Pragmatism,Utopia and Anti-Utopia

Abstract

This paper explores the tension between pragmatism and utopia, especially in the concept of "realistic utopianism". It argues that historically, the pragmatic and gradualist rejection of utopia has been anti-utopian in effect, notably in the case of Popper. More recent attempts to argue in favour of "realistic utopianism" or its equivalent, by writers such as Wallerstein and Rorty are also profoundly anti-utopian, despite Rorty's commitment to "social hope". They co-opt the terminology of utopia to positions that are antagonistic to radical alterity. But this is not a necessary response to the utopia/pragmatism tension: Unger, who is explicitly opposed to utopia, in fact proffers a more sympathetic resolution based on the merits of vision, social improvization and collective learning. These may lie closer to the core of the utopian project as a vehicle for the education of desire than Unger himself recognizes.     

Hyperreal America ∗

May 1968 in Paris was a utopian revolt which failed; America is a utopia which has been achieved. It is the original version of modernity. This article examines the logic of Biosphere 2 a miniature version of the entire planet, but which means the society is already living with the prospect of a catastrophe affecting its utopia, it is a zoological museum in anticipation of its own destruction.     

Tristees tropes: post-modern anthropologists encounter the other and discover themselves

Modernists have represented the world and its history as divided into ‘medieval’ (or traditional) and ‘modern’, ‘developed’ and ‘developing’, and claimed that they will bring about humanity's ‘emancipation’ from the medieval. I argue that the world which modernists wish to bring into existence, far from entailing the erasure of the medieval, as claimed, involves the complex rearticulation of the medieval. Vital to the modern is not just the secularization of a previously sacred realm, upon which scholars have concentrated, but the sacralization of the mundane, pointed to by Foucault. The agent of modernist emancipation is a hypostatized sovereign Agent. The medievals engaged in certain practices which were supposed to embody a transcendent God in the human world and lead them to a celestial paradise. the moderns, silently transposing that god intoa foundational reason, assert that its manifesation in enlightened institutios will take them to a utopia which is none other than the surreptitious imporatation of the medieval paradise on earth. Imperial progresses and religious processions were, I argue, the foremost paractices by which medieval polities embodied the transcendent and attained to heaven. Modern polities, While treating them as mere ‘rituals’, have sublimated those very practices into an abstract material progress emanating from the economic practices of the entire nation represented as a vehicle on the move. Developed countries represented themselves, after recovering from World War II, as already moving at a fast clip and as living in a productionist and consumerist utopia. Underdeveloped countries like India, considered medieval, were represented as only beginning to move. They were to transfrom themselves into modern utopias through central planning andmassive projects such as dam building.     

An ‘anti-utopian age?’: Isaiah Berlin’s England,Hannah Arendt’s America,and utopian thinking in dark times

This essay challenges the influential view that Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt played a central role in inaugurating an ‘anti-utopian age’. While the two thinkers certainly did their share to discredit the radical utopian inclination to portray a political blueprint in the abstract, I show that neither was straightforwardly anti-utopian. On the contrary, both thinkers’ writings display a different kind of utopian thinking, consisting in an imaginative and idealized reconstruction of existing polities. Schematically put, Berlin’s utopia was England reconstructed as a quintessential liberal society, whereas Arendt’s utopia was America reconstructed as a quintessential modern free republic. Those two polities differ from each other in important respects, but they share two essential features in common: they are claimed to be exempt from the rise of totalitarianism; and they allegedly give men and women the decent chance to live a fulfilling life. To illustrate Berlin’s and Arendt’s overlapping and yet differing visions, I consider their contrasting responses to the upheaval of 1968 – a possible utopian moment in the late 20th century. While their responses could scarcely be more different, they were informed by their shared desire to imagine an ideal polity in what both regarded as the darkest century in human history.     

Transgression and (sexual) citizenship: the political struggle for self-determination within BDSM communities

There has been – and continues to be – a tension within the political strategies of sexual minority communities claiming citizenship. Whilst attempting to forge a political self-determination based on being (dissident) sexual subjects, members of sexually diverse communities have frequently engaged in political practices that normalize their diversity to accord with wider socio-cultural conventions. In this article, we address this issue in relation to the political strategies of one of the most marginalized sexual identities/practices: BDSM. By drawing on the work of Foucault, Rose, Rabinow and Bahktin, we advance a case for how it may be possible for dissident sexual communities to resist the normalizing effects of citizenship whilst still making claims for legal recognition and wider social acknowledgment. Key to the argument is the theorization of a position wherein carnival transgression operates within a dialectical integration of ideology and utopia as a mode of citizenship.     

Beyond Marx and Proudhon

A close examination of the Marx vs Proudhon debate shows the need to assimilate the bitter experiences of the socialist (statist and libertarian) movement in the last 150 years or so, in order to develop a new kind of problematique suitable for today's reality of the internationalised market economy. A problematique, which will be the basis for a new project aiming to provide not just another utopia (justified by pseudo-scientific or 'objective' laws of social evolution) but also a way out of the chronic multidimensional crisis to which the dynamic of the market economy and representative democracy has led us.     

Zivilgesellschaft in Entwicklungsländern — konzeptionelle Überlegungen

In this article civil society is defined as a non-normative, but analytical-logic realm which constitutes a societal sphere distinct from the surrounding realms of family, economy and the state. Civil society is reality (not utopia), it is political, not per se democratic, not bound to democracy and not per se civilised. There is no zero-sum situation between civil society, family, economy, and the state. In developing countries the particular deficits of the surrounding realms influence the non-autonomous civil society from the outside. Inside, civil society is marked by fragmented channels and opposing channels. The respective combination of these (opposing) channels serves as a basis for a typologisation of civil societies, to which development policy can refer to.     

Justice in Ideal Theory: A Refutation

In this article I argue that theorizing about justice at the level of ideal theory is inherently flawed and thus has impoverished liberal egalitarianism. Ideal theorists (falsely) assume that a political philosopher can easily determine (or has privileged access to) what constitutes the 'best foreseeable conditions'. Furthermore, by assuming full compliance, ideal theorists violate the constraints of a realistic utopia. More specifically I argue that liberal egalitarians who function at the level of ideal theory adopt a cost-blind approach to rights and a narrow view of possible human misfortune. The former issue leads liberal egalitarians to give priority to a serially ordered principle of equal basic liberties or to treat rights as 'trumps'; and the latter to a stringent prioritarian principle (Rawls' difference principle) or luck egalitarianism. Taken together, the cost-blind approach to rights, coupled with the narrow view of human misfortune, mean the liberal egalitarian theories of justice cannot address the issue of trade-offs that inevitably arises in real non-ideal societies that face the fact of scarcity. This makes liberal egalitarianism an ineffective theory of social justice.     

Who’s afraid of a world state? A global sovereign and the statist-cosmopolitan debate

Wary of quick statist dismissal of their proposals, cosmopolitans have been careful not to associate themselves with a world state. I argue that this caution is mistaken: cosmopolitans should see the vision of a world state as strategically valuable in exposing weaknesses in statist accounts, particularly of the Rawlsian variety. This strategic value follows if the only cogent arguments against a world state belong to non-ideal theory which assumes non-compliance, rather than to ideal theory with its core assumption of full compliance. If our only convincing reasons to reject a world state are non-ideal, then any liberal theory revolving around separate states must itself be considered a non-ideal theory. As a non-ideal theory, a statist law of peoples cannot be presented as an end-state, but is rather a transitional stage. Yet once seen as a transitional theory, the statist “realistic utopia” can no longer dodge the cosmopolitan charge that it is neither sufficiently realistic nor sufficiently utopian.     

Utopia,Food Sovereignty,and Ethical Fashion: The Narrative Power of anti-GMO Campaigns

ABSTRACT

The idea of utopia has become pervasive in the age of everyday humanitarianism. Digital media communicate utopian ideas that allow people to “do good” for vulnerable others and the environment. At the same time, campaigns mobilize citizens by invoking apocalyptic images, such as genetically modified (GM) “monster” foods. This article looks at the construction of utopian and apocalyptic narratives in social movement campaigns and how they contribute to the construction of identities in the campaigns against GM food and Bt cotton, especially in India. Based on an analysis of campaign material, we show that “organic food” and “ethical cotton” products would be less successful without the concurrent use of apocalyptic narratives. Narratives that are more radical enabled the anti-GM food movement to mobilize large resistance. By contrast, a more inclusive narrative approach in the cotton/textile sector risks supporting interests that are detrimental to social justice and environmental protection.     

The observer actant in the contemporary legal discourse: a semiotic meditation*

ABSTRACT

The sensorial access to the law that a society grants to its members is underpinned by a logic of exhibition and disclosure that, in turn, results from a more abstract cultural propensity to either transparency or opacity. Through investigating the systems of signs by which the functioning of the law is either concealed to external audiences or manifested to them in a more or less spectacular way, one can gain a firmer grasp on the juridical aesthetics of a society. This semiotic approach entails two advantages: on the one hand, the possibility to compare and contrast different regimes of disclosure and secrecy in the synchronic dimension, connecting the discourse of the law with other – apparently distant – types of discourse, adopting the same aesthetics of transparency or opaqueness in other domains of social life and discursive production; on the other hand, the opportunity for a more insightful intelligence of the diachronic development of such aesthetics, so that it may be interpreted as the long-term byproduct of historical watersheds in the history of culture. The article, in particular, proposes to link the socio-pathology of anorexia with several other practices and texts of present-day culture that adopt the same rhetoric of transparency in other discursive arena, including that of law. In all these sign productions, indeed, the trend that predominates is one that, adhering to an ideology of immediacy and transparency, pretends to eliminate all filters, all hindrances, but also all material signifiers that would mar the purity of the content. Although this utopia cannot correspond to any actual semiotic state – for any content needs a material expression to be conveyed – it nevertheless exerts a powerful influence on the present time, until it manifests itself in extreme forms of ‘transparentist’ radicalism.     

Nostalgias

Abstract

This paper launches a thought experiment the aim of which is to recover and defend an idea of nostalgia as something other than merely maudlin yearning after the days of yore. Much critical comment on nostalgia, in everyday parlance and in academic debate, begins from the standpoint that the time longed for was never really as it is now, nostalgically, imagined. The force and validity of this jibe is admitted in this paper, but it argues that the concept of nostalgia can be reshaped and turned in quite different less reactive directions. A distinction between Nostalgia and nostalgias is coined in order to introduce a plural and critical version of nostalgic memory. The play of memory in nostalgias is exemplified through a focus on four topoi of experience which are strained, possibly even shattered, by the digitalisation and rationalisation of contemporary culture and society. Nostalgias of and for the body, nature, thought, and modernity itself are explored by comparison to themes of melancholy and utopia which arise in Frankfurt School critical theory as responses to a similarly perceived trauma and triumph of instrumental reason. I argue that ultimately the distinction between nostalgias and Nostalgia cannot be maintained - nostalgias are rather types or tropes of Nostalgia. However, through thinking Nostalgia along the lines of this neologism (nostalgias) we might come to see its dynamic and critical mnemonic potencies. Hence, the paper concludes that nostalgia ought not be simply contemned and dismissed as the conservative freezing of memories and images of a fake past.     

Totalitarianism and justice: Hannah Arendt’s and Judith N. Shklar’s political reflections in historical and theoretical perspective

We locate Arendt’s and Shklar’s writings within what Katznelson has identified as an attempt to create a new language for politics after the cataclysm of the twentieth century, and Greif has called the new ‘maieutic’ discourse of ‘re-enlightenment’ in the ‘age of the crisis of man’. More specifically, we compare and contrast two related, but in many ways also differing, ways of thinking about totalitarianism and its legal repercussions. To this end, we examine two sets of studies: Arendt’s The origins of totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil and Shklar’s After utopia: The decline of political faith and Legalism: An essay on law, morals, and politics. While The origins of totalitarianism and After utopia discussed totalitarian ideology and its consequences for modern political thought, the Eichmann report and Legalism dealt with the question of whether and how justice is possible after the extreme experience of totalitarianism. We argue that the maieutic impulse led Arendt and Shklar to find distinct routes to address a common concern. Our paper ends with a discussion of some of the surplus meaning that was generated by the different maieutic performances of the two thinkers.     

污染环境罪主观方面评析

《刑法修正案（八）》对重大环境污染事故罪进行了重大修改,罪名也变为污染环境罪.一般认为,修改前的重大环境污染事故罪是过失犯罪,但对于修改后的污染环境罪是故意还是过失犯罪,理论上颇有争议,存有过失说、双重罪过形式说及故意说等观点.但过失说及双重罪过形式说均不能正确反映本罪修改的实质意义,不利于正确认定污染环境罪,不利于有效打击污染环境的行为,因而不足取.无论从文理的角度,还是从论理的角度,污染环境罪都应当是故意犯罪.将污染环境罪解释为故意犯罪,有利于惩治污染环境的犯罪行为.     

A Committee of No Importance? Assessing the Relevance of the Committee of the Regions

As a result of its formal weakness, the Committee of the Regions is often presumed to be inconsequential in the development of European Union policy. This article draws on ongoing research to argue against this assumption. From an analysis of the Committee's output and an assessment of its impact on both Commission proposals and final legislation, it emerges that the Committee is already playing an important role in decision making. Moreover, the Committee has a strong and devoted protector in the Commission, enabling it further to escape the peripherality of the position it was assigned in the Maastricht Treaty.     

Extending the rational choice model from the economy to society

That the extension of the rational choice model beyond the economy to all society can finally lead to integration of social theory is often claimed by the model’s advocates. The underlying assumption is that this model is valid for both the economy and society, in the form of an economic approach to, or a utilitarian paradigm of, all social behaviour. The meta-theoretical presupposition or injunction that agents are (should be) profit-seekers or utility-optimizers is therewith given the mission to integrate and ‘save’ contemporary social science. However, such extensions of the rational choice model from the economy to society neglect the fact that this presupposition has been partly mitigated and compromised within economics itself. If so, then suspicion is strong that the rational choice model would be even less appropriate for the other social sciences and thus fall short of achieving its self-designated role of integration of social theory. The conclusion of an interdisciplinary analysis drawing both from economics and sociology is that rational choice is far from being an integrative model of the economy and society.     

Sophocles'Antigone and the History of the Concept of Natural Law

This paper focuses on two related questions. The first of these is a general question. Where are the origins of the concept of natural law to be located in the history of political thought? The second is more specific. Sophocles puts into the mouth of the eponymous heroine of his Antigone an argument justifying her disobedience to an edict of her uncle Creon, who forbade her to bury her brother Polyneices. Does this argument involve an appeal to the concept of natural law? The paper takes issue with the claim, first made by Aristotle in his Rhetoric , that Sophocles' Antigone is indeed an early example of the application of the concept of natural law in political argument and debate. This interpretation of the political message of the Antigone is inconsistent with what we know about Sophocles' attitude towards the fundamental questions of Athenian politics in the classical era of Periclean democracy during the fifth century BC.     

浅析网络小说中关于社会公德意识缺失的问题

网络小说作为当代网络文学中重要组成部分之一,其发展受到社会各界的关注,由于刚刚起步,发展中难免存在着各种严峻的问题,而当前发展中的一个重要问题既是网络小说中社会公德意识缺失问题,本着治病救人的原则,笔者着重分析了这种道德现象的成因以及解决问题的一些有益的思考,希望对解决此种问题有所帮助。     

提高政府驾驭市场经济的能力三题

提高政府架驭市场经济的能力,绝非强化行政手段,而是主要提高政府运用经济手段和法律手段引导、规范、管理、调控经济运行,推动经济持续快速健康发展的能力。一是优化市场机制高效运行的体制环境;二是强化弥补市场失灵的政府职能;三是硬化、规范宏观调控的政策工具。     

Encounters with the clandestino/a and the nomad: the emplaced and embodied constitution of non-citizenship

Taking the ‘encounter’ as an analytic, this paper will argue for an understanding of citizenship as an emergent condition that is emplaced and embodied, rather than as simply a collection of rights to be possessed or endowed. This is not to deny the importance of legal status to the ways in which one inhabits the city (and therefore the nation-state), but show how this status is modulated in the everyday to constitute a range of legitimately and illegitimately present non-citizen subjects. The nature of the encounter as a constitutive event in which particular bodies are deemed in- or out-of-place will be discussed relative to two imagined figures that have been used to represent outsiders that are deemed to be illegitimately present in Italy: the clandestino/a and the nomad. These figures have been invoked in legislation and in political and popular discourse. In this paper, they are also imagined to be encountered in the spaces of the city.