How America disguises its violence: colonialism,mass incarceration,and the need for resistant imagination

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how a delusive social imaginary of criminal-justice has underpinned contemporary U.S. mass incarceration and encouraged widespread indifference to its violence. I trace the complicity of this criminal-justice imaginary with state-organized violence by comparing it to an imaginary that supported colonial violence. I conclude by discussing how those of us outside of prison can begin to resist the entrenched images and institutions of mass incarceration by engaging the work and imagining the perspective of incarcerated people.     

The politics-violence frontier

ABSTRACT

This article analyses how early twenty-first century political activists in Italy construct the frontier between politics and violence. It puts these constructions into the context of more conventionally theoretical accounts of violence and politics. Analysis of internet discourse published by left/anarchist bloggers and group members focusses on how activists criticize the conventional view that electoral politics is non-violent, and endorse the view that violence is politics’ main means. This means that the role of violence in oppositional politics then has to be negotiated. Discourse analysis shows how ideas of resistance, and anti-state force, are articulated in such a way as to draw distinctions between us and them, and their politics and ours. The article discusses the significance of these articulations of the politics-violence distinction for the construction of political agency, and for the justification of forms of political action, seeking to show that boundary work is fundamental to political agency.     

Reason and the Restlessness of the Speculative: Jean-Luc Nancy's Reading of Hegel

Abstract

This paper examines Jean-Luc Nancy's interpretation of Hegel, focusing in particular on The Restlessness of the Negative. It is argued that Nancy's reading represents a significant break with other post-structuralist readings of Hegel by taking his thought to be non-metaphysical. The paper focuses in particular on the role Nancy gives to the negative in Hegel's thought. Ultimately Nancy's reading is limited as an interpretation of Hegel, since he gives no sustained explanation of the self-correcting function of reason.     

Violence in a Religiously Divided City: Kaduna,Nigeria—From the Shari'a Riots of 2000 to the Post-election Clashes of 2011

Abstract

This paper examines why frictions developed in Kaduna between Muslims and Christians, how they turned violent, and the outcomes. The frictions were caused by a combination of the effects of colonial policies that established the north/south, Muslim/Christian divide, added to unequal treatment of ethnic groups within Nigerian state structures, and Nigeria's position as a rentier oil-producing state, making it a valuable property for elite capture, and structural adjustment that increased unemployment. Hostilities between Reform Islam and Pentecostal Christianity helped fuel conflict and the configuration of masculinities among unemployed youths facilitated participation in violence. The outcomes included death, destruction and mutual suspicion.     

The Hyper-Hermeneutic Gesture of a Subtle Revolution

Abstract

I argue that Shakespeare's Timon of Athens exemplifies the concept of mourning play that Walter Benjamin had in mind when he wrote The Origin of German Tragic Drama. While others have interpreted the play in various ways, no one has attempted to understand Timon in a Benjaminesque manner that seeks to show the emergence of baroque tragedy as a new aesthetic form at odds with, and liberated from, classical tragedy's mythical foundation and instead premised on historical time and progress. In my discussion, I question the view that Timon possesses inheritable or transmissible human social bonds that can be the subject of annihilation as is the case in Shakespeare's other tragedies. Rather, Benjamin sees in allegory, as illustrated by Timon of Athens, the social condition of modernity replete with suffering, chaos, and violence, but devoid of real human bonds; indeed, it is without human meaning.     

Power,agency and structure: An examination of Steven Lukes

The dynamic between violence and politics in the American South during the Civil Rights Movement is analyzed, focusing on the relationship between racist terror and the state. The study explores how blacks in the rural South tried to defend themselves before civil rights, when white supremacists dominated local government and federal authorities ignored lynch murders. The article traces the development of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s nonviolent resistance strategy, and the long struggle to force the state to combat racist violence, one of the Civil Rights Movement's most significant achievements.     

The Naturalistic Side of Hegel’s Pragmatism

Abstract

This paper contrasts the Hegelianism of contemporary neo-pragmatism (Brandom) and the Hegelianism of classical pragmatism as it has been reassessed in contemporary Deweyan scholarship. Drawing on Dewey’s interpretation of Hegel, this paper argues that Hegel’s theory of the spirit is in many aspects more akin to Dewey’s pragmatism than Brandom’s. The first part compares Dewey’s pragmatism with Hegel’s conceptions of experience and the theory/practice relation. The second part compares Dewey’s naturalism with Hegel’s theory of the relation between nature and spirit.     

The Presence of Tragedy

Abstract

This paper argues that modernity can only be properly understood when tragedy is viewed as one of the conditions internal to it. Modernity and tragedy are not mutually exclusive, as Hegel and Schlegel, for example both argue, but mutually inclusive. Each is determined by the other—as tragic modernity and as modern tragedy.     

Pierre Bourdieu: From Neo-Kantian to Hegelian Critical Social Theory

Abstract

This paper challenges the commonly made claim that the work of Pierre Bourdieu is fundamentally anti-Hegelian in orientation. In contrast, it argues that the development of Bourdieu's work from its earliest structuralist through its later ‘post-structuralist’ phase is better described in terms of a shift from a late nineteenth century neo-Kantian to a distinctly Hegelian post-Kantian outlook. In his break with structuralism, Bourdieu appealed to a bodily based logic of practice' to explain the binaristic logic of Lévi-Strauss' structuralist analyses of myth. Effectively working within the tradition of the Durkheimian approach to symbolic classification, Lévi-Strauss had inherited Durkheim's distinctly neo-Kantian understanding of the role of categories in experience and action—an account that conflated two forms of representation—‘intuitions’ and ‘concepts’—that Kant himself had held distinct. Bourdieu's appeal to the role of the body's dispositional habitus can be considered as a retrieval of Hegel's earlier quite different reworking of Kant's intuition-concept distinction in terms of distinct ‘logics’ with different forms of ‘negation’. Bourdieu commonly acknowledged the parallels of his analyses of social life to those of Hegel, but opposed Hegelianism because he believed that Hegel had remained entrapped within the dynamics of mythopoeic thought. In contrast, Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss, he claimed, by instituting a science of myth, had broken with it. This criticism of Hegel, however, relies on an understanding of his philosophy that has been rejected by many contemporary Hegel scholars, and without it, the gap separating Hegel and Bourdieu narrows dramatically     

Consuming Part-time Nationalism: China as an Immigrant in the Global Society

If Chinese foreign policy is to continue enjoying legitimacy, one must not allow globalization to overwhelm, penetrate, or obscure the boundary of the Chinese state. However, if the contemporary goal of Chinese foreign policy is to globalize, the process of integrating unavoidably questions the very foundation of Chinese foreign policy. By reinterpreting and psychologizing China's foreign policy, this paper tackles the discursive strategy, pertaining to nationalism, to make China's entry into globalization emotionally more manageable and less felt as a loss of identity. While there is worry that Chinese nationalism, if mismanaged, may lead to confrontation with the United States, nationalism today is no longer the same nationalism as before. Most importantly, the commercialization of nationalism and the bifurcation of its meanings have granted some agency to individual Chinese to interpret and practice nationalism as each sees proper. This citizen agency exists in various forms with those in the countryside ready to answer the call by the government and those in the cities acting more spontaneously. These individuals can together, without them necessarily planning collectively, bring out interpretations and practices that are difficult to anticipate beforehand.     

Derrida on Identity and Difference: A Radical Democratic Reading of The Other Heading

Abstract

Both modernist and post-modern social criticism of power pre suppose that agents frequently consent to power relations, which a political theorist may wish to critique. This raises the question: from what normative position can one critique power which is, as a sociological fact, legitimate in the eyes of those who reproduce it? This paper argues that "symbolic violence" is a useful metaphor for providing such a normative grounding. In order to provide an epistemological basis of critique, it is further argued that social actors have multiple interpretative horizons avail able to them as part of their everyday social practices. Thus, they are not caught in a preconstituted web of meaning from which there is no escape, as is sometimes implicit in the over-socialized perceptions of agency associated with post-modernism.     

Hegel,Habermas and the Spirit of Critical Theory

Abstract

This paper explores the complex relation between Hegel and Habermas. Centring the discussion around the key themes of philosophy, modernity and political philosophy, it argues for a gradual re-approachment of Habermas towards Hegel. In the final section on critical theory, it takes up the question of the spirit of this theory to offer a more trenchant critique of Habermas' theoretical short coming from this perspective.     

From Buckskin to Calico and Back Again: An Historical Interpretation of American Indian Feminism

Gender inequality and violence of indigenous women began during the high level of European colonial penetration. This process was continued and maintained by the creation of federal Indian legislation. In order for this process to take hold, indigenous men were forced to perpetuate the same type of gender inequality that was practiced by the new Americans. Consequently, indigenous women were displaced from their indigenous purpose and relegated to an unfamiliar, inferior and often subjugated position to Indian men and to whites. As a result of this treatment, the relationship between American Indian men and women changed dramatically, contributing to a higher level of conflict and gender inequality within and outside of tribal governments. This article examines factors that gave rise to the inequality of Indian women and offers suggestions on how American Indian women can achieve a level of equality and still not sidestep the larger issue of tribal sovereignty.     

Unpacking the Effects of Competing Mandates on Agency Performance

Public administration scholars and practitioners uniformly agree that saddling agencies with multiple mandates breeds dysfunction and impedes performance. However, less is known about the mechanisms by which combining purposes has these effects. This study of a broad set of U.S. federal agencies finds support for the conventional wisdom by showing that agencies balancing greater numbers of programs perform worse. The analysis further suggests that such organizations struggle largely because they are more likely to be forced to simultaneously adopt conflicting stances toward program targets. Moreover, when programs force agencies into conflicts in which they are asked to both support and restrain the same target, the resulting uncertainty among personnel regarding agency priorities helps explain why operations are negatively impacted. Thus, it is not simply that accumulating missions impedes agency performance but rather how those competing mandates interact that can define whether an agency will struggle to achieve its objectives.     

Habit,Sittlichkeit and Second Nature

Abstract

Discussions of habit in Hegel’s thought usually focus on his subjective spirit since this is where the most extended discussion of this issue takes place. This paper argues that habit is also important for understanding Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. The discussion of habit and second nature occur at a critical juncture in the text. This discussion is important for understanding his notion of ethical life and his account of freedom.     

Hegel’s Relational Organicism

Abstract

This paper is concerned with organic conceptions of socio-political life and is concerned with the rehabilitation of organicism as a positive social ontology. It demonstrates that: organicism does not necessarily imply the negation of individuality by a monolithic society, and; that G. W. F. Hegel’s references to the state as organic do not imply social holism. With Hegel’s organicism, as with Idealist organicism generally, what is found is a relational rather than a holistic social ontology. This relational ontology is one that addresses the tension between individualism and holism by theorizing the reciprocal or recursive nature of social relations; thus neither society nor the individuals within it can be seen as either purely determined or purely determining, each contributes to the constitution of the other. In making this case the paper provides both: a conceptual articulation of relational organicism which shows that it is an instructive and coherent positive social ontology, and; a historical account of its emergence into Idealist thought in the work of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel. Through developing this account of the organic relation this paper seeks to offer a conception of socio-political life that provides resources for thinking through both the tension between holism and atomism in social theory and the tension between liberal individualism and communitarian collectivism in political theory.     

The Common Root of Commitment,Resistance and Power

Abstract

This essay responds to some of the questions raised by Infinitely Demanding from the perspective of tragic conflicts. On this view, the struggle for power cannot be disentangled from the freedom at stake in liberalism and capitalism, nor from the efforts of individuals and groups to resist the powers that be. I suggest, moreover, that this entanglement threatens to divide from within not just the ethical subject, but groups and institutions as well.