Kūniškos mediacijos: biomedijos šiuolaikinėje kontrolės visuomenėje

The aim of this article is to present, discuss and critically reflect the emerging in media studies notion of biomedia, which refutes the alleged dichotomy between technology and the body. In the broadest sense, biomedia can be construed as a particular way of mediation whereby the media directly affect and transform the biological dimension of the body and vice versa. The article opens with the discussion of the context in which biomedia emerge – the societies of control (G. Deleuze). In the this first part, the genesis of the concept of biomedia is discussed, as well as two conceptual paradigms – epistemological (E. Thacker’s “dark media”) and ethical (M. Fuller, A. Goffey’s “gray media”) are presented. In the second part, the nexus between biomedia and the cyberbiopolitical regime is highlighted, as well as a peculiar form of biopower, functioning through biomedia – neuropower (W. Neidich) is presented. Ultimately, two potential resistance lines (negative and critical) are examined.

‘The Franco Way’: The American Right and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–9

The following article is an intellectual and cultural history of the American supporters of Francisco Franco (hereafter referred to as American Francoites) and the Nationalist Movement during the Spanish Civil War. This article examines political pamphlets, magazines, radio broadcasts, journal articles, and books to reconstruct the American Francoite worldview. Like pro-Franco Catholics across the globe, American Francoites insisted the war was not between democracy and fascism but communism and Christianity; as Americans, they believed that supporting Franco was critical in fulfilling a patriotic and providential duty to protect Western Christendom from godless communism. Investigating the American Francoite worldview contributes to a recent body of scholarship detailing the rise of transnational anticommunism and nationalism as a constellation of culturally contingent reactions to the growth and spread of international communism. American Francoites emerged as one peculiar form of anticommunist American nationalism. In conclusion, this article argues that the political myths perpetuated by the pro-Franco argument – that the war was a battle between godless communism and Western Christendom – survived both the Spanish Civil War and Franco himself, merging easily into the ‘new conservatism’ of the postwar period and continuing to inform the beliefs and attitudes of the present right.

Rentiers of the low-carbon economy? Renewable energy's extractive fiscal geographies

Progressive movements today call for transformative state-led investment in renewable energy and other climate infrastructures—in the United States, a vision that confronts inherited legacies of austerity. I argue that a significant obstacle is the neoliberal toolkit through which the US federal government subsidizes renewables, an indirect, highly opaque system of tax credits and incentives. For forty years, tax subsidies have ‘paid’ private financial players to invest in renewables, via allowing them to claim legal tax shelters against their other income. In this political economic analysis, I question, first, how US renewable energy acquired this peculiar form of public finance ‘through the tax code’, unique in the global industry. Second, I explore how the model has shaped US renewables financing, development, and ownership. I center two decisive moments: the California ‘wind rush’ in the 1980s, and the ongoing renewables boom of the last fifteen years. This history articulates financial experiments and tax sheltering scandals of the Reagan Administration with exploitation returned today in more organized (and lucrative) form, as ‘tax equity’ finance. Via tax equity, a handful of major US banks dominate financing for renewables and other politically embattled public goods. They exert a troubling ability to extract rents for their capital, gatekeep what projects get built and by whom, and stall US renewables development altogether. Today, the practice is increasingly strained by these and other problems—growing public costs, private capacity ceilings, and amplification of sectoral crises. Under Biden, it faces probable reform, but may need more comprehensive reimagination.

Italy in times of protest and negative voting: An introduction

The classic heuristics of voting behaviour have been eroded overtime especially in well-established democracies. Ideology, party identification, and social class have been gradually replaced by short-period factors. In particular, the personalization has represented an innovative variable that significantly contributes to explain voting behaviour. Cross-pressures between party identification, candidate assessments and issue preferences paved the way to the diffusion of protest voting, both against the élite and the system. In this respect, Italy represents a very interesting case from both a theoretical and an empirical point view considering the presence of protest parties and the important diffusion of anti-system movements which surfed the protest to consolidate their positions. The editors conceived this special issue aiming at analysing and measuring the impact of protest/negative voting in Italy between 2016 and 2020, a period in which protest parties and voters’ discontent have significantly increased. Data presented by the different papers confirm, albeit under different perspectives, the relevance of this peculiar form of political behaviour.

ВЗГЛЯД РОССИЙСКИХ ПРАВОСЛАВНЫХ ЧИНОВНИКОВ НА РЕЛИГИОЗНУЮ СИТУАЦИЮ У ГРУЗИН-ГОРЦЕВ: ПО АРХИВНЫМ МАТЕРИАЛАМ XIX ВЕКА

В статье на основе материалов первой половины ХIХ в. из Центрального исторического архива Грузии (ЦИАГ) рассматривается отношение российских православных чиновников к тем религиозным традициям, которые были характерны для грузин-горцев Восточной Грузии (хевсуры, пшавы, тушины). Грузия была одной из первых стран, где христианство стало государственной религией. Но к началу ХIХ в. роль православной церкви в некоторых труднодоступных горных регионах Грузии была значительно ослаблена. Грузины-горцы осознавали себя христианами, но бытование христианства здесь нередко принимало своеобразные формы. Здесь сохранялся синкретизм религиозных воззрений, а в определенной мере происходил возврат к архаичным дохристианским верованиям. После вхождения Грузии в состав Российской империи власти стали уделять значительное внимание укреплению православного христианства у грузин-горцев, строительству здесь церквей и назначению священнослужителей в эти отдаленные районы. Миссионерская проповедь должна была укрепить православие на Кавказе и способствовать более полной интеграции местного населения в пространство Российской империи. Based on the materials of the Central Historical Archive of Georgia of the first half of the nineteenth century, the article examines the attitude of Russian Orthodox officials to the religious traditions that were characteristic of the Georgian mountaineers of Eastern Georgia (Khevsurians, Pshavs, Tushins). Georgia was one of the first countries where Christianity became the state religion. But by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the role of the Orthodox Church in some remote mountainous regions of Georgia was significantly weakened. The Georgians-Highlanders recognized themselves as Christians, but the forms of Christianity’s existence often took a very peculiar form here. Here the syncretism of religious views was preserved, and to a certain extent there was a return to archaic pre-Christian beliefs. After Georgia became part of the Russian Empire, the authorities began to pay considerable attention to strengthening Orthodox Christianity among mountain Georgians, building churches here and appointing priests to these remote areas. The missionary sermon was supposed to strengthen Orthodoxy in the Caucasus and promote a more complete integration of the local population into the space of the Russian Empire.

Interpersonal and Intersubjective Alienation in Social Stigmatization and Depression

The subjective experience of social stigma has been widely researched in terms of discrimination, rejection, isolation, etc. These are commonly understood within the traditional individualistic framework of affective experience and sociality, which fails to address the transformative effects of social stigma on how one experiences the social realm and the own self in general. Phenomenology and recent work on the relationality of affective experience acknowledge the central role interpersonal interactions play in subjectivity and offer a suitable approach towards addressing the complexity of the subjective experience of social stigma. Focussing on autobiographical accounts, I propose that the experience of social stigmatization is characterized by an affective atmosphere of interpersonal alienation. Its counterpart, an atmosphere of belonging, is closely related to social empathy, which is eroded by prejudicial attitudes and stereotypes. The breakdown of social empathy establishes a peculiar form of relationless relationality that radically transforms one’s subjectivity. The transformation of subjectivity is structurally similar to disturbances of intersubjectivity in psychopathological conditions such as depression and feelings of disconnectedness, loneliness, and even shame are common in both cases.

Politics of Inclusion: Review Essay

Politics of Inclusion (2009) is an unusual book as its major arguments are not merely valid but are increasingly relevant. Published over a decade ago, it remains a must read for policymakers, political scientists and developmental experts. This review essay has tried to lay down eight key arguments that the book made. These are expanding the ambit of the definition of discrimination from only historical to both past and present forms; accepting that Muslims are not only a poor community but also suffer a peculiar form of discrimination which is increasing; discrimination and backwardness both criterion must be fulfilled for any kind of affirmative action to be institutionalized; state should be welfare in nature and protect all vulnerable social groups; acknowledging that Hindutva is not only against religious minorities but also against women; political representation must be on the four axes of caste, ethnicity, religion and gender; for proper representation of Dalits, tribes, Muslims and women we need electoral reforms and lastly, Scheduled Caste (SC) status must be conferred to Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians. Rather than simply summing up the book, this review essay uses arguments from various contemporary political theorists and social scientists.

Le voleur d’enfants (1906) : trompe-l’oeil médiatique et fausse nouvelle romanesque

Le voleur d’enfants is a novel by Louis Forest, published in Le Matin in 1906. The text stands out for its peculiar form, mimicking the coverage of a major criminal case by the press. Despite being a piece of fake news, the novel does not aim to deceive but rather to entertain by using the imaginary resources of crime and by using the poetic forms specific to the newspapers of the time. In this regard, the text can be analyzed as a fictional equivalent of a pictorial genre aimed at producing a similar effect: the trompe-l’oeil.

Biosemiotics and The Identification of Species-Specific Morphological Characters in The Spider Dysdera Erythrina (Araneae: Dysderidae)

A biosemiotic approach of interpreting morphological data is apt to reveal morphological traits whose key role in intraspecific communication processes, such as specific mate recognition, has been overlooked so far. Certain genital structures of the haplogyne spider Dysdera erythrina (Walckenaer, 1802) serve as an example. In Dysdera erythrina the semi-circular sclerite at the tip of the male’s bulb fits exactly into the anterior diverticulum of the female’s endogyne. From the viewpoint of biosemiotics, which studies the production and interpretation of signs and codes in living systems, these structures are considered the morphological zones of an intraspecific communication process which forms one of the necessary prerequisites for sperm transfer and achievement of fertilisation. Thus, a biosemiotics-based species delimitation approach with its peculiar form of evaluation of morphological structures yields new insights for the multidisciplinary undertaking of modern integrative taxonomy.