Thinking politically about crisis: A pragmatist perspective
| Author | Brian Milstein |
| Published date | 01 April 2015 |
| Date | 01 April 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885114546138 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2015, Vol. 14(2) 141–160
!The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885114546138
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Article
Thinking politically about
crisis: A pragmatist
perspective
Brian Milstein
Colle
`ge d’e
´tudes mondiales, Fondation Maison des sciences
de l’homme, Paris, France
Abstract
‘‘Crisis’’ is a key concept in our political lexicon. Since the beginning of the modern age,
it has arguably been, as much as anything, the experience of crisis that has calibrated the
aims of both politics and political theory. But as central as crisis experiences have been
for the shaping of our political imaginary, the concept itself has proven difficult to
incorporate into the political theory enterprise. In this article, I argue that we can
think politically about crisis by taking up a ‘‘pragmatist’’ perspective that focuses on
how we deploy crisis as a conceptual tool for guiding judgments and coordinating
actions. I argue that crisis is a fundamentally reflexive concept that bridges our traditional
distinctions between objective phenomena and normative experience, and whose very
usage implies the active participation of those involved in it. Only by examining these cru-
cial aspects of the crisis concept can we begin to grasp its normative political content, as
well as how it may be deployed in the service of political action and social change.
Keywords
Crisis, pragmatism, community, emancipation, reflexivity, modernity
‘‘Crisis’’ is a prominent feature of our social and political reality. However, the
term ‘‘crisis,’’ pervasive as it is in discussions about politics, society, and history, is
rarely defined or grappled with explicitly. As the conceptual historian Reinhart
Koselleck once observed, ‘‘From the nineteenth century on, there has been an
enormous quantitative expansion in the variety of meanings attached to the con-
cept of crisis, but few corresponding gains in either clarity or precision.’’
1
Nearly a
half-century after Koselleck made this statement, very little has changed. We talk
of particular crises; we talk of things that are alleged to be ‘‘in crisis,’’ but there is
Corresponding author:
Brian Milstein, Colle
`ge d’e
´tudes mondiales, Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, 190 avenue de France,
CS 71345, 75648 – Paris cedex 13, France.
Email: brian.m.milstein@gmail.com
comparatively little discussion about ‘‘crisis’’ as such. This is especially the case in
political theory, where the bulk of normative energies tend to be expended on
questions relating to ideal conditions in an otherwise stable society. Yet however
else we might think to characterize crisis—be it as a time of radical disruption, a
moment of epochal transition, the detonation of systemic societal contradictions,
or a state of emergency, and be it of the state, the economy, the environment, or the
international sphere—a crisis is always in the last instance a political phenomenon.
My purpose here is to rethink the concept of crisis as a concept of political
theory. More specifically, I am interested in how the ‘‘grammar’’ of crisis might
inform the way we think about political action and social change. In doing so,
I seek to broach a number of foundational questions about the nature of the
concept of crisis and the place it occupies in our political repertoire: What are
we doing when we say there is a crisis? What function does the concept serve?
What assumptions are we putting into play when we use the term crisis?
Since the beginning of the modern age, crisis experiences have played a key role
in calibrating the aims of politics and the central questions of political theory. The
primary point of reference for modern political thought—the sovereign state—was
forged out of the manifold political crises of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. Jon Elster observes that ‘‘new constitutions almost always are written in the
wake of a crisis or exceptional circumstance of some sort.’’
2
Many of our social
welfare institutions came into being in the wake of recurrent economic crises, and it
is also out of these same experiences that the idea of socioeconomic justice has
found its way into the mainstream of contemporary political thought. Many of our
most important international institutions, as well as the bulk of international
humanitarian law, were forged out of experiences of international and humanitar-
ian crisis, and so, too, have our current debates about human rights and inter-
national or global justice.
At the same time, crises are not exactly phenomena we welcome. They wreak
havoc on society, destroying lives and livelihoods, and they are just as likely to
leave society in a worse state instead of a better one. Moreover, crises harbor
political dangers as well as opportunities, and the opportunities they do present
may just as well be opportunities for exploitation by elites as for emancipatory
movement by the masses. It is no surprise that much of the recent literature dealing
with crises, particularly in the realm of legal and constitutional scholarship after
9/11, has put its emphasis on precisely this potential for exploitation.
3
But, as I will
argue in what follows, even this potential for elites or rulers to manipulate crises is
parasitic on a more fundamental set of functions that the concept of crisis fulfills in
the modern social imaginary.
Philosophies of history, especially those influenced by the Hegelian and Marxist
traditions, often identify crisis not only with disruption and cataclysm but with
opportunities for transformation or even transcendence: crises can be indicative of
deeper pathologies in the structure of society, and they can bring into the open
power relations or conflicts that remained otherwise hidden.
4
To be sure, over-
simplified associations of crisis with revolutionary praxis have been rightly criti-
cized on both philosophical and empirical grounds as flawed, naı
¨ve, and even
142 European Journal of Political Theory 14(2)
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