Ideology and Post-structuralism after Bernard Stiegler

What is the objective of ideology critique today? A unique answer to this question can be found in the work of Bernard Stiegler: the object of ideology critique is stupidity. Stiegler’s work will be situated with regard to the study of ideology and post-structuralism, reframed as respective versions of a dichotomy between critical and neutral theories, to show how Stiegler’s conception of ideology encompasses both. How he thinks ideology ‘after’ post-structuralism will be explored through his reading of Deleuze and Guattari. First, by seeing how Stiegler capitalizes upon the theoretical developments of Deleuze and Guattari to rethink the notion of ideology. Second, by seeing how this understanding of ideology is folded back on their work in order to discern how post-structuralism can be critiqued by a theory of ideology that utilizes its views. From the perspective of his reading of desire in Deleuze, Guattari and Freud, Stiegler shows how ideology destroys the desire to rethink ideas, and enforces stupidity. Third, after Stiegler’s theoretical labour, we arrive at a notion of ideology dichotomized between the critical and the stupid, tasking critique with the invention of new forms of desire, and the struggle against stupidity.     

Questioning Blackmun's Thesis: Does Uniformity in Sentencing Entail Unfairness?

It is commonly believed among criminal justice scholars that sentencing guidelines increase uniformity in sentencing at the cost of fairness. They reason that guideline systems rarely take all relevant case characteristics into consideration, and as a result, impose sentences in particular cases that are biased relative to the ideal or best sentence. This bias effect is one of the primary theoretical and practical challenges faced by courts and sentencing commissions in the last 30 years, and provides one of the strongest arguments against mandatory sentencing guidelines. This article identifies a second effect of guidelines on fairness, which has not been sufficiently acknowledged by the scholarly literature: the variance effect increases the fairness of sentences directly by increasing uniformity. This article uses statistical simulation to examine the relationship between the variance effect and the bias effect. The results provide substantial evidence that the variance effect is comparatively large, and that it may often outweigh the negative effects of bias. Under these conditions, sentencing guidelines will both increase uniformity and increase fairness.     

BROTHERHOOD

In April 2011 a group of young male Australian Defence Force Academy Cadets conspired to prey upon an unsuspecting female colleague. Their plan was to broadcast one of their mates having consensual sex with an unsuspecting female cadet colleague for their viewing pleasure and fratriarchal bonding. The incident generated a strong and heated public debate about military culture and the ways soldiers behave. But it also marked a long end enduring history of such scandals that have developed into a reputation for the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) as obdurate and resistant to reform. Indeed, the ADF has consistently neutralised their responsibility for such practices by naming bad behaviour as merely the practices of a few bad apples. This paper unpacks the technologies of camouflage that the ADF and its military subjects' use to justify the role and place of militarism in contemporary Australian cultural relations. The paper focuses on the ideal of brotherhood and the way in which the Skype men, and the ADF as an institution, engage in forms of homosociality to naturalise the inherently violent disposition of the military. The practices and forms of fratriarchal bonding are implicated in the desire to generate and sustain a totalising masculinist economy that seeks wholeness and certainty at the expense of difference and otherness. These concerns are explored through the investigation of the sexual predation of six cadets and the manner in which the ADF accounts for its cultural practices.     

Strangled at birth: the One Nation ideology of Theresa May

ABSTRACT

Contemporary and retrospective evaluation of Theresa May’s premiership inevitably focuses on the division, drift and indecision which characterized it. However, this article argues that although such narratives have considerable validity, they miss an important aspect of the May ‘project’, namely, its attempt to shift the contemporary Conservative Party’s ideology in a ‘One Nation’ direction in rhetoric if not necessarily in deed. The article begins with a conceptual and historical analysis of One Nation Conservatism and then places May within this tradition, principally through consideration of key statements she made as Prime Minister. It, therefore, adds an original perspective both on May’s government and on the ideological analysis of One Nation Conservatism, building on the existing literature.     

Labour and Antisemitism: a Crisis Misunderstood

In this article, we argue that Labour’s antisemitism crisis has been misunderstood. We suggest that a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of antisemitism offers a way forward. There are three elements to this claim. First, by drawing on existing data on attitudes towards Jews, we criticise the widespread focus on individual ‘antisemites’, rather than on the broader problem of antisemitism. In turn, we conceive of antisemitism not as a virus or poison, as in so many formulations, but rather, as a reservoir of readily available images and ideas that subsist in our political culture. Second, following on from this understanding, we offer five ways forward. Finally, we set this analysis in the context of a historical parting of the ways between anti-racism and opposition to antisemitism. An anti-racism defined solely by conceptions of whiteness and power, we argue, has proven unable to fully acknowledge and account for anti-Jewish racism.