Antonio Negri

In the Street ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 63-92
Author(s):  
Çiğdem Çidam
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Factory Workers ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Theory Of Education ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Antonio Negri ◽  
Exclusive Focus

This chapter focuses on Antonio Negri’s turn to democratic theory in the wake of Italy’s “Long ’68.” As an activist thinker involved in the political struggles of his time, starting in the early 1970s, Negri challenged the Marxist orthodoxy’s exclusive focus on factory workers through a series of conceptual innovations, such as the “multitude,” highlighting the emancipatory potential of diverse political actors and their innovative resistance practices. Despite this crucial contribution, the chapter contends, Negri’s account, too, is haunted by the Rousseauian dream of immediacy: for Negri, insurgencies are moments of democracy because they are the immediate expressions of the multitude. And while Negri refuses to characterize such short-lived moments as failures, he still, like Rousseau, considers their transience a problem, which he tries to resolve through the cultivation of “adequate” revolutionary consciousness—a problematic move, the chapter concludes, which reproduces the antidemocratic Rousseauian tendency to turn political theory into a theory of education in Negri’s work.

Jacques Rancière

In the Street ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-150
Author(s):  
Çiğdem Çidam
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Theory Of Education ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Action Taking ◽  
As If

This chapter demonstrates that Rancière’s journey to democratic theory started in the aftermath of May 1968 with his efforts to overcome the problematic transformation of political theory into “a theory of education.” For Rancière, unpredictability is integral to democratic politics. Thus, in an anti-Rousseauian move, he emphasizes the theatrical aspect of democratic action: taking on a role other than who they are, acting as if they are a part in a given social order in which they have no part, political actors stage their equality, disrupting the existing distribution of the sensible. Rancière’s focus on the moments of disruption, however, opens him to the charge of reducing democratic politics to immediate acts of negation. Insofar as he erases the role of intermediating practices in the stagings of equality, Rancière imposes on his accounts a kind of purity that his own work, with its emphasis on broken, polemical voices, cautions against.

HOPE AND MEMORY IN THE THOUGHT OF JUDITH SHKLAR

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATRINA FORRESTER
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
Judith Shklar ◽  
Exclusive Focus

Current interpretations of the political theory of Judith Shklar focus to a disabling extent on her short, late article “The Liberalism of Fear” (1989); commentators take this late essay as representative of her work as a whole and thus characterize her as an anti-totalitarian, Cold War liberal. Other interpretations situate her political thought alongside followers of John Rawls and liberal political philosophy. Challenging the centrality of fear in Shklar's thought, this essay examines her writings on utopian and normative thought, the role of history in political thinking and her notions of ordinary cruelty and injustice. In particular, it shifts emphasis away from an exclusive focus on her late writings in order to consider works published throughout her long career at Harvard University, from 1950 until her death in 1992. By surveying the range of Shklar's critical standpoints and concerns, it suggests that postwar American liberalism was not as monolithic as many interpreters have assumed. Through an examination of her attitudes towards her forebears and contemporaries, it shows why the dominant interpretations of Shklar—as anti-totalitarian émigré thinker, or normative liberal theorist—are flawed. In fact, Shklar moved restlessly between these two categories, and drew from each tradition. By thinking about both hope and memory, she bridged the gap between two distinct strands of postwar American liberalism.

scholarly journals The Pitfalls of “Love and Kindness”: On the Challenges to Compassion/Pity as a Political Emotion

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Kathrin Weber
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Realm ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

Martha Nussbaum’s political theory of compassion offers an extensive and compelling study of the potential of employing compassionate emotions in the political realm to further social justice and societal “love”. In this article, two pitfalls of Nussbaum’s affirming theory of a politics of compassion are highlighted: the problem of a dual-level hierarchisation and the “magic” of feeling compassion that potentially removes the subject of compassion from reality. I will argue that Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on pity provide substantial challenges to a democratic theory of compassion in this respect. Following these theoretical reflections, I will turn to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 US-American presidential election campaign, to her video ads “Love and Kindness” in particular, in order to provide fitting illustrations from current realpolitik for these specific pitfalls of the political employment of compassionate emotions.

Education for Citizenship in a Changing Country

2021 ◽  
pp. 70-88
Author(s):  
Alexa Zellentin
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Value Pluralism ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Theory Of Education ◽  
Role Of The State

This chapter discusses some questions regarding the political theory of education in Ireland: 1. Which value commitments and attitudes should be encouraged to prepare children for their roles in society? 2. Who should decide what children learn? How is the role of the state to be balanced against that of parents and educational institutions? 3. How should education respond to increasing diversity and value pluralism? 4. To what extent should public education promote equality of opportunities? It identifies the concerns relevant to policy choices on these issues. The first section presents the basic structure of the Irish educational system. The second discusses its implications for debates on the authority and responsibility to educate, the third debates dealing with diversity, the fourth value education. The final section considers the idea of equality of opportunity in view of the different resources available to different schools.

Everyday Deeds: Enactive Protest, Exit, and Silence in Deliberative Systems

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 587-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby Rollo
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Recent Innovation ◽  
Important Shift

The deliberative systems approach is a recent innovation within the tradition of deliberative democratic theory. It signals an important shift in focus from the political legitimacy produced within isolated and formal sites of deliberation (e.g., Parliament or deliberative mini-publics), to the legitimacy produced by a number of diverse interconnected sites. In this respect, the deliberative systems (DS) approach is better equipped to identify and address defects arising from the systemic influences of power and coercion. In this article, I examine one of the least explored and least understood defects: the exclusion of non-speaking political actors generated by the uniform privileging of speech in all sites within a system. Using the examples of prefigurative protest, Indigenous refusal to deliberate, and the non-deliberative agency of disabled citizens, I argue that the DS approach allows theorists to better understand forms of domination related to the imposition of speech on those who are either unwilling or unable to speak.

C.B. Macpherson and Philosophy, “Crypto” or Otherwise: A Response to Frank Cunningham

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
High Regard ◽  
Possessive Individualism ◽  
Limited Accuracy ◽  
Oxford University Press

I have a high regard for Frank Cunningham and his work, on socialism, on democratic theory—and on C.B. Macpherson. To take one example, his new introductions to the recent reissues of Macpherson's books from Oxford University Press, including The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism and Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval, are excellent. Lucid and informative, they highlight the value Macpherson's ideas hold for contemporary political thought. So I am grateful that he has offered so fulsome a critical response to my book—even though he finds my approach, based on the idea that there is a suppressed philosophical dimension in Macpherson's work, though (dubiously) audacious, to be of limited accuracy or usefulness—indeed ultimately misguided. It results, he claims, in an analysis that “detracts from Macpherson's political-theoretical and political strengths.”

scholarly journals Penggunaan Akun Bot Media Sosial untuk Mempengaruhi Opini Publik : Sebuah Tinjauan Hukum Di Indonesia

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Devi Rahma Fatmala ◽  
Amanda Amelia ◽  
Fitri Agustina Trianingsih
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law

Today’s political discourse can’t be disattached from the usage of social media. There are plenty of political actors using it to campaign their issues and attack their political rival in order to influence public opinion. One of the instruments used by the political actor in using the social media is bot accounts. Bot accounts are an automated online account where all or substantially all of the actions or posts of that account are not the result of a person. The usage of bot accounts are viewed as harmful for democracy by many experts on law and democracy. However, a lot of states have no regulation regarding the usage of bot accounts, including Indonesia. This article is intended to bring legal review on the usage of bot accounts to influence public opinion in Indonesia. Using deliberative democratic theory, this article views that the usage of bot accounts could prevent the objective achievement of democracy based on UUD 1945. The authors recommend the regulation of bot accounts through the revision of UU No. 19 Tahun 2019 about Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik with bringing up various important argumentations regarding the law implementation. Keywords : Bot Accounts; Social Media; Public Opinion; Democracy; Legal Review.

Between reason and will: On Christopher Meckstroth’s The Struggle for Democracy

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 490-499
Author(s):  
Carlo Invernizzi Accetti
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
The Political ◽  
Intrinsic Interest ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Internal Coherence

Christopher Meckstroth’s book The Struggle for Democracy poses and attempts to solve a central problem of democratic theory: what he calls the ‘paradox of authorization’, whereby the very activity of spelling out the political content of democracy is said to potentially contradict its object, since the democratic theorist may end up substituting himself or herself for ‘the people’ in deciding what this form government amounts to in practice. In order to avoid this problem, Meckstroth suggests that the political content of democracy ought to be extrapolated out of concrete political struggles, by submitting competing claims to represent the people’s will to a rational scrutiny that tests them for internal coherence. While pointing out the intrinsic interest and originality of this approach, the review also advances some reservations concerning the posited criterion’s capacity to perform all the work Meckstroth assigns it. In the end, the proposed solution to the ‘paradox of authorization’ may fall prey to it too, since on its own terms the criterion of internal coherence is insufficient to specify any determinate outcomes. This leaves it up to the theorist applying it to (arbitrarily) decide which concrete proposals best satisfy the test.

scholarly journals The use of social media bot accounts on influencing public opinion: a legal review in Indonesia

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Devi Rahma Fatmala ◽  
Amanda Amelia ◽  
Fitri Agustina Trianingsih
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
Electronic Information ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Law ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Today’s political discourse cannot be separated from the usage of social media. There are plenty of political actors using it to campaign their issues and attack their political rivals to influence public opinion. One of the instruments used by the political actor in using social media is bot accounts. Bot accounts are an automated online account where all or substantially all of the actions or posts of that account are not the result of a person. The usage of bot accounts is viewed as harmful for democracy by many experts on law and democracy. However, lots of states have no regulation regarding the usage of bot accounts, including Indonesia. This article intends to bring legal review on the usage of bot accounts to influence public opinion in Indonesia. By using deliberative democratic theory, this article views that the usage of bot accounts could prevent the objective achievement of democracy based on the 1945 Constitution. The authors recommend the regulation of bot accounts through the revision of Law Number 11 of 2008 concerning Electronic Information and Transactions with bringing up various notable arguments regarding the law implementation.

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