Liberating clocks: Developing a critical horology to rethink the potential of clock time

Across a wide range of cultural forms, including philosophy, cultural theory, literature and art, the figure of the clock has drawn suspicion, censure and outright hostility. In contrast, even while maps have been shown to be complicit with forms of domination, they are also widely recognised as tools that can be critically reworked in the service of more liberatory ends. This paper seeks to counteract the tendency to see clocks in this way, arguing that they have many more interesting possibilities than they are usually given credit for. An analysis of approaches to clocks in continental philosophy critiques the way they have too often been dismissed as unworthy of further analysis, and argues that this dismissal is based upon an inadequate understanding of how clocks operate. Seeking to move towards more critical and curious approaches, the paper draws inspiration from critical cartography in order to call for the development of a ‘critical horology’ which would emphasise both the fundamentally political nature of clocks, and the potential for designing them otherwise. A discussion of temporal design provides a range of examples of how clocks might open up new horizons within the politics of time

The Fight for the Self-Representation. Ainu Imaginary, Ethnicity and Assimilation

Film representation of the Ainu people is as old as cinema but it has not remained stable over time. From the origins of cinema, Ainu people were an object of interest for Japanese and foreign explorers who portrayed them as an Other, savage and isolated from the modern world. The notion of "otherness" was slightly modified during wartime, as the Ainu were represented as Japanese subjects within the "imperial family", and at the end of the fifties when entertainment cinema presented the Ainu according to the codes of the Hollywood Western on the one hand; and Mikio Naruse proposed a new portrayal focusing on the Ainu as a long-discriminated social collective rather than as an ethnic group, on the other. However, Tadayoshi Himeda's series of seven documentaries following the Ainu leader Shigeru Kayano's activities marked a significant shift in Ainu iconography. Himeda challenged both the postwar institutional discourse on the inexistence of minorities in Japan, and the touristic and ahistorical image that concealed the Ainu's cultural assimilation to Japanese culture. The proposed films do not try to show an exotic people but a conventional people struggling to recover their collective past

Hyperborea: The Arctic Myth of Contemporary Russian Radical Nationalists

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union Russians had to search for a new identity. This was viewed as an urgent task by ethnic Russian nationalists, who were dreaming of a ‘pure Russian country’, or at least of the privileged status of ethnic Russians within the Russian state. To mobilise people they picked up the obsolete Aryan myth rooted in both occult teachings and Nazi ideology and practice. I will analyse the main features of the contemporary Russian Aryan myth developed by radical Russian intellectuals. While rejecting medieval and more recent Russian history as one of oppression implemented by ‘aliens’, the advocates of the Aryan myth are searching for a Golden Age in earlier epochs. They divide history into two periods: initially the great Aryan civilisation and civilising activity successfully developed throughout the world, after which a period of decline began. An agent of this decline is identified as the Jews, or ‘Semites’, who deprived the Aryans of their great achievements and pushed them northwards. The Aryans are identified as the Slavs or Russians, who suffer from alien treachery and misdeeds. The myth seeks to replace former Marxism with racism and contributes to contemporary xenophobia.&nbsp

Thinking "Religion": The Christian Past and Interreligious Future of Religious Studies and Theology

The category “religion” is a tripartite, emergent from Christian theology during modernity, as Christianity increased, transcended, and diminished, and persistent in contemporary religious studies and Christian theology. With the postmodern and postcolonial “return of religion”: the tripartite category is located as a product of Eurocentric modern Christianity; Christianity is positioned as one religion among others; and religious studies engages religious traditions, including Christianity, in their particularities, rather than in terms of overarching (modernist) categories. Within Christian theology, while Christianity transcended persists in (pluralist) liberal theologies, religion is repudiated and (particularist) Christianity re-centered in its neo-orthodox strands. While the Eurocentic entwining of Christianity with western modernity unravels, Christianity re-centered looks to a Trinitarian core, differently appropriated in the diverse locations constituting World Christianity. The recent particularist focus of both religious studies and Christian theology opens a path toward greater cooperation between the two disciplines, beyond tensions arising from the Christian-infused tripartite

Introduction: Eight Myths of Conflict and Development in the Middle East

In this introductory article we identify eight myths of conflict and development related to the Middle East region. Some of these myths, which cut across academia, foreign policy and development interventions, are specific to the Middle East; others are ‘global’ myths that regional developments contradict. We do not claim to be the first to identify all these myths; many of our arguments are indebted to a long history of critical scholarship. The articles in this IDS Bulletin all speak to the disconnects, disjunctures and misconceptions highlighted here

The ocean in a drop: a narrative of reintegration for an era of disintegration

It has been twenty years since I left the corporate world to pursue a life of greater meaning and fulfilment, driven less by the pursuit of wealth, and more by purpose. Initially, that purpose took the form of a mission to raise awareness of our environmental challenges which led me to row solo across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, between 2005 and 2011, using my adventures as a campaigning platform. In this context statement, I evaluate the successes and failures of that mission. I conclude that while I succeeded in creating both the platform and the inner resources to be an effective advocate for change, I largely failed in generating that change, due to my naivety regarding both the scale and the structural strength of the forces – particularly the psychological, social, and economic forces – that preserve the status quo. I then explore the subsequent insights that have led me to a more holistic, systems-level approach to societal transformation, which is inseparable from action at the individual level. These insights spring from an eclectic mix of sources, including Taoism, and their implications for leadership as partnership. During the writing of this critical commentary I was inspired by the pandemic to write on the gifts of solitude, the liminal space that enhances the bricolage of the mind to develop insights and be open to uncertainty. I have then extrapolated from the bricolage of my rowing experiences to the bricolage of ideas to generate a narrative that supports the fundamental shift in consciousness that I believe is required for us to escape our existential crisis. This shift in consciousness has become the foundation for a new work in progress, which I include as an Appendix 6 to this statement