II: Political Thinkers and Ideas/Penseurs et Idées Politiques
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002083451606600402 |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
445
II
POLITICAL THINKERS AND IDEAS
PENSEURS ET IDÉES POLITIQUES
66.4248 “ADONIS” — Contre l’essentialisme. La notion de pro-
gress dans la conception islamique de l’homme et du
monde (Against essentialism: the notion of progress in
the Islamic conception of man and the world). Commen-
taire 153, Spring 2016 : 59-64.
Sartre’s idea about the relationship between essence and existence,
that “existence precedes essence”, states the exact opposite of the
Islamic conception, according to which essence precedes existence
since human essence comes from God. Islam is real human nature and
in this sense it is clear that Islam is an essentialism. This might explain
why, in the Islamic conception, the other or the non-Muslim, has a
choice between two identities: he is unbelieving and has to be rejected
or killed; he lives under the authority of the Islamic regime and, in this
case, has to pay a tax. The Islamic vision of progress is to Islamize the
world and Islam is a religion that is indestructibly linked to power.
66.4249 COWEN, Nick — Millian liberalism and extreme pornog-
raphy. American Journal of Political Science 60(2), Apr.
2016 : 509-520.
How sexuality should be regulated in a liberal political community is an
important, controversial theoretical and empirical question — as shown
by the recent criminalization of possession of some adult pornography
in the UK. Supporters of criminalization argue that J.S. Mill, often con-
sidered a staunch opponent of censorship, would support prohibition
due to his feminist commitments. I argue that this account underesti-
mates the strengths of the Millian account of private conduct and free
expression, and the consistency of Millian anticensorship with feminist
values. A Millian contextual defense of liberty, however, suggests
several other policy approaches to addressing the harms of pornogra-
phy. [R]
66.4250 DEAN, Jodi — Enclosing the subject. Political Theory
44(3), June 2016 : 363-393.
This paper draws from contemporary psychoanalytic theory as well as
19th-c. crowd theory to critique L. Althusser’s account of the ideological
interpellation of the subject. I argue that rather than ideo logy interpellat-
ing the individual as a subject, bourgeois ideology interpellates the
subject as an individual. By “bourgeois ideology” I mean the loose set of
ideas associated with European modernity, an instrumental concept of
reason, and the capitalist mode of production. The advantage of revers-
ing the Althusserian account is that the subject is not pre-constrained to
the individual form, a form that is itself always already as failing and
impossible as it is assumed and demanded. The individual is thus a
form of capture. Rather th an natural or given, the individual form en-
closes into a singular bounded body collective bodies, ideas, affects,
desires, and drives. [R, abr.]
66.4251 Del LUCCHESE, Filippo — Spinoza and constituent
power. Contemporary Political Theory 15(2), May 2016 :
182-204.
Modern theories of constituent power agree on its paradoxical essence:
a power that comes before the law and founds the law is at the same
time a power that, once the juridical sphere is established, has to be
obliterated by the law. Spinoza’s ontology has been recognized as one
of the early modern sources of constituent power, yet he argues for a
strict equivalence between law and power. This article argues that by
reading Spino za’s political theory through the lens of a radical imma-
nence between ontology and history, we can understand him as a
source for a theory of constituent power. Through this immanence,
Spinoza’s thought offers a solution to the paradox of constituent power
and enriches contemporary discussions on the origin of juridical sphere
and the relationship between politics and law. [R, abr.]
66.4252 FLORES D’ARCAIS, Paolo — Terrorismo islamico, tabù e
wishful thinking (Islamic terrorism, taboo and wishful
thinking). Micromega 2015(8) : 3-13.
If the West really wanted to attack the Islamic State “without mercy”,
following F. Hollande’s words, it should give the greatest possible
support to the Kurd guerrillas that are already fighting against it, and
suppress every contact with the theocratic states that finance it and
supply it with arms. This would however imply giving serious considera-
tion to the values known as liberté, égalité and fraternité. Real democ-
racies claim to be founded on these principles, but it is manifest that
they betray them every day. [R, transl.]
66.4253 FORTIER, Jeremy — Nietzsche's political engagements:
on the relationship between philosophy and politics in
The Wanderer and his Shadow. Review of Politics 78(2),
Spring 2016 : 201-225.
In Nietzsche's early and late writings, he appears as an anti-modern,
anti-liberal political revolutionary, championing the world-transformative
characters of (first) Richard Wagner and (later) Zarathustra. By contrast,
in the writings of his “middle period", Nietzsche struck up a rapproche-
ment with the modern world, and developed the ideal of a “free spirit".
Among those writings, The Wanderer and His Shadow sheds the most
revealing light on the free spirit ideal. It shows that, even as Nietzsche
sought to avoid some of the hazards associated with his more revol u-
tionary writings, he continued to advocate a sharply critical engagement
with political and cultural life. And it reveals what Nietzsche understood
to be most c hallenging or problematic about the free spirit ideal — and,
thereby, what later moved him away from it. [R]
66.4254 HALLENBROOK, Christopher R. — Leviathan no more:
the right of nature and the limits of sovereignty in
Hobbes. Review of Politics 78(2), Spring 2016 : 177-200.
This article challenges the prevailing interpretations of Hobbes's thought
as providing only minimal protection for the natural right of individuals in
political society. Natural right requires the protection of not just the
subjects' lives, but their ability to live commodiously, and as a result, the
protection that natural right receives in political society places substan-
tive constraints on the actions of the sovereign. When those entrusted
with sovereign power overstep this constraint, they cease to be sover-
eign and the former subjects are returned to the state of nature to seek
protection as each judges fit. I develop the substance of commodious
living more thoroughly than similar analyses and demonstrate that this
understanding is not limited to Leviathan but can be found in Hobbes's
earlier political work as well. [R]
66.4255 HONIG, Bonnie — What kind of thing is land? Hannah
Arendt’s object relations, or the Jewish unconscious of
Arendt’s most “Greek” text. Political Theory 44(3), June
2016 : 307-336.
Informed by D.W. Winnicott’s object relations theory, and focused on
the role o f Things in constitutin g the Arendtian world, this essay exam-
ines Hannah Arendt’s treatment in The Human Condition of two liminal
examples, cultivated land and poetry, that hover on the borders of
Labor, Work, and/or Action. Cultivated land is assigned to Labor be-
cause land, once left uncultivated, returns to nature, Arendt says. But
(un)cultivated land also has a textualized form. What possibilities of
political thought or action might have been opened had she done so?
Working through these questions with particular reference to colonial
cartography (in which uncultivated land, deemed “fallow", has a particu-
larly political resonance), and reading Kafka’s The Castle alongside B.
Friel’s Translations, this essay explores practices of participatory map-
ping and land sabbatical that might make of land a “Thing” in Arendt’s
sense. [R, abr.]
66.4256 INCE, Onur Ulas — Bringing the economy back in: Han-
nah Arendt, Karl M arx, and the politics of capitalism.
Journal of Politics 78(2), Apr. 2016 : 411-426.
This article [examines] how to construct modern economic relations as
an object of political theorizing by placing Hannah Arendt’s and Karl
Marx’s writings in critical conversation. I contend that the political aspect
of capitalism comes into sharpest relief less in relations of economic
exploitation than in moments of expropriation that produce and repro-
duce the conditions of capitalist accumulation. To develop a theoretical
handle on expropriation and thereby on the politics of capitalism, I
syncretically draw on Marxian and Arendtian concepts by first examining
expropriation through the Marxian analytic of “primitive accumulation of
capital” and second delineating the political agency behind primitive
accumulation through the Arendtian notion of “power”. I substantiate
these connections around colonial histories of primitive accumulation
wherein expropriation emerges as a terrain of political contestation. [R,
abr.]
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