CONSTRUCTION OF POLITICAL CULTURE FROM THE CONCEPT OF AN IDEAL WOMAN FOUND IN THE CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S JOURNALS IN SERBIA

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This paper analyses discourses on an “ideal woman” in modern Serbia ie the manner in which actual political culture is construed from representation of women in various ladies’ journals. I have tried to define discourses produced by the Cosmopolitan and Blic Žena, pinpoint differences in the suggested concepts of womanhood and identify the manners in which such discourses and representations of women, their gender roles and relations, coincide with the wider social norms, stereotypes and practices. I have also analyzed the general impression left by these journals trying to categorize them into suggested “elementary prototypes” as defined by Neda Todorović-Uzelac, primarily the prototypes/models of a traditional woman/female versus a rebelled, liberated woman (a feminist).

GENDER POLITICS IN THE SUMMER BEFORE THE DARK BY DORIS LESSING AND LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN BY ALICE MUNRO

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By relying on Kate Millett’s views and her interpretations of patriarchy from different perspectives in Sexual Politics, this paper analyses the position of women in the novels The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing and Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro. In both novels we come across two generations of women in anglophone culture in the seventh decade of the twentieth century. The older protagonists, Kate, in The Summer Before the Dark and Addie, in Lives of Girls and Women, cannot live in the way they want or be appreciated in the way they deserve, because patriarchal culture has imposed certain patterns of behaviour from their childhood and early youth. However, their life stories have served as a warning to younger generations in the mentioned novels. Therefore, Maureen, in The Summer Before the Dark, as well as Del, in Lives of Girls and Women, refuse to accept the stereotypical gender prejudices and to obey the rules and expectations of patriarchy.

PERMACULTURE AS A NEW POLITICAL CULTURE

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This article deals with the potential of a subculture which considers itself sustainable through orientation towards natural (re)production of life. Distinctiveness of this subculture is spreading across the planet, gathering its supporters in Serbia as well. It shows a developing awareness of various aspects of need for reconnection with nature and its laws in all the lifeforms. It is rooted in caring for life on Earth by following the principles of nature. By harmonizing relations within the environment connected to the principles of ecological economy, it links technology and science with ancient insights that are in accord with contemporary scientific views. The label “permaculture” stands to point out the idea of a permanent regenerating of culture and cultivating all aspects of life. It is directed towards a conception of niches in which the ecological way of living represents a pattern of restraint from the shortcomings of civilization which rapidly destroy the environment and dehumanize the world. The concept of permaculture surpasses the common urban/rural dichotomy although its resemblance to the utopian desire to escape the system of technological civilization makes it, from the point of view of that system, marginal by default. However, considering catastrophic weaknesses of the neo-liberal political culture, the concept still has a potential to create a new kind of political culture.

PUBLIC REASON AS A BASIS OF POLITICAL CULTURE IN LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES: IDEAS AND PROBLEMS

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The main purpose of this work is to present the idea of public reason as we can find it in John Rawls’s Political Liberalism, partly from the perspective of Joseph Raz’s critique which he presented in his work “Facing Diversity: The Case of Epistemic Abstinence”. Raz critiqued Rawls, who tried to ground his political liberalism on the basis which does not need the truth – which means that his theory is epistemicаlly abstinent. Raz considers that this is not possible and that theory must have its foundation in some objective values. This paper will show a difference between objective values and values constituted by concord, in order to differentiate from the terminology of Joseph Raz and to point out his problematic assumptions. I will also represent standpoint from which Raz criticism of epistemic abstinence is justified, which means that Rawls has to find some objective values although that does not mean, as Raz concludes, that a theory of justice must be true to be a theory of justice.

JOHN RAWLS’S VIEW ON THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF А DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

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In this paper we discuss the role of the political culture of a democratic society within Rawls’s later work. In the first part of the paper we analyze Rawls’s standpoint as presented in his Political Liberalism. According to Rawls, the political culture of a democratic society is a source of ideas and principles that are the building blocks of political theory aiming at the political conception of justice for a well-ordered democratic society. In the rest of the paper, we raise some objections concerning the relationship between the political culture of a democratic society and political theory. Finally, we sketch our own view on the proper role of normative political theory.

POLITICAL CULTURE AS A CULTURE OF OBLIVION

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If dealing with our past is a significant segment of every culture then politics could be defined as directing our memory. Starting with Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment and Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche, this article aims to show the ways and conditions under which politics articulates the goals of a culture. A healthy, active, productive culture shapes a sovereign and self-conscious citizen, a free individual who can react. The culture of ressentiment, on the contrary, creates a community of vassals who, according to the Nietzsche-Deleuzian formula, do not activate their reaction, all in the name of a petrified past. To the petrified and instrumentalized memory Nietzsche opposes the power of forgetting as a certain cure.