Psychopolitics Of Speech

The human capacity for speech is forever celebrated as evidence of its innate civility. Why, then, is public discourse often - and today more than ever, it would seem - so uncivil, even delusional? The reason, argues James Martin in this timely book, lies in the way speech works to organise desire. More than knowledge or rational interests, public speech services an unconscious urge for a lost enjoyment, stimulating an excess in subjectivity that moves us in body and mind. James Martin draws upon the work of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan as well as other Continental thinkers to set out a new approach to the analysis of rhetoric and answer the troubling question of whether civil discourse can ever hope to escape its obscene underside.

Thought-provoking and timely, this book addresses the increasingly widespread issue of online political hatred in Europe. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it examines both the contributions of new technologies, in particular social networks, to the rise of this phenomenon, and the legal and political contexts in which it is taking place. Giovanni Ziccardi also evaluates possible remedies for the situation, including both legal and technological solutions, and outlines the potential for a unified European framework to counter the spread of hatred online.

This book offers a psychosocial perspective on political violence, employing a strong current of psychoanalytic thinking. In the course of its chapters an international roster of researchers and scholars offers a richly complex and insightful view of diverse forms of political violence and its build-ups. The authors discuss the processes by which the ground for political violence is prepared, and how violent acts are facilitated. They question how social, cultural and political constellations can develop in such a way that, for certain people in this constellation, violence becomes a logical – perversely reasonable – response. This collection demonstrates what a psychoanalytic perspective can bring to existing approaches to political violence, going beyond the social movement approach by unfolding the inherent ambiguity in accepted concepts within the study of political violence.

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) is the central executive authority on migration and integration policy in Germany. Vinzenz Kratzer analyses the Federal Office's research output between 2005 and 2015 with a joint perspective of Ethnography and Political Science. In the wake of political reforms after the »paradigm change« around the turn of the millennium, the development of practically relevant knowledge can be traced. While governmental researchers were able to establish themselves in the bureaucracy with some success, they bought this influence with uncontroversial, depoliticized knowledge production, while the production of seemingly politically irrelevant knowledge - most importantly on racism and discrimination - is underdeveloped.

How is solidarity understood by the people who practice it actively and daily? What is the role of solidarity in reconciling the relationship of individuals with the collective demands of communities that fight for the rights of others? Based on a variety of anthropological, sociological, and philosophical writings as well as ethnographic research, Maria Giannoula takes an elaborated look at the emotional and spiritual aspects of political participation within an activist group in Greece in the 2010s. This study is a valuable resource for those researching social movements and alternative communities, focusing on the ways in which individuals organise their own forms of activism.

Increasing irrigation efficiency has been high on the political agenda in Spain for many years. However, the overarching aim to reduce agricultural water consumption has not been met so far. To explore this phenomenon, Nora Schütze investigates processes of coordination between the water and agricultural sector in three Spanish river basins in the context of the EU Water Framework Directive implementation. From the perspective of polycentric governance, she identifies multiple mechanisms which illustrate how and why actors interact in certain ways, and thus shows why environmental aims of the Water Framework Directive remain unachieved.

Amnesty International's (AI) focus on civil and political rights has marked their work with a gender bias from the outset. In the first comprehensive look at AI's work on women's rights, Miriam Ganzfried illustrates the development of their activities regarding women's rights issues over twenty years. Through interviews with staff members and activists and unprecedented access to archive material from the Swiss and the German AI sections, she shows how women activists strategized to make AI increase its work on women's rights. Additionally, the book demonstrates that, despite the leadership's commitment to the Stop Violence Against Women campaign, internal resistance hampered the integration of women's rights into the organization's overall work.

Rivers, landscapes, whole territories: these are the latest entities environmental activists have fought hard to include in the relentless expansion of rights in our world. But what does it mean for a landscape to have rights? Why would anyone want to create such rights, and to what end? Is it a good idea, and does it come with risks? This book presents the logic behind giving nature rights and discusses the most important cases in which this has happened, ranging from constitutional rights of nature in Ecuador to rights for rivers in New Zealand, Colombia, and India. Mihnea Tanasescu offers clear answers to the thorny questions that the intrusion of nature into law is sure to raise.