This article outlines a critical systems theory approach to the study of populism by arguing that populism is an avenue of contestation which assumes a distinct role and function in the existing constitution of the political system. Most notably, it is characterised by the re-entry of a popular sovereignty dimension within regular political procedures. By taking up a critical systems theory perspective, it becomes possible to more precisely distinguish populism from other forms of politics, such as oppositional politics, social movement (...) politics or procedural constitutional politics. Further, populism’s oscillation between democratic and authoritarian dynamics can be elucidated as an inversion which operates from within its political form. Finally, it is argued that the critical systems theory approach provides a more nuanced understanding of populism’s inherent problems and, consequently, moves beyond a blunt defence or rejection of populism as such. (shrink)

Is Machiavelli an Epicurean in his political and religious thought? Recent scholarship has identified him as the foremost representative of Epicureanism in Renaissance Florence. In particular, his incomplete epic poem, The Ass, is read as an expression of his adherence to Lucretian naturalism. This article offers a new reading of the poem and shows that its teaching reveals that Machiavelli is closer to a Platonic variant of classical naturalism linked with the idea of a natural virtue modelled on the lives (...) of animals which has been lost through human civilization and progress and to which it is necessary to return periodically. The article focuses on the poem’s claim that civil religion is a necessary component for good laws that maintain a free republic and argues that Machiavelli offers a poetic reflection on the role of Numa as the founder of Roman religion on the model of a neo-Pythagorean philosophical religion that was instrumental in the rise of constitutional government. More than Lucretius’s critique of religion, Machiavelli’s poem can be read as an extended reflection on Plutarch’s texts – above all, his Life of Numa. (shrink)

This paper engages the debate within the ‘democratic turn’ in Machiavelli scholarship, where an ‘institutional’ approach has celebrated Machiavelli's theorisation of the institutions under which the people can rule while a ‘no-rule’ approach has traced Machiavelli's attention to the popular capacity to subvert all relations of rule. What do we make of Machiavelli's concurrent reception as a champion of popular rule and an antagonist to all rule? I argue that both institutionalising and subversive impulses appear simultaneously in Machiavelli's works, though (...) in a dynamic for which neither of the democratic approaches adequately accounts – namely, a rhetorical dimension of Machiavelli's works wherein political knowledge unfolds from a continuous multiplicity of perspectives and the ensuing implication that perspective is crafted and shaped through political action. Perspectival readings of Machiavelli's accounts of the Capuan debate and the Ciompi rebellion thus reveal that both democratic approaches have neglected to question certain ‘princely’ orientations toward political action inherited in their conceptualisations of Machiavellian democracy. In contrast, I suggest that Machiavelli's comedy La Mandragola offers an opportunity to reframe perspective as a uniquely democratic phenomenon. Reading the comedy alongside the democratic turn, I argue that it enacts, satirises and even casts doubts on Machiavelli's princely lessons, in turn proposing a popular capacity to cultivate perspective in a newly organised public space. (shrink)

For W. E. B. Du Bois, the tragedy of Reconstruction was that its achievements were overthrown and erased from collective memory. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction corrects this, claiming enslaved people who fled plantations self-emancipated, thus enacting a “general strike against the slave system.” Yet Du Bois contravenes his general strike thesis when he quotes without rebuttal several Union officials who spoke of the formerly enslaved in degrading, nonagentic terms. I turn to Jacques Rancière’s politics of dissensus to understand why Du (...) Bois quoted such racist views without comment. In Rancière, political actors “stage a scene” of equality that is shared, even among parties in conflict. Recording conflicting perceptions of the strike, highlighting divisions that persist despite momentary advances of equality, Du Bois’s reading of the general strike is dissensual in Rancière’s sense, I argue. But Du Bois also offers a valuable corrective to Rancière, whose account of the first plebeian secession erases a different general strike from memory. Rancière reads the Aventine as an event of confrontation unconnected to the collective action that Du Bois summoned from the archive and named “general strike.”. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the antagonistic character of democratic politics, specifically in relation to the neo-republican conceptualisation of politics, as outlined by Philip Pettit. I take up a problem not addressed in the neo-republican scholarship, namely, the broader dispute over the practice of contestation and the scope of its reach in relation to the activity of politics. This article proceeds through an examination of what I call Pettit’s method of political theory in order to approach sideways the concept of (...) ‘contestation’ as a marker for a sublimated antagonistic dimension of neo-republican politics. Drawing on the work of Rancière and the insights of post-Nietzschean critical theory (Derrida, Laclau and Arendt), I examine the relationship between populism, democratic contestation and non-domination in neo-republican discourse. As such, this article exerts pressure on Pettit’s privileging of a status concept of freedom as the supreme political ideal of republican politics. This article explores the political possibilities opened up through a re-politicisation of non-domination, and the radical potential that resides in a politics that does not foreclose on democracy, understood in terms of popular power and not popular control. (shrink)

Trata-se, neste trabalho, de refletir acerca da recuperação do republicanismo de Nicolau Maquiavel para o debate democrático contemporâneo. Com esse intento, entre as muitas atualizações possíveis do pensamento do secretário florentino para os dias atuais, destaco duas matrizes conceituais, justamente aquelas mais concernidas com as noções de liberdade e ação política popular. Seguindo as sugestões de Helton Adverse, procuro então aprofundar e esclarecer a sua proposta de uma matriz “institucional” e uma matriz “conflitiva” quando da interpretação e recuperação das ideias (...) de Maquiavel. (shrink)