The recognition perspective is a valuable lens through which identity struggles and historical marginalization and abuses can be explored. This study analyzes Ireland’s Justice for Magdalene (JFM) campaign between 2009–2013; JFM was a group that fought for a state apology and redress for women and girls confined to Catholic-run laundries between the 1920s and 1990s. Such institutions formed part of the post-colonial Irish identity and church-state structure, within which many women and girls once suffered. We document the rhetorical dimension of (...) how a resolution was ultimately reached following the campaign’s transformation of women’s individual experiences into the collective voice of an advocacy group with targeted political goals. Focusing on JFM’s public press releases, we consider the media logic and rhetorical strategies of the group, which effectively built a case against the state. At the core of the discussion is the balance between the instrumental and constitutive functions of the organization’s messaging. (shrink)

Why should citizens participate in civic endeavors they oppose? In the Philoctetes, Sophocles dramatizes the actions of three interlocutors who struggle for answers to an intractable personal and political conflict amid an existential civic crisis. The characters try several methods to resolve the impasse, specifically deceit, sympathy and appeals to duty. Ultimately, civic religion succeeds in creating unity where other methods of resolution fail. The civic religion framework in the Philoctetes can be seen as Sophocles's statement that resolution of the (...) most extreme political conflicts can be obtained through a combination of piety and reason that respects foundational civic doctrines transcending politics. In this way, civic religion serves to unify political communities divided by self‐interest, intolerance, and desire for revenge while preserving self‐determination and the dignity of free will. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of the constitution of ‘the people’. It argues that J.L. Austin’s concept of the ‘perlocutionary’ speech act gives us a framework for understanding the constitutive force of a specific constitutional document: the American Declaration of Independence. It does so through responding to Derrida’s analysis of the Declaration, which itself draws on Austin’s work. Derrida argues that the Declaration’s constitutive force lies in the fact that it cannot be simply understood as either ‘performative’ or ‘constative’, in (...) Austin’s terminology. According to Derrida, ‘the people’ do not pre-exist the Declaration, but are constituted in the act of declaration itself. In response, I argue that while Derrida’s insight regarding the constitution of ‘the people’ is sound, his analysis misses two key aspects of the Declaration. These two lacunae point the way to an understanding of the constitutive force of the Declaration in terms of Austin’s ‘perlocutionary’ speech act. (shrink)

Sophokles' Philoktetes is a response to the oligarchic takeover and restoration of democracy in Athens in 411–10 BC. The play explores the grounds, strengths, and weaknesses of democratic discourse, and measures it against alternatives. The final agon between Neoptolemos and Philoktetes defines a model of legitimate persuasion that can replace Odysseus' sophistic and oligarchic modes of interacting with others. The deus ex machina, in turn, brings in an authoritative aristocratic discourse that is superior even to democratic deliberation.

The chief concern of the paper is to initiate discussion on the difference between the private and public power of judgement. The inspiration comes from Kant and his conception of the power of judgement, customs, morality and provisional law.

This paper examines the role of performance in law and music as a structural means of their self-programming construction. Music and law are considered as parallel social practices or performative doings. The paper begins with a critical analysis of the special aesthetical features of present-day juridical practice as exemplified by legal trial and legal expertise. Drawing upon reflections on the modern discourse on aesthetics and art, the article then examines in greater detail the specific traits of performance in law and (...) jazz music. Performative processes move from representation to presentation, from a preoccupation with rules and controlling to induced self-programming. Both law and jazz regard the unknown future as a resource for present decisions by “inventing” new possibilities; both require, expand and promote a responsibility that does not follow from statutes nor can be expressed in a code of ethics. Finally, the article addresses the performance situation in jazz. Jazz being polyphonic and improvisational by nature, improvisation makes explicit tradition by staging the context dependency of its performance. It is mediated by the knowledge, the operational history and the communication of the participants. Jazz is an exercise in the possibilities of an “aesthetics of imperfection” which can open up new ways of seeing law and politics. (shrink)

In recent years, outbreaks such as H1N1 have prompted heightened efforts to manage the risk of infection. These efforts often involve the endorsement of personal responsibility for infection risk, thus reinforcing an individualistic model of public health. Some scholars—for example, Peterson and Lupton —term this model the “new public health.” In this essay, I describe how the focus on personal responsibility for infection risk shapes the promotion of hand hygiene and other forms of illness etiquette. My analysis underscores the use (...) of constitutive and stigmatizing rhetoric to depict individual bodies, rather than environments, as prime sources of infection. Common among workplaces, this rhetoric provides the impetus for encouraging individual behavior change as a hedge against infection risk. I argue, though, that the mandating of personal responsibility for infection risk galvanizes a culture of stigma and blame that may work against the aims of public health. (shrink)