Documents found
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181.More information
In this study, I propose to take a new look at the interpretive tradition which finds in Moses a political reformer. Different from the methodological minimalism leading to a full demythologization of the biblical figure, this tradition considers possible to access the historical experience of Moses. The recent book of Jacob Rogozinski is in line with this tradition and proposes to expose a “kernel of truth” as its essence. Different from philosophical or spiritual perspectives, such as the interpretations of Hegel and Martin Buber, this work proposes a full historical reconstruction. I present the main theses of this audacious book and try to show how it contributes to a new understanding of the figure of Moses.
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In Israel, major social justice protests that developed during the “Peoples' Spring” were marked by the emergence of spontaneous mobilizations and totally new forums for debate and criticism, such as the creation of a people's assembly and court that held hearings in late 2012. This paper seeks to better understand these new forms of public engagement, which give life to ordinary language without untangling it from its critical, argumentative functions. The general issue in this study consists in reading these different actions from the standpoint of the renewal of social criticism. A specific issue consists in asking to what degree and by what means this “ordinary indignation” (in the sense that the criticism is “taken” in the daily environment of the actors) can be regarded as radical indignation that calls institutions into question. The paper focuses in particular on the people's court that held hearings in Israel in 2011, in the wake of the social justice protests.
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184.More information
The Middle East is generally perceived in the West, often in simplistic terms, as an area which is crucial to the West's economic and strategic interests. Given the complexity of this new « Eastern question », the Western perspective is important because it counts for a lot in determining the future of this region and in defining the position the Middle East holds in the world System. This dominant perspective has nonetheless the defect of putting on the back burner the interests of the peoples of the Middle East and the possibilities of a different scenario which corresponds less with the designs of the great powers today and more with the needs of the Middle Eastern countries.The present and future position of the Middle East in the world System should thus be examined from an internal viewpoint as much as from an external one. Seen from the outside, the region appears essentially as a pawn. From this perspective, the deterioration of the Palestinian question permits the great powers (particularly the United States) to keep the Arab governments divided and thus blocks the way to regional cooperation susceptible to putting the energy resources of the oil producers at the service of self-directed development in the region. Seen from the inside, however, this cooperation, beyond its economic advantages, has interesting social and cultural possibilities, It is thus a question of knowing which conditions would develop these possibilities. The question is important because, to a certain extent, the outcome of the Middle Eastern situation will serve as an example to the Third World as a whole to the extent that the Middle East develops a strategy for a new kind of development defined and carried out free from dependency on external powers. The precondition to this effort is clearly the formulation and effective maintenance of a common Arab position which is coherent and realistic on the Palestinian question ; inevitably this is central to all Middle Eastern policy.
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185.More information
AbstractFirst on the basis of an historical analysis, we try to discern the different elements which are preparing a new crisis in the capitalist system. With the help of an interpretation which is borrowed from new tendencies in contemporary marxism, the author reviews one by one the evolution of the capitalist world of the socialist world and of the peripheral countries. Attempts at a prediction include different patterns that are possible in the world system in 1984, from the point of view of the economy as well as from the point of view of ideology.
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186.More information
AbstractThis article proposes to reflect upon the dialectical tension between minority and majority to the level of theoretical, literary, and microsocial analysis of the “appearance” of the minority—appearance being the “who” in the “who am I ?” that declares and signifies itself in social and public space. It aims to grasp the figures of the Jew and the Black as ideal types of the minority in order to elaborate upon a specific political dimension of the minority that is constituted within the individuality, equality and anonymity of a republican citizenship. First of all, we will endeavor to carry out this study from the perspective of political and moral sociology. In order to perceive and analyze how political activity is discussed and elaborated and to see what is implicated in the appearance of the minority in the social field, we will study selected texts among certain dialogues, correspondences and essays in the field of post-colonial studies (Fanon, Hall) and the “Jewish question” (Arendt, Sartre).
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At the beginning of the twentieth century, a number of European immigrants who had examined the specific features of Quebec society wrote, in Montréal, literary essays on the subject in non-official languages. Among them, a cultural activist and community leader of Romanian origins, Hananiah-Meir Caiserman, explored in Yiddish the poetry of the École littéraire de Montréal. To gain a better understanding of the cultural achievements of French Canada, Caiserman published his reflections in 1921 in a small Montréal literary journal, Nyuansn. His efforts, to which little attention has been paid to date, throw a new light on Quebec society before the Quiet Revolution and show the value of exploring the works of authors who belonged to linguistic minorities.