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Living with the Huxtables in a State of Emergency

in Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid

This chapter considers the role of television in further breaking down the absence of Black South Africans under the States of Emergency in the mid-and late 1980s, paying particular attention to the ... More

This chapter considers the role of television in further breaking down the absence of Black South Africans under the States of Emergency in the mid-and late 1980s, paying particular attention to the third fence post: the overwhelming popularity of The Cosby Show among White South Africans. Ethnographic research shows that the SABC's version of current events during the States of Emergency was widely viewed as untrustworthy by Black and White South Africans alike. While Black South Africans lived the States of Emergency in an immediate and visceral way, White South Africans turned away from television news to make sense of their world. One of the places they turned, in extremely large numbers, was The Cosby Show. Through transnational media flows in general and particularly The Cosby Show, White South Africans were able to appropriate the language and attitude of “racial tolerance” in the United States while simultaneously conceptualizing a profound difference between Black Americans and Black South Africans. While this often led to apartheid apologetics, the shift from a biological to a cultural foundation for racial domination made formal apartheid increasingly difficult to maintain.Less

The ‘five techniques’ of interrogation and the Aden Emergency, 1963–67

Samantha Newbery

in Interrogation, intelligence and security: Controversial British Techniques

This chapter identifies the nature of the ‘five techniques’ of interrogation used during the State of Emergency in Aden. The threat from nationalist insurgents led not only to the declaration of a ... More

This chapter identifies the nature of the ‘five techniques’ of interrogation used during the State of Emergency in Aden. The threat from nationalist insurgents led not only to the declaration of a State of Emergency, but to the use of the ‘five techniques’ as well. In order to explain how such controversial techniques came to be used in this case the history and development of the techniques is addressed, as is the process of decision-making that led to their use. The reasons why the military brought these techniques to Aden will be made clear. It will be shown that the purpose behind the use of the ‘five techniques’ in Aden was to improve the intelligence available to the security forces.Less

Emergence of a Field

Ángeles Donoso Macaya

in The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile's Dictatorship

This chapter explores the discursive emergence of the photographic field. I elucidate the connections between the discursive emergence of the photographic field and the state of emergency installed ... More

This chapter explores the discursive emergence of the photographic field. I elucidate the connections between the discursive emergence of the photographic field and the state of emergency installed on the same day the new Constitution took effect. My analysis considers how this expansion took place in the middle of Chile’s most severe economic crisis (which reached a climax in 1982), and also how the prevailing precariousness determined both the discourses about the photographic field that was beginning to consolidate, as well as the materiality, themes, and formal aspects of the different initiatives designed to consolidate the photographic field. The chapter also discusses the economists referred to as the Chicago Boys. In this chapter, I consider the texts published in Asociación de Fotógrafos Independientes’s (Independent Photographers Association, AFI) magazine Punto de Vista (1981–1990) and the two Anuarios fotográficos edited by the AFI in 1981 and 1982. I also analyze two collaborative photographic projects: Ediciones económicas de la fotografía chilena (1983) (Affordable Editions of Chilean Photography), and El pan nuestro de cada día (1986), a book edited collectively by photographers Óscar Navarro, Claudio Pérez, Paulo Slachevsky, and Carlos Tobar.Less

Concentrated Power Breeds Corruption, Repression, and Resistance

Ann M. Lesch

in Arab Spring in Egypt: Revolution and Beyond (A Tahrir Studies Edition)

This chapter examines the causes of the uprising, addressing the concentration of power in the hands of the president, the violence unleashed by security forces under the cover of the State of ... More

This chapter examines the causes of the uprising, addressing the concentration of power in the hands of the president, the violence unleashed by security forces under the cover of the State of Emergency, and the deepening economic inequality, social injustice, and corruption, which culminated in the deeply fraudulent National Assembly election in 2010. The chapter then examines the multiple modes of opposition, including political mobilization and street protests by concerned citizens, strikes and sit-ins by workers, and cyber-launched efforts to enhance awareness of state repression and corruption. The mass protests that began on January 25, 2011, are seen in the context of deepening public anger at the ruling regime, which erupted into the calls for bread, dignity, freedom, and social justice.Less

Human Rights and States of Emergency: Humanitarians and Governmentality

J. Paul Narkunas

in Reified Life: Speculative Capital and the Ahuman Condition

This chapter diagnoses how humanitarian non-governmental organizations are filling a vacuum created ironically by governments outsourcing their governing functions that marks a transformation of the ... More

This chapter diagnoses how humanitarian non-governmental organizations are filling a vacuum created ironically by governments outsourcing their governing functions that marks a transformation of the Westphalian order of states by neoliberalism. The proliferation of non-state actors facilitates the politicization of human rights around how to recognize who or what is a human being endowed with natural rights, and who is a terrorist, outlaw, or posthuman. By tracing the connections between human rights and governmentality, human rights advocates must acknowledge their cozy relationship with powerful militaries, which has resulted in humanitarian interventions using the language of rights to justify neocolonial projects that often intensify human suffering. Humanitarianism may function as a deterritorialized form of governmentality that offers a theatrical illusion of protection and security, while undermining their possibilities structurally. Powerful states not only use human rights and humanitarian legitimations for their particularist geopolitical and economic ends, but also direct humanitarian NGOs strategically by proxy for their own interests. In the process the very idea of securing humans becomes instrumentalized as a form of outsourced governance that can be a model eventually for “expendable people” within nation-states.Less

The Repressed State of Emergency: The Exercise of State Authority in Extraordinary Circumstances (1978)

Mirjam Künkler and Tine Stein (eds)

in Constitutional and Political Theory: Selected Writings

In this article Böckenförde argues in favour of constitutionalizing the possibility of a state of emergency instead of regulating it through normal law. The primary purpose of constitutions is to ... More

In this article Böckenförde argues in favour of constitutionalizing the possibility of a state of emergency instead of regulating it through normal law. The primary purpose of constitutions is to limit, not to authorize power, Böckenförde argues. Therefore, emergencies must be dealt with through constitutionally embedded procedures of declaring a state of emergency. The most rights-preserving way of dealing with emergencies is through measures, which in contrast to laws are temporary, purpose-oriented, narrow in application, and most importantly can only complement but not abrogate extant law. Drawing on Carl Schmitt, Böckenförde underlines that the securing of freedom lies not only accidentally, but fundamentally in forms and procedures.Less