Arte asociacionista cubano para un fin de siglo: artivismo, performance y revolución

This article analyzes some of the most significant groups of artists of the exuberant eighties in Cuba. Among the great variety of groups that appeared in this period, we are going to focus on those that, with greater clarity, use performance as a fundamental medium. This use of an ephemeral and unconventional discipline will reinforce the ties between the community of artists and the Cuban people at large, at a time when many still considered it possible to solve the many failures of the system through spontaneous and disinterested art. Pursuing this objective, the artists held firm to the hope that something could change and, sure of this conviction, they promoted collaborative work such as had not been seen since the historical avant-gardes in Cuba. After the devastating economic and social crisis of the 1990s, hope started to disappear. The arrival of the new century perpetuated hardship and managed to squander the former spirit of solidarity - not only among artists - but also among an important part of society. However, it seems correct to conclude that the current tense political context can function as a deterrent of disunity and individualism. The important popular protests against the government that took place on July 11, 2021, have caused a large number of creators, intellectuals and people outside the artistic field to decide to work again in community. El presente artículo propone analizar algunos de los grupos de artistas más significativos de la explosiva década de los ochenta en Cuba. Dentro de la gran variedad de colectivos que aparecen en este periodo, vamos a centrarnos en aquellos que, con mayor claridad, utilizan la performance como medio fundamental. Este uso de una disciplina efímera y poco convencional reforzará los lazos de unión entre la comunidad de artistas y el pueblo en un momento en el que todavía se veía posible solventar los numerosos fallos del sistema a través de un arte espontáneo y desinteresado. Persiguiendo este objetivo, los artistas mantuvieron firme la esperanza de que algo podía cambiar y, seguros de esta convicción, potenciaron el trabajo colaborativo como no se había visto desde las vanguardias históricas en Cuba. Tras la devastadora crisis económica y de valores de los noventa, la esperanza desaparece. La llegada del nuevo siglo perpetuó la penuria y consiguió dilapidar el otrora espíritu grupal y solidario -no sólo de los artistas- sino de una parte importante de la sociedad. Sin embargo, parece acertado concluir que el tenso contexto político actual anima a sortear la desunión y el individualismo. Las importantes protestas populares contra el gobierno que tuvieron lugar el 11 de julio de 2021, han propiciado que una nutrida representación de creadores, intelectuales y personas ajenas al campo artístico hayan decidido trabajar nuevamente en comunidad.

Elena Pulcini. The Time to Think of the Good

The essay explores the work of Elena Pulcini, who was snatched away by the pandemic when her ideas and her work were becoming more and more visible in the public sphere. Books like Care of the World, or her last work Tra cura e giustizia, were read and discussed beyond the usual academic circles. Although she was profoundly alien from spectacularisation of any kind, in the last years her profile had become that of a public intellectual whose philosophical work was a point of reference for a wide variety of groups and networks, from feminists to environmentalists.

Women and Violent Extremism: Concepts and Theories

“Women” who engage in “violent extremism” are often portrayed in ways that disassociate femininity from agency in violence, sensationalize the violence that women do commit, and manipulate traits associated with femininity to portray women’s violence as femininity gone wrong. The study of “women” and “violent extremism” suffers on a variety of levels. First, both the category of “women” and the label of “violent extremism” are definitionally fraught, political, and politicized. Second, there are gendered obstructions to recovering and representing histories of women’s engagement in violent extremism that make learning about the extent of the relevant behavior difficult at best. Third, both existing theories themselves and the existing contours of the enterprise of theorizing “women” and “violent extremisms” make the project of figuring out why “women” commit “violent extremist” acts both difficult and problematic. But why “women” engage in “violent extremism” is only an interesting question if you believe that women necessarily have something in common. Otherwise, why “women” engage in any given behavior is not any different than why people engage in that same behavior. We argue that, rather than focusing on a causal relationship between an essentialist understanding of gender and a politicized understanding of “violent extremism,” it is more productive to think about the role that gender plays in shaping “violent extremism,” conceptually and as it is practiced across a wide variety of groups and locations around the world. “Violent extremism” is indeed gendered, just not in the simple way where some generic motivation can be assigned to the participation of “women” therein.

On Collections of the Chu Verses (chuci) of the 3rd–10th Centuries

The article deals with factual data on chuci (verses of Chu) collections, presented in the bibliographical treatises from the official historiographic works Suishu (Book of Sui), Jiutangshu (Old Book of Tang) and Xintangshu (New Book of Tang). Although most of the texts there recorded were irretrievably lost, the available information about the genre enables us to assume, firstly, a further growth in the popularity of chuci poetry in the spiritual life of the 3rd6th centuries and among a variety of groups of educated people: from court scholars to literati, who preferred a free-from-service lifestyle, and, secondly, the existence of a series of different versions of the Chuci collections. Thirdly, we may assume the formation of the commentary school of chuci, within which the most important directions of the future studies in the area have emerged.

Religious education in Russia and Europe in the twentieth century: historical experience and transfer of values

The twentieth century was a time of trial for the Christian Churches of Europe and Russia. Their clash with a new type of state could not but affect the system of religious education. In almost all countries, it has faced state intervention, which has led to its significant transformation, and sometimes even a complete ban. At the same time, there was a search for new forms of religious education aimed at a wide variety of groups: from future priests and lay students to teenagers and preschoolers. This collection of articles provides reviews of these trends, as well as reviews of current discussions about the future of religious education. For historians, teachers and anyone interested in the history of religious education.

Free coarse groups

A coarse group is a group endowed with a coarse structure so that the group multiplication and inversion are coarse mappings. Let {(X,\mathcal{E})} be a coarse space, and let {\mathfrak{M}} be a variety of groups different from the variety of singletons. We prove that there is a coarse group {F_{\mathfrak{M}}(X,\mathcal{E})\in\mathfrak{M}} such that {(X,\mathcal{E})} is a subspace of {F_{\mathfrak{M}}(X,\mathcal{E})}, X generates {F_{\mathfrak{M}}(X,\mathcal{E})} and every coarse mapping {(X,\mathcal{E})\to(G,\mathcal{E}^{\prime})}, where {G\in\mathfrak{M}}, {(G,\mathcal{E}^{\prime})} is a coarse group, can be extended to coarse homomorphism {F_{\mathfrak{M}}(X,\mathcal{E})\to(G,\mathcal{E}^{\prime})}. If {\mathfrak{M}} is the variety of all groups, the groups {F_{\mathfrak{M}}(X,\mathcal{E})} are asymptotic counterparts of Markov free topological groups over Tikhonov spaces.

Countering Extremism Through Sufi Practices in Sindh

This article is an analysis of Sufism and Sufi practices performed at Sufi shrines of Sindh. Moreover, the ways to counter the growing menace of extremism through Sufi practices is discussed in this paper. The approach adopted is from traditional to modern, in understanding the importance of Sufism. Sindh is considered the land of Sufis but unfortunately, it is badly affected by extremism. Although there is a huge number of Sufi shrines in Sindh, the data has been collected and analyzed from the shrines of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Usman Marwandi (Lal Shahbaz Qalander) and Sachal Sarmast, particularly at Urs celebrations. The important Sufi practices include Sufi music, Sufi poetry, Lunger, Urs celebrations etc. The participants in Urs celebrations belong to a variety of groups from upper class to lower and middle class, irrespective of their caste, creed and religion.

Managing and Visualizing Unstructured Big Data

One of the most common terms that is used in a significant amount of popular and scholarly discussion is big data. As pointed out earlier, the term has a dubious history and different people claim ownership. What remains true of the notion of big data is that it exists. With the increasing rate at which institutions and individuals are digitizing many different kinds of information the amount of data can only go up in volume. Therefore, big data has become an object of analysis for a variety of groups, from academics to marketers, all of whom are interested in understanding how big data could provide highly granular information about people.

“Written barracks.” On the Production and Circulation of Newsletters in the Internment Camps of Southwest France

Around half a million Spanish exiles crossed the French border in the Pyrenees between January and February of 1939. They were looking for shelter in anticipation of the overthrow of the Spanish Second Republic. The reception of the exiles in France was rather hostile, and approximately a quarter of a million of them were locked up in internment or concentration camps that French authorities improvised or reactivated camps of WWI. The exiles were defeated and they were deprived of freedom and forced to live in insalubrious conditions. The refugees used writing and culture as a strategy to resist, and as a means to hang on to their personal, familial, social and ideological identities. As a result of their cultural activity, a wide range of newsletters and diaries were edited in the internment camps despite the scarcity of resources. The refugees used these writings as a means of entertainment but also to spread their own doctrines. This article analyzes some 30 newsletters produced by a variety of groups in the camps: political groups, which were mostly linked to the field of education, different intellectuals and members of the International Brigades. The main goal of this work is to disentangle how the newsletters were produced, discuss the aims of the different publications and show how the texts were circulated and exchanged within the internment camps. Ultimately, the purpose of this work is to demonstrate the meaning of these communications for their authors and their readers and examine how the texts were used to reconstruct their lost identity.

Organized Armed Groups in Contemporary International Practice

Chapter 3 suggests that IHL requires non-state entities to fulfil three criteria to form a party to a non-international armed conflict: a group needs to be (1) a collective entity with (2) the ability to ensure respect for basic humanitarian norms, and (3) the capacity to engage in sufficiently intense violence. This chapter discusses how these broad criteria have been interpreted and also develops new ways of how they should be understood in light of the variety of groups engaged in contemporary armed conflicts and the increasing fragmentation of groups. Instead of simply recounting factors established in international jurisprudence, this chapter reconsiders these factors’ actual relevance and shows how they can be helpful in proving the three identified criteria. In its final part, Chapter 3 applies the identified criteria to two specific cases: transnational armed groups such as the Islamic State Group, and cyber groups such as Anonymous.