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This chapter explains that the cool conduct's ritual, actions, and lifestyle inscribe themselves as traces of separation within the world of fusion's imaginary spaces—birth memories, faith in the completeness of the life cycle, longing for spheres of trust, praise for warm zones, and a weakness for the myths of origin. It notes that a look at the political implications of polarization reveals the one-dimensional images of the individual it sets up. At the same time, the split into opposed spheres obscures their reciprocal conditionality; both separation scenario and fusion drama draw energy from mutual negation and find in the other a horizon of uncanniness that keeps the universe intact. It explains that the examination of the theoretical constructions of the cool persona presents numerous variations on the attempt to recall the father out of nothing.

This book explores the cultural meanings and political implications of the practices of remembering, reinscribing, and retelling memories of Hiroshima. In exploring the politics of historical knowledge about Hiroshima, this ethnography deploys the concept of memory as its central device. It examines some of the spatial strategies that have contributed to taming knowledge about the city's past, analyzes the testimonial practices of Hiroshima's survivors, and considers how acts of remembrance have produced ethnic and gendered subjectivities in the post-war years.

This chapter summarizes the contribution to genre, examining Johnnie To's achievements from the critical-theoretical perspective of genre expectations, in particular the convention of the happy ending. It also updates To's career to the release of Exiled (2006), and deals with his three most recent films: Election, Election 2, and Exiled. The two panels in the Election diptych stand apart from the rest of To's films because they contain new visions of violence and clear political implications in their narratives. All of these three films reveal the director engaging in a dialectical discourse with his own work in the action genre. Violence in To's action cinema has a didactic function inasmuch as one's cognitive senses are provoked through the viscera of violence.

This chapter examines the radical and conservative doctors who are considered allies and antagonists of the patient movement. It explains that the minority of doctors who are radical tend to support radical patient activists' ideas and definitions of higher standards. The chapter suggests that radical and conservative alignments and positions in doctors are important because doctors and activists working together can articulate new standards successfully. It contends that it is important to consider the cultural and political implications of these alliances and antagonisms in order to help the royal colleges and other institutions or groups set and secure the implementation of the high standards which should characterise healthcare.

Suicide terrorism, although not new, increased over the last decade in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorist organizations primarily use suicide attacks as a form of psychological warfare to create fear and chaos as a means of achieving a political goal. Suicide attacks often cause an intense combination of personal fear for one’s life and shared national fear for the security of the country. The current paper describes a theoretical model based on the PSI-theory (Dörner, 1999)that connects individuals’ fear of suicide attacks to political attitudes. The paper describes how politicians react to these individual psychological processes related to fear of suicide terrorism, using examples from the Hamid Karzai administration in Afghanistan and the Nouri al-Maliki administration in Iraq. Thus the paper attempts to connect psychological motivational, emotional, and cognitive processes on the level of the individual to the politics of the war on terror.

This final chapter concludes with a reflection on the findings presented in the book, the implications of these findings for politics and political science, and suggestions for a new research agenda on legitimacy. The chapter concludes that the analyses in this volume do not provide evidence of legitimacy crisis. This leaves us with a puzzle, as the belief in such a legitimacy crisis is persistent, and it has proven to be quite resistant to evidence provided by political scientists on the basis of data such as analyzed in this book. This discrepancy between current data and public discourse must also prompt us to reflect on political science research: what have we done so far in selecting our concepts, data, research strategies, and empirical domain, and what can and should be improved? The chapter concludes with suggestions for new research on legitimacy.

This chapter examines the pedagogical forms through which students who matriculate to art academies after years of highly technical test prep are taught to practice creativity and “find themselves.” It offers an ethnography of the discussion-based, “critique”-style “creativity classes” (chuangzaoke) that are a central part of university-level art and design curriculum. Building on the linguistic anthropology of pedagogy, this chapter describes how art students are taught to “entextualize” a style by narrating a self, performatively anchoring an aesthetic that is always drawn from the work of others in a unique and highly personal subjectivity. The chapter reflects on the political implications of this subjectivity and its forms of practice.

This chapter examines the political implications of the revisions made to Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella Bird. The idealization of the Ainu people, the culminating northern point of her journey, consigns them to historical defeat, victims of the racial struggle for existence. In particular, it investigates how editorial changes alter the character of the traveler. It also shows how representations of Japan are accordingly modified. Finally, it reviews the most conspicuous difference between the two editions — the erasing of most of the references to missionary activities in Japan. Perhaps the act of travel writing is itself an effort to redefine identity, which contact with the other destabilizes to some extent. If this is the case, differences between the first and the popular editions of Unbeaten Tracks in Japan cast an interesting light upon the ways in which cultural boundaries are redrawn in the process of recounting travel.

This chapter presents an analysis of the vampire story ‘Good Lady Ducayne’. It discusses the socio-political implications of the vampire during the late Victorian age and shows how Braddon’s text tells a form of vampiric exploitation by a wealthy aristocrat. The Good Lady Ducayne, however, suggests many other parallel readings that are related to decayed female sexuality and productivity. The chapter also looks at an anti-Semitic racial unconscious that was common during the years when this short story was written. It concludes that Braddon’s mutations of the Gothic code show her willingness to survive the challenges of the Victorian literary market.

This chapter discusses folklore studies and how the history of folklore research, critical studies on folklore collectors and their ideologies, and the socio-political implications of folklore studies have all been seen within national boundaries. The history of folklore as a subject and object of research is traced back to the early nineteenth-century romantic-nationalist movement in Germany. The global history of folklore research, on the other hand, is Eurocentric in its approach, to the extent that it is based on nineteenth-century European folklore collectors within Europe, although it is well known that in the same century a large number of Europeans collected folklore of countries on other continents. Much of this work outside the European continent was accomplished in the context of colonial relations and done by non-folklorists.

This chapter discusses the notion of food as a fundamental instrument of cultural identity. Many have, after all, asserted their identities via the authenticities of a particular cuisine, yet food and alimentary traditions in general are continually evolving, continually shaped by history and many other factors. The authenticity with a dish respective to its region is not static, as its historical roots likely point to a variety of sources from elsewhere. Culinary traditions are frequently shaped by the dietary needs of their time, as well as the cultural and political implications thereof. Identities associated with these are likewise fluid as they construct themselves over time, leaving even the mere notions of “traditions” and “roots” moot.

This chapter examines the extent to which mega-regional agreements constitute new orientations for EU external relations. It focuses on CETA, TTIP, and TiSA, which are the most important instruments in the context of mega-regional initiatives from the viewpoint of the EU, placing them, however, in the broader context of other mega-regional initiatives such as TPP and the RCEP. This chapter explains the main motivations underlying the worldwide move to regional agreements in the course of the last ten to fifteen years and expounds the main functions of mega-regional agreements. Furthermore, it sketches out the principal (geo-)political implications of today’s prime mega-regional projects. Finally, this introductory chapter argues that the reorientation attempted with these initiatives calls for a re-evaluation in view of the problematic experiences made during the negotiations on CETA and TTIP, in particular.