PAST EVENTS 2011-2012
Special Series 2012
'Screening the Political - A Window on Latin America'
Films are like bridges: they help us to see and connect with others, and other realities. Aside of entertaining, they can play a crucial role in decoding (un)known forms of life, making them visible and making us aware of the imbricate forms and connective networks exisiting across different historical events and spacial realities.
Since it was first formulated, the question what is political? has been related to the necessary spatiality and temporality of the human condition: plurality, which implies having something in common - already a spatial determinant - and deeds and words that are expressed in public, in turn giving form to the public. In this sense, we have always somehow 'screened' the political, as a way to (trans)form our understanding of what is public.
Screening the Political is a research initiative that addressed various topics-views. The launching gaze is on Latin America. During the second half of the academic year 2011-2012 students and faculty gathered to watch a selection of films/documentaries, often followed by a debate lead by invited speakers coming from various disciplinary backgrounds and activities.
convenor: Dr. Daniela Vicherat-Mattar (d.a.vicherat.mattar@luc.leidenuniv.nl)
Since it was first formulated, the question what is political? has been related to the necessary spatiality and temporality of the human condition: plurality, which implies having something in common - already a spatial determinant - and deeds and words that are expressed in public, in turn giving form to the public. In this sense, we have always somehow 'screened' the political, as a way to (trans)form our understanding of what is public.
Screening the Political is a research initiative that addressed various topics-views. The launching gaze is on Latin America. During the second half of the academic year 2011-2012 students and faculty gathered to watch a selection of films/documentaries, often followed by a debate lead by invited speakers coming from various disciplinary backgrounds and activities.
convenor: Dr. Daniela Vicherat-Mattar (d.a.vicherat.mattar@luc.leidenuniv.nl)
LUCRC would like to thank the organisers of the Movies That Matter film festival for their collaboration in the 'Screening the Political' research initiative.
We would also like to express our gratitude to the people at the Latin American Film Festival (LAFF) for their support
We would also like to express our gratitude to the people at the Latin American Film Festival (LAFF) for their support
Political Arts Workshop Series
How do we, as a collective of citizens, occupy political space and time?
How is this political engagement distinct from your or my political action as an individual occupying the same political space and time?
The PAI Workshop Series takes these questions as a starting point and explore them through artistic avenues and practices, towards a more robust understanding of political expression.
Convenor: Dr. Cissie Fu (c.fu@luc.leidenuniv.nl)
How is this political engagement distinct from your or my political action as an individual occupying the same political space and time?
The PAI Workshop Series takes these questions as a starting point and explore them through artistic avenues and practices, towards a more robust understanding of political expression.
Convenor: Dr. Cissie Fu (c.fu@luc.leidenuniv.nl)
Enter the category for this item: SEPT 2011
Series: Philosophy in the World
Raymond Geuss
University of Cambridge
The Authority of Democracy and Human Rights
LUC is delighted to start its new season of visiting speakers with the eminent Raymond Geuss, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, who is a political philosopher and scholar of 19th and 20th century European philosophy. This lecture is the second in our series, ‘Philosophy in the World,’ which was inaugurated by Simon Blackburn last year.
Geuss took both his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Columbia University. He taught at Princeton University, Columbia University, and University of Chicago in the United States and at Heidelberg and Freiburg in Germany before taking up a lecturing post at Cambridge in 1993.
To date Geuss has published eight books of philosophy, of which three are collections of essays. They are: The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School; Morality, Culture, and History; Public Goods, Private Goods; History and Illusion in Politics; Glueck und Politik; Outside Ethics, Philosophy and Real Politics, and Politics and the Imagination, which has just appeared from Princeton University Press. He has also co-edited two critical editions of works of Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Writings from the Early Notebooks. Together with Quentin Skinner, Geuss co-edits the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series of books. Geuss has also published two collections of translations/adaptations of poetry from Ancient Greek, Latin and Old High German texts.
[poster in pdf]
Karlijn van der Voort
Independent Legal Consultant
Profile of an International Lawyer: Working as Defence Counsel for the Cambodia Tribunal
Ms Karlijn van der Voort works as a Legal Consultant for one of the defence teams at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.
As many as 2.2 million people are believed to have died during the 1975-79 rule of the Khmer Rouge, which was then followed by a protracted period of civil war in the impoverished country.
Under an agreement signed by the UN and the Cambodian government, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was set up as an independent court using a mixture of Cambodian staff and judges and foreign personnel. It is designated to try those deemed most responsible for crimes and serious violations of Cambodian and international law between 17 April 1975 and 6 January 1979. It is a Cambodian court with international participation that will apply international standards. It will provide a new role model for court operations in Cambodia.
In her talk Karlijn van der Voort will give us a critical and insightful look not so much into the actual trials itself but more, and equally interesting, into the demands of international law firms, as well as the differences between working in The Netherlands and Cambodia independent of them.
[poster in pdf]
For background information about the Cambodia Tribunal, please visit www.cambodiatribunal.org
LUC Dies Natalis
John Dunn
Emeritus Professor University of Cambridge
Cutting Democracy Down to Size
LUC is honoured to have Professor John Dunn as a guest speaker at its Dies Natalis on Thursday 29 September.
Lecture abstract:
The last year has proved once again and unforgettably the power of democracy as an idea across the world in de-authorizing the power of incumbent rulers. It remains both important and difficult to understand quite what makes it so potent in that guise. It is natural for us to be gratified by the demonstration of that potency in an idea which we identify with our own political institutions; but it is also in some respects dangerous for us to be so, unless we recognize where its power really lies. What democracy can authorize in a modern state, insofar as it credibly authorizes anything at all, is the identity of those who give commands and attempt to get them obeyed. It does nothing to authorize any particular decisions and it gives no guarantee of any merit whatever in those decisions: neither their justice, their decency, their prudence, nor even their elementary good sense. In the increasingly evident disarray of so many of our economic, social and political institutions, we need with some urgency to learn to think and speak together more clearly and realistically about the predicaments which we face and the resources we have with which to confront them; and we need to ensure that democracy as an idea aids rather than impedes us in doing so.
John Dunn studied history at King’s College,Cambridge and as Harkness Fellow at Harvard. He has been a Fellow of King’s since 1966 and was Professor of Political Theory in Cambridge University from 1987 to 2007.
Fascinated and dismayed by the vagaries of political fate across the modern world since childhood experiences in Occupied Germany, Iran, and India, his recent publications include Rethinking Modern Political Theory (1985), Interpreting Political Responsibility(1990), The History of Political Theory (1996), The Cunning of Unreason:making sense of politics(2000) and Setting the People Free(2005).
John Dunn has taught at universities around the world, he is a Fellow of the British Academy, chairing its Political Studies Section from 1994 to 1997, and serving on its Council for three years, an Academician of the Academy of the Social Sciences, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Enter the category for this item: OCT 2011
Maarten Jansen
Leiden University, Faculty of Archeology
Indigenous Heritage and Cultural Rights: the Case of the Mixtec Pictorial Manuscripts
With Maarten Jansen’s lecture on indigenous heritage and cultural rights, LUC offers you an exciting opportunity to hear about cultural rights from an archaeological perspective--something many of us may not (yet) be familiar with.
Maarten Jansen is professor of Mesoamerican archaeology and history (nominated by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences).
Besides his work on the Mayan Codices and Mixtec language, Professor Jansen is a committed activist. He recently drafted and submitted documents regarding the preservation of indigenous culture in Latin America to the United Nations. Professor Jansen works on how the political situation of indigenous communities in Mexico (and indeed other parts of Latin America) has affected, and has been affected by, peace and stability building efforts in the region on the part of government officials.
[poster in pdf]
[preparatory reading]
Narendra Subramanian
McGill University Faculty of Political Science
Personal Law and Gendered Citizenship in South Asia
Narendra Subramanian’s talk at the LUCRC brings India into critical focus for the evening. Discussing issues pertaining to ‘Gender Inequality and Personal Law’, Professor Subramanian’s talk will allow students of the LUC and members of the community to come together to inquire into how the largest democracy in the world has negotiated legal, cultural and personal laws since its independence from colonial rule.
Narendra Subramanian is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University. He studies the politics of ethnicity, nationalism, religion, gender and race, primarily in India. Subramanian’s work explores the role of identity politics in political mobilization, electoral competition, public culture, and public policy; the functioning of democracies amidst social inequalities with long histories; and different ways in which policy-makers and citizens attempt to resolve the tensions between official secularism and the significant presence of religion in public life. His book, Ethnicity and Populist Mobilization: Political Parties, Citizens and Democracy in South India (Oxford University Press, 1999), explored how mobilization behind language and caste banners strengthened democracy in parts of India. Another current project of his compares the changes in caste relations in India and race relations in the United States since the sustained enfranchisement of the lower castes and African-Americans, focusing on two regions of particularly high ascriptive inequalities and, until recently, agrarian bondage – the Kaveri delta in southern India and the Mississippi delta in the southern United States. Subramanian received his B.A. in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
[poster in pdf]
Enter the category for this item: NOV 2011
Duncan Bell
University of Cambridge
Dreamworld of Empire: Citizenship, Patriotism, and Race, c.1900
In this paper, Duncan Bell explores a range of ideas about patriotism and citizenship that circulated in British and American political debates during the opening years of the twentieth century. In particular, he focuses on ideas about 'isopolitan citizenship' and 'race patriotism'. Moreover, he argues that the much of this racial-imperial discourse was distinctly utopian in form, suggesting that if the Anglo-Saxon 'race' could unite politically it would dominate the twentieth century, bringing peace and to the earth.
Duncan Bell is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies.
Duncan's primary research interests are in contemporary (international) political theory and modern intellectual history. He is currently working on a number of projects, including a co-edited collection entitled The Cold War in Pieces (with Joel Isaac) and a book on the political thought and intellectual history of Anglo-American relations during the twentieth century. He is also working on essays about the intellectual history of the British empire, utopianism and modernism in political thought, and the character of liberal political philosophy, past and present.
His publications include The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900 (Princeton University Press, 2007) and Ethics and World Politics (Oxford University Press, 2010).
[poster in pdf]
Patricio Bernal
Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative (IUCN)
One Planet, One Ocean
Producing half of the oxygen we respire, storing 93.4% of the extra heat generated by climate change and providing a myriad of services to humankind, the Ocean plays a fundamental role in maintaining life on the planet. This role will be briefly analyzed and explained.
Compared to land, where laws and institutions operate under national states, on the Ocean there is a clear deficit of governance, control and enforcement of established rules. Enforcement of laws and rules up to 200 miles from the coast are the responsibility of coastal states. Beyond 200 miles of the coast becomes the joint responsibility of the international community under the United Nations. In this lecture a brief review of the last 50 years of law of the sea will be conducted together with a brief analysis of ongoing processes attempting to fill the many gaps and loopholes that exist.
Patricio A. Bernal is the former Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, where for 11 years lead the development of the Global Ocean Observing System and built the extension of the Pacific Tsunami Warning System to the whole world. With an extensive academic career, he holds a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UCSD). Dr. Bernal has served as Under-Secretary of State for Fisheries and Director of the National Fisheries Institute in his native Chile and is currently the Coordinator of the Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative (IUCN).
Detailed biography of Patricio Bernal.
[poster in pdf]
Don van Luijn
OXFAM novib, campaign advisor for the Horn of Africa
What is Economic Justice - an 'OXFAM' perspective
Mr. van Luyn is heavily involved in clean water programs for the African continent. His work in Africa centres on providing clean water, sustainable farming and access to education among young children In addition to Africa. He has also worked extensively in the south of India.
Enter the category for this item: FEBR 2012
Nick Vaughan-Williams
University of Warwick
Europe’s Border Wars: Down-Loading, Out-Sourcing, and Off-Shoring the Security of Mobility
The aim of this paper is to critically examine the EU’s response to migration, particularly in the aftermath of the political unrest across North Africa in 2011, and to explore the impact – existing and potential – on migrants’ lives. Drawing upon recent fieldwork conducted in Brussels, Dr. Vaughan-Williams argues that the response to the perceived threat of population movement from Libya and Tunisia has intensified a longer-term quasi-militarization of Europe’s southern – particularly southeastern – margins. In this context the paper investigates Europe’s ‘border wars’ via three interrelated lenses: 1) the current and future use of new technologies (including the use of UAVs) to secure regimes of mobility and immobility; 2) the role of private enterprise in developing and implementing these technologies; and 3) the preemptive outward projection of the border beyond the territory of EU member states to the so-called ‘pre-border frontier area’. The paper investigates the impact of these practices on migrants’ lives by drawing on research commissioned by various humanitarian NGOs. It argues that while Critical Migration Studies has focused on the juridical-political status of detainees as ‘bare life’ the material conditions in which they are held are better viewed as a product of the sovereign abandonment from critical infrastructure. The discussion concludes with an evaluation of the prospects for critical engagement with these practices in the light of the humanitarian aims of the Commission’s renewed ‘Global Approach to Migration and Mobility’ (GAMM) released on 18 November 2011. Ultimately, he argues that military-style responses to the perceived threat of migration is neither likely to enhance the EU’s nor migrants’ security in the long run as both enter into a lethal game of cat and mouse.
Nick Vaughan-Williams is Associate Professor of International Security, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick. His book Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power (2009, 2012) was the 2011 Gold Winner of the Association for Borderlands Studies Past Presidents’ Book Award. He is currently working on a project called Marginal Lives: European Border-Making and Its Challengers.
Screening the Political
Tambien la lluvia / Even the rain
I. Bollain, Bolivia – 2010
Spanish director Sebastián, his executive producer Costa and all his crew are in Bolivia, in the Cochabamba area, to shoot a motion picture about Christopher Columbus, his first explorations and the way the Spaniards treated the Indians at the time. Costa has chosen this place because the budget of the film is tight and here he can hire supernumeraries, local actors and extras on the cheap. Things go more or less smoothly until a conflict erupts over the privatization of the water supply.
Speakers: Daniela Vicherat-Mattar (LUC), Rosalba Icaza (ISS)
Enter the category for this item: MARCH 2012
Screening the Political
Machuca
A. Wood, Chile – 2004
Santiago, capital of Chile during the Marxist government of elected, highly controversial president Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports his leftist views by introducing a program at the prestigious "collegio" (Catholic prep school) St. Patrick to allow free admission of some proletarian kids. One of them is Pedro Machuca, slum-raised son of the cleaning lady in Gonzalo Infante's liberal-bourgeois home. Yet the new classmates become buddies, paradoxically protesting together as Gonzalo gets adopted by Pedro's slum family and gang. But the adults spoil that too, not in the least when general Pinochet's coup ousts Allende, and supporters such as McEnroe.
Speaker: Gerard van de Ree (Utrecht University College)
Political Arts Workshop Series
National Subsidies for the Performing Arts Explained
David Pocknee, composer, researcher
David Pocknee, a composer and researcher, will explain how Dutch national subsidies for the performing arts are organised and how such redistribution reaches individual composers, ensembles, and performance venues. Following this presentation, he will share some personal conclusions on how this system of organisation affects the arts, the ethics of its production, and its future horizons, with discussion afterwards.
Screening the Political
Impunidad / Impunity
J.J. Lozano & H. Morris, Colombia – 2010
Colombia today: the biggest trial against Paramilitary armies - accused of killing thousands of Colombians - is designed to create "peace and justice". Instead the process comes to an abrupt halt, when the political and economic interests in the paramilitary war are uncovered.
Are the victims' families doomed to stay victims forever or are they able to fight Impunity?
Speaker: Edwin Koopman (Journalist Radio Netherlands Latin-America)
Enter the category for this item: APRIL 2012
Political Arts Workshop Series
On the Choreography of a Protest
Ana Smarada Nemnaru, KABK
If social movements manifested in public space can be envisioned as disruptions of everyday life, they can be related to play and art – performance. A protest can be read as choreography of bodies in space. If this would be a play, what are the roles/ characters that emerge on this scene? How does movement happen and how does it contribute in asserting functions to a public space? What are the implications of surrendering an individual voice to a collective body and how does it relate to representation politics in democratic systems?
More information
L.H.M. Ling
New School New York
Worlds Beyond Westphalia: the 'China Threat' Reframed
We can – must – reframe the US/Western discourse that a rising China threatens world order. Drawing on Daoist dialectics, this paper presents a multiple worlds approach to this issue. Worldism reveals the complicities and complementarities that bind even seemingly intractable opposites, thereby undermining the rationale for violence. By recognising the ontological parity between Self and Other, we may begin to shift IR/world politics from empire to engagement, the 'tragedy‘ of great power politics to the freedom of discovery and creativity.
L.H.M. Ling is one of LUCRC's 2012-2013 Research Associates
Ken Booth
Aberystwyth University
Desperately Seeking Kenneth Walz!
While recognising the significance of the globalisation of politics in recent decades, this talk argues that what now passes for 'International Relations'/ ‘World Politics’/’Global Politics’/’Alternative Approaches to IR’ is an area-study losing momentum as a result of too many bloated textbooks and too much theoretical self-obsession. The disciplinary incoherence that has developed is partly the result of an unproductive contestation between rival schools of thought, and partly the result of a mistaken understanding that human society globally now lives in a ‘postinternational’ age. The talk will emphasise the importance for those committed to understanding 'who gets what, when [and] how' across the world (and especially those committed to going beyond the horizons of conventional political realism) of recognising the continuing 'causal weight' and 'texture' of the international level of global/world politics. The dynamics at this level, it will be argued, continue to pose one of the major challenges to world order and global security. It is therefore critical for 'critical' and other schools of IR that have emerged since the late 1980s to engage seriously with the ideas of the great realist thinkers of the past, in relation both to analysing the global condition, and thinking about global reform.
[poster]
Screening the Political MASTERCLASS
Dr. Daniela Vicherat (LUC The Hague)
Serving, seeing, silencing: being perpetrator and victim at the same time
In a context of wide violations to human rights, is it possible to move beyond the perpetrator / victim distinction when looking at the actors involved. The story of Jorgelino Vergara, handy man in one of the main detention centers during the Chilean dictatorship, is an invitation to examine and interrogate this classic opposition. After 20 years since the return to democracy, the story of Jorgelino reflects the ambivalence of these categories: Jorgelino was at the same time accomplice and victim of the regime. His story is a mirror of a society that is still struggling with itself to attain truth and justice
Enter the category for this item: MAY 2012
Political Arts Workshop Series
Otherness: Western European Colonial Dialectics through Propaganda and Testimony
Miguel Peres dos Santos, KABK
Departing from a video editing of a video documentation of a performance, the description that Ranciére gives of relational art. The redistribution of bodies, images, spaces and times. The two main modus of Aesthetics according to Ranciére: the sublime and the relational and the concept of absolute other in his philosophical discourse. Speech versus discourse, a discussion on the true role of politics, and the possible role of art as political action.
More information
Marieke Eleveld & Alfred Wagtendonk
Institute for Environmental Studies, VU
Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis
Remote sensing offers a wealth of environmental data to study environmental sustainability. We are all aware that satellite imagery is used in weather forecasts, but we also rely on these datasets to help us make many other environmental decisions.
In this workshop, Drs. Eleveld and Wagtendonk will explore the physical principles behind remote sensing, starting with the fundamental characteristics of electromagnetic radiation and its interaction with substances in the atmosphere and water.
more...
Corporate Governance: a Global Challenge
David Stolin, Toulouse Business School
When corporations get into trouble, consequences can be dire and far-reaching. Diagnosing what went wrong is usually the easy part; figuring out how (and whether) such events can be avoided in the future so that the cure is not worse than the disease is quite a bit harder. The term “corporate governance” refers to the system of controls, regulations and incentives designed to promote the management of firms in the interest of their stakeholders. The variety of stakeholders and the complexity of their relationships make corporate governance a fascinating area of study and practice. In this talk David Stolin will outline and illustrate the key issues in corporate governance, and discuss some of the academic research shedding light on them. Throughout, he will emphasize the global scope of the corporate governance challenge.
David Stolin is a Professor of Finance at Toulouse Business School, where he has been a faculty member since 1999. His current research focus is on stock investing and the investment management industry. He has published in leading academic journals including Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Journal of Business, and his research has been cited by such sources as The Financial Times, The Times, and Reuters. David holds an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Finance from London Business School and is a member of the Society of Actuaries.
[poster in pdf]
Screening the Political
Cuando las Montañas Tiemblan / When the mountains tremble
N.T. Siegel & P. Yates, USA, Guatemala - 1983
This vigorous and persuasive documentary describes the struggle of the largely Indian peasantry against a heritage of state and foreign oppression. Centered on the experiences of Rigoberta Menchú, a Quich Indian woman, the film knits a variety of forms--- interviews, direct address, re-enactment, video transmission, and on the spot footage shot at great hazard--- into a wide-ranging and remarkable cohesive epic canvas of the Guatemalan struggle.
Speaker: Dan Saxon (Former Prosecutor at ICTY & Leverhume Visiting Professor at Cambridge University)
