On the 24th June 2015, Feminist Legal Studies and the London School of Economics Law Department hosted an afternoon event with Professor Wendy Brown, Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science, University of California. Professor Brown kindly agreed to discuss her scholarship on feminist theory, and its relationship to both the law and neoliberalism. The event included an interview by Dr Katie Cruz and a Q&A session, which are presented here in an edited version of the transcript. Sumi Madhock, (...) Professor of Gender Studies, LSE chaired the interview and discussion and introduced Professor Brown’s work. Katie Cruz asked Wendy Brown to reflect upon topics that span her scholarship and activism, including the state of critical, feminist, and Left approaches to rights, neoliberalism, despair and utopianism, and the future of feminist theory and practice in the context of neoliberalism and current debates about intersectionality. Participants in the discussion asked questions on a wide range of issues, including the limits of feminist engagement with law as a tool for social change, the dominance of neoliberalism, imperialist feminism, Islamophobia, secularism, and our attachment to the figure of homo politicus. (shrink)

Abolitionism is an animal rights' philosophy and social movement which has recently begun to grow. It has been largely contested but the criticisms directed at it have usually been articulated outside academia. In this article, I wish to contend that one of the criticisms directed at abolitionism—that it contains racist implications—is correct. I do this by defending the idea that abolitionism engages in what Eduardo Bonilla-Silva classifies as ‘racism without racists’—an unintentional and subtle form of racism. I present three ways (...) in which abolitionism may be considered racist and then address some possible objections to my view. (shrink)

It has been argued that globalization assists the USA to gain a hegemonic position, allowing it to export its culture. Because this exportation leads to the domination by American culture of the local cultures of importing countries, which are the key element in sustaining their citizens’ national identity, citizens of these countries are unable to protect state sovereignty from this cultural invasion. In order to prevent a political crisis arising from such an invasion, these countries will adopt the strategy of (...) cultural localization. However, this top-down approach overestimates the influence of hegemonic cultures and, thus, overlooks the dynamic nature of cultural development that is generated by people’s agency. This essay rejects this top-down model by arguing that texts cannot dominate people, and that people influence their existence and value. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to offer a sociological concept of crisis that, defined as the expected yet non-lineal outcome of the internal dynamics of modern societies, builds on the synergies between critical theory and systems theory. It contends that, notwithstanding important differences, both traditions concur in addressing crises as a form of self-reproduction of social systems as much as a form of engagement with the complexities and effects of such processes of reproduction. In order to make our (...) comparison exhaustive, this article explores critical and systems theories’ notions of crisis at three levels: (1) their conceptual delimitation of crises; (2) their methodological proposals to empirically observe crises; and (3) their normative attempts to contribute to their resolution. As crises remain a distinctive structural feature of the social world and a rich source of knowledge about it, reflexivity must be seen as a crucial form of engagement with the negative expressions of social life itself. (shrink)

Drawing on Peter Harrison's argument that individuals should be attributed a central role in analyses of the relationship between science and religion, this article proposes that an understanding of personality can help us better appreciate a person's attitudes to both science and religion. Rather than seeing an individual's attitudes to these two topics as separate, if sometimes overlapping, parts of their lives, it is suggested that both may result from psychological drives and sometimes from the same psychological drive. Two contrasting (...) case studies are employed to illustrate this proposal. First, Paul Dirac who, it is argued, was on the autistic spectrum, a personality profile that is often linked to both mathematical physics and atheism. By contrast, Michael Faraday's scientific practice and his commitment to a specific form of Christianity were underpinned by his need for security, as assured by the God‐given laws that operated in both the physical and moral domains. (shrink)

The revival of realism in political theory has included efforts to challenge realism’s conservative reputation and argue that radical forms are possible. Nonetheless these efforts have been criticised as insufficient to overcome realism’s inherent conservatism. This article argues that radical forms of realism can be better appreciated by considering the application of the realist perspective within an existing radical ideology: anarchism. This may seem an unusual choice, considering anarchism’s standard representation as naïvely idealistic and paradigmatically non-realist. However, attention to the (...) breadth of diversity in anarchist theory reveals a collection of positions that together represent a ‘realist anarchism’ which not only challenges anarchism’s reputation as uniformly committed to unrealistic and idealistic utopianism but also demonstrates the existence of genuinely radical forms of realism. (shrink)

Dialectics is the logic of estrangement. Self-relating negativity, which is at once every difference and its overcoming, is the pulse of dialectics. But what is this self-estranging sameness? For Hegel, the idealist, it is “the absolute concept.” It is more difficult to say what it is for Marx, who is supposed to be a materialist. If Marx were merely relocating self-estranging sameness from the concept to human “genus-being” (Gattungswesen), understood as a historically variable “ensemble of social relations,” this ensemble would (...) harbour a potentiality to become that is at once enabled and disabled by the social divisions of labour and class that they have generated. This interpretation is vitiated by an ambiguity in its invocation of potentiality. If we flatten human genus-being onto historically variable social relations, there is no latency left in it which could be said to be unactualized by existing social practices. But if some aspect of genus-being is held in reserve as an unactualized potential, we risk re-substantializing it as an a-historical essence. It is this ambiguity that leads Marx’s critics to accuse him of invoking a transcendent conception of human essence despite his insistence that this essence is a function of historically variable social relations. I want to parry this criticism by suggesting that Marx’s materialism requires Hegel’s self-estranging sameness in order to dissolve the apparent dichotomy between immanence and transcendence in the potency ascribed to practice. Estrangement and de-estrangement, compulsion and freedom, are not separable moments but twin facets of the same movement. The prospect of de-estrangement emerges only by retrospecting an enabling estrangement. (shrink)

Realist thinkers who once rejected the moral claims of the possibility of a lasting world peace now take the position that the goal of attaining it is clearly worth striving for, "however utopian it seemed when first advocated.".

Compared to standard liberal approaches to public reason and justification, the asymmetric convergence model of public justification allows for the public justification of laws and policies based on a convergence of quite different and even publicly inaccessible reasons. The model is asymmetrical in the sense of identifying a broader range of reasons that may function as decisive defeaters of proposed laws and policies. This paper raises several critical questions about the asymmetric convergence model and its central but ambiguous presumption against (...) coercion. By drawing on the theory of structural coercion, a main conclusion of the paper is that the asymmetric convergence model ultimately encounters the very incompleteness problems that its proponents often associate with more familiar consensus models of public justification. The paper also develops an alternative, Rawlsian-inspired account of public justification that includes elements of both convergence and consensus but not asymmetry. The Rawlsian model enables us to understand how democratic decisions may possess a degree of procedural, but still morally significant, liberal legitimacy under conditions of pluralism even when citizens fail to agree fully about either the premises of or conclusions to their political arguments. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTomasi's case for “market democracy” stands or falls, not on its credentials as a genuinely “liberal” argument—a consideration to which he attaches undue importance—but on the plausibility of his arguments about the value of “self-authorship.” Free Market Fairness fails to explain adequately why self-authorship, as Tomasi construes it, is as normatively significant as he thinks it is, and why, even if it has that normative importance, citizens should agree that taking it seriously requires them to endorse his intended political recommendations. (...) Indeed, there are good reasons to think that a commitment to self-authorship supports Marxian, rather than liberal, conceptions of “economic liberty.”. (shrink)

This paper analyses conceptual change. A rejection of pure experience has prompted philosophers of science to adopt a certain perspective from which to view changes of belief. Popper, Kuhn, and others have analysed conceptual change in terms of problems or anomalies, that is, in terms of contingent reasoning about issues posed in the context of an inherited web of belief. This paper explores a more general analysis of conceptual change in dialogue with these philosophers of science. Because changes of belief (...) are not all changes in scientific belief, we seek to unpack conceptual change in terms of dilemmas, as opposed to anomalies or problems. For a start, the notion of a dilemma has to be broader than that of an anomaly since it purports to apply to conceptual change as a whole, not just the transition from one era of normal science to another. In addition, we should detach the notion of a dilemma from the objectivism of Popper's world-3 problems. (shrink)

Critique as a philosophical concept needs to be recast once it is linked to the possibility of a productive opening. In such a context critique has an important affinity to destruction and forms of inauguration. Working through writings of Marx and Walter Benjamin, specifically Benjamin's 'The Meaning of Time in the Moral World', destruction and inauguration are repositioned in terns of othering and the caesura of allowing.

In a famous passage in volume three of Capital, Karl Marx distinguishes between a “realm of freedom” and a “realm of necessity”. The passage has attracted attention as seeming to register a dismal perception by Marx of the productive labour that will be necessary even under communism. “Dismal perception” is G. A. Cohen's verdict in his lucid essay “Marx's Dialectic of Labour”. Cohen has now softened the charge to “a somewhat gloomy perception”. But he continues to hold that the passage (...) reveals Marx viewing even post-capitalist labour “as bound always to be unsatisfying”, a marked shift from Marx's optimistic 1840s view that under communism labour would be unalienating. The debate has recently been joined by James Klagge, who has argued against Cohen that the volume three passage does not disclose a shift in view, and so does not register a “deep pessimism” or “negative appraisal” by Marx of post-capitalist labour. (shrink)

This essay reviews Skeggs’ and Wilson’s papers in this issue of Feminist Legal Studies in terms of their development of, and departure from, ideas central to the Italian post-Marxist, post-workerist tradition; specifically their understanding that capital is increasingly converging with the production and reproduction of social life itself. I interrogate the assumed necessity to move beyond ‘the limitations of Marx’ by revealing, via the Communist Manifesto, Grundrisse and Capital, how the ideas of ‘old’ Marx can offer important engagements and interlocutions (...) with the ‘new’ empirical phenomena explored by Skeggs and Wilson. I show how Marx’s notion of creative destruction is in tune with Wilson’s work on the erotic generativity of capitalism, and how his observations on labour-time as the measure of value illuminate the exchange and circulation of Wife Swap. Finally, I suggest that we might be wary not to lose sight of the question of resistance by regarding immaterial labour as productive labour, and thus relinquishing Marx’s conceptual tools of labour, value and capital. (shrink)

The ideal of emancipation has been traditionally grounded on the premise that human activity is not restrained by external boundaries. Thus the realisation of values such as autonomy or recognition has been facilitated by economic growth and material expansion. Yet there is mounting evidence that the human impact on natural systems at the planetary level, a novelty captured by the concept of the Anthropocene, endangers the Earth’s habitability. If human development is to be limited for the sake of global sustainability, (...) can emancipation be kept as a mobilising ideal? As opposed to alternative views such as that of degrowth, this article argues that it can. The key lies in the ability of the Anthropocene to produce planetary subjectivities. By recognising the bounded quality of human embeddedness, the possibility of a different emancipation is opened up. The latter does not give up material well-being, yet it makes sure that the latter does not endanger planetary habitability. (shrink)

In this paper, I engage with the radical critique of human rights moralism. Radical critics argue that: human rights are myopic ; human rights are demobilising ; human rights are paternalistic ; and human rights are monopolistic. I argue that critics offer important insights into the limits of human rights as a language of social justice. However, critics err insofar as they imply that human rights are irredeemably corrupted and they under-estimate the subversive potential of the moral ideas that underpin (...) the discourse. Building on the idea of human rights as claims, I set out the politicising features of human rights as they are deployed in a practical context of disagreement, conflict, and imbalances of power. I illustrate this discussion with reference to the contemporary struggles of irregular migrants. (shrink)

Great critical theorists from Marx and Engels to Adorno and Horkheimer not only came from the margins but also stayed faithful to the plight of the marginalized. They refused to compromise about the struggle for equality and tried to universalize its emancipatory essence. From Marx to Benjamin, critical philosophers who showed fidelity to the cause were denied a career in European universities and made impoverished, stateless, and homeless. Marginalization and critical theory are inseparable; yet, today, Marxism is institutionalized, and the (...) Frankfurt School's Critical Theory is gentrified. Critical Theory from the Margins, however, revives the Critical Theory that endorses criticism, aiming to negate dominant regimes of truth. It is unapologetic in its fidelity to the universalist struggles of the minoritized. In that spirit, Saladdin Ahmed shows that capitalism imposes a totalitarian social mode of existence and neoliberalism perpetuates fascism as a class of ideology across nationalist and religious movements. This book, then, is both a theorization and an argument in favor of the application of the episteme of the silenced as the essence of the critical education necessary for achieving universal emancipation. (shrink)

To systematically answer two questions “how does language work?” and “where does linguistic meaning come from?” this paper argues for SocialConstructivism of Language and Meaning which consists of six theses: the primary function of language is communication rather than representation, so language is essentially a social phenomenon. Linguistic meaning originates in the causal interaction of humans with the world, and in the social interaction of people with people. Linguistic meaning consists in the correlation of language to the world established by (...) collective intentions of a language community. Linguistic meaning is based on the conventions produced by a language community in their long process of communication. Semantic knowledge is empirical and encyclopedic knowledge distilled and condensed, and the uses of language accepted by a linguistic community. Language and meaning change rapidly or slowly as the communicative practice of a linguistic community does. The crucial point of SCLM is to focus on the triadic relation among language, humans and the world, rather than the dyadic relation between language and the world. (shrink)