Fanon

Abstract

I argue that Franz Fanon can usefully be situated in the tradition of German Idealism in the sense that he takes from Kant and especially Hegel the conception of agency as something to be achieved through struggle for the ideal of humanity as self-determining. Fanon sees the suffering cased by colonial rule in Africa and elsewhere as deriving from the systematic deprivation of agency by the colonial power. Using the work of Hegel, Fanon seeks to reconstruct the emancipatory project of the black man in close analogy to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. The violence which Fanon sees as unavoidable in such a struggle is not violence for the sake of violence but, following Hegel, the violence that constitutes the subject in the first place.     

The art and politics of imagination: remembering mass violence against women

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the role of artistic memory in processes of redressing political violence and historical injustices. Combining philosophical reflection, insights from memory studies and examples of artistic practices, it focuses on how memory and imagination coalesce in problematising mass violence against women and resisting its ‘official’ oblivion. The argument is that artistic memory work can foster collective memories of the painful past in ways that overcome both individual and national representations. To this end, this paper aims to explore various contemporary art productions as new models of memorialization, which deal with the representation of violence against women in armed conflicts and under political repression. The academic literature on the role of art in processes of dealing with the past tends to examine literature, film, theatre, painting and other more traditional artistic media of commemorating the victims of mass violence. In contrast, this paper explores the political potentialities of new artistic models of memorialization, namely participatory and collaborative artistic practices. Unlike the traditional media, they can commemorate victims performatively and collaboratively, simultaneously catalysing transnational solidarity and new forms of politics ‘from below.’     

Violence and Silencing: A Philosophical Investigation of Apartheid

Abstract

With reference to examples of violence during Apartheid, I argue that the socio-political contexts in which violence occurs significantly shape agents' ideas about and responses to violence. As such, philosophers can only make sense of why perpetrators and bystanders alike may have judged violent acts morally justifiable or failed to challenge instances of violence against the backdrop of the particular characteristics of the socio-political context in which it occurs.     

Urban Intersections: Religion and Violence in Belfast

Abstract

Addressing the intersections of religion and violence in ‘post conflict’ Belfast, this paper focuses on the nexus between religion, violence and memory. It distinguishes between the churches (institutionalised religion) embedded in the physical and social environment of the city, and popular religion that recurs in the contexts of parades, protests and sectarian conflict. Wider debates on the relationships between religion, violence and politics are integrated with recent empirical data. We argue that while asymmetries between Protestantism and Catholicism continue to inform politics and vice versa, there are also signs of change in the religious politics of Belfast and in how they accommodate violence.     

Can there be Costless War? Violent Exposures and (In)Vulnerable Selves in Benjamin Percy's "Refresh,Refresh"

Abstract

The technological transformation of the conduct of war, exemplified by the American employment of drones in Afghanistan and in Iraq, calls for a critical reflection about the fantasies that underpin, and are in turn animated by, the robotic revolution of the military. At play here is a fantasy of a "costless war" or a "sterile war", that is such act of military state violence against the other that is inconsequential for the self. In other words, the seductive appeal of the "costless war" fantasy rests on the desire to develop a self that is invulnerable in the face of violence. Importantly, it is a desire explicitly projected towards a particular American future (of an imagined warfare, or of a super-power status), but also one that is connected to a lacking critical reflection about the intersubjective aspects of violence in the debates about America's post-9/11 military involvements. This article reflects critically about the fantasy of the "costless war" and about its underpinning politics of invulnerability from a perhaps unlikely angle of literature. In a close reading of a short story by Benjamin Percy called "Refresh, Refresh" (2008), it explores its narrative insights into how acts of violence, which are undertaken far from home, inevitably return to affect and damage, perhaps beyond repair, the subject at home. Importantly, the return of violence in Percy's story occurs within the domain of the everyday and the mundane, not of the exceptional, and testifies to the despair experienced by young males "abandoned' by their military fathers. My interpretation draws also on theoretical explorations of the connection between violence, intersubjectivity and vulnerability, based on the ideas of Emmanuel Levinas on the subject's ethical captivity by the suffering of the other, and on Judith Butler's recent "uses" of the Levinasian ethical project in her writing about the post-9/11 America.     

Intersectional citizenship,violence, and lesbian resistance in South Africa

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature on intersectionality and citizenship, with scholars positing a need to analyze multiple identities simultaneously in order to understand both the legal incorporation and embodied experience of citizenship for marginalized groups. Building upon this central insight, I contribute to this literature by articulating the components of an intersectional citizenship framework to better understand the way multiple identities mediate citizenship, with particular reference to black lesbians in South Africa. Based on in-depth interviews with eighteen members of the black lesbian organization Free Gender, in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, I argue that Free Gender’s organizational goals can usefully be understood as asserting the commensurability of the identity “black lesbian” with “community member,” “African,” and “woman.” In applying a theoretical framework of intersectional citizenship to South Africa, it becomes clear that Free Gender’s activism reveals differential access to identities necessary to be seen as citizens entitled to rights. More than just extending juridical citizenship, black lesbians must have socially and politically legitimate access to multiple identity categories simultaneously in order to live free of violence.     

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.     

Interpretation after Kant

Abstract

After tracing the rise in interest in the phenomenon of interpretation to events in the early post-Kantian period, I argue that this development is highly relevant to understanding contemporary philosophy's methodological status and its relation to fields such as science and literature. I argue that much of recent philosophy is best understood in terms of an "interpretive turn" that has now provided philosophy with a modest but valuable and distinctive role. I illustrate the procedure of philosophy in this key by critically appropriating ideas about interpretation advanced by Harold Bloom and Richard Rorty, and by using hints about the role of history that arise from discussions of Kant's notion of genius.     

A feminist challenge to the gendered politics of the public/private divide: on due diligence,domestic violence,and citizenship

This article examines the feminist appropriation of the legal principle of due diligence to politicize acts of violence at the hands of private actors within the private sphere. This move expanded traditional notions of state responsibility for violence against women under international human rights law. Using frame analysis, we focus on the institutionalization of this feminist understanding of due diligence through its discursive incorporation in international human rights policy documents and its mobilization in cases of domestic violence litigated within the UN and the Inter-American and European human rights systems. Through this discursive framing work and its institutionalization, feminists have challenged the gendered politics of the public/private divide to change the terms on which differently positioned women can engage with the state and global governance institutions. We argue that this change can potentially reconfigure women's state-bounded and transnational citizenship. The implications of due diligence as a political and sociological concept require more careful consideration by citizenship and human rights scholars.     

Election type and the logic of pre-election violence: Evidence from Zimbabwe

Election violence is often conceptualized as a form of coercive campaigning, but the literature has not fully explored how electoral institutions shape incentives for competition and violence. We argue that the logic of subnational electoral competition – and with it incentives for violence – differs in presidential and legislative elections. In presidential elections, national-level considerations dominate incentives for violence. Presidential elections are usually decided by winning a majority of votes in a single, national district, incentivizing parties to demobilize voters with violence in strongholds. In contrast, election violence is subject to district-level incentives in legislative elections. District-level incentives imply that parties focus on winning the majority of districts, and therefore center violent campaigning on the most competitive districts. We test our argument with georeferenced, constituency-level data from Zimbabwe, a case that fits our scope conditions of holding competitive elections, violence by the incumbent, and majoritarian electoral rule. We find that most violence takes place in strongholds in presidential elections, especially in opposition strongholds. In contrast, competitive constituencies are targeted in legislative contests.     

Collective and Private Resources and the Inequalities of Non-violent Political Protest in European Countries

Abstract

Political participation is deemed to be a fundamental component of democratic regimes. The literature on political participation has shown that some social groups of citizens tend to be less involved in politics than other social groups, and the consequence is that the interests of these specific groups of less involved citizens are underrepresented in the political process. Given the increasing popularity of non-violent protest in contemporary democracies, it is important to understand whether political inequalities are present in this form of political engagement. In this article, we argue that non-violent protest may present inequalities, that examining the consequences of public social spending can help in understanding the cross-national differences in the levels of non-violent political protest, and that political inequalities in non-violent protest may vary according to public social spending. We test our argument using sources that include the European Values Study (1980–2009), multilevel models, and contextual data provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.     

On Public Protest,Violence, and Street Gangs

This article elaborates upon the authors’ 2017 op-ed, “To deal with Antifa, designate it a street gang,” published in The Wall Street Journal. Following recent calls to declare Antifa, a loosely-organized collective of anti-fascists, a domestic terrorist organization, we argue for the categorization of the group as a street gang instead. We advocate for better understanding of groups and group processes and review existing gang definitions, specifically the California penal code and the consensus Eurogang definition. We find that groups within antifa meet gang criteria because they have a collective identity and engage in illegal violent activity. Classification of antifa as a street gang is preferable to domestic terrorism, we argue, because it permits the deployment of evidence-based violence prevention and intervention strategies beyond the current emphasis on crowd control. This article thus contributes to a burgeoning literature that examines the overlap between gangs and other social groups, with implications for broader criminological research and practice.     

“The River Told Me”: Rethinking Intersectionality from the World of Berta Cáceres

ABSTRACT

Inspired by the spiritual and political journey of Berta Cáceres (1973-2016), a fierce Lenca woman leader from Honduras who died in defense of sacred indigenous rivers, the essay aims to rethink the frame of intersectionality that is axiomatic in feminist theorizing and activism. Against the backdrop of the January 2017 Women’s March in the USA, I interrogate inclusionary accounts that equate intersectionality with a pre-existing unity among women that leaves power differentials intact. I recover the intersection as an index of invisibility and violence by drawing on the intimate connections that Berta foregrounded between multiple structures of domination. However, I argue that attending to the relational histories and geographies of patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism, is insufficient for imagining more just futures that are hospitable to subaltern horizons. Feminist praxis must also interrogate the Western liberal conceptions of agency and human-nature relations that undergird its intersectional analysis. Through an exploration of the indigenous cosmovisions and transnational grassroots solidarity that coalesce under Berta’s name, I point to the importance of cultivating a disposition to listening to incommensurable worlds where rivers tell stories and call upon us. This is an ecofeminist vision capable of rooting intersectional analysis within decolonizing relations and alternatives.     

Polytheism,Monotheism and Public Space: Between Levinas and Arendt

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the Levinasian opposition between the violence of the production of identity and self-presence and its undermining in a charitable disburdening of the self for the sake of the monotheistic ethical other, is unable to provide all the resources required for a politically motivated critique of the present. As a critique of Levinas' almost Manichean opposition between identity and difference, I argue, by appealing to the Arendtian model of public space, that Levinas underestimates our capacity to build and open up societal spaces within which a non-violent polytheistic political difference can proliferate. The identity of the built and legislated can constitute a non-violent stage upon which discursive political differences are played out.     

Gendered discipline,gendered space: an ethnographic approach to gendered violence in India

ABSTRACT

Why are Indian women’s lives at fatal risk in the public sphere, when Indian democracy is inclusive in terms of gender? Addressing this question reveals a methodological and theoretical blind spot in political science scholarship – a blind spot which results in the reproduction and legitimization of gender-blindness. To understand how and why political science reproduces and legitimizes gender-blindness I reflect on a particularly horrific case of sexual and gender-based violence, the 2012 Delhi gang rape. This analysis is significant because it provides insight into the difficulty of understanding gendered violence in political science and achieving gender equality within democratic societies.     

Murder on the Tokyo Subway: Nerve Centres,Religion and Violence

Abstract

The 1995 Tokyo subway attack by the Japanese religious movement Aum Shinrikyō represents one of the most dramatic examples of violence by a religious movement in modern times. Initially urban-based but with a rural communal presence, Aum believed that it had a mission to transform the world and fight in an imminent apocalyptic war between good and evil, and it engaged in numerous conflicts with the secular world it despised. While emphasising the significance of religious visions in Aum's activities this article examines the degree to which Aum's associations with the city of Tokyo also featured as an element in its violence.     

Becoming Who We Are: Democracy and the Political Problem of Hope

Abstract

In this article I argue that hope is rightly numbered by Hesiod among the evils, as hope cannot be separated from an awareness of the inadequacy of one's current state. Political hope for democrats in particular is tied to the awareness that we have not yet realized ourselves, that, to paraphrase Pindar, we have not yet become who we are. I argue that, although Rorty comes close to articulating this in his book Achieving Our Country, his emphasis on pride ultimately obscures more than it reveals. I conclude that Thoreau's anguished reflection in Walden on the failures of his fellow citizens is a better place to look for instruction on the question of political hope.     

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.     

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.