There is a broad consensus, within the interlocking system of art institutions, on the goals viewed as worth achieving. Artists, for example, will strive to realize broadly formalist values in their work; critics will strive to discern and articulate the achievement of such values; dealers will strive to discover and promote artists whose work successfully reflects these standards; and collectors will strive to acquire and exchange such work.The long-range effect of this tightly defended consensus is that the art practitioners who (...) share it determine - through their shared values and practices, and the economic and social factors that determine them - the criteria of critical evaluation for all art that aspires to entry into existing art institutions. I shall describe this as a state of critical hegemony. That is, the socioeconomically determined aesthetic interests of these individuals define not only what counts as "good" and "bad" art, but what counts as art, period. (shrink)

Any social and political arrangement depends on acceptance. If a substantial part of a people does not accept the authority of its rulers, then those can only remain in power by means of force, and even that use of force needs to be accepted to be effective. Gramsci called this acceptance of the socio-political status quo “hegemony.” Every stable state relies primarily on hegemony as a source of control. Hegemony works through the dissemination of values and beliefs (...) that create acceptance and that serve the interests of the state and/or the ruling elite (the “hegemones”). Hegemony is most efficient if it remains invisible. A key hegemonic belief is the idea that there is no alternative to the current socio-political status quo or that the way things are is “natural.” The current hegemony – that is, the set of values and beliefs that bolster the current socio-political status quo – is a hegemony of psychopathy: it promotes “cultural psychopathy” and destroys empathy and compassion, thus threatening everything that makes us human. The hegemony of psychopathy is responsible for massive human suffering. It must be fought and replaced with a counter-hegemonic set of values and beliefs that promote compassion and care. Fighting hegemony requires fighting the “pillars” that support it. Most important among these are the mass media and culture industry, and mainstream economics. The former is responsible for a continuous stream of hegemonic propaganda; the latter – among others – for providing a pseudo-scientific justification for the false belief that there is no alternative. The book concludes with some considerations on tactics and strategy in the struggle against the hegemony of psychopathy, but does not – and cannot – offer any concrete advice. (shrink)

field: Issue 8 Embodying an Anti-Racist Architecture comprises essays, articles, podcasts, drawings, designs, the cover image, and a film. ‘This Call to Action' is a document borne from dialogue, and as such derives its power from the activism that collaboration and cooperation engender. -/- Asma Mehan, Carolina Lima, Faith Ng’eno, and Krzysztof Nawratek discuss white hegemony across different geopolitical and academic spaces, mindful of the nuances of using English as their shared yet borrowed language. -/- .

In the present article, the first section recapitulates my “figuration” philosophy of dance, the “dancing-with” interpretive method derived therefrom, and my previous application of figuration to salsa dance as a decolonizing gestural discourse. The second section deepens and modifies this analysis through a reinterpretation of Argentinian philosopher Ernesto Laclau’s concept of hegemony and his dance-resonant interpretations of Derrida. And the final section offers a template for this hegemonic dancing-with in the Birmingham, Alabama Latin dance troupe, Corazon de Alabama (Heart (...) of Alabama), as a new strategy for decolonizing and reconstructing social justice. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs Gramsci’s account of social objects in light of recent developments in analytic social ontology. It combines elements of Gramsci’s account with that of John Searle, and argues that when taken together their theories constitute a robust account of social reality and a nuanced view of the relation between social reality and power. Searle provides a detailed analysis of the creation of social entities at the level of the agent, while Gramsci, by employing his concepts of hegemony (...) and domination, is able to provide an analysis of the differential ability of societal subgroups to construct the social world. (shrink)

The paper inculcates the path of modern education by implementing cum ensuing the form and content of moral education from the stances of prescriptivist R. M Hare and existentialist Sartre. In the first part of the paper, Hare’s tune for language-centric moral concepts and its prescriptive plus universalistic application for society enhance an outlook for moral education where learners should be taught to apply morality from a prescriptive sense, not by memorizing it in a descriptive manner. Besides, Sartre’s existentialist appeal (...) delineates moral education as a free choice of a learner where any institutional hegemony becomes trivial. The second part of the paper focuses on the content of moral education. What sort of moral laws make the content of moral education justifiable? Here Russell’s approach takes a pertinent role. We should secure modern education from the social and state’s anarchism. A way out that I depict in the last section of the paper stresses on moral education that evades itself from the repression of the pedagogue or rigid principles. Modern education should quest for why and liberal neutrality not by following the rigid rules obediently. Moral education teaches children about their own rights and the rights of the other in a beneficial manner. (shrink)

Traditionally Ψ is used to stand in for both the mathematical wavefunction (the representation) and the quantum state (the thing in the world). This elision has been elevated to a metaphysical thesis by advocates of the view known as wavefunction realism. My aim in this paper is to challenge the hegemony of the wavefunction by calling attention to a little-known formulation of quantum theory that does not make use of the wavefunction in representing the quantum state. This approach, called (...) Lagrangian quantum hydrodynamics (LQH), is not an approximation scheme, but rather a full alternative formulation of quantum theory. I argue that a careful consideration of alternative formalisms is an essential part of any realist project that attempts to read the ontology of a theory off of the mathematical formalism. In particular, I show that LQH undercuts the central presumption of wavefunction realism and falsifies the claim that one must represent the many-body quantum state as living in a 3n-dimensional configuration space. I conclude by briefly sketching three different realist approaches one could take toward LQH, and argue that both models of the quantum state should be admitted. When exploring quantum realism, regaining sight of the proverbial forest of quantum representations beyond the Ψ is just the first step. (shrink)

This paper advocates for the introduction of poetic inquiry in Nigerian universities as a powerful approach to decolonizing research and reclaiming indigenous ways of knowing. It highlights the need to challenge outdated colonial concepts of higher education that have suppressed poetry and other indigenous forms of exploration and understanding. It argues that the incorporation of poetic inquiry in Nigerian universities can create inclusive and transformative spaces that foster social justice, cultural affirmation, and knowledge decolonization. The paper draws on literature on (...) decolonial and critical pedagogy to argues that poetic inquiry enables researchers to engage with alternative modes of expression and challenge dominant Western-centric paradigms. It underscores the social and political implications of embracing poetry as a means of reimagining narratives and reshaping power dynamics within academia and society at large. By validating and honouring indigenous knowledge systems, poetic inquiry promotes self-determination and cultural revitalization while bridging the gap between academia and the wider community. The paper offers recommendations on how Poetic Inquiry may be integrated into the curriculum of Nigerian universities. (shrink)

The local opposes the global or the macro opposes the micro and vice versa, respectively. This dialectical relationship further exposes that scales are socially and politically constructed, representative of a phenomena that is relational, and is thus of important consideration in analysis beyond simple labeling. That is, scale represents more than ‘size’ and ‘complexity’, but also reveals the relational. It is the relational—the relationship between the ‘global’ and its contents or the ‘local’—which provides for or is wont for analytic complexity (...) and theorizing. (shrink)

The relationship between power, law and consent is a key feature of the Western debate on criminal law. On the one side, defining the legitimate ways of exercising the punitive power has been a critical question since the Enlightenment thought onwards and especially as to the rule of law doctrine. On the other side, the role played by public punishment in shaping consent and its communicative potential have been crucial questions for critical, as well as non-critical approaches to criminal law (...) in contemporary thought. These questions gain in strength and radicalism when it comes to international criminal law (ICL). In this case the filter of the state is not present anymore to mediate between power, law and consent, and the power to punish individuals is directly exercised by international institutions. This means, on the one hand, that traditional justifications of the power to punish and which are elaborated on in the domestic sphere are not useful anymore in legitimating international punishment. International criminal norms are not framed by an international democratically elected parliament, and their exercise is not controlled by the complex system of checks and balances typical of the rule of law. On the other hand, having not being created by a sovereign, international criminal law cannot be conceived as an instrument to build or consolidate consent around the sovereign. A double-sided dilemma therefore arises: traditional explanations are no longer apt to answer the question whether ICL is legitimate, while ICL itself can no longer be considered an instrument to build consent around the traditional power exercising it, namely the state. Although I consider both sides of the dilemma equally interesting and stimulating, I will focus here only on one side of the coin: the ability to build consent of the ICL institutions, and in particular the International Criminal Court (ICC). In other words, instead of asking whether the consent around the ICC is broad enough for the Court to be considered legitimate, I shall ask whether the ICC is able to build consent around the world order it embodies. (shrink)

This essay examines the cultural phenomena of noise in its perceived social constructions and demonstrates its emergence as a form of resistance against prevailing dominant hegemonic codes of culture. In particular, the paper explores the ability of noise to be enacted as a tool to escape the shackles of heteronormative constructions of sexuality and gender in the cultural landscape of the United States. Examined to support this argument are the contrasting works of two American artists: John Cage and Emilie Autumn. (...) Through Cage and his avant-garde articulations of sound, covert acts of resistance against the dominant heteronormative constructions of masculinity are explored, and through Autumn’s classical crossover work, a more overt and explicit form of resistance to subvert gender stereotypes and structures of normality and patriarchy are illuminated. Additionally, the paper explores possibilities for artists to engage with other movements, such as disability activism to create new possibilities for change. -/- . (shrink)

Religiosity is associated with better mental health outcomes including lower levels of anxiety and depression; a greater sense of emotional wellbeing; and personal fulfilment. However, whether religiosity has the same bearing on the mental health of lesbians, gay men, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT+) individuals has yet to be fully established. What is clear is the social environment in which it operates is one that routinely rejects and stigmatises non-heterosexual people. Set within a global context, religion has been acknowledged to be (...) a key agency hostile to the introduction of legislation protecting the civil rights of the LGBT+ populace. In this article, the interconnections between religious hegemony, LGBT+ Christians, and socio-political advances for the equal rights of gay people is explored through an assessment of the scholarly literature and research. This article seeks to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between traditional religion, secular society, and the mental wellbeing of LGBT+ citizens. (shrink)

This is an outline to my paper attempting to develop a full theory of hegemony. I deal with hegemony both at the micro and the macro in this paper. Highly influenced by Goffman, Gramsci and Wittgenstein. -/- This will be the first of many paper outlines over the coming months as I move closer towards publication.

The thinking of those with the power to formulate and implement public policy is now almost totally dominated by the so-called science of economics. While efforts have been made to supplement or modify economics to make it less brutal or less environmentally blind, here it is suggested that economics is so fundamentally flawed and that it so completely dominates the culture of late modern capitalism (or postmodernity) that a new master human science is required to displace it and provide an (...) alternative coordinating framework for research and for defining reality. This could then provide an alternative basis for formulating public policy. It is argued that if human ecology is to fill this role, it will must be developed on consistently anti-reductionist foundations, and that such a social science would totally reorient public policy from a domain for power elites to a domain for genuinely democratic societies to define and control their destinies. -/- . (shrink)

To understand fully the contemporary imposition of capitalist class power, we need to consider not only social relations and neoliberal economic doctrines, but also academic and vernacular cultural contexts, including social critique, within which neoliberalism has been ideologically tailored and practically applied. Among the vernacular cultural contexts, religion – related to deepest human identifications, feelings and ideas about the nature of reality – certainly represents such an unavoidable political resource, inseparable from secular ideologies of a given social world. Taking this (...) into account, we will try to show how neoliberalism was built in a specific context, developing governmental approaches relative to elements of progressive critique, and has eventually succeeded to legitimize new mechanisms of capitalist accumulation, linking them, among other things, to specific religious “externalities”. We will suggest that the satisfactory explanation of profound changes in the contemporary religious life, referred to as the emergence of “New Age spirituality”, is only possible if we understand them as an integral part of the processes of neoliberalization. This does not mean that we are trying to reduce a complex multitude of contemporary spiritual practices to a simple one-dimensional reflex of neoliberalization, but rather to suggest that only such an approach can complement the omissions and correct the misconceptions of various inquiries that analyze New Age spirituality using the frameworks of postmodern culture and/or consumer society. By doing this, we wil discuss not only countercultural spirituality, but also neoliberal social epistemology and different critical aproaches to understanding it. (shrink)

The vertiginous rise of right-wing populism, especially in its “nationalist, xenophobic and conservative form”, and some “racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and sexist” drifts associated with this phenomenon – whether real or perceived as such – make the mainstream media play a double role. On the one hand, the mainstream media reflect the struggle for political hegemony between different vested interests; on the other hand, they engage in the fight against right-wing populism blasting both right-wing populist candidates and their voters or (...) supporters. Many mainstream journalists ask citizens to realize a “sanitary cordon”, a “wall” or a “republican front” to block far-right populism and preserve liberal democracy. Moreover, they urge people to be wary of all attempts to “dediabolize” or “normalize” some tokens of right-wing populism. The main idea of this article is that right-wing populism is more harmless than is generally believed and, if excessive, negative media coverage doesn’t baffle but feed it. Populism is essentially a latent side effect of liberal democracy. Populism rises and becomes obtrusive only if a significant part of society perceives a regime of illiberal majoritarianism instead of one of liberal democracy. Right-wing populists are chiefly frustrated “ci-devants” who feel dispossessed of their past, identity, properties, qualities, privileges or titles. Inasmuch as the causes of collective frustration are many and varied (e.g. the real or just perceived corruption of the elites, the “system”, the deep state, the relocation of jobs, immigration, national sovereignty, national identity, communitarianism, radical Islamism, the status of some traditional institutions, some chapters of official history, etc.), there will always be right-wing populists, whether they are self-declared or covert. By adopting David G. Hackett’s thesis that the media are “agents of hegemony”, we applied the critical analysis of discourse to a set of 346 media articles in order to reveal the discursive sources of power, domination, inequality and partiality. The articles appeared in The New York Times and Le Monde during the period 2016-2017, at the time when the presidential elections took place in the United States and France. The articles were selected according to the occurrence of the keywords “Donald Trump” – “populism” and “Marine Le Pen” – “populisme” within the titles. The analysis of these articles reveals a divisive discursive structure that correspond to a real political cleavage in society. It is true that populism presents a “Manichean outlook”, in which there are only friends and foes” and no compromise is possible. It is also true that mainstream media reinforce this Manichean perspective on society and make populists feel marginalized and politically disempowered. The mainstream media may appease right-wing populism if they treat its followers as legitimate and equal political actors. For this, they have to give up the narrative structures that underscore insurmountable divergences and irreconcilable interests. In a liberal democracy, mass media should chiefly play the role of mediator. They may not aim to defeat or re-educate certain categories of citizens just because they advocate “wrong” political solutions. (shrink)

The present article analyzes the world order in the past, present and future as well as the main factors, foundations and ideas underlying the maintaining and change of the international and global order. The first two sections investigate the evolution of the world order starting from the ancient times up to the late twentieth century. The third section analyzes the origin and decline of the world order based on the American hegemony. The authors reveal the contradictions of the current (...) unipolar world and explain in what way globalization has become more profitable for the developing countries but not for the developed ones. The authors also explain the strengthening belief that the US leading status will inevitably weaken. In this connection we discuss the alternatives of the American strategy and the possibility of the renaissance of the American leadership. The last section presents a factor analysis which allows stating that the world is shifting toward a new balance of power and is likely to become the world without a leader. The new world order will consist of a number of large blocks, coalitions and countries acting within a framework of rules and mutual responsibility. However, the transition to a new world order will take certain time (about two decades). This period, which we denote as the epoch of new coalitions, will involve a reconfiguration of the World System and bring an increasing turbulence and conflict intensity. (shrink)

In this essay, I analyse Howard S. Becker's labelling theory, using Wittgenstein and Foucault to argue that it has significant explanatory power in describing what I term "the hegemonic power of the label". Much of this essay hints at my general thought with regards hegemony at the level of interaction and language. Final grade was first class honours, 2,000 word limit. -/- The ideas expressed herein have matured significantly since. I am working on a quantitative study with my University (...) to analyse the ability of Becker's labelling theory (plus some ideas of my own) to explain the exact process of the social construction of age. I am also working on a revision of the theory of hegemony, of which includes analysis of hegemony at an interactive/linguistic level, which is heavily influenced by Becker's and Wittgenstein's thought. (shrink)

This work, in English "Struggle for power, organic crisis and judicial independence", has its origin in research academics of the IAEN carried out to provide expert advise to the Inter American Court of Human Rights in the case Quintana and others (Supreme Court of Justice) vs the State of Ecuador. The research is about the nature of the evolution of the ecuadorian state, the dynamics of its institutions, its players, parties, laws, its factors of instability, the way rights have been (...) deployed since the return to democracy in 1979, those who have benefited from neoliberal democracy and those who have paid the costs, and where in all this was the Supreme Court of Justice. The Introduction takes a look at this origin of the work and its intellectual import, provides a brief characterization of the Inter American Sistem of Human Rights Protection, how the Quintana Case fits within it, and an overview of the chapters and their logic. The first chapter analyzes the institutional and sociological factors that have contributed to Ecuador's historically unstable state, based primarily in an antagonistic struggle for power between the Executive and Legislative branches. The second chapter analyzes the economic and political factors that provoked an organic crisis, or crisis of hegemony, between 1997 and 2007 in Ecuador. The third chapter analyzes the evolution of the way in which judges are selected in Europe, the outcomes they have generated, and how they compare with the ecuadorian systems of judge selection in terms of securing judicial independence. The fourth chapter develops a theory of judicial independence in democracy and analyzes how Ecuador measures up to that standard, from when it became a neoliberal minimal democracy in 1981, to when it became a neoliberal false democracy as a consequence of instalation of a system evidently lacking in the people's support under the guise of the 1998 Constitution and its system of judge selection, and the new democratic horizons set by the 2008 Constitution, and the judicial system that springs from it. (shrink)

Was hat der Staat mit sexueller Orientierung zu tun? Eine ganze Menge, meint Gundula Ludwig, denn durch staatliche Macht in Form von „heteronormativer Hegemonie“ würden wir zu Subjekten gemacht – und zwar ‚normalerweise‘ zu männlichen bzw. weiblichen und heterosexuellen. Dabei betont Ludwig die Gegenseitigkeit des Verhältnisses von Staat und Geschlecht: Nicht nur wirke staatliche Macht konstitutiv und vergeschlechtlichend auf Subjekte, sondern der Staat selbst werde im „Prozess der vergeschlechtlichen Subjektkonstitution erst hervorgebracht“. Deshalb seien weder der Staat noch Heterosexualität natürlich gegeben, (...) sondern ihre Konstruktion sei eine Regierungstechnologie, und nicht zu trennen vom ökonomischen (Neo-)Liberalismus. Mit ihrem Buch möchte die Autorin eine Leerstelle in der Forschung füllen: Einerseits sei die Staatstheorie geschlechtsblind, andererseits ließen queer-feministische Arbeiten zur Konstruktion von Geschlecht den Staat aus. Ludwig verspricht eine poststrukturalistisch antiessentialistische Theorie, die beides beobachten kann und so den Zusammenhang von Staat und Geschlecht erklärt. (shrink)

Adoptando una revitalización de la tradición marxista en los Estudios Sociales de Ciencia y Tecnología (STS) y en la filosofía contemporánea, mi trabajo se ocupa de la emergencia de la colapsología en Francia y Bélgica, Europa y el mundo, sus tensiones constituyentes con el campo hegemónico de los societal collapse studies. La tesis realiza un seguimiento minucioso de la colapsología y sus profetas fundacionales, el ingeniero agrónomo y Doctor en Biología, Pablo Servigne, y el administrador ambiental de empresas y Máster (...) en Ciencias Holísticas, Raphaël Stevens, en su intento retórico de constituir un nuevo campo. En el primer capítulo, realizo un diálogo crítico y ensamble de dinámicas y funcionamientos de los campos, estudios de retóricas e ideologías de las ciencias, literaturas especializadas sobre hegemonías de riesgos y catástrofes, reconsiderando los catastrofismos y las finitudes del capitalismo. En el segundo capítulo, en un rango temporal de 2015-2024, en siete momentos analizo los mecanismos de emergencia y reconocimiento, hegemonía y contrahegemonía de los actores colapsólogos, sus repertorios discursivos de catástrofes y disciplinas, con el desglose de su hipótesis fuerte del colapso civilizatorio de la modernidad termo industrial. En las conclusiones, realzo el interés reflexivo del campo mundial STS y la filosofía hacia los campos de estudios catastrofistas. Valiéndome del caso emergente de la colapsología, evidencio los resultados centrales conseguidos y las conexiones con diagnósticos de estados de riesgo y estados de ánimo cultural, tanto de las tecnociencias actuales y sus expertos, como de los públicos, las clases sociales y las sociedades, respecto a la crisis epocal de la civilización capitalista contemporánea. -/- Adopting a revitalization of the Marxist tradition in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and contemporary philosophy, my work addresses the emergence of collapsology in France and Belgium, France and the world, its constituent tensions with the hegemonic field of societal collapse studies. The thesis carefully monitors collapsology and its founding prophets, the agronomer engineer and Doctor in Biology, Pablo Servigne, and the environmental business administrator and Master in Holistic Sciences, Raphaël Stevens, in their rhetorical attempt to constitute a new field. In the first chapter, I carry out a critical dialogue and assembly of dynamics and functioning of the fields, studies of rhetoric and ideologies of sciences, specialized literature on hegemonies of risks and catastrophes, reconsidering catastrophisms and the finiteness of capitalism. In the second chapter, in a time range of 2015-2024, in seven moments I analyze the mechanisms of emergence, recognition, hegemony and counter hegemony of the collapsological actors, their discursive repertoires of catastrophes and disciplines, with the breakdown of their strong hypothesis of the civilizational collapse of thermo-industrial modernity. In the conclusions, I highlight the reflexive interest of the world STS field and philosophy towards the fields of catastrophist studies. Using the emerging case of collapsology, I demonstrate the central results achieved and the connections with diagnoses of risk states and cultural moods, both of current technosciences and their experts, as well as of the public, social classes and societies, regarding the epochal crisis of contemporary capitalist civilization. (shrink)

This essay develops an argumentative position which implies that historically Caribbean political philosophers have engaged in establishing a theoretical position that is trapped, and entrenched, within European hegemony. The essay traverse the works of some noted Caribbean thinkers and highlight limitations in logic, and or tactical approach, to the question of Caribbean decolonisation, and establishes the essay’s principal hypothesis. The article revealed three (3) Philosophers; namely C.L.R. James, Franz Fanon, and Walter Rodney as the principal thinkers whose philosophical approaches (...) gave intellectual keys that were adjacent to unlocking European dominance. The paper then suggest that the method in breaking the false decolonisation notion rest in making a cultural link with ancient cosmology of Kemet and dialectics of Pharaonic Egypt. A task all philosopher thought-out Caribbean history failed to established as a matter of principle. (shrink)

The revival of republicanism was meant to challenge the hegemony of liberalism in contemporary political theory on the grounds that liberals show insufficient concern with institutional protection against political misrule. This article challenges this view by showing how neorepublicanism, particularly on Philip Pettit’s formulation, demands no greater institutional protection than does political liberalism. By identifying neutrality between conceptions of the good as the constraint on institutional requirements that forces neorepublicanism into the liberal framework, the article shows that neutrality is (...) what neorepublicans must jettison to offer a tenable critique of liberalism. Only then can neorepublicans ensure greater protection against misrule by demanding that citizens participate more actively in politics. They can then also criticize liberalism for failing to appreciate the importance of such protection. (shrink)

Twenty first century is posing unprecedented challenges for the human existence and development. This era has witnessed awesome economic & technological growth, increased connectedness but great poverty, malnutrition, anxiety, mental stress and environmental degradation. Thus, this time depicts great contradiction, uncertainty, and risk. Accordingly, in this era a holistic education system has to deal with the challenges such as population growth, terrorism, environmental degradation, hegemony of machines, mental stress, cultivating creativity, bridging the skill and wisdom gap, and expanding human (...) potential etc. To find a sustainable solution to such challenges, we need to develop a holistic education system which acknowledges various dimension of human being. For this task, this paper will try to highlight some philosophical themes which are commonly suggested by various prominent thinkers such as M.K. Gandhi, R.N. Tagore, J. Krishnamurti, S. Radhakrishnan etc. in India, and J. Dewey, I. Illich, and B. Russell etc. in the west. They have put forward their philosophy to discuss the aims of education which are relevant to this century. In this paper, we will analyze their views from the perspective of the challenges that the twenty-first century world is going to face. Our investigation will analyze agreements and disagreements among the approaches taken by these educators. However, the focus will be on the commonalities, so that we can identify some philosophical themes which can work as the solid foundation for holistic model of education. (shrink)

This paper argues that the current scholarship of radical politics primarily bannered by Christopher Ryan Maboloc is a misappropriation of the postMarxist political project of Mouffe and Laclau. Drawing primarily both on Mouffe’s and Laclau’s work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics and an interview with Chantal Mouffe herself, the paper argues how the post-Marxist radical political project of Mouffe and Laclau fails to theoretically fit to the style of governance and regime of Duterte. Fundamental to (...) the idea of radical democratic politics is the task of radicalizing liberal democracy. However, as discussed in the paper, liberal democracy is a project whose very institutions and processes Duterte and his regime have undermined and attacked. Under Duterte’s regime, radical democracy lost the conditions for its flourishing, rendering its own impossibility. (shrink)

This chapter interrogates the role that liberalism plays in Immanuel Wallerstein’s grand and sweeping narrative of modern history. From liberalism’s beginnings as an ideological response to the French Revolution in 1789, to its apotheosis in the global hegemony of the USA after the Second World War, to its final dissolution in the collapse of Soviet communism, liberalism is the analytical thread that animates Wallerstein’s World-Systems Analysis of the modern period. The chapter examines the idea of liberalism as ideology and (...) sets out Wallerstein’s thoughts on what lies beyond liberalism. It ends with a few critical comments and reflections. (shrink)

What are we to make of the fact that world leaders, such as Canada’s Justin Trudeau, have, within the last few decades, offered official apologies for a whole host of past injustices? Scholars have largely dealt with this phenomenon as a moral question, seeing in these expressions of contrition a radical disruption of contemporary neoliberal individualism, a promise of a more humane world. Focusing on Canadian apology politics, this essay instead proposes a nonideal approach to state apologies, sidestepping questions of (...) what they ought to do and focusing instead on their actual functioning as political acts. Through a sociologically informed speech act theory and Foucault’s work on power, apology is conceptualized as a speech act with an essentially relational nature. The state, through apologizing, reaffirms the norms governing its relationship to its subjects at a moment when a past transgression threatens to destabilize this relation. From a Foucauldian point of view, the state’s power inheres in the very stability of the state–citizen relation, and we should therefore see apologies as defensive moves to protect state hegemony. In the context of Western liberal democracies, such as Canada, apologies embody, rather than challenge, the logic of neoliberal governmentality by suggesting that everything, including resentment against the state, can be managed within the current status quo. Nevertheless, total cynicism about apology politics is not warranted. In many indigenous apology campaigners’ demands for contrition we see another side of apologies: their potential to bring about change by enacting counterhegemonic relations to the state. (shrink)

This paper outlines a theory of radical democratic education by addressing a key concept in Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: articulation. Through their concept of articulation, Laclau and Mouffe attempt to liberate Gramsci’s theory of hegemony from Marxist economism, and adapt it to a political sphere inhabited by a plurality of struggles and agents none of which is predominant. However, while for Gramsci the political process of hegemony formation has an explicit educational dimension, Laclau and (...) Mouffe ignore this dimension altogether. My discussion starts with elaborating the concept of articulation and analysing it in terms of three dimensions: performance, connection and transformation. I then address the role of education in Gramsci’s politics, in which the figure of the intellectual is central, and argue that radical democratic education requires renouncing that figure. In the final section, I offer a theory of such education, in which both teacher and students articulate their political differences and identities. (shrink)

In this autoethnographic study, I recount my lived experiences as a queer boy raised in a heteronormative family in Vietnam, where social life and culture, families, and institutions are infused with binaried gendered roles and hierarchies, alongside conservative Confucianism and Buddhism. Following queer theory, encompassing conceptions of queerness, queer sense, and queer identities, I examine, through the praxis of my lived experiences, notions of masculinity and interlocking conceptions of hegemonic masculinity and hegemonic femininity, analyzing theories of gendered hegemonies, particularly gender (...) stereotypes, offering perspectives on gender fluidity, queer performances, and hegemonic queerness, framed by my experiences as a queer boy and youth in Vietnam. (shrink)

Many countries throughout the globe function in a system that allows the usage of more than one language. Such a multilingual social reality’s construction, especially in societies like the one in which I am living, is perceived in many different ways: attempting thus to provide for the process of differentiating identity’s oneness and sameness into various cultural subcategories, which already represent new realities. Due to newly created social realities, semiotics naturally discusses the differences and/or oppositions that can contribute to various (...) cultures’ mutual exclusivity or inclusivity, in terms of various heterogeneous “transformations,” which would thus overcome dualities, and be viewed as single acts of signs, or as a result of a process of singularization of their constituent components. I shall also attempt using a semiotic style that may enact a semiotics of action, grounded on the semiotics of passions, through a way of producing semantic taxonomies as pride versus humiliation, hegemony versus subordination, etc., obtainable due to disjunctive and/or conjunctive semiotic relations such as contextualization versus de-contextualization. (shrink)

Classical Sparta is an enigma in many ways, but for ancient and contemporary political theorists it is especially intriguing insofar as its politeia (or its educational/political/social system or “constitution”) produced a city-state that was both the hegemon of all other Greek city-states, for instance during the 5th century Persians wars, but was also ignobly defeated by Thebes at the battle of Leuctra in 371, slightly more than a century later, after which its hegemony collapsed and its subject population of (...) helots won a war of emancipation. How did Sparta field citizen-soldiers in the 5th century who were without parallel in their bravery and military prowess? And why did Sparta, perhaps under the same politeia, collapse just over a century later? Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch searched for answers to such questions in the Spartan public educational program, its mixed constitutions, and its apparently militaristic goal and orientation. Such 4th century intellectuals (and Plutarch, writing in the 1st century CE) debated whether Sparta’s collapse was the result of deep-rooted problems within its Lycurgan constitution or in Sparta’s subsequent departure from that constitution; there also is significant debate concerning the education and roles of women within Spartan society. (shrink)

Feminists of a philosophical sort, lovers of women and wisdom, political critics and witnesses! What unusual and important opportunities we face as we bring the lessons of the last few years to bear on complex theorizing, multi-issue praxis, and the work of twenty-first century democracy. We've been on the streets, in th classroom, and on the Internet, opposing war and occupation, protesting police brutality, demanding global peace and justice. We've helped organize teach-ins and lectures, meetings and potlucks, concerts and art (...) exhibitions. From the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan to New Yorkers Say No to War, from Women in Black to Code Pink, feminists were some of the first vocal opponents of the Bush rush to war. In February 2003 we helped create the greatest global protest for peace in human history, proclaiming "The World Says No to War" under banners of the swirling blue earth, cracking open the hegemony of you're-either-with-us-or-you're-with-the-terrorists, and activating a phenomenal range of new coalitions. (shrink)

The critique of philosophical foundations of neoclassical economics is significant, because of its hegemony on economic education and research programs in Iran and worldwide academies. Due to an epistemological fallacy, methodological individualism plays a prominent role in the philosophy of economic; since the ontological aspects of economy are reduced to methodological considerations. Accordingly, critique of methodological individualism is regarded as the main entry for philosophical analysis of neoclassical economics. This article aims to analyze and appraise the methodological individualism from (...) critical realism’s point of view. Critical realism is taken as a stand for criticizing methodological individualism, because critical realism and neoclassical economics as a positive approach to economics, both share a realistic worldview. The critical realism’ critique of methodological individualism is bases on analyzing the concepts of formalism, syllogism, social atomism, isolation and reduction. From critical realism’ point of view because of unrealistic postulations of methodological individualism, neoclassical economics is turned to an abstract and deductive science such as mathematics with a low potentiality of explanation. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the historiographical fate of Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) and Pedro da Fonseca (1528–1599) in two Iberian journals ran by Jesuits and founded in 1945: the Spanish Pensamiento, and the Portuguese Revista portuguesa de filosofia. I endeavor to show that the discussions of Suárez’s and Fonseca’s ideas on these journal is a two-sided case of constructing the legacies of major figures in late scholasticism, and I emphasize how the demand to identify cultural national heroes intertwines with (...) theoretical and ideological elements, especially the peculiar history of the Iberian Peninsula, and to the historical relationships between Spain and Portugal. With regard to Suárez, the Pensamiento group strives to carve out a specific place for Neo-Suarezianism within Neo-Thomism, also via a substantive reassessment of Suárez’s importance in the history of scholasticism and of philosophy in general. Hence, Suárez’s thought undergoes triumphant reevaluation, which even aims at ousting Aquinas as the ultimate reference of scholasticism, to make Suárez’s Thomism the principal authority of contemporary schools. By contrast, Fonseca remains a rather obscure and neglected figure, dug up by his fellow compatriots on the Revista portuguesa de filosofia, also against this attempt at establishing a Suarezian, Spanish hegemony. (shrink)

The present article analyzes the world order in the past, present and future as well as the main factors, foundations and ideas underlying the maintaining and change of the international and global order. The first two sections investigate the evolution of the world order starting from the ancient times up to the late twentieth century. The third section analyzes the origin and decline of the world order based on the American hegemony. The authors reveal the contradictions of the current (...) unipolar world and explain in what way globalization has become more profitable for the developing countries but not for the developed ones. In the paper also explains the strengthening belief that the US leading status will inevitably weaken. In this connection we discuss the alternatives of the American strategy and the possibility of the renaissance of the American leadership. The last section presents a factor analysis which allows stating that the world is shifting toward a new balance of power and is likely to become the world without a leader. The new world order will consist of a number of large blocks, coalitions and countries acting within a framework of rules and mutual responsibility. However, the transition to a new world order will take certain time (about two decades). This period, which we denote as the epoch of new coalitions, will involve a reconfiguration of the World System and bring an increasing turbulence and conflict intensity. (shrink)

In this essay, Giovanbattista Tusa suggests that we are currently witnessing a mutation, which disrupts the mythical imaginary that had confined viruses, climate change, and atmospheric turbulences to an immutable background in the all-too-human narrative of the struggle against nature. I argue that the incapacity of translating this mutation in cultural and social terms, and the repression of this traumatic experience, are the cause of the perturbation that haunts our time. Disorientation pervades philosophy when the entire imaginary to which it (...) had anchored its power to change the world seems to dissolve in the air, when what was silent and distant turns out to be vibrant, more familiar to us than any known proximity. Precisely for this reason, philosophy must rediscover its ability to inhabit times and spaces different from those oriented by the hegemony of capitalist progress, with its correlate of regular catastrophic emergencies and calculated risk. In this essay, Giovanbattista Tusa aims to present a perspective in which, instead of coming back straightforwardly ‘down to earth’, philosophy accepts inhabiting the fluctuating disorientation of its own time, itself populated by intermittent and uncertain opportunities of experiencing differently the past and the future—to encounter different relationships with the times that change. (shrink)

The main thesis of this article is that Western societies risk becoming Balkanized if they confront the superdiversity issue without sound management of intolerance. The Balkanization process has some essential features that allow the use of this term outside the area of origin (namely the Balkan Peninsula). Thus: It always affects a diverse political unit that comprises an inextricable medley of racial, ethnocultural, religious, ideological, or gender identities. It emerges only where neither the hegemony principle nor the confederacy principle (...) can sustain a divided population’s peaceful coexistence. It entails “antagonistic and conflict-oriented relationships resistant to resolution” between the groups or classes dissociated from a diverse political unit. It increases the density of physical and psychological boundaries between the formerly associated parts. It is perpetuated by the great sponsors of the dissociated parts. Any diverse political unit can enter a process of Balkanization, regardless of its degree of culture and civilization. Balkanization does not have a fatal course. Just as there is no society immune to Balkanization, there is no diverse society doomed to Balkanization. Balkanization can be prevented, checked, stopped, or reversed, depending on society members’ individual and collective actions. To survive, the superdiverse liberal democracies from the Euro-Atlantic area need an agonistic public sphere, where actionable truths emerge from a genuine clash of educated opinions. If intolerance management is the first step in preventing the Balkanization of a superdiverse political unit, promoting social and political tolerance towards all people who express educated opinions is the best starting point to genuine tolerance. The return to Enlightenment rationalism values that underpinned our freedom of thought and expression will help us meet the challenges inherent in current and future superdiversity. By feeding enlightened conversations and debates with genuine, educated opinions, people learn to have tolerance for “unpleasant” pieces of knowledge. Then, they spread general tolerance – as a by-product – across the entire society. (shrink)

The term ‘reflexivity’ continues to maintain an interpretive hegemony in discussions on modernity and the Self. As a form of praxis, applications of reflexivity frequently rely upon an acknowledged awareness of one’s self-conscious attitudes, dispositions, behaviors and motives. This paper will take aim at such contentions, exploring the extent to which examples of racism rely upon a level of reflexivity, best encapsulated in Žižek’s ‘reflexive racism’. Specifically, it is highlighted how examples of non- racism/anti-racism assert the formal promotion of (...) a monadic subject, solely adept at ‘uncovering’ and ‘relinquishing’ their racism (disavowal); and, an equally unhelpful social constructionism, which depoliticizes racism by relocating and relativizing it to a particular socio-historical context (deferment). In outlining this response, specific attention is given to Lacan’s subject of enunciation and subject of the enunciated, from which it is concluded that it is in the obfuscation of one’s ‘position of enunciation’ that examples of reflexive racism reside. (shrink)

As a representative of the papacy Bellarmine was an extremely moderate one. In fact Sixtus V in 1590 had the first volume of his Disputations placed on the Index because it contained so cautious a theory of papal power, denying the Pope temporal hegemony. Bellarmine did not represent all that Hobbes required of him either. On the contrary, he proved the argument of those who championed the temporal powers of the Pope faulty. As a Jesuit he tended to maintain (...) the relative autonomy of the state, denying the temporal powers ascribed by radical papalists and Augustinians. Their argument was generally framed as a syllogism: Christ, who possessed direct temporal power as both God and man, exercised it on earth; the Pope is the vicar of Christ; therefore the Pope possesses and may exercise direct temporal jurisdiction. Bellarmine simply denied that Christ had exercised the temporal power, which as God, it is true, he possessed. Moreover, he drew up and circulated a list of patristic passages collected under the title De Regno Christi quale sit, to prove to the Pope the orthodoxy of his position. (shrink)

The main thesis of this paper is that justice is not a natural law that (re)establishes equilibrium and order in the universe, but a disposition enforced by a fighting will to render to every man his due in line with a regime of rights, powers, or immunities to use, enjoy and control some external goods. Inasmuch as there is no sense, feeling or instinct of justice, it is reasonable to assert that people regulate their conduct under the authority of a (...) legislative authority according to certain ideas of justice, which they adopt and promote through a steady effort of knowledge and will. Critical analysis of the main types of justice − associative justice, punitive justice, corrective justice, restorative justice, functional justice, normative justice, commutative justice and distributive justice − from a liberal democratic perspective highlights the formal requirements of justice in different social arrangements and in relation to various aspects of personal and social life. Because it lacks a natural foundation of justice and people have strong interests in enforcing a certain idea of justice, public debates about justice entail a clash of militant wills. Debaters engage in a struggle for political hegemony trying to exclude from the public sphere the rival ideas about justice. In other words, all substantive debates about justice are carried out in an agonistic public sphere. The more civilized and reasonable the agonistic debates about justice are, the more likely the idea of justice is to fit the vital interests of individuals and society. (shrink)

The role of China in the world economy is constantly growing. In particular we observe that it plays more and more important role in the support of theworld economic growth (as well as high prices of certain very important commodities). In the meantime the perspectives of the Chinese economy (as well as possible fates of the Chinese society) remain unclear, whereas respective forecasts look rather contradictory. That is why the search for new aspects and modes of analysis of possible development (...) of China turns out to be rather important for the forecasting of global futures. This article employs a combination of scientific methods that imply (a) the analysis at the level of Chinese economic model; (b) the analysis at regional level (at this level the Chinese economic model is compared with the regional East Asian model); (c) the analysis at the global level that relies on the modified world-system approach that allows to answer the question whether China will replace the USA as the global leader. It is important that the analysis is conducted simultaneously in economic, social, demographic, and political dimensions. As regards the analysis of specific features of the Chinese model as an especial type of the East Asian model (that is based on the export orientation, capital & technology importation, as well as cheap labor force), we note as organic features of the Chinese model the totalitarian power of the Communist Party and the immenseness of resources. As regards special features of the Chinese model, we note (in addition to “cheap ecology” and cheap labor force) and emphasize that China has a multilevel (in a way unique) system of growth driving forces, where, as opposed to developed states, the dominant role belongs not to native private capital, but to state corporations, local authorities and foreign business. This explains the peculiarities of the Chinese investment (or rather overinvestment), which determines high growth rate up to a very significant degree. A unique feature of the Chinese model is the competition of provinces and territories for investments and high growth indicators. As regards perspectives of the global hegemony of China, we intend to demonstrate that, on the one hand, economic and political positions of China will strengthen in the forthcoming decades, but, on the other hand, China, assuming all possible future success, will be unable to take the USA position in the World System. We believe that in a direct connection with the development of globalization processes the hegemony cycle pattern is likely to come to its end, which will lead to the World System reconfiguration and the emergence of its new structure that will allow the World System to continue its further development without a hegemon. Finally, the article describes some possible scenarios of the development of China. We demonstrate that China could hardly avoid serious difficulties and critical situations (including those connected with demographic problems); however, there could be different scenarios of how China will deal with the forthcoming crisis. We also come to the conclusion that it would be better for China to achieve a slowdown to moderate growth rates (that would allow China to go through the forthcoming complex transition period with less losses) than to try to return at any cost to explosive growth rates attested in the 2000s. (shrink)

Plotinus’ famous treatise against the Gnostics (33), together with contemporary and thematically related treatises on Intelligible Beauty (31), on Number (34), and on Free Will and the Will of the One (39), can be seen as providing the essential components of a Plotinian defense of polytheism against conceptual moves that, while associated for him primarily with Gnostic sectarians overlapping with Platonic philosophical circles, will become typical of monotheism in its era of hegemony. When Plotinus’ Gnostics ‘contract’ divinity into a (...) single God, they not only devalue the cosmos for its multiplicity and diversity, but also multiply intelligible principles unreasonably. This is because they have foreclosed the distinction, which is to become increasingly explicit in the later antique Platonists, between the intelligible and that which is given existentially, the domain belonging to Plotinus’ indeterminate multiplicity of ‘intelligible Gods’, as opposed to the dialectically determinate number of intelligible principles. Plotinus is prescient in recognizing that incipient monotheism threatens to erase the distinction between philosophy and theology, and between both of these and psychology, the final outcome of which can only be solipsism or nihilism. The defense of polytheism is seen in this fashion to be essential to the preservation of the space for philosophical discourse. (shrink)

Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980) may have featured both animated corpses and hardcore sex scenes, but only recently have Re-Penetrator (2004) and Porn of the Dead (2006) managed to fully eroticise the living dead, allowing these creatures to engage in intercourse. In doing so, the usually a-subjective zombie is allotted a key facet of identity - sexuality. This development within the sub-genre needs accounting for outside of the contexts of porn studies, where it has only been briefly touched (...) upon in relation to its "extremity". -/- Moreover, the gendering of the undead opens a discussion which expand the horizons of zombie studies away from the overt critiques of capitalism, race and psychoanalysis that have pervaded analyses of these narratives. The dichotomy of binary oppositions so often associated with psychoanalytic approaches dictates that "passive (non-phallic) = female", and "active (phallic) = male". In these terms, the zombies are feminine - soft-bodied and passive, despite their murderous intent (which has been accounted for, by Barabara Creed (1993) amongst others, by invoking the vagina-dentata motif). Humans (active) are deemed masculine, not least since they tend to dispatch zombies with "phallic guns". Taking this logic to an extreme, the zombie may be read as allegorising feminism: the "feminised" figures (zombies) become fearsome in their will to exert themselves despite their seeming disempowerment in the face of "masculine" hegemony. Ultimately, by grouping together as a force, they overthrow or at least significantly damage that "normality" (an ideological paradigm usually read in terms of race, class and economics). (shrink)

Within the last decade, epistemic injustice has been a valuable framework for those working on exposing oppressive practices within the healthcare system. As this work has evolved, new terminology has been added to the epistemic injustice literature to bring to light previously obscured epistemic harms in healthcare practices. This paper aims to explore an important concept that has not received the attention it deserves: epistemic isolation. By developing Ian Kidd and Havi Carel’s concept of epistemic isolation, a new range of (...) epistemic harms are brought to the fore, as some of the most marginalised in our society are forced to operate from positions of ignorance. In the words of Kidd and Carel, epistemic isolation occurs in ‘situations where a person or group lacks the knowledge of, or means of access to, particular information; for instance, if they live within a politically repressive society which forbids access to the necessary sources of information in order to protect the government’s hegemony’ (183–184). This paper will demonstrate that such epistemic isolation is uniquely devastating for those with psychiatric illness, exacerbating their already challenging circumstances. (shrink)

Using Australia to illustrate the case, in this paper it is argued that the transformation of universities into businesses and the undermining of the liberal arts is motivated by either contempt for or outright hostility to democracy. This is associated with a global managerial revolution that is enslaving nations and people to the global market and the corporations that dominate it. The struggle within universities is the site of a struggle to reverse the gains of the Radical Enlightenment, the tradition (...) of Enlightenment that, committed to upholding and developing the civic humanism of the Renaissance, strove for liberty, understood as democratic self-governance. The central place the liberal arts had in upholding this liberty is shown. Inspired by the Ancient Greek notion of paideia, the liberal arts, which originated in republican Rome, was the form of education required designed for free people, in opposition to the specialist education appropriate for slaves, to inspire them to maintain their liberty and enable them to govern themselves. While not always upholding this ideal, it is argued in this paper that the liberal arts always kept alive this quest for liberty, bequeathing this quest to the Renaissance philosophers and to the proponents of the Radical Enlightenment. With managerialism and the undermining of democracy, such education and the questioning, creative people it produced, are now seen as a threat to the new global corporatocracy who, to achieve cultural hegemony, have coöpted university managers and academics to impose their agenda to cripple the liberal arts. Their goal, never fully articulated as such but successfully prosecuted, is a dumbed-down population. (shrink)

Peter D. Thomas’s book The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism draws us to reflect on a point that Gramsci’s interpreters have often neglected: the particular structure of the Prison Notebooks, i.e., the ways in which the text was constituted and, dependent on that, the fundamental methodological criteria for its interpretation. Thomas’s book is a consummate synthesis between the deep and detailed study of the Notebooks text and the need to reconstruct some order within; between close historicalphilosophical assessment and (...) theoretical proposal within contemporary Marxist (and para-Marxist) debate. Consequently, this book confronts us – as Gramsci’s present-day readers – with a task that no-one can face alone, but that is nonetheless extraordinarily urgent: the task of intervening in the debate within the post-modern and post-Marxist Left so that the link between Marxism and philosophy is resumed, starting out from Gramsci himself. In short: a revival of Marx through Gramsci, through – in turn – a return of the philosophy of praxis as Marxism for our own day. (shrink)

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed (...) by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a point) so that they can manipulate it for profit. Their survival in the marketplace often depends on their competitive success in doing so. The fact that their interventions into nature, driven by class interest, often succeed, is evidence of the reliability and truth of their natural scientific theories. -/- With social science, capitalists have a partial interest in understanding the world, so that they may maintain their class power, ideological hegemony, and a reasonably stable and self-reproducing economy. Some bourgeois social science, Marx thinks, is therefore vindicated the same way that natural science is, because of, not despite, its success in promoting the class interests that cause it. But the capitalist class, Marx thinks, also has an interest in obfuscating the truth about the social world. It would undermine the stability of capitalism, for example, for the bourgeoisie to adopt what Marx thinks to be the correct social theory, Marxism, and proclaim to the world that capitalism is exploitative and unstable. Capitalism creates a a need for ideological social theories that, driven by class interest, represent capitalism as just, natural, inevitable, and unalterable. If Marxism is correct, while these theories may further capitalist interests, they will not withstand the test of time as capitalist exploitation and instability engenders countersystemic political action. -/- How, then can we know, according to Marx, that Marxism is correct, as applied to itself? In part it is whether it succeeds in further the class interests that cause it. If workers adopt bourgeois theories and Marxism is right, they will find themselves frustrated in pursuit of goals that they have, such as improving their well-being, and if Marxism is wrong, then those theories will help them further their own goals. Similarly with Marxism: if it is right, then workers who adopt it should in the long run have more success in furthering their own goals, and if not, then not. But it is question begging to say that our confidence in the reliability of Marxism is enhanced by its successful promotion of goals that capitalists do not have but (according to Marxism) workers do. To avoid this problem it is necessary to compare the relative success of each sort of theory in promoting the interests and needs that the respective classes have independently of the theory, as well as by the usual criteria of scientific theory choice. -/- Thus the Soviet variant of Marxism was fairly decisively refuted by its failure to generate the support of its own designated constituency necessary to grow and survive. Whether the same is true of other varieties of Marxism or of capitalist social theory, it is, as Zhou En Lai said when asked whether the French Revolution had succeeded, too soon to tell, at least in any definitive way. However, and this is the point of the paper, an objective test of Marxism is possible even though Marxism says that all theory is informed by class interest. The question is whether the interests are in discovering or obfuscating the truth. The point is not limited to Marx, but applies to any self-referential social scientific theory that includes itself in its scope. -/- Keywords: ideology, self-referential theory, self-reference, reliabilism, objectivity, Marx, Marxism, sociology of science, class interest, classes, capitalism, bourgeoisie, workers, working class, social theory of knowledge, confirmation of scientific theory. (shrink)

The chapter examines Russian political theorist Aleksandr Dugin’s (b. 1962) challenge to the Western liberal order. Even though Dugin’s project is in many ways a theoretical epitome of Russia’s contemporary attempt to profile itself as a regional great power with a political and cultural identity distinct from the liberal West, Dugin can also be read in a wider context as one of the currently most prominent representatives of the culturally and intellectually oriented international New Right. The chapter introduces Dugin’s role (...) on the Russian right-wing political scene and his international networks, Russian neo-Eurasianism as his ideological footing, and his more recent “fourth political theory” as an attempt to formulate a new ideological alternative to liberalism as well as the two other main twentieth-century ideologies, communism and fascism. Dugin’s fourth ideology, essentially meant as an alternative to a unipolar post–Cold War global hegemony of victorious liberalism, draws inspiration from the German conservative revolutionary movement of the Weimar era. In particular, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of history, with its thesis of the end of modernity and another beginning of Western thought, and Carl Schmitt’s pluralistic model of geopolitics are highlighted as key elements of Dugin’s eclectic political thought, which is most appropriately characterized as a form of radical conservatism. (shrink)

The paper will explicate the Sache or matter of the dialectic of the founder of Kyoto School philosophy, Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945), from the standpoint of his mature thought, especially from the 1930s and 40s. Rather than providing a simple exposition of his thought I will engage in a creative reading of his concept of basho (place) in terms of chiasma and chōra, or a chiasmatic chōra. I argue that Nishida’s appropriation of nineteenth century German, especially Hegelian, terminology was inadequate in (...) expressing what he strove to say—for his concept of basho confounds traditional metaphysical discourse. Because of its chiasmatic and chōratic nature, the Sache he strove to capture and express through the language of dialectical philosophy, perpetually slips away from any systemic bounds. His “dialectic” (benshōhō) implies a chiasma or a criss-crossing of multiple factors on multi-dimensional levels that exceed in complexity simplistic binomial oppositions or the triadic formula of traditional dialectics. The complexity is one of over-determination that threatens to undermine the very language of such a dialectic. As the deep complexity of over-inter-determinations would deconstruct any notion of a substance, what Nishida offers—as opposed to an ousiology (or logic of substance)—is a chiasmology. I thus argue that his so-called dialectic is really an unfolding of that chiasma. And if chiasma expresses the over-determinate aspect of Nishida’s matter of thinking, chōra would express its under-determinate aspect. Nishida himself based his concept of basho or “place” on Plato’s notion of the chōra from the Timaeus. I take Nishida’s basho in its chōratic nature as what simultaneously unfolds and enfolds the chiasma. But in the case of the chōra it is its under-determinate nature that refuses reduction to any of the terms of opposition. In its self-withdrawal, it provides a clearing, a space, for the chiasmatic unraveling of the many. Like the chiasma it undermines any claim to a first substance or the hegemony of a universal First. For in its indeterminateness, it is “nothing” (mu). The unfolding it enfolds is, as Nishida states, “a determination without determiner.” In concrete terms, however, we might develop Nishida’s concept further by returning to the original pre-Platonic Greek meaning of chōra in the sense of “region” or “country,” to understand chōra or basho here as the very space of co-existence provided by this very earth. As a chiasmatic chōra irreducible, in its over- and under-determinations, to being or non-being, Nishida’s basho qua mu proves to be the an-ontological origin of both on and meon (being and non-being). Rejecting the culture-nature dichotomy this notion of our place of being as chiasma and chōra underscores our holistic symbiosis with the earth as the anontological (un)ground and clearing for our co-existence in a concrete milieau with one another and with nature. It is this earth as our ultimate contextual wherein that provides a clearing for co-dwelling and mutual encounter with one’s other, that we must acknowledge today if we are to co-exist authentically and freely vis-à-vis our global neighbors and vis-à-vis the surrounding nature. (shrink)

The present working paper analyzes the world order in the past, present and future as well as the main factors, foundations and ideas underlying the maintaining and change of the international and global order. The first two sections investigate the evolution of the world order starting from the ancient times up to the late twentieth century. The third section analyzes the origin and decline of the world order based on the American hegemony. The authors reveal contradictions of the current (...) unipolar world and explain in what way globalization has become more profitable for the developing countries but not for the developed ones. The paper also explains the strengthening belief that the US leading status will inevitably weaken. In this connection we discuss the alternatives of the American strategy and the possibility of the renaissance of the American leadership. The last section presents a factor analysis which allows stating that the world is shifting toward a new balance of power and is likely to become the world without a leader. The new world order will consist of a number of large blocks, coalitions and countries acting within a framework of rules and mutual responsibility. However, the transition to a new world order will take certain time (about two decades). This period, which we denote as the epoch of new coalitions, will involve a reconfiguration of the World-System and bring an increasing turbulence and conflict intensity. There are grounds to conclude that in 2011–2012 the World-System experienced to some extent a phase transition to a qualitatively new state of global protest activity. This phase transition is shown to bear some resemblance to the one which the World-System experienced in the early 1960s. The first (after 1919) phase transition of this sort occurred in the early 1960s and was related to the growth of global informational connectivity after the World War II, as well as the improvement of the means of protest self-organization due to the spread of television, portable radio receivers, portable electric loud-speakers and other technologies of the Fourth Kondratieff Cycle. The phase transition of the early 2010s was prepared by a new wave of growth of global informational connectivity, as well as the improvement of the means of protest self-organization due to the spread of various technologies of the Fifth Kondratieff cycle (the Internet, satellite television, Twitter and other social networks, mobile telephony etc.). Similarly to what was observed during the Fourth Kondratieff Wave, during the Fifth Cycle while the spread of these technologies was going on for many years before 2011, their internal colossal potential for generating and spreading protest activity was realized in one leap, as a phase transition. (shrink)