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5302P Democracy MUP-PT/lb.qxd 1111 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 10111 11 12 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 42111 23/10/09 16:08 Page 29 1 ‘Don’t blame me!’ Seriality and the responsibility of voters Robert Bernasconi Personal interest and the secret ballot Within democracies, politicians are called upon to take responsibility for their decisions, but surprisingly little is heard today about holding voters responsible for the decisions that they make when electing their representatives. The rhetoric of voters is represented by
Though pointedly raising its literary pedigree with allusions to ‘high’ literature from Percy‘s RELIQUES to Spensers FAIRIE QUEENE, Coleridge‘s ‘Christabel’ (1799-1801) still draws heavily on the very Gothic fiction of the 1790s that he condemns as ‘low’ writing in reviews of the same period. Especially Gothic is this poems alter-ego relationship between the title character and the vampiric Geraldine. This peculiar use of echoes extends the many jibes of this period that blame the many literary changes of this time (including a mass-produced effulgence of printed writing and a frightening blurring of genres) on the Gothic as a kind of scapegoat for the cultural upheaval of this era. The Gothic is, in fact, a site for what Kristeva calls ‘abjection’: the cultural ‘throwing off’ of intermingled contradictions,into a symbolic realm that seems blatantly fictional and remote. As such a site, the Gothic in ‘Christabel’ haunts the poem with unresolved cultural quandaries that finally contribute to its unfinished, fragmentary nature. One such quandary is what is abjected in the Gothic relationship of the heroine and Geraldine: the irresolution at the time about the nature and potentials of woman.
Introduction Humanitarian films in the 1920s served to blame or impel audiences, without naming or shaming perpetrators most of the time. Instead of being proper political advocacy, early humanitarian cinema displayed more educational advocacy, which aims to impose a transformative agenda based on solidarity. Advocacy developed more systematically as a form of humanitarian communication in the 1970s and 1980s. It was influenced by the French and British schools of humanitarianism ( Dolan, 1992 ; Edwards, 1993 ; Gorin, 2018 ). While British NGOs such as
above, such violence may be aimed at causing humiliation or fear among victims and their communities, and it should not be understood as a reflection of the sexuality of the perpetrator ( Eriksson Baaz and Stern, 2018 ) or the victim ( Eichert, 2018 ). This myth contributes to victim-blaming, as it suggests that survivors might have somehow ‘attracted’ the perpetrator or that they must have ‘enjoyed’ what was in fact rape ( Davies, Gilston et al
-cultural universe, ubwenge is – locally and traditionally – considered to be a value. Ubwenge characterises the effectual truth at play in the gacaca assemblage. Communications – mostly accusations in the context of gacaca – depended to a great extent on their usefulness and were not necessarily aimed at serving justice. These communications were animated by a consequentialist ethics: what is true or just is that which has the most favourable outcomes in the given circumstances. Corruption, score-settling, the search for profit, blaming the dead and the absent, and
are the ones who sent these people to kill us.’ By the afternoon, chiefs remained conspicuously absent, but national politicians, ‘sons of the soil’ with aspirations, arrived in Bamoi and denounced the closure of the Luma, in an effort to shift the blame from government and on to local actors. The crowd retaliated by burning down the police station. At night, they set up checkpoints to check vehicles for local authorities: ‘If
important in a world whose rules they did not write, allege that human rights and humanitarianism represent the soft-power version of Western modernity, another vector for the transmission of liberal-capitalist values and interests that threatens their hold on national power and resources. China, with its muscular conception of sovereignty and its no-questions-asked relationship with other authoritarian states, leads the way. These non-Western states can hardly be blamed for their scepticism given the degree to which humanitarians often attend crises
dancing, singing and learning in orphanages and schools are ‘healthy’ and ‘happy’ ( New Near East , 1921 : 4). The visual economy of aid (and its underlying moral, political and religious components) thus involved a plethora of emotions not limited to care, compassion, and empathy; filmic narratives also involved indignation that enabled new affective and intellectual engagements of the audience with ‘others’. The use of blame, which previous studies have underestimated, is of particular interest. Instead of shaming oppressors, the movies blamed the audience for not
. It is for these reasons and others – ranging from the lack of knowledge, victim-blaming and, in some countries, the fear of prosecution as male victims might find themselves in predicaments where humanitarian service providers accuse them of being homosexual ( RLP, 2013 : 31) – that male victims fail to report CRSV. Having to prove their heterosexuality to service providers makes silence about experiences inevitable ( Office of the United Nations Special Representative of the
support the agitation for the restructuring of the Federation, but the North, which seems to be benefiting from the present constitutional structure, is opposed to any form of restructuring. So it has been a contentious issue. Fifty years after independence people are still talking about whether the Federation would survive or not. In the past, people were blaming the colonial authorities for the underdevelopment of the country. How long shall we blame colonial rule? Is