The secular contract: sovereignty,secularism and law in Australia

What does it mean to say that a nation-state is secular? Secular law typically begins when a state has no religious competitor for authority. For this reason, it can be said that the Australian state is secular because its authority is derived from its own laws. What makes Australian law sovereign, the highest authority within the state, is its secularity. However, given Australia's colonial heritage, it is not just the absence of religious authority, such as a state religion, that gives the state its secularity. The law's foundations in colonial violence and the extinguishment of Indigenous sovereignty as a competing authority are also a crucial way in which secular Australian law can continue to operate as the sovereign authority within the state. Using the work of Charles W. Mills, I will critically interrogate how legal and political characterisations of the law as secular work to disavow the state's racialised foundations in colonial violence in the form of a “secular contract”. In developing this notion of a “secular contract” I hope to show that secularism be must re-thought of as not simply the operation of law without religion, but also, as complicit with the ways indigenous sovereignties in (post)colonial states are negated.     

Constructing a decolonized world city for consumption: discourses on Hong Kong Disneyland and their implications

The paper argues that, under the globalized economy, state power is far from diminishing. I study how the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government officials in 1999 developed “competition-development” discourse and “disappearing-world-city” discourse to persuade the public to approve the unequal and non-transparent Hong Kong–Disney deal for setting up the Hong Kong Disneyland (HKDL). I also examine how newspaper reports have circulated and have reinforced these two pairs of political discourses in wider popular discourse. I further reveal, in the post-colonial context of HongKong, how the HKDL project functions to accomplish decolonization tasks and to reshape Hong Kong as a consumption-based tourist spot instead of a citizen-based participatory community.     

Discourses of popular politics,war and authenticity in Turkish pop music

Turkey and the United States (US) have had a close mutually beneficial political and military relationship since the end of World War Two. However, this relationship came under pressure when the US government and Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) tried to cooperate closely in the 2003 military invasion of Iraq. AKP's leadership failed to persuade Turkey's parliament to accept the deployment of US troops and equipment in Turkey partially due to public opinion. Despite Turkish media and its government being intertwined to the extent where subversive discourses are all but silenced, some popular music videos were able to articulate discourses which questioned AKP's military policies. This paper analyses lyrics, visuals and sounds of one of these songs to look at the way war and political issues become articulated through a form of simplified popular politics, despite being presented as serious and authentic by a number of key signifiers across the different modes. A number of scholars have addressed the issue of subversion in music both as actual political challenge and as popular counter culture. This case study is used to assess subversion in music in these terms in order to consider its likely place in political debate in Turkey.     

The 'Bad Mother' in Media and Legal Texts

Mothers who kill or injure their children highlight crucial disjunctions between the status ‘mother’ and the practices and expectations of mothering. Failures of ‘mothering’ reconstruct the meaning of the maternal, while being themselves given meaning by it. Violent mothers may be pathologised and excused, demonised and condemned, but the explanatory narratives that are used draw centrally on notions of the maternal and, more broadly, the feminine. These discourses are reproduced in legal proceedings and sentences, and in the media reports of these proceedings. This paper will analyse the construction of the bad mother in legal proceedings in one prominent recent Victorian case, and in the print media reports of this case.     

From neoliberalism to neocommunitarianism: opposing justifications in a dispute over privatized electricity infrastructure

It is becoming increasingly clear that neoliberal ideological efforts to depoliticize politics have come to incorporate arguments once associated with radical communitarian, localist and existential critiques of capitalism. This article contributes to cross-disciplinary discussion of how and on what terms this process of assimilation has taken place. It first describes the rise of neocommunitarian politics and policy-making in the privatized electricity system of a “first-mover” neoliberal state, Australia. It then examines in detail a dispute over a proposed upgrade to a piece of electricity system infrastructure in a formerly industrial, working-class and immigrant, now post-industrial, bourgeois-bohemian and gentrified suburb of inner-Melbourne, Victoria. The study reveals a shift over time in the strategy of the protest group convened to resist the proposed upgrade. Originally using NIMBY-like arguments to oppose the upgrade, the group gradually transformed its strategy into a more general critique of privatization and marketization, and of the use of neocommunitarianism by state and market interests to promote economic growth. Generalizing from this case study, we suggest that such a transformation in protest strategy signals the possibility of a new culture of awareness that neocommunitarianism is little more than a response by states and markets to public rejection of free-market reforms. Moreover, the transformation of the protesters' strategy heralds the possibility of a renewal in critical thought and practice, one that is repoliticizing politics by challenging the marketizing and privatizing of public goods.     

The Priority of Receptivity to Creativity (Or: I trusted you with the idea of me and you lost it)

Abstract

In this paper I address what Arendt called the “problem of the new”, or, as Castoriadis put it, the problem of how to make the new “the object of our praxis”. I argue that the problem of the new requires thinking about receptivity in a new way, making it normatively and epistemically prior to creativity. I illuminate my new approach to receptivity through detailed engagement with Russell Hoban’s brilliant novel, The Medusa Frequency     

论《庄子·人间世》中的喻辞

“医门多疾”在《人间世》中作为一个“喻辞”,形象地表达出颜回急于入世救民的心情.“医门多疾”蕴含政治理性、入世精神等方面的思想内容,属于《庄子》散文“三言”中的“重言”.进一步而言,“医门多疾”可视为一个“隐喻”,是理解《人间世》乃至庄子哲学的一个线索.它所包含的思想观念、精神品格最终在庄子哲学中被一扫而空.     

福柯与大数据时代的政治

人们对于与大数据、数据挖掘相关的政治问题的关注不应仅停留在隐私权的保护、商业规范的制订等方面。通过比较福柯所论述的规训时代与大数据时代的异同,可以发现大数据创造了以抽象的深层次身心机制为特征的新权力客体。统治者能够借助非系统化的海量信息对社会各个职能领域进行细节化的监控和管理。这种统治模式虽然可能造成民主危机和责任危机,却也蕴含着向有利方向变革的可能。     

毛泽东民主政治思想及其现实启示

毛泽东民主政治思想主要包括人民民主专政思想、党内民主思想和民主执政思想。这一思想的现实启示就在于：建设中国特色社会主义民主政治必须从我国的基本国情出发,防止“西化”;必须加强民主的制度化和法制化;必须以党内民主推动人民民主。     

论纯洁性建设视野下民主革命时期党的作风问题

理论与实际相结合是党的思想建设最重要的作风,坚持马克思主义中国化成为党优良思想作风的核心问题。思想作风不正,路线方针政策就会发生错误,革命必然遭受损失,党的纯洁性也就受到影响。密切联系人民群众是党的工作实践表现出的优良作风,领导中国革命的实践中,坚持群众路线成为党维护纯洁性的重要内容。加强和改进党的作风建设,核心问题是保持党同人民群众的血肉联系。发扬艰苦奋斗精神是干部和党员保持优良作风的要求,生活作风虽然是个人问题,但它对党的影响则不可小窥,生活作风对党的纯洁性维护具有重要意义。民主革命时期党开展作风建设留下的思想财富值得认真汲取,在新的历史条件下推进党的建设,必须高度重视党的作风纯洁问题。