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The Right-Wing Mirror of Critical Theory
What really separates emancipatory thinking from its opposite? The prevailing Left defines itself against neoliberalism, conservative traditionalism, and fascism as a matter of course. The philosophical differences, however, may be more apparent than real. The Right-Wing Mirror of Critical Theory argues that dominant trends in critical and radical theory inadvertently reproduce the cardinal tenets of the twentieth century’s most influential right-wing philosophers. It finds the rejection of foundationalism, rationalism, economic planning, and vanguardism mirrored in the work of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, and Strauss. If it is to be more than merely an inverted image of the Right, critical theory must reevaluate its relationship to what Julius Nyerere once called “deliberate design” in politics. In the era of anthropogenic climate change, a substantial—not merely nominal—departure from right-wing talking points is all the more necessary and momentous.
Democracy in Spite of the Demos
The value of democracy is taken for granted today, even by those interested in criticizing the fundamental structures of society. Things would be better, the argument goes, if only things were more democratic. The word “democracy” means “the power of the people,” and scholars with a critical and progressive outlook often invoke this meaning as a way of justifying the honorific status accorded to the term: the power of the people to resist racism, sexism, imperialism, climate change, etc. But if the people have the power to resist these structures of domination and inequality, they also have the power to reinforce them. By treating democracy as an end in itself, political theorists of a critical bent overwhelmingly assume that the demos, if given the opportunity, will advance progressive or even radical politics. But given the recent successes of right-wing populism, and the persistence of pathological views such as climate skepticism, is this assumption still warranted? If not, then can democracy really save us?
Global Justice, Natural Resources, and Climate Change
This work develops a new theory of global egalitarianism concerning natural resources.
Democracy despite Itself
Recent developments, including anti-democratic moves by governments in Hungary, India, and Turkey and the rise of populist leaders, demonstrate the threat posed to democratic values by legal revolution and other acts committed within the confines of the system. Militant democracy, a form of constitutional entrenchment, can protect these values from the harmful influence of illiberal regimes. However, critics and proponents alike wonder whether these tactics risk undermining democracy in the process of trying to save it. Democracy despite Itself advances a liberal normative theory of militant democracy by combining American philosopher John Rawls' political liberalism with German jurist Carl ...
Crime TV
"This book offers a straightforward and vibrant approach to the study of criminal behavior and contemporary criminal justice issues through the use of popular TV shows. Students, researchers, and anyone else interested in crime will find this book an accessible and informative resource for understanding the causes of crime and how society responds to crime"--
Zero-Point Hubris
Operating within the framework of postcolonial studies and decolonial theory, this important work starts from the assumption that the violence exercised by European colonialism was not only physical and economic, but also ‘epistemic’. Santiago Castro-Gómez argues that toward the end of the eighteenth century, this epistemic violence of the Spanish Empire assumed a specific form: zero-point hubris. The ‘many forms of knowing’ were integrated into a chronological hierarchy in which scientific-enlightened knowledge appears at the highest point on the cognitive scale, while all other epistemes are seen as constituting its past. Enlightened criollo thinkers did not hesitate to situate the Black, Indigenous, and mestizo peoples of New Granada in the lowest position on this cognitive scale. Castro-Gómez argues that in the colonial periphery of the Spanish Americas, Enlightenment constituted not only the position of epistemic distance separating science from all other knowledges, but also the position of ethnic distance separating the criollos from the ‘castes’. Epistemic violence—and not only physical violence—is thereby found at the very origin of Colombian nationality.
The French Revolution in Theory
It is time to re-examine the French Revolution as a political resource. The historiography has so far ignored the question of popular sovereignty and emancipation; instead the Revolution has been vilified as a matrix of totalitarianisms by the liberals and as an ethnocentric phenomenon by postcolonial studies. This book examines why. More so than historians, it is philosophers that have played the leading role in the portrayal of this major event in French political history. The philosophical quarrels of the 1960s placed the French Revolution at the heart of their debates. The most well-documented among these is the conflict between Jean-Paul Sartre and Claude Lévi-Strauss and subsequently, Michel Foucault. Do we need an ethics of the history of the French Revolution? Rancière, Derrida, Balibar, Lefort, Robin, and Loraux can help answer this question, in an epistemological approach to history. These successive explorations allow us to move away from a myth of identity and to rediscover a real Revolution, capable of offering Enlightenment and political utility and interrogating what democracy and emancipation mean for us today.
Domination and Emancipation
A melancholy defeatism has become a hallmark of critical thought and leftist politics. A consequence of this has been an exaggerated focus on domination among critical theorists, leaving emancipation—along with questions of political organization and strategy—undertheorized at best, or disregarded as delusional, at worst. If emancipation still plays a role in critical reflection, it is most often in a “domesticated” form, made into a bedfellow of centrist liberalism. Recent events necessitate a different outlook, especially since the financial collapse of 2008 and the myriad movements—emancipatory as much as reactionary—it has spawned throughout the world. Through a series of dialogues and reflections by leading thinkers, scholars, and activists, Domination and Emancipation: Remaking Critique seeks to rebuild the emancipatory pole of critique and bring forward theoretical work that is in step with the struggles and aspirations of the moment.
The Politics of Bodies
Is it due to lack of critical agency that precarious persons opt, time and again, for political views that contribute to their marginalization? How should we understand that alleged loss of critical agency and how could it be countered? Influential perspectives in critical theory have answered these questions by highlighting how certain ideological mechanisms, incorporated thoughtlessly by the most vulnerable bodies, function to obscure their interests and the causes of the condition they find themselves in. Through an original interpretation of Jacques Rancière’s thought, but also going beyond it, The Politics of Bodies establishes a different horizon of reflection. Laura Quintana’s ma...
Narratives of Arab Secularism
This book offers a new interpretation of the rich narratives of Arab secularism, contending that secularism as a set of ideas and a social movement is destined to loom large on the political and legal horizon of most Arab states. Youssef M. Choueiri provides a study of three moments in the development of secularism in the Arab World, the Machiavellian, the Alfierian and the Gramscian. It is within such a scope that secularism in its interaction with state-building projects, women’s emancipation and religion is treated as an intellectual current and a discursive entity embedded in the political process of its diverse societies. Through the chapters, Choueiri demonstrates how secularism occu...
