BSJ

The Butler Scholarly Journal

Category: Politics

  1. When Capitalism Got Woke: The Hypocrisy of Corporate Virtue Signalling and the emergence of Rainbow Capitalism

    Editor-in-chief April Howard explores ‘Rainbow Capitalism’ and the corporate exploitation of trauma and social injustice for profit. [Featured image: Restatement by Andre] To the backing track of gentle piano music, a transgender boy goes about his day- to- day life being called by his deadname ‘Gemma’, the continual misgendering chipping away at him. Until, at Starbucks, the barista asks his name and he can finally tell us it is James. The advert ends with a peaceful scene of people sat in Starbucks, while James walks past the window, coffee in hand. The advert screams, in all senses except the literal,…

  2. Jane Eyre: A novel of resistance and rebellion? by Millicent Jarvis- Scott

    In this thoughtful and incisive essay, Millicent explores resistance in Jane Eyre. Featured Image is Jane Eyre by Liz Lux, flickr creative commons. Literature which can be described as rebellious and resistive should be willing to go beyond social norms in a revolutionary way for the time period, something I would argue that Bronte is successful in doing in her novel ‘Jane Eyre’. Even the action of writing ‘Jane Eyre’ in 1847 could easily be considered to be an action of resistance, against both a literary culture which placed less value on female narratives, and a society which reinforced these…

  3. Agnes and Adam: Emily and Anne Brontë’s Politics of the Animal Kingdom. An essay by Jack Probert.

    One of the brilliant entries for our Anne Brontë competition. Jack Probert expertly explores the animal kingdom in Anne and Emily’s works. Featured image is a sketch of Keeper, Emily Brontë’s dog, by Emily herself. In the work of both Emily and Anne Brontë, animals form part of a wider moral and political scheme in which both sisters examine the growing individualism of their own modern, industrial world. In exploring this, the distinction between wild animals and pets is crucial: for Emily, there is a separation between the animal and the human that Anne resists in her more compassionate approach…

  4. Pandemic Papers: Coronavirus’ Impact on US Politics

    In this article, Jessica Pabon will explore the effect the pandemic has had on US politics in a thoughtful, engaged way. [Featured image credit: ‘Jackson: Capitol Building’, by Visit Mississippi] ‘Coronavirus’: the term that will haunt the world for years to come, eliciting memories of a global pandemic in modernity, which was allowed to senselessly cause over a million death in its first year of existence. The pandemic has influenced every aspect of human life, resulting in quarantines, added stress on societal norms, and divides between individuals, both physical and ideological, where they did not exist before. There is nowhere…

  5. Disenfranchised Youth: The Effect of Sanders’ Campaign’s Suspension on young Americans

    When, on the 8th April, Bernie Sanders announced that he was suspending his campaign, he congratulated Joe Biden and said that he will work with him in order to “move our progressive ideas forwards.” Yet, across the US, young voters have lost hope, and many have pledged that they will not vote for either Biden or Trump in the upcoming presidential election. They see no blue light at the end of the tunnel. It is not surprising that the youth of the US would feel disappointed at this development, two- thirds of voters under 45 voted for Sanders. Conversely, two-…

  6. Corbyn’s Pragmatic Populism

    “Comrade Corbyn. Loony lefty. Bearded Trot.” The British right-wing press routinely depicts Jeremy Corbyn as someone who will establish a Marxist administration over the United Kingdom should he become Prime Minister (Cammaerts et al 2016: 9). An outlier in the Labour Party for many years following his election to parliament in 1983, few predicted his rise to the office of party leader in 2015. His 2017 election manifesto featured many elements that typified his political and social stances, such as the establishment of a £10 minimum hourly wage by 2020, reintroducing the 50p rate of tax on the highest earners…

  7. What are the consequences of conflating the Middle East with the Muslim World as geographical designations?

    The exonymic neologism ‘Middle East’ was coined by US Navy Captain Alfred Mahan in 1902 in an attempt to delineate a seamless territory centering on Persia, Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf (Culcasi, 2010, 585). Since then, the term has been used to describe a plethora of countries, spanning three continents, contributing to its obfuscation as a geographical and cartographic object. This confusion is caused because the Middle East is an abstraction of various distinct and heterogeneous countries which have little physiographical, geographical, historical, cultural, or political unity. In attempting to categorise the Middle East, it is often mistakenly conflated with…

  8. Interview with an Ex-Minister of State: Rolf Lüders

    Rolf Lüders, Minister for Finance and Economy in 1982-3 under Pinochet’s military dictatorship in Chile, is a leading economist and academic at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and as it happens, one of my lecturers during my year abroad in Santiago. Lüders graduated from the University of Chicago with a Master’s degree in 1960, where he was taught by economic luminaries Arnold Harberger and Milton Friedman. Friedman is of course the infamous father of monetarism who influenced the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. In the 1970s, Lüders became part of the Chicago Boys, a group of neoliberal…

  9. ‘Popular Imperialism’ in the USA: A Necessary Debate

    In 1898, with victory in the Spanish-American War and the official annexation of Hawaii, the United States suddenly found in its possession a significant overseas empire stretching from the Caribbean, across the Pacific to the South China Sea. The acquisition of these territories was a process of many years, and intervention in the Cuban War of Independence, as well as the annexation of Hawaii, was debated in the press and by politicians in the preceding decades. As Americans came to terms with their new colonial possessions and came face-to-face with often hostile colonial subjects, imperialist and racist sentiments were expressed…

  10. The Rendition Dystopia

    ‘Power is not a means; it is an end.’ – George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four. The date 11 September 2001 is undoubtedly identified among the global population as one of the most significant dates in modern history. The acts of terror committed in the United States on that day continue to resonate with countless others across the world. Attacks such as those upon Paris in November 2015 and the Brussels bombings in March 2016 serve as stark reminders of the capabilities of human beings in causing harm to others. However, almost 15 years since the start of the War on Terror,…