Empire after Liberalism: The Transatlantic Right and Identitarian War

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER VIALS

American studies has developed excellent critiques of post-1945 imperial modes that are grounded in human rights and Enlightenment liberalism. But to fully gauge US violence in the twenty-first century, we also need to more closely consider antiliberal cultural logics. This essay traces an emergent mode of white nationalist militarism that it calls Identitarian war. It consists, on the one hand, of a formal ideology informed by Identitarian ethno-pluralism and Carl Schmitt, and, on the other, an openly violent white male “structure of feeling” embodied by the film and graphic novel 300, a key source text for the transatlantic far right.

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Luisa Frick

Against the background of the trend of Islamizing human rights on the one hand, as well as increasing skepticism about the compatibility of Islam and human rights on the other, I intend to analyze the potential of Islamic ethics to meet the requirements for vitalizing the idea of human rights. I will argue that the compatibility of Islam and human rights cannot be determined merely on the basis of comparing the specific content of the Islamic moral code(s) with the rights stipulated in the International Bill of Rights, but by scanning (different conceptions of) Islamic ethics for the two indispensable formal prerequisites of any human rights conception: the principle of universalism (i.e., normative equality) and individualism (i.e., the individual enjoyment of rights). In contrast to many contemporary (political) attempts to reconcile Islam and human rights due to urgent (global) societal needs, this contribution is solely committed to philosophical reasoning. Its guiding questions are “What are the conditions for deriving both universalism and individualism from Islamic ethics?” and “What axiological axioms have to be faded out or reorganized hierarchically in return?”


2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 1033-1044
Author(s):  
Sonia Ryang

Based on the articles in this “Global Asias” forum, this essay proposes that in order to build a meaningful bridge between Asian studies and Asian American studies, we must first face what needs to be critically overcome in Asian studies itself: persistent white male domination of the field, on the one hand, and historical role that the United States has played in Asia, on the other. One possibility is to adopt a transnational Asian studies approach, which advocates bringing Asian studies and Asian American studies together while also envisioning radical interdisciplinarity across Asian studies and African American studies, Latino/a studies, and Asian American studies. The key to pursuing such an approach would be to create a teaching and research environment of inclusion and collaboration.


2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Marie-Luisa Frick

Against the background of the trend of Islamizing human rights on the one hand, as well as increasing skepticism about the compatibility of Islam and human rights on the other, I intend to analyze the potential of Islamic ethics to meet the requirements for vitalizing the idea of human rights. I will argue that the compatibility of Islam and human rights cannot be determined merely on the basis of comparing the specific content of the Islamic moral code(s) with the rights stipulated in the International Bill of Rights, but by scanning (different conceptions of) Islamic ethics for the two indispensable formal prerequisites of any human rights conception: the principle of universalism (i.e., normative equality) and individualism (i.e., the individual enjoyment of rights). In contrast to many contemporary (political) attempts to reconcile Islam and human rights due to urgent (global) societal needs, this contribution is solely committed to philosophical reasoning. Its guiding questions are “What are the conditions for deriving both universalism and individualism from Islamic ethics?” and “What axiological axioms have to be faded out or reorganized hierarchically in return?”


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
INO AUGSBERG

AbstractCarl Schmitt is still astonishingly present in the legal discourse. Yet instead of indulging in the study of his explicit ‘lesson’ and its possible impact on contemporary legal problems, it might be worthwhile to survey the primary cause of his greatest fear. Following this perspective, the article analyses Schmitt's concept of the nomos, distinguishing it from the traditional normativist approach on the one hand and confronting it with a more recent understanding of law in terms of the network conception on the other. Thus Schmitt's view of the developing legal system in the twentieth century proves to be relevant to our current efforts to grasp newly emerging legal phenomena in the twenty-first century.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 487-494
Author(s):  
Daniel Mullis

In recent years, political and social conditions have changed dramatically. Many analyses help to capture these dynamics. However, they produce political pessimism: on the one hand there is the image of regression and on the other, a direct link is made between socio-economic decline and the rise of the far-right. To counter these aspects, this article argues that current political events are to be understood less as ‘regression’ but rather as a moment of movement and the return of deep political struggles. Referring to Jacques Ranciere’s political thought, the current conditions can be captured as the ‘end of post-democracy’. This approach changes the perspective on current social dynamics in a productive way. It allows for an emphasis on movement and the recognition of the windows of opportunity for emancipatory struggles.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization


Author(s):  
Dolores Morondo Taramundi

This chapter analyses arguments regarding conflicts of rights in the field of antidiscrimination law, which is a troublesome and less studied area of the growing literature on conflicts of rights. Through discussion of Ladele and McFarlane v. The United Kingdom, a case before the European Court of Human Rights, the chapter examines how the construction of this kind of controversy in terms of ‘competing rights’ or ‘conflicts of rights’ seems to produce paradoxical results. Assessment of these apparent difficulties leads the discussion in two different directions. On the one hand, some troubles come to light regarding the use of the conflict of rights frame itself in the field of antidiscrimination law, particularly in relation to the main technique (‘balancing of rights’) to solve them. On the other hand, some serious consequences of the conflict of rights frame on the development of the antidiscrimination theory of the ECtHR are unearthed.


Author(s):  
Geoffrey Bennington

Scatter 2 identifies politics as an object of perennial difficulty for philosophy—as recalcitrant to philosophical mastery as is philosophy’s traditional adversary, poetry. That difficulty makes it an attractive area of attention for any deconstructive approach to the tradition from which we inevitably inherit our language and our concepts. Scatter 2 pursues that deconstruction, often starting, and sometimes departing, from the work of Jacques Derrida, by attending to the concepts of sovereignty on the one hand, and democracy on the other. Part I follows the fate of a line from Book II of Homer’s Iliad, where Odysseus asserts that “the rule of many is no good thing, let there be one ruler, one king,” as it is quoted and misquoted, and progressively Christianized, by authors including Aristotle, Philo Judaeus, Suetonius, the early Church Fathers, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, Jean Bodin, Etienne de la Boétie, up to Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson, and even one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, before being discussed by Derrida himself. Part II begins again, as it were, with Plato and Aristotle, and tracks the concept of democracy as it regularly impacts and tends to undermine that sovereignist tradition, and, more especially in detailed readings of Hobbes and Rousseau, develops a notion of “proto-democracy” as a possible name for the scatter that underlies and drives the political as such, and that will always prevent politics from achieving its aim of bringing itself to an end.


Author(s):  
Hannah Smidt ◽  
Dominic Perera ◽  
Neil J. Mitchell ◽  
Kristin M. Bakke

Abstract International ‘naming and shaming’ campaigns rely on domestic civil society organizations (CSOs) for information on local human rights conditions. To stop this flow of information, some governments restrict CSOs, for example by limiting their access to funding. Do such restrictions reduce international naming and shaming campaigns that rely on information from domestic CSOs? This article argues that on the one hand, restrictions may reduce CSOs’ ability and motives to monitor local abuses. On the other hand, these organizations may mobilize against restrictions and find new ways of delivering information on human rights violations to international publics. Using a cross-national dataset and in-depth evidence from Egypt, the study finds that low numbers of restrictions trigger shaming by international non-governmental organizations. Yet once governments impose multiple types of restrictions, it becomes harder for CSOs to adapt, resulting in fewer international shaming campaigns.


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA HUNEEUS

AbstractThis article argues that human rights law – which mediates between claims about universal human nature, on the one hand, and hard-fought political battles, on the other – is in particular need of a richer exchange between jurisprudential approaches and social science theory and methods. Using the example of the Inter-American Human Rights System, the article calls for more human rights scholarship with a new realist sensibility. It demonstrates in what ways legal and social science scholarship on human rights law both stand to improve through sustained, thoughtful exchange.


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