From a socio-theoretical and media-theoretical perspective, this article analyses exemplary practices and structural characteristics of contemporary digital political campaigning to illustrate a transformation of the public sphere through the platform economy. The article first examines Cambridge Analytica and reconstructs its operational procedure, which, far from involving exceptionally new digital campaign practices, turns out to be quite standard. It then evaluates the role of Facebook as an enabling ‘affective infrastructure’, technologically orchestrating processes of political opinion-formation. Of special concern are various tactics (...) of ‘feedback propaganda’ and algorithmic-based user engagement that reflect, at a more theoretical level, the merging of surveillance-capitalist commercialization with a cybernetic logic of communication. The article proposes that this techno-economic dynamic reflects a continuation of the structural transformation of the public sphere. What Jürgen Habermas had analysed in terms of an economic fabrication of the public sphere in the 1960s is now advancing in a more radical form, and on a more programmatic basis, through the algorithmic architecture of social media. As the authors argue, this process will eventually lead to a new form of ‘infrastructural power’. (shrink)

This article aims to make progress towards an account of social cohesion and participation in terms of which we can better understand how groups of people come to constitute stable social orders. It argues for a conceptual distinction between "inclusion" and "integration" and sheds new light on their theoretical relationship. While "integration" refers to group members' willingness to act in accordance with the given norms of a social structure, "inclusion" is linked to their participation opportunities. Although inclusion also plays an (...) essential role in integrating a normative order, levels of inclusiveness necessary for social cohesion may vary across different contexts. (shrink)

There is growing interest in political phenomenology in the role that affectivity and emotions play in the political realm. Broadly speaking, it has been suggested that political emotions fall into two sub-categories: political emotions of allegiance and political emotions of antagonism. However, what makes an emotion one of allegiance or one of antagonism has yet to be explored. In this chapter, we show how work done on the phenomenology of emotions, the phenomenology of sociality, and critical phenomenology, can inform our (...) understanding of political emotions. Inspired by frameworks from each of these fields respectively, we introduce three ‘levels’ of phenomenological analysis with regards antagonistic political emotions: (i) the antagonistic character of the emotion, (ii) the antagonistic role in group dynamics, and (iii) a critical reflection on the very notion of antagonistic. Through this three-pronged phenomenological analysis we show how we can better understand, and critique, the conceptualisation of political emotions of antagonism and allegiance as well as show that whether an emotion is considered one of allegiance or antagonism depends on what level of analysis is employed. (shrink)

This paper argues that social media companies’ power to regulate communication in the public sphere illustrates a novel type of domination. The idea is that, since social media companies can partially dictate the terms of citizens’ political participation in the public sphere, they can arbitrarily interfere with the choices individuals make qua citizens. I contend that social media companies dominate citizens in two different ways. First, I focus on the cases in which social media companies exercise direct control over political (...) speech. They exercise quasi-public power over citizens because their regulation of speech on social media platforms implies the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with citizens’ democratic contestation in the political system. Second, companies’ algorithmic governance entails the capacity to interfere with citizens’ choices about what mode of discursive engagement they endorse in their relationships with fellow citizens. By raising the cost of deliberative engagement, companies narrow citizens’ choice menu. (shrink)

In contemporary democracies, global capitalism exerts a significant influence over how state power is exercised, raising questions about where political power resides in global politics. This question is important, since our specific considerations about justifiability of political power, i.e. political legitimacy, depend on how we characterize political power at the global level. As a partial answer to this question, I argue that our notion of global political legitimacy should be reoriented to include the structural power of the Transnational Capitalist Class (...) as its subject matter. Structural power is a social relation in which the institutional context makes some agents comply with others’ preferences regardless of actors’ intentional efforts to bring about such outcomes. Even when global business elites do not intentionally exercise power to obtain political control of global governance, their structural power has recognizable effects that partly enforce the world order. To advance my claim, I utilize the radical realists’ argument that the notion of legitimacy is applicable to a broader range of social practices that are beyond dyadic power relations, i.e. rulers intentionally exercising power over subjects. (shrink)

This thesis aims to rework Foucault’s care of the self so that it can be understood as a political activity that opens the possibility for a new type of subjectivity. I develop and exemplify this claim through an analysis of the digital. Firstly, I focus on Foucault’s ethical work, which I articulate and defend by reading the care of the self through the notions of body, critique and limits, thus envisioning a political activity from which a new subjectivity can emerge. (...) Ultimately, I understand the care of the self to be an embodied critical practice that aims at transgressing the limits of imposed truths and forms of life. The exercise of the care of the self, thus, permits for a conversion of power, which signifies the passing from a moment of subjection to one of subjectivation. Secondly, I employ such arguments in a more practical manner and analyse the digital and the subjection process it enacts. I argue that the digital, which I take as the exacerbated use of the internet through gadgets, is a complex tool-like space characterized by quantification, seclusion and symbiosis, and that such notions arise as a result of the mechanisms that uphold the digital: discipline, mediation of discourse and biopower. However, my interest here is not in these characteristics and mechanisms per se but about the subject they create. I claim that the digital serves to exemplify the making of the useful and docile bodies of the twenty-first century: depoliticized in their utility and docility insofar as they are made to take for granted the imposition of a contingent truth. Thirdly, I then explore how my political reading of the care of the self serves to ‘fight’ the depoliticized digital subject, where I claim that our attention should be directed towards the mundane, the everyday, and the regaining of it through thought exercises, which allow for the subject to rethink that which was once taken for granted and regarded as incontestable. In doing so, I argue for the value of the uncertain and the political possibility that rests within. (shrink)

Spanish translation of Field, S. L. (2012). 'Democracy and the multitude: Spinoza against Negri'. Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 59(131), 21-40. Translated by María Cecilia Padilla and Gonzalo Ricci Cernadas. Negri celebra una concepción de la democracia en la que los poderes concretos de los individuos humanos no se alienan sino que se agregan: una democracia de la multitud. Pero ¿cómo puede actuar la multitud sin alienar el poder de nadie? Para contestar esta dificultad, Negri explícitamente apela (...) a Spinoza. Sin embargo, en este trabajo, sostengo que la filosofía de Spinoza no respalda el proyecto de Negri. Por el contrario, argumento que la multitud spinozista evita la jerarquía interna por medio de la mediación de las instituciones políticas y no a pesar de ellas; de la misma manera, estas instituciones tampoco simplemente emanan de la multitud tal cual es, sino que estructuran, contienen y canalizan sus pasiones. En particular, las instituciones requeridas no son las de la democracia simple y directa. Puede ser que existan otros argumentos no spinozistas en los cuales Negri pueda basar su teoría, pero no puede defender legítimamente su concepción de la multitud democrática apelando a Spinoza. (shrink)

This article’s guiding thesis is that the theory of radical democratic citizenship is built on a tension between a radical, conflictual element and a democratic element. As radical democrats, these philosophers point to the intimate relation between conflict and both emancipation and democracy. But as radical democrats, they also propose different methods that prevent conflict from breaking up the polis—the common ground that makes democratic conflict possible. I look at two radical democrats’ way of dealing with this tension: Chantal Mouffe (...) and Étienne Balibar. My claim is that the former ends up overemphasising the danger of division in her later democratic works and is therefore unable to account for more intense forms of democratic resistance (such as riots). In the work of Balibar, however, we find a way of dealing with this tension. (shrink)

Rise of populist politics in the 21s century calls scholars and politicians alike to reflect upon the question of how politics and democracy have been understood. Drawing on the theory of hegemony, this article establishes a distinction between democracy and ‘demography’ as a key line of conceptualization in politics. It highlights a central misunderstanding at the core of the demonization of populism: For radical democratic theory, ‘the people’ is not a demographic, socio-economic, or historically sedimented category tied to some characteristics, (...) but a performative process of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ ‘the people’ as a self-consciously enacted polity. This statement challenges the taken-for-granted status of subjectivities of political struggle and links this approach to other contemporary discussions of politics, democracy, and populism. After discussing how anti, neo and post-foundational theoretical accounts on populism reveal a dimension of politics and representation, this article emphasizes action and performativity over static categories and models characteristic of political realism and political system approaches. (shrink)

This article argues that Bernard Williams’ Critical Theory Principle (CTP) is in tension with his realist commitments, i.e., deriving political norms from practices that are inherent to political life. The Williamsian theory of legitimate state power is based on the central importance of the distinction between political rule and domination. Further, Williams supplements the normative force of his theory with the CTP, i.e., the principle that acceptance of a justification regarding power relations ought not to be created by the very (...) same coercive power. I contend that the CTP is an epistemic criterion of reflective (un)acceptability which is not strictly connected to the question of whether people are dominated or not. I show that there are cases of non-domination that fail the epistemic requirements of the CTP. (shrink)

Since at least the 1980s, the role of adversariality in argumentation has been extensively discussed within different domains. Prima facie, there seem to be two extreme positions on this issue: argumentation should never be adversarial, as we should always aim for cooperative argumentative engagement; argumentation should be and in fact is always adversarial, given that adversariality is an intrinsic property of argumentation. I here defend the view that specific instances of argumentation are adversarial or cooperative to different degrees. What determines (...) whether an argumentative situation should be primarily adversarial or primarily cooperative are contextual features and background conditions external to the argumentative situation itself, in particular the extent to which the parties involved have prior conflicting or else convergent interests. To further develop this claim, I consider three teloi that are frequently associated with argumentation: the epistemic telos, the consensus-building telos, and the conflict management telos. I start with a brief discussion of the concepts of adversariality, cooperation, and conflict in general. I then sketch the main lines of the debates in the recent literature on adversariality in argumentation. Next, I discuss the three teloi of argumentation listed above in turn, emphasizing the roles of adversariality and cooperation for each of them. (shrink)

This paper argues that the critique of depoliticization in Mouffe’s agonistic political theory needs to be revised. This is because her account of the political does not succeed in filtering out undesirable forms of politicization such as science denialism and other types of post-truth politics. Mouffe's conception of the common symbolic space does not accomplish the task of limiting extreme pluralism in the absence of certain standards about how to correctly apply the fundamental notions of this space. By drawing on (...) a quasi-Wittgensteinian reading of linguistic normativity, I develop principled but non-universalist limits on politicization that are needed for a healthy, well-functioning democracy. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility of a notion of left-wing populism that is conceptually opposed to the identitarian logic of embodiment that characterises right-populist interpellations of ‘th...

This essay diagnoses the condition of contemporary liberal democracies. It assumes that the current crisis of democracy is not the result of an external ideological threat, but it is the result of the lack of a coherent vision of democracy itself. The author recognises that the key symptom of the contemporary crisis is the decreasing involvement of citizens in public life and their growing reluctance to participate in public debate. He claims that the reason for this is the increasing social (...) polarisation. The article considers two forms of polarisation: vertical and horizontal. The first form is illustrated by Colin Crouch’s considerations, while the second one by Fareed Zakaria’s thoughts. What finds its manifestation in both cases is the phenomenon of citizens’ resignation from participation in the public debate; in the first case it is because of the lack of faith in the effectiveness of this type of opiniongiving mechanism, while in the second case it is because of the lack of recognition of other political and ideological options in society. These reflections are concluded in the postulate that the basic task facing democracy today is to maintain the public sphere as open as possible, i.e. not excluding any ideological position in advance. This kind of conclusion is illustrated with the concepts of Chantal Mouffe and Helmuth Plessner. (shrink)

This essay presents a novel approach to specifying the meaning of the concept of populism, on the political position it occupies and on the nature of populism. Employing analytic techniques of concept clarification and recent analytic ideology critique, it develops populism as a political kind in three steps. First, it descriptively specifies the stereotype of populist platforms as identified in extant research and thereby delimits the peculiar political position populism occupies in representative democracies as neither inclusionary nor fascist. Second, it (...) specifies on this basis analytically–normatively the particular stance towards liberal representative democracy (in particular towards popular sovereignty and democratic legitimacy) that unifies populism’s political position and explains how populist politics can be compelling for democratic citizens. The normative core (populist ideology) turns out to require no more than two general principles of legitimizing political authority by elections. Surprisingly, it does not need a separate anti-pluralist or exclusionary commitment: it entails it. Third, this normative model allows a response to a contested question in the theoretical discussion, namely, whether populism (properly specified) can be democracy-enhancing. The article defends the negative answer in virtue of the normative core alone and does so as much vis-à-vis a minimal (purely electoral) as vis-à-vis a normatively ambitious (liberal) conception of democracy. The reconstruction of the normative core of populist ideology enables a novel argument to show that populism is incompatible with the continued democratic legitimation of political authority even in the normatively most austere conception of ‘electoral democracy’, not just with ‘liberal democracy’. Assuming a normatively more ambitious concept of democratic legitimation in terms of political autonomy, the model also produces an extremely direct argument showing that populists cannot fulfil their promise of ‘taking back control’ over political decision-making to the population. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Many companies engage in dialogue with nongovernmental organizations about societal issues. The question is what a regulative ideal for such dialogues should be. In the literature on corporate social responsibility, the Habermasian notion of communicative action is often presented as a regulative ideal for stakeholder dialogue, implying that actors should aim at consensus and set strategic considerations aside. In this article, we argue that in many cases, communicative action is not a suitable regulative ideal for dialogue between companies and NGOs. (...) We contend that there is often an adversarial element in the relation between companies and NGOs, and that an orientation towards consensus can be in tension with this adversarial relation. We develop an alternative approach to stakeholder dialogue called ‘agonistic deliberation.’ In this approach, conflict and strategic considerations play a legitimate and, up to a certain point, desirable role. (shrink)

The humanities and the social sciences have been hostile to future visions in the postwar period. The most famous victim of their hostility was the enterprise of classical philosophy of history, condemned to illegitimacy precisely because of its fundamental engagement with the future. Contrary to this attitude, in this essay I argue that there is no history (neither in the sense of the course of human affairs nor in the sense of historical writing) without having a future vision in the (...) first place. History, its very possibility, begins in the future, in the postulation of a future where further change can take place. Our notions of history, change, and the future are interdependent, they come as one package, meaning that the abandonment of one entails the abandonment of the other two. As to the current situation, although lately it became a commonplace to diagnose our age as presentist, Western societies are deeply engaged in a vision of the future revolving around artificial intelligence and the prospect of technological singularity. This technological vision is best characterized as the prospect of unprecedented change, substantially differing from Enlightenment and nineteenth-century developmental visions of future. If our notions of history, change, and the future are necessarily interdependent, and if we have a characteristically new future vision, it follows that our historical sensibility is already transformed and is accommodated to the prospect of unprecedented change. The ultimate aim of this essay is to outline this transformed historical sensibility of our technological age. (shrink)

This article explores some of the central challenges presented by decolonial thought to other critical, progressive, or emancipatory theories, especially theories of radical democracy. The article has two main aims. First it seeks to synthesize and highlight a number of key strands and interventions of contemporary decolonial thought. It does so through a reading of several decolonial literatures including the Latin American modernity/coloniality school, as well as research in Indigenous Studies and Settler Colonial Studies focused largely on the Anglo settler (...) colonies of Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Three key thematics of decolonial thought are drawn out and explicated in this survey: modernity/coloniality, land, and ethico-political resurgences. The second aim is to show what kind of work is done by these decolonial interventions by using them to interrogate Chantal Mouffe’s theory of radical democracy. (shrink)

The contemporary agonist thinker, Chantal Mouffe argues that conflicts are constitutive of politics. However, this position raises the question that concerns the survival of order and the proper types of conflicts in democracies. Although Mouffe is not consensus-oriented, consensus plays a role in her theory when the democratic order is at stake. This suggests that there is a theoretical terrain between the opposing poles of conflict and consensus. This can be discussed with the help of concepts and theories that seem (...) to be standing between the two, namely compromise, debate and the borders of democracy. I will argue that we can reveal this position with the theoretical analysis of compromise in the works of F. R. Ankersmit on the historical origin of representative democracy, and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson on the role of compromise in divided communities. J. S. Mill’s view of colliding opinions offers a moderate agonistic understanding of politics, while the concept of debate plays a similar role for Márton Szabó, a contemporary Hungarian political theorist. Finally, Mouffe’s position stands at the conflictual end of this spectrum, although conflicts are delimited on the normative ground of democracy. (shrink)

Beyond the reaches of scholarly debates about how to define and value civility properly, social actors across various institutional domains routinely demarcate civil from uncivil behavior. Yet this everyday classification process remains understudied and undertheorized, despite being widespread and having significant stakes for the individuals and groups involved. This article begins to fill this gap by developing the concept of civility contests—practical efforts to draw symbolic boundaries between civil and uncivil individuals, groups, or behaviors. Through a focus on the realm (...) of political protest in the United States, this article demonstrates that civility contests involve a wide range of political actors (including institutionalized power holders, opposing movements, and the media) who engage in this boundary-work in order to justify the control or (de)legitimation of protest. It then highlights patterned disparities in the outcomes of these contests, demonstrating that the likelihood of being marked as uncivil and the extent to which this prompts negative social sanction is shaped by one’s social position. Overall, the article seeks to stimulate and guide future empirical research on civility contests and to deepen theoretical understandings of the relationship between symbolic and social boundaries and the role of symbolic boundary-work in the reproduction of political inequality. (shrink)

The Irish Republic's economic success story has been simultaneously regarded as antithetical to and indicative of neoliberal hegemony. The question of the neoliberal pedigree of the Irish case is explored here from the perspective of mediatized representations of political economy. The paper's argument is advanced in three distinct stages. First, it outlines a theoretical and methodological rationale for the analysis itself. Second, it formulates a summary account of neoliberalism as discourse and ideology, introducing a key analytical distinction between ‘transparent’ and (...) ‘euphemized’ neoliberal discourses. Third, it presents an empirical overview of how neoliberal assumptions are articulated through mediatized representations of political economy. The article shows how the ‘Celtic Tiger’ can be understood as a case of neoliberal hegemony, as long as it is recognised that neoliberalism is hegemonically constituted through a plurality of discursive forms and rhetorical strategies. In addition, the paper highlights the constitutive role of media representation, especially the media rhetoric of Irish political leaders, in the production and reproduction of an Irish neoliberalism. (shrink)

The present volume is the fifth in the series of yearbooks with the title Globalistics and Globalization Studies. The subtitle of the present volume is Global Transformations and Global Future. We become more and more accustomed to think globally and to see global processes. And our future can all means be global. However, is this statement justified? Indeed, in recent years, many have begun to claim that globalization has stalled, that we are rather dealing with the process of anti-globalization. Will (...) not we find ourselves at some point again in an edifice spanning across the globe, but divided into national apartments, separated by walls of high tariffs and mutual suspicion? Of course, some setbacks are always possible, because the process of globalization cannot develop smoothly. It is a process which is itself emerging from contradictions and is shaped by a new contradiction. They often go much further than underlying systemic changes allow. They break forward, as the vanguard of a victorious army, and then often meet resistance of various social and political forces and may suddenly start to roll back just at the moment when everyone expects their further offensive. We believe that this is what is happening with globalization at present. The yearbook will be interesting to a wide range of researchers, teachers, students and all those who are concerned about global issues. (shrink)

Through an analysis of policy texts, population statistics and a targeted sample from the popular press, this paper both furthers knowledge about changing meanings of working motherhood in the contemporary US, and proposes a refinement to existing conceptual work relating to how wage-work and care-work are combined. I focus analysis on recent US social policy which grants new rights and protections for women seeking to combine lactation and wage-work (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2011). I critique this (...) policy through Bernise Hausman’s work on the politics of motherhood, arguing that it represents a form of work-life integration that is particularly burdensome for working mothers. I further argue that maternal practice as well as well as expectations of working motherhood in the contemporary US are being reshaped around the demands of neoliberalism, producing what I term ‘neoliberal motherhood’. I assert that this policy represents a way of combining wage-work and care-work that is not captured within existing feminist theory, and suggest that a re-working of theory in this area is needed in order to address cases in which embodied care-work is enfolded within the time and space of wage-work. (shrink)

Even though the interrelationship between education and democratic politics is as old as democracy itself, it is seldom explicitly formulated in the literature. Most of the time, the political system is taken as a given, and education conceptualized as an instrument for stability and social integration. Many contemporary discussions about citizenship education and democracy in the Western world mirror this tendency. In the paper, I argue that, in order to conceptualise the socio-political potential of education we need to understand democracy (...) in more political terms. This means that democracy can neither be seen primarily as a mode of associated living, nor a model for handling different life-views. A third alternative is Gert Biesta’s notion of democratic subjectification. Even though Biesta identifies depoliticising trends in citizenship education policies, I argue that his alternative still fails to be a sufficiently political alternative. What is lacking in Biesta is the explicit attention to political causes and the kind of collective activities that define a democracy: the creation of one’s own laws, norms and institutions. This capacity of the collective to question and govern itself is put in relief by Cornelius Castoriadis’s notion of “the project of autonomy”. (shrink)

This article examines the theoretical implications of the changing relationships between NGOs and businesses that have emerged as a response to the evolving agenda around CSR and sustainable development. In particular, it focuses upon examining whether greater engagement from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in this area reflects a process of appropriation and co-optation of protest by the business community. To examine this process, the article considers two forms of appropriation—appropriation of language and appropriation via participation—as a basis for discussion. While co-optation (...) pressures are identified within both areas, the article argues that co-optation is identified almost as an inevitable outcome of engagement without significant consideration of the ability of movements to identify and respond to these processes. In identifying an alternative approach, the article utilises Mouffe’s framework of agonistic pluralism. Mouffe’s framework, it is argued, provides an understanding of the way in which agonistic relationships are emerging between NGOs and businesses while highlighting the continuance of conflict between parties struggling to influence the contested interpretations of responsible business. (shrink)

The mass theory of the Austrian novelist and philosopher Hermann Broch has been virtually ignored in social theory. However, the recent theoretical interest in crowds makes it pertinent to scrutinize this part of his work. This article presents and examines the fundamental architecture of Broch's Massenwahntheorie, its historical context and how it may contribute to contemporary social theory. Specifically, Broch's insistence on the irrational dimensions of human behaviour is analysed as well as his emphasis on psychological anxiety in modern society. (...) It is argued that both aspects may point beyond the specific context of his writings and illuminate important general aspects of social and political life. (shrink)

Trudy Govier argues in The Philosophy of Argument that adversariality in argumentation can be kept to a necessary minimum. On her ac-count, politeness can limit the ancillary adversariality of hostile culture but a degree of logical opposition will remain part of argumentation, and perhaps all reasoning. Argumentation cannot be purified by politeness in the way she hopes, nor does reasoning even in the discursive context of argumentation demand opposition. Such hopes assume an idealized politeness free from gender, and reasoners with (...) inhuman or at least highly privileged capabilities and no need to learn from others or share understanding. (shrink)

Negri celebrates a conception of democracy in which the concrete powers of individual humans are not alienated away, but rather are added together: this is a democracy of the multitude. But how can the multitude act without alienating anyone’s power? To answer this difficulty, Negri explicitly appeals to Spinoza. Nonetheless, in this paper, I argue that Spinoza’s philosophy does not support Negri’s project. I argue that the Spinozist multitude avoids internal hierarchy through the mediation of political institutions and not in (...) spite of them; nor do these institutions merely emanate from the multitude as it is, but rather they structure, restrain and channel its passions. In particular, the required institutions are not those of a simple direct democracy. There may be other non-Spinozist arguments on which Negri can ground his theory, but he cannot legitimately defend his conception of the democratic multitude by appeal to Spinoza. (shrink)

Large-scale transnational land acquisition of agricultural land in the global south by rich corporations or countries raises challenging normative questions. In this article, the author critically examines and advocates a human rights approach to these questions. Mutually reinforcing, policies, governance and practice promote equitable and secure land tenure that in turn, strengthens other human rights, such as to employment, livelihood and food. Human rights therefore provide standards for evaluating processes and outcomes of transnational land acquisitions and, thus, for determining whether (...) they are ethically unacceptable land grabs. A variety of recent policy initiatives on the issue have evoked human rights, most centrally through the consultation and negotiation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests concluded in 2012. However, a case of transnational land appropriation illustrates weak host and investor state enforcement of human rights, leaving the parties to in interaction with local groups in charge of protecting human rights. Generally, we have so far seen limited direct application of human rights by states in their governance of transnational land acquisition. Normative responses to transnational land acquisition—codes of conduct, principles of responsible agricultural investment or voluntary guidelines—do not in themselves secure necessary action and change. Applying human rights approaches one must therefore also analyze the material conditions, power relations and political processes that determine whether and how women and men can secure the human rights accountability of the corporations and governments that promote large-scale, transnational land acquisition in the global south. (shrink)

Two features characterize new and emerging technosciences. The first one is the production of peculiar ontologies. The human agent is confronted with a biophysical world the contingent, indeterminate character of which does not hamper but expands the scope of purposeful action. Uncertainty is increasingly regarded as a resource for an expanding will rather than a drawback for a disoriented agent. The second feature is that ethics is increasingly considered as the core regulatory means of this messy, ever-changing world. The ambivalences (...) of the ethical government of contingent assemblages are discussed by focusing on the governmentality perspective. The latter helps to make sense of the regulatory alliance between ethics and technoscience. A reflection on Foucault’s account of ethics shows that the emancipatory role of the latter is today hampered by its embroilment with the instrumental reason it aims to govern, nor can older models of ethical commitment find any straightforward application. Mapping the issue in terms of mutual constitution of power, potentiality and possibility gives salience to a particular question: what we are able not to do. (shrink)

Much work in the field of education for democratic citizenship is based on the idea that it is possible to know what a good citizen is, so that the task of citizenship education becomes that of the production of the good citizen. In this paper I ask whether and to what extent we can and should understand democratic citizenship as a positive identity. I approach this question by means of an exploration of four dimensions of democratic politics—the political community, the (...) borders of the political order, the dynamics of democratic processes and practices, and the status of the democratic subject—in order to explore whether and to what extent the ‘essence’ of democratic politics can and should be understood as a particular order. For this I engage with ideas from Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière who both have raised fundamental questions about the extent to which the ‘essence’ of democratic politics can be captured as a particular order. In the paper I introduce the figure of the ignorant citizen in order to hint at a conception of citizenship that is not based on particular knowledge about what the good citizen is. I introduce a distinction between a socialisation conception of citizenship education and civic learning and a subjectification conception of citizenship education and civic learning in order to articulate what the educational implications of such an ‘anarchic’ understanding of democratic politics are. While the socialisation conception focuses on the question how ‘newcomers’ can be inserted into an existing political order, the subjectification conception focuses on the question how democratic subjectivity is engendered through engagement in always undetermined political processes. This is no longer a process driven by knowledge about what the citizen is or should become but one that depends on a desire for a particular mode of human togetherness or, in short, a desire for democracy. (shrink)

In this paper I draw some distinctions between the terms “cultural diversity” and “plurality” and argue that a radical conception of plurality is needed in order both to re-imagine the boundaries of democratic education and to address more fully the political aspects of conflict that plurality gives rise to. This paper begins with a brief exploration of the usages of the term diversity in European documents that promote intercultural education as a democratic vehicle for overcoming social conflict between different cultural (...) groups. In contradistinction to these usages, this paper calls for a more robust conception of plurality, one that does not simply denote membership in different cultural groupings but is rooted in the human condition and based on a conception of uniqueness. Following the work of Hannah Arendt and feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, I explore how the appearance of unique beings in specific contexts can be understood as an eminently political act and I contend that such a view leads to a better educational understanding of conflict and contestation. The paper sketches the contours of democratic plurality along this line of thought and discusses how these new boundaries have implications for education’s relation to democracy. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to show the discussion concerning the idea of cosmopolitan society. I intend to examine the structure and content of the argumentation which put into question the very notion of cosmopolitanism, as well as the contemporary content of this concept. I will look at nationalistic discourse as presented, for instance, by Gertrude Himmelfarb, which puts emphasis on national values as an indispensable part of group and individual identity. On the other hand, I am going to (...) analyze left-wing evaluation of cosmopolitanism as an ideologically motivated attempt to hide the real contradictions of the contemporary world. Finally, I will prove that these critiques cannot undermine the concept of cosmopolitanism, but they force us to rethink a way in which cosmopolitan society can be achieved. If cosmopolitan society is to emerge, we need to reconstruct the idea of democracy and the notion of multi-cultural pluralistic society. I propose such rethinking of cosmopolitanism by the introduction of the notion of “dialogical cosmopolitanism,” which refers to M.M. Bakhtin’s concept of dialogue and G.H. Mead’s idea of “taking the role of the other.”. (shrink)

As a flashpoint for specific instances of conflict, Muslim sartorial practices have at times been seen as being antagonistic to “western” ideas of gender equality, secularity, and communicative practices. In light of this, I seek to highlight the ways in which such moments of antagonism actually might be understood on “cosmopolitical” terms, that is, through a framework informed by a critical and political approach to cosmopolitanism itself. Thus, through an “agonistic cosmopolitics” I here argue for a more robust political understanding (...) of what a cosmopolitan orientation to cultural difference can offer education. The paper moves from a focus on harmony to agonism and from cosmopolitanism to the cosmopolitical, and within each I discuss the questions of democracy and universality, respectively. Drawing on, the work of Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler and Bonnie Honig, I discuss the basis upon which our agonistic interactions can inform education in promoting better ways of living together. This requires, in my view, nothing less than a clear understanding of the very difficulties of pluralism and a questioning of some of the ways we often reflect on the political dimension of these difficulties. I offer some reflections on what an agonistic cosmopolitics has to offer the debates surrounding the wearing of various forms of Muslim dress in schools in the conclusion. My overall claim is that cosmopolitanism as a set of ideas that seek more peaceful forms of living together on a global scale is in need of a theoretical framework that faces directly the difficulties of living in a dissonant world. (shrink)

The present essay discusses the value of citizenship as shared fate in sites of ethnic conflict and analyzes its implications for citizenship education in light of three issues: first, the requirements of affective relationality in the notion of citizenship-as-shared fate; second, the tensions between the values of human rights and shared fate in sites of ethnic conflict; and third, the ways in which citizenship education might overcome these tensions without falling into the trap of psychologization and instrumentalization, but rather focusing (...) on providing opportunities for social and school practices that manifest shared fate and compassion in critical ways. It is argued that what teachers and schools should try to do is to make practices of shared fate and compassion possible through creating conditions for children and young people to experience what it means to enact such practices in sites of ethnic conflict. It is also suggested that teachers and schools in sites of ethnic conflict cannot produce ‘new’ citizens on the basis of any values, no matter how ‘noble’ these values may be. The most that can be done is to help children and young people to critically reflect upon the conditions under which people in sites of ethnic conflict can act on the basis of shared fate and compassion and provide support so that these possibilities can become realistic. (shrink)

Poe's Law is roughly that online parodies of religious extremism are indistinguishable from instances of sincere extremism. Poe's Law may be expressed in a variety of ways, each highlighting either a facet of indirect discourse generally, attitudes of online audiences, or the quality of online religious material. As a consequence of the polarization of online discussions, invocations of Poe's Law have relevance in wider circles than religion. Further, regular invocations of Poe's Law in critical discussions have the threat of further (...) entrenching and polarizing views. (shrink)

The Politics of Orientation provides the first substantial exploration of a surprising theoretical kinship and its rich political implications, between Gilles Deleuze's philosophy and the sociological systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. Through their shared theories of sense, Hannah Richter draws out how the works of Luhmann and Deleuze complement each other in creating worlds where chaos is the norm and order the unlikely and yet remarkably stable exception. From the encounter between Deleuze and Luhmann, Richter develops a novel take on (...) postfoundational ontology where subjects and societies unfold in self-productive relations of sense against a background of complexity. The Politics of Orientation breaks and rebuilds theoretical alliances by reading core concepts and thinkers of Continental Philosophy, from Leibniz to Whitehead and Marx, through this encounter. Most importantly, the book puts Luhmann and Deleuze to work to offer urgently needed insight into the rise of post-truth populism. In our complex democratic societies, Richter argues, orientation against complexity has become the ground of political power, privileging the simplistic narratives of the populist right. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of the war in the Ukraine, realism has made a comeback in public discourses but it is not clear what realism actually means as it seems to stand for everything: from supporting the Ukraine against Russian aggression to the war is the West’s fault. This is the result of decades of not distinguishing between neorealism and classical realism and implicitly acknowledging neorealist storytelling of having systematized classical realist thought. The present paper is a further intervention to carefully (...) distinguish between both theoretical perspectives to uncover what they can add to current world political problems. It finishes by asking if neorealist scholars like John Mearsheimer have a point that it is the West’s fault and a diplomatic solution needs to be found. They often refer to Hans Morgenthau not least because he was one of the most outspoken critics of the Vietnam War. (shrink)

The imagery of Left and Right has been a common way to conceive democratic politics in modern Europe, and commentators have suggested it be extended to the European Union. This article examines the normative implications and plausibility of European politics being cast in these terms. It focuses on the challenges of rendering political division recognizable and acceptable at a transnational level, of evoking its continuities of structure, and of symbolizing the ties of political community. The article probes the Left–Right dichotomy’s (...) potential in these regards, together with the conjunctural factors likely to raise or diminish its appeal. (shrink)

This paper examines a struggle over the future use of Nordic forests, which took place from 2009 to 2012 within a major research program, Future Forests—Sustainable Strategies under Uncertainty and Risk, organized and funded by Mistra, The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. We explore the role of strategic environmental research in societal constructions of long-term challenges and future risks. Specifically, we draw attention to the role played by environmental research in the creation of future images that become dominant for (...) how societies structure action for the long term. We also show that this process is on several accounts problematic. Research labeled “strategic” or “relevant” is intended to manage long-term risks and challenges in a sustainable way, by taking into account the “open” and “plural” nature of the future. The case of Future Forests suggests, rather, that by contributing to the emergence of dominant future images, environmental research is entangled with a process of gradual consensus creation around what may be highly selective or biased narratives of the long term, which may conceal or postpone key forms of future conflict. (shrink)

Identity and democracy and, more particularly, national identity and deliberative democracy account for a controversial relationship. However, from a classical deliberative democratic point of view, the controversy over who is the ‘we’ that needs to stand together in contemporary complex societies settled with the constitution of modern states. In this sense, the main contribution of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, I rebut the analytical appropriateness and conceptual coherence of Habermas’ discursive approach to democracy for the case of (...) plurinational societies in contemporary constitutional democracies. A discussion of a test case – Catalonia – demonstrates that this inadequacy renders incoherent the deliberative model regarding one of its most fundamental premises: the equal weight of the principles of law and the principle of democracy. On the other hand, I sustain that the challenge is not about identity but democracy, and more particularly, about the role deliberative democracy is called to play when controversy challenges whether the people of a state do conform to a single people or not. More concretely, I explore the opportunities offered by the systemic turn to sustain a more realistic approach to deliberative democracy regarding its capacity to steer society towards integration in the context of the system of public deliberation. (shrink)

Death is frequently seen as the ultimate manifestation of materiality. Without denying this materiality, this article will investigate the discursive character of death and its contingent nature, through the lens of Laclau and Mouffe's [. Hegemony and social strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso] discourse theory. First, the core elements of the discourse of death, such as end/cessation/termination, negativity, irreversibility, inescapability, and undesirability, in combination with life as death's constitutive outside, will be analysed, showing the specificity of this (...) discourse of death. The contingency of death is argued further from a more genealogical stance, through the changes over time in the articulation of death and good death. Finally, the political nature of the discourse of death is illustrated by an analysis of end-of-life debates and the struggle between the hospice and the right-to-die social movements over the exact articulation of a good death. The article concludes by pointing to the necessary and constitutive failure of discourse to capture the materiality of death. (shrink)

In May 2017, yet another South African university became a site of hate speech. Three students chose to display Nazi-inspired posters, which advertised an ‘Anglo-Afrikaner student’ event, under the motto ‘Fight for Stellenbosch’. That the posters provoked the response which it so obviously sought, was evident in the student outrage, and the swift condemnation from university management. Neither the prevalence of hate speech, nor its predictable responses, is new. The central concern of this article is to consider the extent to (...) which tolerance can offer a plausible response to hate speech. The questions which arise, however, are: Does the right to divergent viewpoints hold the same legitimacy as antagonistic ones? When is the boundary between legitimate and hate speech breached? Does a democracy imply the tolerance of all forms of speech? Or, are there limits to the forms of speech that a democracy ought to tolerate? (shrink)

Moving beyond the post-political framing of the climate change debate, scholars have tried to show that scientific practice is based on politically significant forms of social construction. While sympathizing with this attempt, this paper questions their use of the term ‘political’. Drawing on post-foundational political theory and focusing on the example of climate denialism, it argues that the relation between science and the political constitutes a double bind: while upholding an original distinction between science and the political is untenable, representing (...) science in political terms is impossible, because of the specific way the scientific field is symbolically instituted. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of ‘the legitimacy of the people’, that is, what constitutes the legitimate demarcation of the political units within which democracy is practiced? It is commonplace among philosophers to argue that this problem cannot be solved by appeal to democratic procedure because every attempt to do so results in an infinite regress. Based on a social contract theoretical analysis of the problem, this view is rejected. Although contract theorists have ignored the problem of the legitimacy of (...) the people, this article nevertheless argues for one specific, and currently dominant, type of contract view – ‘contractarianism’ – that it contains the conceptual tools to solve it. In a contractarian view, the people are understood as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage and accordingly consist of only those individuals for whom it is mutually beneficial to bind themselves to one another. It is argued that contractarianism offers a procedurally democratic solution to the problem of the legitimacy of the people that does not cause an infinite regress. Furthermore, this article refutes a classic criticism of contractarianism’s account of moral standing. Finally, the article demonstrates contractarianism’s practical implications for one specific articulation of the problem of the legitimacy of the people, namely, immigration. (shrink)

This paper explores two different versions of ‘the realist turn’ in recent political theory. It begins by setting out two principal realist criticisms of liberal moralism: that it is both descriptively and normatively inadequate. It then pursues the second criticism by arguing that there are two fundamentally different responses among realists to the alleged normative inadequacy of ideal theory. First, prescriptive realists argue that the aim of realism is to make political theory more normatively adequate by making it more realistic. (...) Interpretative realists, on the other hand, argue that realist theorising should detach itself from such an aspiration, and instead aim at theoretical understanding rather than normative prescription. After some further elaboration of what interpretative realism might look like, it is acknowledged that both approaches still need to address the question of political normativity. (shrink)

By assuming the permanence of conflict, agonistic theories of politics are apparently incompatible with cosmopolitanism. Nevertheless, this paper aims to reveal the potential for a theory of cosmopolitanism in Chantal Mouffe's agonistic theory. In the first section, I present Mouffe's own critique of cosmopolitanism, pointing to its inconsistencies. The second section examines four aspects of Mouffe's agonism and explores their cosmopolitan potential. First, I argue that Mouffe's account of pluralism reveals the interconnectedness of political practices at different levels. Second, Mouffe's (...) sense of the transformation from “enemy” into “adversary” through “conversion” can be extended to cosmopolitanism. Third, the “conflictual consensus” which Mouffe attributes to adversaries is adequate for a cosmopolitanism that lacks a global consensus, but nonetheless is based on a minimal commonality of all human beings. Fourth, contestation, as conflict in the “tamed” mode, has a cosmopolitan potential to contest an.. (shrink)