Pub Date : 2019-05-13DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2019.12.1.1013
Olmo Gölz
This special issue on Martyrdom and the Struggle for Power in the Middle East was made possible by the collaborative research centre SFB 948 “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms” at the Albert-LudwigsUniversität Freiburg, Germany, which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The issue builds on a workshop on the topic of martyrdom in the modern Middle East. The workshop was facilitated by the staunch support of Prof Dr Johanna Pink, who is the head of the SFB’s Islamic studies project on Heroization Strategies in Conflicts of the Middle East Since the 1970s and to whom I express my sincerest gratitude for all the chances and opportunities she has given me in the course of the last few years. I would also like to thank the two student workers in our project, Elena Fellner and Jamal Herdzik, who helped to organise the workshop, read and corrected many of the written works and did some serious research contributions to the project’s success. Last but not least, I thank Alp Yenen for his comments on the editorial, and Wibke Liebhart for the tremendous effort she put into setting up this issue. Introduction
{"title":"Martyrdom and the Struggle for Power. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Martyrdom in the Modern Middle East","authors":"Olmo Gölz","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2019.12.1.1013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2019.12.1.1013","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue on Martyrdom and the Struggle for Power in the Middle East was made possible by the collaborative research centre SFB 948 “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms” at the Albert-LudwigsUniversität Freiburg, Germany, which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The issue builds on a workshop on the topic of martyrdom in the modern Middle East. The workshop was facilitated by the staunch support of Prof Dr Johanna Pink, who is the head of the SFB’s Islamic studies project on Heroization Strategies in Conflicts of the Middle East Since the 1970s and to whom I express my sincerest gratitude for all the chances and opportunities she has given me in the course of the last few years. I would also like to thank the two student workers in our project, Elena Fellner and Jamal Herdzik, who helped to organise the workshop, read and corrected many of the written works and did some serious research contributions to the project’s success. Last but not least, I thank Alp Yenen for his comments on the editorial, and Wibke Liebhart for the tremendous effort she put into setting up this issue. Introduction","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"12 1","pages":"2-13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42179910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-12-07DOI: 10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.989
Rainer Mühlhoff
{"title":"Affekte der Wahrheit. Über autoritäre Sensitivitäten von der Aufklärung bis zu 4Chan, Trump und der Alt-Right","authors":"Rainer Mühlhoff","doi":"10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.989","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.989","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"11 1","pages":"74-95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44059982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-12-07DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.2.986
Frieder Vogelmann
‘Post-truth’ is a failed concept, both epistemically and politically: its simplification of the relationship between truth and politics cripples our understanding and encourages authoritarianism. This makes the diagnosis of our ‘post-truth era’ as dangerous to democratic politics as relativism with its premature disregard for truth. In order to take the step beyond relativism and ‘post-truth’, we must conceptualise the relationship between truth and politics differently by starting from a ‘non-sovereign’ understanding of truth.
{"title":"The Problem of Post-Truth. Rethinking the Relationship between Truth and Politics","authors":"Frieder Vogelmann","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.2.986","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.2.986","url":null,"abstract":"‘Post-truth’ is a failed concept, both epistemically and politically: its simplification of the relationship between truth and politics cripples our understanding and encourages authoritarianism. This makes the diagnosis of our ‘post-truth era’ as dangerous to democratic politics as relativism with its premature disregard for truth. In order to take the step beyond relativism and ‘post-truth’, we must conceptualise the relationship between truth and politics differently by starting from a ‘non-sovereign’ understanding of truth.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"11 1","pages":"18-37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48872154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-12-07DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.2.992
A. Folkers
{"title":"Ute Tellmann: Life and Money. The Genealogy of the Liberal Economy and the Displacement of Politics","authors":"A. Folkers","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.2.992","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.2.992","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"11 1","pages":"132-134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49417801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-12-07DOI: 10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.990
Mariana Valverde
The forms of political populism that are flourishing around the world, in extreme right-wing versions, but also in left-wing versions, are often dismissed as ignorance, fake news, and demagoguery. However, those analyses often focus only on the content of the claims made by populist leaders rather than on the forms of ‘veridiction’ and the ethical practices and forms that constitute ‘populism’. In this article some theoretical tools borrowed from Foucault’s diverse work on ‘veridiction’ and truth-telling, and also from Adorno’s 1960s critique of existentialism, are deployed to try to understand the forms and techniques that constitute populist leaders as ‘authentic’ and thus as close to the people and as not contaminated by discredited institutions. Authenticity is created through very specific forms of truth-telling, as is shown with the example of the late mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford—in analysis with broader implications.
{"title":"Forms of Veridiction in Politics and Culture: Avowal in Today’s Jargon of Authenticity","authors":"Mariana Valverde","doi":"10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.990","url":null,"abstract":"The forms of political populism that are flourishing around the world, in extreme right-wing versions, but also in left-wing versions, are often dismissed as ignorance, fake news, and demagoguery. However, those analyses often focus only on the content of the claims made by populist leaders rather than on the forms of ‘veridiction’ and the ethical practices and forms that constitute ‘populism’. In this article some theoretical tools borrowed from Foucault’s diverse work on ‘veridiction’ and truth-telling, and also from Adorno’s 1960s critique of existentialism, are deployed to try to understand the forms and techniques that constitute populist leaders as ‘authentic’ and thus as close to the people and as not contaminated by discredited institutions. Authenticity is created through very specific forms of truth-telling, as is shown with the example of the late mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford—in analysis with broader implications.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"11 1","pages":"96-111"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46555387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-12-07DOI: 10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.987
P. Niesen
In recent years, academic fakes have routinely been planted in order to discredit academic genres and subdisciplines. In line with Richard Rorty’s late pragmatist attempt to identify ‘cautionary’ and ‘metalinguistic’ uses of the truth predicate, I suggest we ascribe such fakes a ‘cautionary’ function, thereby explaining and partly defusing them. The predicate ‘is true’ highlights both the justification-transcendence of truths as well as their relativity to a specific language or vocabulary. While the cautionary use of ‘true’ reminds us of possible errors, the cautionary use of fakes reminds us that we may have invested in a problematic vocabulary. Academic fakes point out a lack of critical self-correcting procedures in academic vocabularies, yet at the same time can obstruct their innovative potential at too early a stage. Fakes highlight the fact that academic discourse is not just an industry that produces truths (or falsehoods), but should also be seen as an endeavour to generate new truth value candidates.
{"title":"The Cautionary Use of Fakes","authors":"P. Niesen","doi":"10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.987","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.987","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, academic fakes have routinely been planted in order to discredit academic genres and subdisciplines. In line with Richard Rorty’s late pragmatist attempt to identify ‘cautionary’ and ‘metalinguistic’ uses of the truth predicate, I suggest we ascribe such fakes a ‘cautionary’ function, thereby explaining and partly defusing them. The predicate ‘is true’ highlights both the justification-transcendence of truths as well as their relativity to a specific language or vocabulary. While the cautionary use of ‘true’ reminds us of possible errors, the cautionary use of fakes reminds us that we may have invested in a problematic vocabulary. Academic fakes point out a lack of critical self-correcting procedures in academic vocabularies, yet at the same time can obstruct their innovative potential at too early a stage. Fakes highlight the fact that academic discourse is not just an industry that produces truths (or falsehoods), but should also be seen as an endeavour to generate new truth value candidates.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"11 1","pages":"38-54"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42440467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-12-07DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.2.988
Norbert Paulo
Can post-truth thinking be rational? In order to answer that question I develop, in the first part of this article, a non-pejorative understanding of post-truth thinking, namely as the systematic underestimation of the epistemic value of the expert discourse as compared to one’s individual deliberation in relation to politicized factual issues in an environment without secure epistemic rules. Everyone significantly underestimates how more reliable academic discourse, say, is compared to individual epistemic means. In post-truth thinking this underestimation concerns questions the answers to which allow for predictions about political affiliation. In answering such questions—about the truth of the theory of evolution, say—almost everyone has to draw on the testimony of others one regards as being trustworthy. Oftentimes one finds these trustworthy people in his or her social media filter bubbles. Post-truth thinking happens when one has to inform oneself in social or alternative media for which we currently lack safe epistemic rules of thumb or heuristics. “Post-truth thinking” seems to imply indifference about truth or rationality. Against this assumption I argue, in the second part, that post-truth thinking can be regarded as being rational, at least in the sense of “bounded rationality”. After all, everyone has to rely on the testimony of others in almost all fields of knowledge. In non-ideal circumstances, which are characteristic for post-truth thinking, it is rational, in navigating social and alternative media, to follow epistemic rules well-established in other domains. These rules often speak for believing what emerges in one’s filter bubble.
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Pub Date : 2018-12-07DOI: 10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.991
J. Herder
What is the specific subjectivity of the computer age? Donna Haraway and Katherine Hayles suggested that the spread of computers and the post World War II dis-courses of cybernetics and information theory enabled us to construe subjects as cyborgs or posthumans. This paper offers another perspective that regards subjectivity in relation to the central conceptual innovation cybernetics introduced—information. Cybernetics and information theory first of all enabled a new understanding of humans as informed sub-jects—subjects, for whom the feedback of information is a specific way to manifest truth. By help of Michel Foucault I will conceptualise subjectivity and its relation to information as a specific regime of truth. This regime presently gains enormous momentum as is evi-dent by practices such as self-tracking but also the growing importance of information or data in general.
{"title":"Information as Truth. Cybernetics and the Birth of the Informed Subject","authors":"J. Herder","doi":"10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.991","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.991","url":null,"abstract":"What is the specific subjectivity of the computer age? Donna Haraway and Katherine Hayles suggested that the spread of computers and the post World War II dis-courses of cybernetics and information theory enabled us to construe subjects as cyborgs or posthumans. This paper offers another perspective that regards subjectivity in relation to the central conceptual innovation cybernetics introduced—information. Cybernetics and information theory first of all enabled a new understanding of humans as informed sub-jects—subjects, for whom the feedback of information is a specific way to manifest truth. By help of Michel Foucault I will conceptualise subjectivity and its relation to information as a specific regime of truth. This regime presently gains enormous momentum as is evi-dent by practices such as self-tracking but also the growing importance of information or data in general.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"11 1","pages":"112-131"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46311025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-12-07DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.2.994
Janina Ruhnau
{"title":"Karsten Schubert: Freiheit als Kritik. Sozialphilosophie nach Foucault","authors":"Janina Ruhnau","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.2.994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.2.994","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"11 1","pages":"138-140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47847393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-07-02DOI: 10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.1.976
Felix Maschewski, Anna-Verena Nosthoff
Various media-theoretical studies have recently characterized the fourth industrial revolution as a process of all-encompassing technicization and cybernetization. Against this background, this paper seeks to show the timely and critical potential of Gunther Anders’s magnum opus Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen vis-a-vis the ever-increasing power of cybernetic devices and networks. Anders has both witnessed, and negotiated, the process of cybernetization from its very beginning, having criticised not only its tendency of automatization and expansion, but also the circular logic and the “integral power” it rests upon, including the destructive consequences for the constitution of the political and the social. In this vein, Anders’s oeuvre can indeed shed new light on the techno-logically organized milieus of the contemporary digital regime. The aim of the essay is, thus, not only to emphasize the contemporariness of Anders’s critical thought, but also use it to frame a critique vis-a-vis current neo-technocratic and, ultimately, post-political concepts, such as “algorithmic regulation”, “smart states”, “direct technocracy”, and “government as platform”. The essay finally seeks to, through Anders’s lens, address the question of the position and role of the critic in relation to ever expanding technical environments.
最近，各种媒体理论研究将第四次工业革命描述为一个包罗万象的技术化和控制论化的过程。在此背景下，本文试图展示冈瑟·安德斯的巨著《人之古物》(Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen)面对不断增长的控制论设备和网络的力量时所具有的时代性和批判性潜力。安德斯从一开始就见证和讨论了控制论化的过程，他不仅批判了控制论化的自动化和扩张倾向，而且批判了控制论化所依赖的循环逻辑和“整体权力”，包括对政治和社会构成的破坏性后果。在这方面，安德斯的作品确实可以为当代数字政权的技术-逻辑组织环境提供新的视角。因此，本文的目的不仅是强调安德斯批判思想的当代性，而且要用它来构建对当前新技术官僚主义以及最终的后政治概念的批判，如“算法监管”、“智能国家”、“直接技术官僚主义”和“作为平台的政府”。这篇文章最后试图通过安德斯的镜头，解决批评家在不断扩大的技术环境中的地位和作用问题。
{"title":"„Passivität im Kostüm der Aktivität“. Über Günther Anders’ Kritik kybernetischer Politik im Zeitalter der „totalen Maschine“","authors":"Felix Maschewski, Anna-Verena Nosthoff","doi":"10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.1.976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6094/BEHEMOTH.2018.11.1.976","url":null,"abstract":"Various media-theoretical studies have recently characterized the fourth industrial revolution as a process of all-encompassing technicization and cybernetization. Against this background, this paper seeks to show the timely and critical potential of Gunther Anders’s magnum opus Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen vis-a-vis the ever-increasing power of cybernetic devices and networks. Anders has both witnessed, and negotiated, the process of cybernetization from its very beginning, having criticised not only its tendency of automatization and expansion, but also the circular logic and the “integral power” it rests upon, including the destructive consequences for the constitution of the political and the social. In this vein, Anders’s oeuvre can indeed shed new light on the techno-logically organized milieus of the contemporary digital regime. The aim of the essay is, thus, not only to emphasize the contemporariness of Anders’s critical thought, but also use it to frame a critique vis-a-vis current neo-technocratic and, ultimately, post-political concepts, such as “algorithmic regulation”, “smart states”, “direct technocracy”, and “government as platform”. The essay finally seeks to, through Anders’s lens, address the question of the position and role of the critic in relation to ever expanding technical environments.","PeriodicalId":30203,"journal":{"name":"Behemoth a Journal on Civilisation","volume":"11 1","pages":"8-25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43291211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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