The Moral Imaginary of Discourse Ethics

Abstract

The central claim of this essay is that Habermas' pro gram of discourse ethics fails to establish the necessary immanent connection between the universality of discourse ethics and the quasi-transcendentalism, which is supposed to provide its ground. Habermas' attempt to avoid the spectre of subjectivism leads him to develop an understanding of universalism that hinges on a critical error, the confusion of subjectivity with ethical sub stance. Using Castoriadis' theory of the imagination to illuminate this failure, I demonstrate the way in which Habermas' moral theory of discourse inadvertently harbours a moral-imaginary horizon, a pre-political kernel which undercuts its capacity to serve as a universalist ethic.     

Discourse Ethics and the Problem of Nature

Abstract

In what sense could discourse ethics be linked with normative problems raised by the ecological crisis? Even if Apel and Habermas have not really addressed this question extensively, and even if their position in moral philosophy seems to develop and reinforce a neo-Kantian anthropocentric point of view, one can find in their works some evidence for the possibility of connecting a dialogical view with an ecological one. In order to defend the philosophical interest in highlighting this possibility, this essay analyses Habermas' position concerning the moral and ontological status of animality in particular, and attempts to situate this position within the history of Critical Theory.     

Deleuze and literature: Metaphor and indirect discourse

This paper deals primarily with Deleuze's work on literature? but also looks briefly at related ideas in the books on cinema. Deleuze has often concentrated on what he calls ‘American‘ literature, particularly in Critique and clinlque. The first part of the paper seeks to outline some of the main elements of this particular literary field for Deleuze. The paper then goes on to show how the general rejection of metaphor that informs Deleuze's work on literature can be more precisely defined as a theory of free indirect discourse. The concept of free indirect discourse is? as Frangois Zourabichvili has shown, at the heart of Deleuze's work? aesthetic or otherwise. For example, the idea of the percept functions as an aesthetic application of free indirect discourse, and Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 suggest that this form of enunciation represents a new aesthetic cogito to which cinema is ideally suited.     

Towards a democracy-centred ethics

Abstract

The core idea of this paper is that we can use the differences between democratic and undemocratic governments to illuminate ethical problems. Democratic values, rights and institutions lie between the most abstract considerations of ethics and meta-ethics and the most particularised decisions, outcomes and contexts. Hence, this paper argues, we can use the differences between democratic and undemocratic governments, as we best understand them, to structure our theoretical investigations, to test and organise our intuitions and ideas, and to explain and justify our philosophical conclusions. Specifically, as we will see, a democracy-centred approach to ethics can help us to distinguish liberal and democratic approaches to political morality in ways that reflect the varieties of democratic theory, and the importance of distinguishing democratic from undemocratic forms of liberalism.     

Habermas and the Holy Grail of reason: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity between theatre and theory

A critical discourse analysis of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity demonstrates that Habermas's discourse on modernity is theoretische Fiktion (a term Freud used to describe a given theory for which no evidence can be found and no arguments validated). Theatrical narrative strategies from drama are identified that not only organise the logic of the text, but also position readers. The choice of mise en scene—the Oedipal cross‐roads where older and younger protagonists meet in conflict—is seen to position readers as mere spectators. The choice of the narrative trope of the romance of lost opportunity (the road open but not taken) is not merely illustrative, but necessary for the claim that Habermas has redeemed the enlightenment project.

The paper critiques Habermas's theorising on discourse ethics because it distinguishes categories of discourse into scientific/analytical, moral/interpretive and aesthetic/expressive, which operate in three different spheres of value. In particular, it challenges the notion of an “inner logics” for what, in Habermas's stable of discourses, he labels the scientific/analytical. Readers of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, the paper demonstrates, are not so much pulled along by the force of the better argument, but seduced by that unbridled beast: the aesthetic/expressive.     

Discourse Ethics and 'the Rift of Speechlessness': The Limits of Argumentation and Possible Future Directions

Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics – and within this framework, particularly the idea of 'moral discourses', which focuses on 'what is good for all' and is intended as a means of addressing situations where a shared substantive 'background consensus' does not exist or has broken down – is premised on the assumption that participants attempt to engage with and persuade each other through reasoned argumentation. Where does this leave (potential) participants with strong religious convictions? In several recent publications, Habermas himself has started to reflect on this question. His reflections are motivated not least by (responses to) 11 September 2001. In this context, Habermas has suggested that those with secular commitments engage in a process of self-reflection about the meaning of secularisation, the losses involved in the questioning of religious world views, and the question of how we might respond to these losses. Yet while these reflections are interesting and suggestive, Habermas's framework, as it stands, cannot easily accommodate his own recognition of the need to overcome what he has called 'the rift of speechlessness' that threatens to divide religious and secular discourses. Against this background, I consider elements of William E. Connolly's recent reflections on Neuropolitics as one example of a body of work that suggests possible alternative responses to the challenges Habermas identifies – and as a contribution that deserves to be taken seriously by those interested in the further development of discourse ethics and/or deliberative democracy.     

Umbilical cord blood banking and its interruptions: notes from Chennai,India

Abstract

What is the relationship between globalization and the body? In both scholarly discourse and everyday practice, the relationship between globalization and the body has been understood through the idea of accumulation – the intensified and interlinked pursuit of health and wealth. Through an examination of private umbilical cord blood banking in south India, this paper investigates the interplay of accumulation and its interruption in Indians' uptake of this practice. Although Chennai-based bankers, doctors and parents explain the recent surge in popularity for cord blood banking in the city in terms of interlinked financial and familial accumulation, investment and security, Indians' cultural and religious conceptions of the latent power of the placenta and cord often work against cord blood banking marketers' neat account of twinned economic and familial accumulation. Analytic attention to interruption highlights the tensions within and precariousness of the accumulation at the heart of the relationship between globalization and the body.     

Andalusia at the crossroads of Europeanness: immigration as a performance of coloniality

ABSTRACT

The semantics of cultural diversity, based on the political discourses of immigration as they appear in integration and anti-racist policies in Andalusia, underline the sense of Otherness of immigrant groups. In this article, Castaño, Martínez and Periáñez focus on the most relevant texts in the Planes Integrales para la Inmigración en Andalucía (Comprehensive Plans for Immigration in Andalusia). To date, these texts have formed the most significant discursive framework for representations of the third sector, trade unions and public agencies involved in the management of diversity. The key ideas in the plans revolve around transnational political references in the context of the European Union (EU). They impose a sense of Europeanness on Andalusia that is in opposition to its historical heritage, endogenous diversity and cultural specificity, and thus steer the imaginary of Andalusia's identity towards a Eurocentric idea that enhances the region's peripheral position. Immigration is regarded in the hegemonic media discourse and the social imaginary as a risk and a social problem. Integration policies, despite being couched in anti-racist rhetoric, are specifically targeted at immigrants, further enhancing the idea of Otherness. The notion of interculturality is the leitmotiv of these policies. In practical terms, however, action is limited to empty measures in the field of education. These policies, in sum, neutralize, rather than reinforce, the sense of equality on which interculturality is based. The examination of the intertextuality of Andalusian, Spanish and European discourses reveals the conformity of the discourse of Andalusia's coloniality within the framework of the EU.     

Democratic Norms and Means of Communication: Public Sphere,Fourth Estate,Freedom of Communication

Abstract

This article assesses some major democratic norms commonly invoked in relation to means of communication or ‘media’, especially in the context of ‘media policy’. The paper argues that freedom of communication provides the most appropriate normative discourse in which to re-articulate the case for the European policy practice of ‘regulated pluralism’ outside Europe. Recent developments in Australia provide a brief case-study of this thesis.     

Adorno's Contemplative Ethics

Abstract

This paper argues that there is an ethics of contemplation that is internal to Adorno's critique of modern functionalised and administered societies. It is argued here that ‘contemplation’ is Adorno's name for a praxis by which one is open to the other, and yet can let the other be. Adorno sees a kernel of experience in such contemplative practices, which, although increasingly being stripped bare by the modern world, is the basis for its possible critique.     

Prologue: the riddle of race

ABSTRACT

Bernard explores the myth of racelessness as it is currently circulating in American social discourse. The election of the first black American president has unleashed the term across the cultural landscape, from the mainstream media to the classrooms in which she teaches African American literature. Students use the term as a twenty-first-century incarnation of the civil rights-era concept of colour blindness. But racelessness does not represent an aspiration for equality as much as it represents an ambition to turn away from the realities of difference. It is code for a common ambition to avoid the realities of institutional racial inequalities, as well as personal experiences of cultural difference. The myth of racelessness intersects uncomfortably with current academic discourse that promotes the view of race as a social construction. Scientifically proven and irrefutably true, this discourse does not allow any room for the social experience of race and racial difference as it is lived by everyone every day, whether we like it or not. The election of President Barack Obama is a portal on to this current confusion about the concept of race, specifically, and blackness, in particular. Many pundits have speculated that Obama would not have been electable if he had had dark skin, if he were irrefutably black, in colour and culture. The fact that he himself has elected to call himself ‘black’ serves as the platform of Bernard's essay on the case of race in the United States.     

The myopic Foucauldian gaze: discourse,knowledge and the authoritarian peace

ABSTRACT

The discourse of liberal peacebuilding has often been characterized by critics as a hegemonic discourse, in which power and knowledge are co-constitutive. Influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, an important strand of the literature has demonstrated how epistemic communities have produced knowledge that supports this discourse, while marginalizing other, contrary voices. A ‘local turn’ has sought to uncover what Foucault termed ‘subjugated knowledges’, peripheral voices that were seen as potentially contributing to a more emancipatory peace. This article, in contrast, argues that the explicit and implicit Foucauldian framing of discourse and knowledge is no longer adequate to conceptualize the contested nature of peace and conflict in a rapidly changing international system. In a period of significant geopolitical shifts away from a Western-centric international order, post-Foucauldian discourse theories offer a more productive analytical perspective that makes visible the multiple, competing discourses that attempt to achieve closure in defining meanings of peace and conflict. A theoretical framework that emphasizes discursive contestation rather than unitary domination allows serious consideration of alternative conceptualizations of peacemaking. In particular, theoretical frameworks that highlight contestation make visible an authoritarian, illiberal approach to managing conflict that challenges both liberal and emancipatory conceptualizations of peace and conflict, but is occluded in the current debate over post-liberal peace.     

Unexpected narratives in conservation: Discourses of identity and place in Šumava National Park,Czech Republic

Abstract

In ?umava National Park, dominant actors dispute appropriate conservation strategies habitually overlooking ?umava's residents and their socioeconomic concerns. Routinely disregarded, ?umava's residents invoke narratives of identity and place that undermine the conservation paradigm by constructing the local population ‘quality’ as insufficient to make conservation a success. This paper examines the circumstances in which such a discourse emerges, how it responds to the asperity of conservation in a post-socialist setting and gains credence for implausible conclusions by appealing to broadly recognised Czech and European narratives of identity and place. What emerges is a discursive fragmentation of the subject simultaneously lends the discourse credibility and frustrates the redistribution of power in the area.     

Bugs,predations or manipulations? Incompatible epistemic regimes of high-frequency trading

Abstract

Calls for greater transparency as well as corporate and individual accountability have emerged in response to the recent turbulence in financial markets. In the field of high-frequency trading (HFT), suggested solutions have involved a call for increased market information, for example, or better access to the inner workings of algorithmic trading systems. Through a combination of fieldwork conducted in HFT firms and discourse analysis, I show that the problem may not always stem from a lack of information. Instead, my comparative analysis of different market actors (regulators, market analysts and traders) shows that the diverse and complex ways in which they access and construct knowledge out of information in fact lead to what I call different epistemic regimes. An understanding of how epistemic regimes work will enable us to explain not only why the same market event can be viewed as very different things – as market manipulation, predation or error – but also why it is so difficult to arrive at a unified theory or view of HFT. The comparative perspective introduced by the idea of epistemic regimes might also serve as a starting point for the development of a cultural approach to the study of financial markets.     

The Politics of Science and Sustainable Development: Marcuse's New Science in the 21st Century

ABSTRACT

In recent years, debates around development have seen the growing prominence of post-developmentalist proposals, which are driving the anti-capitalist discourse and at the same time serving as a springboard for non-capitalist development proposals. However, the search for an alternative approach to development can disrupt the construction of viable action strategies and dilute important elements of the contributions advanced by the heterodox tradition, mainly Marxist. The aim of this paper is to systematize the limitations of post-developmentalism and articulate a heterodox paradigm that can be measured in tandem with conventional and hegemonic approaches in development studies, such as approaches stressing human development.     

A sociosemiotic interpretation of cybersecurity in U.S. legislative discourse

ABSTRACT

Based on one specially created corpus of U.S. cybersecurity-related laws, this study employs the corpus approach to examine the referent objects and securitizing actors in U.S. cybersecurity legislative discourse, which are two critical issues in constructing security, including cybersecurity. Through corpus data analysis, it is found that unlike traditional security, cybersecurity has become more people-oriented in terms of referent objects with critical infrastructure as a key referent object. Additionally, the role of private sectors and cooperative security are highlighted in U.S. cybersecurity legislative discourse. From a sociosemiotic perspective, it is noted that the meaning-making process of U.S. cybersecurity not only is conveyed by the texts but also interacts with other sign systems, such as historical background, cyberspace as a virtual realm and social contexts, which suggests that the specific meanings of signs constructing cybersecurity and cybersecurity itself should be interpreted in specific temporal or spatial contexts. Furthermore, a sociosemiotic approach to U.S. cybersecurity legislative discourse also offers valuable insights to how signs and concepts in cybersecurity contribute to sketching a holistic landscape of cybersecurity and further security on a large scale.     

The emergence of ‘citizenship’ in popular discourse: the case of Scotland

ABSTRACT

The 2014 Scottish Referendum gauged public opinion on the possibility of Scotland leaving the United Kingdom, raising significant questions about the legitimacy of claims to citizenship in the event of independence. Through a mixed methods survey, this study explored the ways in which citizenship emerged in popular discourse in the lead up to the Scottish referendum. Findings point to an emphasis in public discourse on a commitment to and participation in society, instead of the more traditional citizenship markers of ancestry, birthplace or residency. Data indicates a view of citizenship encompassing status and practice, while identity was framed in terms of more static notions of birthplace and ancestry. The salience of social participation was noticeably greater in respondents’ assessment of others’ potential Scottish citizenship than their own. Specifically, the study highlights the salience of relational aspects of citizenship in popular discourse, with an emphasis on social citizenship in preference to legal citizenship. The study constitutes a significant contribution to ongoing discussions about ‘participatory citizenship’ in the field of Citizenship studies, by providing much needed empirical data on social conceptualizations of citizenship.     

Global citizenship as a national project: the evolution of segye shimin in South Korean public discourse

The idea of global citizenship in contemporary South Korean public discourse has revolved mainly around a national endeavor to boost the county's stature and competitiveness amid economic globalization. Based on a review of two decades of published media references to segye shimin (‘global citizen’ in the Korean language), this article shows that the specific usages of segye shimin – mainly by elites from government, academia, and journalism – underscore how the ‘developmental citizenship’ that marked South Korea's past authoritarian military regimes has carried on since the transition to civilian-led democracy. In contrast with the burgeoning academic discourse on cosmopolitanism that focuses heavily on moral responsibilities to humanity and the planet, South Korea's discourse of global citizenship has been closely aligned with neoliberalism and filled with exhortations to the domestic population to overcome numerous perceived liabilities seen as impeding the country's advancement. While global citizenship discourse in South Korea has emphasized top-down national strategic imperatives, a bottom-up approach to cosmopolitanism is also emerging as the country gains confidence and the notion of segye shimin gradually gains traction across the wider society.     

The (im)plausibility of racism in Europe: policy frameworks on discrimination and integration

ABSTRACT

Rodríguez Maeso and Araújo analyse the reproduction of a dominant understanding of racism in policy discourses of integration and discrimination used by monitoring agencies in Portuguese and European Union (EU) institutional contexts. More specifically, they question the political concern over racism and discrimination vis-à-vis the idea of Europe ‘becoming increasingly diverse’ and the need to gather ‘evidence’ of discrimination. To that end, they examine periodic reports issued by EU monitoring agencies since the 1990s—paying specific attention to reporting on school segregation of Roma pupils in Portugal—and national integration policies and initiatives that, since the 2000s, have targeted mainly Roma and black families and youth. They argue that the dominant discourse of integration and cultural diversity conceives of racism as external to European political culture, and as a ‘factor’ of the ‘conflictive nature’ of social interactions in ethnoracially heterogeneous settings. This paves the way for calls for the ‘strengthening of social cohesion’—on the assumption that policy initiatives need to act on the ‘characteristics’ of so-called ‘vulnerable’ populations—whereas institutional arrangements and everyday practices remain unchallenged.     

Chinese isms: the modernization of ideological discourse in China

ABSTRACT

The many words in ‘-ism’ in Western languages, from ‘anarchism’ to ‘Zenonism,’ are the linguistic manifestation of a significant European conceptual innovation in scholarly and ideological discourse. Briefly put, there is an intense reductionism in these concepts that underlies their effective rhetorical deployment in various forms of ideological and expository discourse. While isms originated in Europe, they were eventually appropriated by speakers of other languages and became a significant factor and indicator of change in modern society on a global scale. Concepts such as ‘feminism,’ ‘socialism’ and ‘nationalism’ were instrumental in transforming history in the Far East, and so this article explores the appropriation of isms as zhǔyì 主義 in Chinese. The article focuses on how ‘ismatic reasoning’ came to dominate Chinese intellectual and political discourse in the 20th century, zooming in on the case of political ideals for China in the modern world. The historical contingency and change of particular isms, as well as local conceptual innovations, are highlighted in the article.