Page 80 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 80
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
only in the mode, in which it is structured around a double axis of the reli-
gious and nationalist signifiers. The religious argumentation coincides with
the nationalist one in a condemnation of sexual pleasure.2 Another type of
rhetoric, conservative but not explicitly religiously based, does not defy the
use of contraceptives and claims them to be a suitable alternative to abor-
tion, which in this view should be more or less restricted. Such discourse
finds arguments for restrictions within medical and psychiatric sciences
blending them with anti-communism. In this line of thought we can also
find standard paradigms of juxtaposition between responsibility and sexu-
al pleasure. There are “theories” of a special advantage of “love” as opposed
to “bare sex”, and persuasions about grave psychic consequences of abor-
tion. The pattern of this line of argumentation very much resembles the
one, which ascertains that masturbation is harmful since it induces a “feel-
ing of guilt”. But as much as we try, it is impossible to find any other basis
for such an assumption, but the self-referential one: a “feeling of guilt” is
derived from the conviction that masturbation induces a “feeling of guilt”.
The spectrum of opposition to free abortion on demand is completed by
a range of compromising standpoints, which do not advocate any ban on
abortion, but they would install counselling, and various administrative
barriers. Such measures should effectively dissuade women from seeking a
solution for their problems in abortion. However, this permissive attitude
shares a common denominator with the above-mentioned stringent views:
a conviction that the abortion is a practice of women, who irresponsibly or
ignorantly indulge in sexual pleasures.
All that is available as a common sense argumentation against any
hindering of women’s free choice has been told many times over, compris-
ing of explanations, which point out that abortion is still necessary beside
contraceptives. Further on, free choice is supported by the assessments of
the fact that abortion makes an integral part of the social equality of wom-
en. In addition, medical reasoning, which demonstrates that a supposed
2 In the universe of “new democracies” in an empirically observable political reality,
some phenomena differ from usual patterns. Some undoubtedly right wing political
groups and Parties appear to resist “capitalism” and advocate interests of the
working class and some nationalist parties do not express a definite stand on sexual
politics, which one would expect. Such cases are to be found in Slovenia as well. The
irreligious stream of nationalist ideology in part intermingled with a flow that one
may label as “enlightened” and it was expressed throughout 1990s in a fringe, but
significant, Slovenian National Party (SNS). We may take this as a sign of a situation
of a social restructuring that is reflected in an eclectic construction of new ideologies
within the pluralist setting.
78
only in the mode, in which it is structured around a double axis of the reli-
gious and nationalist signifiers. The religious argumentation coincides with
the nationalist one in a condemnation of sexual pleasure.2 Another type of
rhetoric, conservative but not explicitly religiously based, does not defy the
use of contraceptives and claims them to be a suitable alternative to abor-
tion, which in this view should be more or less restricted. Such discourse
finds arguments for restrictions within medical and psychiatric sciences
blending them with anti-communism. In this line of thought we can also
find standard paradigms of juxtaposition between responsibility and sexu-
al pleasure. There are “theories” of a special advantage of “love” as opposed
to “bare sex”, and persuasions about grave psychic consequences of abor-
tion. The pattern of this line of argumentation very much resembles the
one, which ascertains that masturbation is harmful since it induces a “feel-
ing of guilt”. But as much as we try, it is impossible to find any other basis
for such an assumption, but the self-referential one: a “feeling of guilt” is
derived from the conviction that masturbation induces a “feeling of guilt”.
The spectrum of opposition to free abortion on demand is completed by
a range of compromising standpoints, which do not advocate any ban on
abortion, but they would install counselling, and various administrative
barriers. Such measures should effectively dissuade women from seeking a
solution for their problems in abortion. However, this permissive attitude
shares a common denominator with the above-mentioned stringent views:
a conviction that the abortion is a practice of women, who irresponsibly or
ignorantly indulge in sexual pleasures.
All that is available as a common sense argumentation against any
hindering of women’s free choice has been told many times over, compris-
ing of explanations, which point out that abortion is still necessary beside
contraceptives. Further on, free choice is supported by the assessments of
the fact that abortion makes an integral part of the social equality of wom-
en. In addition, medical reasoning, which demonstrates that a supposed
2 In the universe of “new democracies” in an empirically observable political reality,
some phenomena differ from usual patterns. Some undoubtedly right wing political
groups and Parties appear to resist “capitalism” and advocate interests of the
working class and some nationalist parties do not express a definite stand on sexual
politics, which one would expect. Such cases are to be found in Slovenia as well. The
irreligious stream of nationalist ideology in part intermingled with a flow that one
may label as “enlightened” and it was expressed throughout 1990s in a fringe, but
significant, Slovenian National Party (SNS). We may take this as a sign of a situation
of a social restructuring that is reflected in an eclectic construction of new ideologies
within the pluralist setting.
78
