scholarly journals Norwegian Political Theatre in the 1970s: Breaking Away from the “Ibsen Tradition”

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Anna Watson
Keyword(s):  
Deep Sea ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Political Theatre ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Social ◽  
Experimental Theatre ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Made In

The dominant theatre aesthetic in Norwegian theatre has been, and remains at large to be, psychological-realism and the bourgeois “living room drama”. In a Norwegian context this tradition is best represented by Henrik Ibsen’s dramas, staged at Nationaltheatret and Den Nasjonale Scene. However, throughout the 20th century there have been several attempts to break with the “Ibsen tradition”, especially among left-wing political and socially engaged theatre-makers and playwrights such as Gunvor Sartz, Olav Daalgard, and Nordahl Grieg in the 1930s, and Jens Bjørneboe and Odin Teatret in the 1960s. I argue that the clearest and most decisive break with Realism and the Aristotelian dramaturgy, in a Norwegian political theatre context, was made in the late 1970s, instigated by the independent theatre groups Perleporten Teatergruppe and Tramteatret. Their break did not only constitute an aesthetic and dramaturgical break, but also a break in organizational terms by breaking the hierarchy of the institutional theatre ‘machine’. Perleporten Teatergruppe and Tramteatret aimed at making a political, progressive theatre both in form and content. Perleporten and Tramteatret were both inspired by contemporaneous political and experimental theatre in Europe and Scandinavia as well as by the historical avant-garde experiments, and, for Tramteatret’s part, the workers' theatre movement from the 1920s and 30s in their search for a theatre that could express the social and political climate of the day. In this article, I will place Tramteatret and Perleporten Teatergruppe’s debut performances Deep Sea Thriller (1977) and Knoll og Tott (1975) within a historiographical and cultural-political context.

Cody’s Books

LOGOS ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-25
Author(s):  
David Emblidge
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Chain Stores ◽  
Street Violence ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University

Cody’s Books, in Berkeley, California, had its roots during the mid-1950s in the left-wing sympathies of its founders, the husband–wife team of Fred and Patricia Cody. Serving the University of California nearby, the much admired bookstore became a hangout and haven for intellectually curious students and faculty. In the social protest movements of the 1960s, the store functioned as a refuge from street violence as students and police clashed outside. When long-term employee Andy Ross bought the shop upon the Codys’ retirement, it was a thriving business but soon ran into challenges from encroaching chain stores and the emergence of online shopping. Ross responded variously: sometimes with ambitious, effective bookselling tactics, sometimes with ineffective resentment towards consumers who had abandoned the store. Attempts to survive through risky refinancing and the infusion of foreign investment money to support expansion into San Francisco all backfired. The last Cody’s branch closed ignominiously in 2008.

Heresy and heroics: The debate on the alleged ‘crisis’ in Italian industrial design around 1960

Modern Italy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjetil Fallan
Keyword(s):  
Future Development ◽  
Industrial Design ◽  
Professional Community ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Italian Design ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Made In

In the course of the 1950s, Italian industrial design underwent a period of professionalisation and rose to international fame under the banners of ‘Made in Italy’ and ‘la linea italiana’. Seen in retrospect, Italian design retained this position during the 1960s, with the onset of avant-garde ‘pop-design’ and ‘anti-design’. Yet this future development was by no means a given in the Italian design community at the turn of the decade. At this crucial moment, between the rationality of the first postwar period and the playfulness of the second, allegations of a ‘crisis’ in Italian industrial design raised a storm in the professional community for a brief period around 1960. This article analyses this heated debate, focusing on its most pronounced manifestation: the discussions in the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (ADI) and the design magazine Stile Industria following the jury's decision to withhold the Gran Premio Nazionale Compasso d'Oro for 1959.

scholarly journals A (Trans)National Emotional Community? Greek Political Songs and the Politicisation of Greek Migrants in West Germany in the 1960s and early 1970s

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-614
Author(s):  
NIKOLAOS PAPADOGIANNIS
Keyword(s):  
West Germany ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
Greek Migrants ◽  
Political Songs

AbstractThis article examines the emotional standards and experiences connected with the entehno laiko music composed by Mikis Theodorakis that was immensely popular among left-wing Greek migrants, workers and students, living in West Germany in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Expanding on a body of literature that explores the transnational dimensions of protest movements in the 1960s and the 1970s, the article demonstrates that these transnational dimensions were not mutually exclusive with the fact that at least some of those protestors felt that they belonged to a particular nation. Drawing on the conceptual framework put forth by Barbara Rosenwein, it argues that the performance of these songs was conducive to the making of a (trans)national emotional community. On the one hand, for Greek left-wingers residing in West Germany and, after 1967, for Greek centrists too, the collective singing of music composed by Theodorakis initially served as a means of ‘overcoming fear’ and of forging committed militants who struggled for the social and political transformation of their country of origin. On the other, from the late 1960s onwards those migrants increasingly enacted this emotional community with local activists from West Germany as well.

The Cul-de-Sac of Social Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan M. Wald
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
New York Intellectuals ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Irving Howe ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S

A history of Irving Howe and Dissent magazine is used to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the social democratic alternative that became the Left wing of the New York intellectuals during the 1950s. This is followed by an examination of the life and work of Harvey Swados, which also express the ambiguities that would render this tradition problematic during the era of new radicalization in the 1960s.

scholarly journals Terrorens poetik: Revolutionen skrives med småt

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (107) ◽  
pp. 52-73
Author(s):  
Susanne Stoltz ◽  
Anders Tønnesen
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Situationist International ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Red Army ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Poetics of Terror: The Manifestoes of the RAF:This paper points to a ‘forgotten’ literary history of the Red Army Fraction (RAF) in order to contest a common misconception. The RAF is often perceived solely as a political phenomenon and its justification of terrorism as a political discourse. Thereby many scholars bluntly fail to pinpoint the attractiveness of the left-wing terrorism of the 1960s and 1970s. The paper argues that the writings of the first generation of the RAF also convey a ‘poetics’ of terrorism. It points to a somewhat overlooked strategy of justification in the writings, which can be formulated as follows: Both the act of terrorism and the utterance of its defence are justified as aesthetic experiences. Furthermore, this was constructed under heavy influence from groups of avant-garde artists in the tradition of the Situationist International (SI). The paper analyses the strategy of justification found in the first few RAF-statements. Beneath the political jargon of left-wing radicalism and the »credo of immediate action«, the paper locates another strategy of justification that carries the sign of avant-garde thought. According to the manifestoes of the RAF, the aesthetic experience of a terrorist act could liberate the spectator. The study concludes that the writings of RAF unveil a ‘poetics’ of terrorism. The act of terrorism is a radical transgression of reality. Hence, the terrorist act destroys the ‘mechanical’ system of cognitive oppression because it shows the possibility of another world. That is why the RAF views terror as a model of spiritual liberation. In addition to this the statements communicate a parallel concept to the ‘poetics’ of the terror act. The RAF constructed a concept of revolutionary language, ‘the armed propaganda’, which claimed to break down the barriers of ‘domination’ in the consciousness of the recipient. In doing so the statements perform what they preach; they are themselves acts of terror. The RAF’s concept of terrorism comprises both word and deed. The writings are acts and the acts are utterances. Accordingly, RAF’s ‘poetics’ of terrorism can be described as the transgression of reality in the word or deed of terror that leads to spiritual liberation.

scholarly journals Rubén Darío en el debate sobre la literatura nacional nicaragüense

(an)ecdótica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-82
Author(s):  
Diana Moro ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Ruben Dario ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Made In

The debate on literature in Nicaragua, at various moments in the country’s history, is elaborated on the figure, aesthetics, and work of Rubén Darío. Not only the birth and death of the poet on vernacular soil are central aspects in the appropriation made, but above all, the international cultural capital built through his wandering life and cosmopolitanism in his work. The appropriation of his aesthetics, as well as the distancing and debates about his contribution, persist in various moments of Nicaraguan literary history. We will explore some interventions by Nicaraguan intellectuals who are members of the Avant-garde Group, above all, their subsequent critical review and the contribution that Ventana magazine made in the 1960s. Finally, it will be observed that during the revolutionary decade, 1979-1989, the figure of Darío concentrates, at least, two simultaneous appropriations, the “anti-imperialist” and the “half-blood”. Both perspectives coincide in the conviction that, in Nicaragua, there would be no literature without the magisterium of Darío.

Inventing New Forms of Political Theatre

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Fischer-Lichte
Keyword(s):  
West Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Political Theatre ◽  
Red Army Faction ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
Political Stance ◽  
Red Army ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Chapter 7, ‘Inventing New Forms of Political Theatre’, covers the 1960s and 1970s. It situates the chosen productions in the socio-political climate of the GDR—that is, within the discussions on the leadership of the Party—and in the Federal Republic of Germany, where the anti-authoritarian movement, the student movement, and the emergence of the Red Army Faction provide the context. The aesthetics of Benno Besson’s Oedipus Tyrant (1967, East Berlin), Hansgünther Heyme’s Oedipus (1968, Cologne), Hans Neuenfels’ Medea (1976), and Christoph Nel’s Antigone (1978, both in Frankfurt/Main) is evaluated in terms of their contribution to this discussion and their political stance. The last three productions serve as examples of how the Bildungsbürgertum—still the majority of the theatregoers in West Germany—wanted the politicization of theatre to be not merely justified but mandatory.

Objectivity and the Politics of Disciplines

2020 ◽  
pp. 193-216
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
The United States ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Universal Quantification ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter assesses the bearing of bureaucratic cultures on science, then shows how inferential statistics became standard in medicine and psychology as a response to internal disciplinary weakness and external regulatory pressures. The massive effort to introduce quantitative criteria for public decisions in the 1960s and 1970s was not simply an unmediated response to a new political climate. It reflected also the overwhelming success of quantification in the social, behavioral, and medical sciences during the postwar period. This was not a chance confluence of independent lines of cultural and intellectual development, but in some way a single phenomenon. It is no accident that the move toward the almost universal quantification of social and applied disciplines was led by the United States, and succeeded most fully there. The push for rigor in the disciplines derived in part from the same distrust of unarticulated expert knowledge and the same suspicion of arbitrariness and discretion that shaped political culture so profoundly in the same period. Some of this suspicion came from within the disciplines it affected, but in every case it was at least reinforced by vulnerability to the suspicions of outsiders, often expressed in an explicitly political arena.

Revisiting “the Long Night” of Iranian Workers: Labor Activism in the Iranian Oil Industry in the 1960s

2013 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 176-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maral Jefroudi
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
International Institute ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Oil Workers ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractThis article reviews the labor historiography of Iran for the period between the 1953 coup and the early revolutionary activism of late the 1970s, an interlude marked by a lack of histories of labor activism. Based on a qualitative analysis of the types of collective actions that oil workers engaged in during the period, this article argues that contextualizing the struggles of workers and the types of collective actions they engaged in will tell us more about the social and political changes that they experienced and participated in than the search for an ideal type of labor activism. It is argued that the social and political climate of Iran during the 1960s, characterized by political repression and an extensive centralized reform program, added new tactics to workers’ repertoires of action as they made use of the discourse of the regime for their own ends. This study is based on archival research at the International Institute of Social History archives in Amsterdam, the BP archives at Coventry, the National Archives of UK in London, and the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC.

scholarly journals Production of truth as reduction of complexity. Understanding society with peripheral critical sociology

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Philipp Altmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Organizational Development ◽  
Global South ◽  
Considerable Effort ◽  
Critical Sociology ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Made In

Truth is always a reduction of complexity. The various aspects of an observed phenomena are reduced to only those that relate to how truth is defined by the observer. In this sense, social sciences create society by applying theories that define what is truth to it. This logic becomes a problem when the social sciences in question do not reflect a wide range of different theories that can complement and criticize each other, providing a more complex observation and, thus, a more complex truth. This is the case with some social sciences of the Global South, especially, in early stages of their institutional and organizational development. However, decisions made in early stages of a system can only be changed with considerable effort later on. There tends to be an effect of path dependency, especially in organizations engaged in social sciences in the Global South. This article will explore the mechanisms of production of truth and thus of reduction of complexity by Marxist critical sociology in Ecuador, between the 1960s and 2010. A focus will be the institutionalization of these mechanisms in organizations and the augmentation of complexity within critical sociology, usually connected to certain ideas of politics and sciences.

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