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Human Visions of FutureNon-Human War? How advances in digital and robotic military systems are creating a new future non-human notion of perpetual conflict
No full textThis article discusses the rise and increasing use of unmanned military systems. It describes how over the course of the last fifteen years they have increasingly become weapons of importance in modern-day conflicts. These new weapons have altered the nature of conflict, its shape, focus, and its political notion. Yet the largest risk comes not from the current changes, but from those in the near future. These foreseen changes could give rise to a scenario in which the notion and conduct of conflict could be further transformed, leading to an entire new concept of conflict. This is going to be an unmanned, non-human notion of conflict, in which the political cost of conflict will be radically different. This new notion, and its limited political costs, could subsequently create a perpetual state of conflict.
Füüsiline teater: mõistest ja kujunemisest VAT Teatri lavastuse „Eine murul” näitel [About the concept and development of physical theatre. On the example of VAT Theatre production “The luncheon on the grass”]
No full textOne of the aims of the article is to define physical theatre. Physical theatre belongs to the performing arts, where physical expression dominates over other means of expression. The impulse to create a physical theatre performance comes from an idea or theme that the director and the performers want to express first and foremost physically. During the creative process several other means of expressions can be used in addition to the physical. Physical theatre is a formal concept, not a semantic one. The performers can express adiversity of content through physical means.Physical theatre often uses devised methods and improvisation.The performers display an intensive presence and energy on stage.The term physical theatre was first introduced by Lloyd Newson,who created DV8 Physical Theatre in 1986. The article sketches the four paths of development of physical theatre: the tradition of corporeal mime and pantomime, the tradition of different forms of dance, the tradition set out by avant-garde and performance art, and the tradition of physicalizing narrative.
The development of physical theatre in Estonia is not very widespread. Out of the four traditions, three are present in Estonia: those of dance (Renate Keerd), narrative (VAT Theatre) and corporeal mime(Moon Productions). Th e article takes a closer look at the physical theatre production “The Luncheon on the Grass”, a physical narrative based production by VAT Theatre (director Tanel Saar, 2017).Physical theatre is an umbrella term that does not have a clearly defined set of creative methods or aesthetics. The usefulness of the term for theatre research lies in the fact that the term allows focus. If a performance is determined to be an example of physical theatre,our attention can be directed to physical expression, the presence and energy of the performer, and the visual and material qualities of the performance
Поэтика комического и контекст (Рассказ А. Т. Аверченко «Праведник») [A Comic Narrative in Context: Arkady Averchenko’s Short Story “Pravednik”]
No full textThe present article addresses the problem of the context’s contribution to the readers’ perception of a certain text as humorous. It is a case study of the short story “Pravednik” (1904, 1908, 1910) by Arkady Averchenko. The study demostrates that in each publication during Averchenko’s lifetime this story was either becoming more serious and less humorous or less serious and more humorous—depending on the immediate context
«Она будет мне отдаваться, а я терпеть этого не могу» («Дьяволиада» М. А. Булгакова как либертинажный текст) [Mikhail Bukgakov’s “Diaboliad” as a Libertine Text]
No full textThis article reveals a whole list of obscene or semi-obscene details in the text of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Diaboliad (1924). It also provides a range of possible pretexts exploring analogous themes, e. g. Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose (1836)
Kirjanduse intermeedialisusest [On the Intermediality of Literature]
No full textOn the Intermediality of Literature. An introduction to Philologia Esonica Tallinnensis 2 (2017)
Independence and Interdependence Values in Changing Societies: A Three-Generation Comparative Study in Estonia, Germany, and Russia
No full textIndependent and interdependent self-construal values of three generations and the intergenerational similarity of self-construal was compared in three countries. The participants were 837 adolescents, their mothers (227 from Russia, 311 from Germany, and 299 from Estonia) and 293 maternal grandmothers. In Germany, all three generations displayed higher scores on independence than participants from other countries. Russian participants had higher scores on interdependence compared to participants from other countries. Adolescents scored significantly higher on the interdependent self-construal than the two older generations, and higher than the mothers’ generation on the independent self-construal. Grandmothers’ self-construal was related to mothers’ in all three countries. In Germany and Estonia, mothers’ interdependent self-construal was related to adolescents’ interdependent self-construal. Grandmothers’ (but not mothers’) independent self-construal predicted adolescents’ independent self-construal. The results are discussed in light of the Family Change Theory and the different roles the participants have
Empowering Animals with Fundamental Rights – the Vulnerability Question
No full textIn the search of applicable methodological tools for analysing the phenomenon of empowering animals with fundamental rights, the question of animals as a vulnerable group has received (undeservedly) little attention. Animal rights is an area where sociological and legal sciences meet, making it an exemplary interdisciplinary research area. It appears that the question of attributing fundamental rights to animals has primarily been studied by legal scholars, who view this as an issue having strong ethical and philosophical component. The main legal theoretical approaches to animal rights – such as the welfarist, abolitionist and middle-position – avoid focusing on the question of vulnerability. This is probably because vulnerability is a sociological and not a legal criterion. What seems missing from today’s global discourse on animal rights is an empirical aspect of how the society understands the need for protecting animals. The doctrine of vulnerability may serve as one interdisciplinary tool to analyse the growing attention to animal rights. There are many examples from the history of mankind that demonstrate how some vulnerable human groups have been deprived of basic rights and subsequently have been gradually provided with full recognition of their rights (ethnic and gender minorities, women, people with disabilities). The author is not arguing that there is sufficient theoretical or empirical information to consider animals as a vulnerable group. Nor is there a consensus about what vulnerability means in legal terms. The author wishes to demonstrate that the matter of vulnerability of animals is a research question that needs to be explored in depth, using both sociological and legal methods.
More broadly, this article shows that the current stage of theoretical analysis of the reasons for animal protection inevitably leads to the fundamental rights questions of animals. Conversely to international law, where the ‘nuclear option’ means the exclusion or exit of someone or something, in the context of animal rights the ‘nuclear option’ means universal acceptance of the capability of animals to have fundamental rights, which will substantially change the human rights framework as we know it forever. The number of scholars who write about the need for change in theoretical and practical paradigms governing the protection of animals is reaching a critical point, which means that this shift is merely a matter of time. Recognising theoretically that at least some animals have at least some fundamental rights, and then proceeding to this recognition in soft and hard international law is inevitable, if my proposition of a paradigmatic change either on the horizon or already ongoing is correct.
As we will see below, during the short academic “excursion”, when exploring diverse replies to the question of whether animals have or should have fundamental rights, these replies all take a position on whether fundamental rights for animals can be justified. The question about justification of human rights is nothing new. Robert Alexy has written that the existence of human rights depends on their justifiability and on nothing else. What is justifiable is correct, according to Alexy. Once we can justify why animals should have fundamental rights, then at the same time we can have an argument of correctness requiring the global community to recognise that animals have fundamental rights. This, of course, will depend on whether fundamental rights for animals are justifiable
«Амур с опрокинутым факелом»: Заметки о повести Пушкина «Гробовщик» [“A Plump Amour with an Inverted Torch”: Notes on Pushkin’s “Grobovshchik”]
No full textThis article is devoted to one of the most enigmatic details of Pushkin’s Grobovshchik (1831), namely, “a plump Amour with an inverted torch.” The author investigates its variable semantic structures, and a range of narrative potentials determined by such contexts as a) classical allegorical tradition, b) patterns of the anecdote genre, c) elegiac language, and d) some elements of funeral practice
The Vocabulary of the Vietnam War: South African invocations of an analogy and its associated lessons
No full textThis paper examines the use of the Vietnam analogy by protagonists involved in conflicts in the African sub-continent during the 1970s–1980s, known variously as the Apartheid Wars, the AngolanNamibian War or the Border War. It also analyses the attendant but typically specious lessons that military and political leaders are inclined to draw from the Vietnam analogy. It suggests that politicians and military professionals do not actually learn from the past: history provides a rhetorical device rather than an analytical tool and serves a political rather than a pedagogical purpose.
Book Review: Neoliberalism and the Moral Economy of Fraud
No full textNeoliberalism and the Moral Economy of Fraud by David Whyte and Jörg Wiegratz, 2016, New York: Routledge