Illiberalism and the Exception in George Eliot's Early Writing

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-407
Author(s):  
Neal Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Victorian Novel ◽  
First Century ◽  
Early Writing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Adam Bede ◽  
Mill On The Floss ◽  
The Public Sphere

Over the past two decades, studies of the Victorian novel have been enriched significantly by a growing body of scholarship looking to the literature and letters of the period to affirm for the twenty-first century the theoretical and practical value of liberal conceptualizations of critical detachment and communicative decision-making procedures. In the process, the works of George Eliot (1819–1880) have come to be understood not only as modeling forms of critical detachment and rational decision-making but also as important contributors to what Amanda Anderson has identified as “the emergence of the [Habermasian] public sphere in Enlightenment Europe, a historical condition in which critique, argument, and debate inform developing political practices and institutions,” which “helped to consolidate … the legitimating force of public opinion and the rule of law, the successor to now delegitimated forms of absolute sovereignty.” However, I will argue here that Eliot's early writing in particular demonstrates a distinct lack of faith in the power of liberalism and its political procedures and that Eliot's early work in fact exposes the illiberal tendencies embedded in these procedures. Rather than asserting the authority of the public sphere, Eliot's important early novelsAdam Bede(1859) andThe Mill on the Floss(1860) consistently look beyond themselves, so to speak, to a providential authority that exceeds the tenets of realism in their efforts to resolve conflict and provide closure to the novels. For each novel, aesthetic coherence is secured not through “critique, argument, and debate” but through recourse to metaphysics and to extrasocial and/or extraprocedural decisions. In the following pages I align this phenomenon in Eliot's early writing with the controversial German legal scholar Carl Schmitt's concept of the exception in order to argue that, by appealing to the logic of providence to resolve their most intractable legal and ethical problems, these early novels in fact demonstrate Eliot's awareness of the practical limitations of proceduralism as a legitimate decision-making instrument.

Chick Noir: Surveilling Femininity and the Affects of Loss in Gone Girl

Noir Affect ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 197-221
Author(s):  
Pamela Thoma
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Young Women ◽  
First Century ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Surveillance Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site

This chapter explores a surprising shift that has occurred in postfeminist popular culture and more specifically “chick culture” in the wake of the global economic crisis. Chick noir forms itself in opposition to those two standbys of twenty-first-century U.S culture, chick lit and the chick flick. If these latter genres perform a humorous remodelling of romance as the “happy object” around which young women should orient self-making or self-improvement projects for the promise of a good life and future feelings of happiness, chick noir has emerged across popular culture to chronicle widespread economic hardship and social decline under neoliberalism. Chick noir narratives are driven by negative affect and deal in the dark side of relationships, domesticity, and the public sphere for women. The chapter takes Gone Girl as its focus. This chapter pays particular attention to ways in which both texts shine a light on modern surveillance culture to explore the textual production of empathy and coercion and the ways in which these texts imagine femininity as a site of surveillance. What emerges is a form of noir affect that dramatizes the absolute lack of a stable or noncontradictory space for the contemporary female subject.

scholarly journals Blogging as Popular History Making, Blogs as Public History: The Singapore Case Study

2007 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Ho
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Public History ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Blogging is a twenty-first century phenomenon that has heralded an age where ordinary people can make their voices heard in the public sphere of the Internet. This article explores blogging as a form of popular history making; the blog as a public history document; and how blogging is transforming the nature of public history and practice of history making in Singapore. An analysis of two Singapore ‘historical’ blogs illustrates how blogging is building a foundation for a more participatory historical society in the island nation. At the same time, the case studies also demonstrate the limitations of blogging and blogs in challenging official versions of history.

Building democracy from below: a case from rural Tanzania

2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine A. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rural Village ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Rural Tanzania ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right

ABSTRACTFocusing on events in a rural village in Tanzania during 2001–02, this paper examines the changing nature of state/society relations in Tanzania. Drawing on experience from previous years of fieldwork in the early 1990s, it becomes apparent that villagers are beginning to change the way they engage with the state. These new approaches are framed in part by the discourse of democracy, with which Tanzanians have become familiar since the economic and political liberalisation policies of the 1990s. These events reveal a new sense of the right to participate in decision-making on how to use key development resources. They also illustrate how local elites can threaten to capture benefits for their own gain. As Tanzanians begin to demand more rights to participate in the public sphere, their achievements enlarge our understanding of what might constitute civil society.

Democratising the global order: from communicative freedom to communicative power

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES BOHMAN
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
Communicative Power

AbstractWhile there is much discussion of the need for democracy in transnational institutions, there is less discussion of the conditions for their democratisation. To address this deficit, a general account of democratisation is necessary. I propose that democratisation is dependent on the joint realisation of two conditions: communicative freedom and communicative power. Democratisation thus requires, first, publics and associations in which communicative freedom is realised on the one hand; and, second, institutions that link such freedom to the exercise of communicative power to decision making on the other. In order for these conditions to be met, civil society must be expanded into the public sphere. The transformation of communicative freedom into communicative power can be promoted only by institutions that recognise the decisional status of publics, which in turn depend on civil society to generate the deliberative benefits of the plurality of perspectives. Communicative power is not merely spontaneously generated through publics, but also through publics expressly formed through democratic institutional design.

scholarly journals Pluralism, Disagreement, and the Status of Argument in the Public Sphere

2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Asen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Social Function ◽  
Responsibility Attribution ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
The Public Sphere

Argument teachers and scholars have frequently invoked external justification-impressing one's viewpoint upon another-as the primary social function of argument. Pluralism and fundamental disagreement in contemporary democratic societies raise questions regarding the status of argument, including the functions argument should serve. In this essay, I suggest alternatives of agenda expansion, responsibility attribution, and identity formation as important functions of argument in diverse societies. These alternative functions are especially important under conditions of social inequality, since they allow less powerful individuals and groups to confront more powerful actors in situations where decision making is not open to all.

The Ethical Bind of Sentimentalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Greyser
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
African American Woman ◽  
American Woman ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sojourner Truth ◽  
The Public ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter maps intimacy in the public sphere and the alternately ethical and exploitative cross-racial bonds sentimentalists have cultivated. The chapter focuses on the challenges Sojourner Truth faced as an African American woman to occupy the position of a civic emoter who channels the nation’s feelings. The chapter examines the writing and editing of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850, 1875, 1884), a process that involved deeply felt and vexed relations between Truth and her white editors that continued through the text’s publication, as well as white women’s sympathy and emotional impositions in the text’s reception into the twenty-first century. Truth models sentimentalism’s ethical capacities, refusing victimization as she expresses compassion toward her former master. Much of her white audience failed to recognize her rhetorical power, yet Truth insisted on taking up space without apology, living out much of her life in her home in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Gendered power transformations in India’s Northeast: Peace politics in Nagaland

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Manchanda ◽  
Seema Kakran
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Power Transformations ◽  
Customary Laws ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

As the middle space for ‘post ceasefire-cold peace’ politics expanded in Nagaland in India’s Northeast, the Naga women’s question has emerged as symbolic of the intense social churning in traditional hierarchies around three sites of inequality: decision-making in the public sphere, patriarchal customary laws and property rights. The article tracks the shift in Naga women’s peace politics, from motherhood politics to asserting more equal modes of citizenship, and explores the emancipatory potential of Naga women’s emergence in the public sphere as key stakeholders in the peace process within a context of growing tensions in the relationship between gender and ethnicity.

scholarly journals Social media as public sphere: a stakeholder perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Rohde Johannessen ◽  
Øystein Sæbø ◽  
Leif Skiftenes Flak
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Communication Preferences ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Stakeholder Perspective ◽  
The Public Sphere

Purpose This paper aims to examine major stakeholders’ communication preferences in eParticipation initiatives and discuss how this affects the public sphere. Despite the potential of social media, it has proven difficult to get people actively involved in the decision-making processes. There is a need for more research on how stakeholders manage and use social media to communicate. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted as a qualitative case study. Data sources include interviews, social media content, document analysis and field notes. Findings Communication preferences of stakeholders vary according to their salience level. Stakeholders with higher salience are less likely to participate in social media, whereas those who are less salient will use every available medium to gain influence. This challenges the opportunity to create a traditional public sphere in social media. Research limitations/implications The authors contribute to a better understanding of who participates in social media and why. Stakeholder salience analysis shows that in the case of citizen-initiated eParticipation, social media cannot be seen as a Habermasian public sphere. Practical implications The authors suggest two approaches for government officials’ handling of social media: to treat social media as a channel for input and knowledge about the concerns of citizen groups and to integrate social media in the formal processes of decision making to develop consultative statements on specific policy issues. Social implications The study shows that power and urgency are the most important salience attributes. These findings indicate that social media may not be as inclusive as early research indicates, and less active social media users may have power and influence through other channels. Originality/value The findings extend current knowledge of the public sphere by adding the stakeholder perspective in addition to existing evaluative models of the public sphere.

The Ethics of Lustration

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Meierhenrich
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jus Post Bellum ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Past Injustices ◽  
The U.S

One of the most important challenges for the occupation of Iraq has been making decisions about the status of people who were either responsible for or who passively benefited from the regime's past injustices. But how should such people—in this case, members of the Baath Party—be dealt with? And how have they been dealt with under the U.S. occupation? Although lustration is just one of many institutions of jus post bellum, it is arguably one of the most important. The pursuit of administrative justice affects the reconstitution of the public sphere—literally and figuratively—in more fundamental ways than most other institutions of transitional justice. Yet our understanding of the ethics of occupation in the twenty-first century continues to be incomplete, and ethical principles are needed for guiding and clarifying how occupations may justly be carried out and for establishing a legitimate role for international morals in the conduct of peace. This article develops three such principles for guiding the practice of lustration, and argues that they have been widely flouted during the occupation of Iraq. This is problematic from the perspective of jus post bellum, for to paraphrase Michael Walzer's argument in Just and Unjust Wars, the restraint of peace is the beginning of peace.

scholarly journals Anthropology and the State in Brazil: questions concerning a complex relationship

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Carlos de Souza Lima ◽  
Caio Gonçalves Dias
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Third Moment

Abstract In this article we argue that, in order to understand the “attack” made on anthropology in Brazil, undertaken in the public sphere since the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, we need to look at how anthropological knowledge has become disciplined and institutionalized in the medium to long term. We refer, in particular, to the relationship between what has been constituted as a “field of anthropology” and issues related to the public sphere. It is also necessary to consider the configuration with other institutionalized knowledge throughout the period spanning from the end of the nineteenth century to the present, with discontinuities but also with some important continuities. We look to show that the anthropology initially undertaken in Brazil was basically committed to furthering the interests of the agrarian-based political elites, a situation that continued from the turn of the nineteenth century to the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty-first, not only at the level of nation building, but also in the formation of the State. However, since the 1950s, and especially following creation of the new postgraduate courses in the late 1960s and early 1970s, anthropologists developed knowledge that led them to make an ethical and moral commitment to the communities with which they worked, combined with a critique of the military regime’s developmentalism and dictatorial authoritarianism. During a third moment ranging from the constituent process to the present, a portion of Brazilian anthropologists began to work directly in the recognition of rights constitutionally assigned to differentiated collectivities, generating a growing and progressive zone of friction with the hegemonic sectors at the economic-political level.

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