The Failure of Political Argument: The Languages of Anti-Fascism and Anti-Totalitarianism in Post-September 11th Discourse

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Shorten
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Change ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
September 11Th ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
Public Imagination

Terms like ‘Islamo-fascism’, the ‘anti-totalitarian’ case for war in Iraq and the description of religiously motivated political extremism as a ‘new totalitarianism’ were all remarkable features of the political discourse organised around the response to the events of 11 September 2001. They share in common the attempt to ground political commitments and allegiances in two morally charged political languages: anti-fascism and anti-totalitarianism. But why did they fail to connect with the public imagination? This article argues that they were not constructed for present purposes so much as appropriated. Yet their projected consumption by a broader public turned on the feasibility of effecting conceptual change to accommodate new meanings and applications. The failure, in this case, to meet the standards thereby required suggests that an important dimension of the response to September 11th is the failure of political argument. It is proposed that this has implications more broadly for the relation between political theory and political rhetoric.

On the Will of the People: Notes on the Political “Theory” of Populism

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Offe
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
National People ◽  
The Will

The “will of the (national) people” is the ubiquitously invoked reference unit of populist politics. The essay tries to demystify the notion that such will can be conceived of as a unique and unified substance deriving from collective ethnic identity. Arguably, all political theory is concerned with arguing for ways by which citizens can make e pluribus unum—for example, by coming to agree on procedures and institutions by which conflicts of interest and ideas can be settled according to standards of fairness. It is argued that populists in their political rhetoric and practice typically try to circumvent the burden of such argument and proof. Instead, they appeal to the notion of some preexisting existential unity of the people’s will, which they can redeem only through practices of repression and exclusion.

scholarly journals An ethic of care? Academic administration and pandemic policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 632-638
Author(s):  
Stephanie A Bryson
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Administration ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Impact

This reflexive essay examines the adoption of an intentional ‘ethic of care’ by social work administrators in a large social work school located in the Pacific Northwest. An ethic of care foregrounds networks of human interdependence that collapse the public/private divide. Moreover, rooted in the political theory of recognition, a care ethic responds to crisis by attending to individuals’ uniqueness and ‘whole particularity.’ Foremost, it rejects indifference. Through the personal recollections of one academic administrator, the impact of rejecting indifference in spring term 2020 is described. The essay concludes by linking the rejection of indifference to the national political landscape.

Emergence of Manichean Political Rhetoric – Theoretical Modeling of Predictive Frameworks

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-87
Author(s):  
Edrex Fontanilla ◽  
Mark Juszczak ◽  
Rosalie Messina
Keyword(s):  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Theoretical Modeling ◽  
The Political ◽  
Predictive Test ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
Predictive Tools ◽  
The Public ◽  
Problems And Solutions ◽  
Frame Work ◽  
High Degree

Manichean political rhetoric can be best summarized as a generalized trend, by an agent with political power in a given field, to increasingly express themselves in their official capacity as a political actor through a binary lens: presenting issues and/or solutions to the public in that field of power as being either “A or B”. This reductionism in presentation of problems and solutions appears, historically, to coincide with a rise in autocratic behavior on the part of the political actor. To this day, however, a true predictive test for the emergence of Manichean political rhetoric, does not exist. While we can often observe and critic the presence of it, and the transition from complex to binary rhetoric after such rheto-ric has been used, a predictive determinative framework (one that can say with a high degree of accura-cy that this shift is about to happen) still does not exist. This articles is an attempt to do two things: understand more accurately the difficulties that arise in attempting to create such a predictive frame-work and provide theoretical modeling of such frameworks to assess their potential functionality as predictive tools.

Do territorial rights include the right to exclude?

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cara Nine
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Property Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Hard Time ◽  
Territorial Rights ◽  
The Right

Do territorial rights include the right to exclude? This claim is often assumed to be true in territorial rights theory. And if this claim is justified, a state may have a prima facie right to unilaterally exclude aliens from state territory. But is this claim justifiable? I examine the version of territorial rights that has the most compelling story to support the right to exclude: territorial rights as a kind of property right, where ‘territory’ refers to the public and common spaces included in the domain of state jurisdiction. I analyse the work of A. J. Simmons, who develops the political theory of John Locke into one of the most well-articulated and defended theories of territorial rights as a kind of property right. My main argument is that Simmons’ justification for rights of exclusion, which are derived from individual rights of self-government, does not apply to many kinds of public spaces. An upshot of this analysis is that most Lockean-based theories of territorial rights will have a hard time justifying the right to exclude as a prima facie right held by states against aliens.

scholarly journals On the Concepts of the “Family” and the “Household” in the Political Theory of Jean Bodin

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 130-148
Author(s):  
Gulnara Bayazitova
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Public ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Republic

The article examines the tradition of formation of the concepts “family” (famille) and “household” (ménage) in the political theory of the French lawyer, Jean Bodin. The article looks into different editions of Six Books of the Commonwealthto explore the connotations of the key concepts and the meaning that Bodin ascribed to them. As secondary sources, Bodin uses the works by Xenophon, Aristotle, Apuleus, and Marcus Junianus Justin, as well as the Corpus Juris Civilis. Bodin examines three different traditions, those of Ancient Greece, Ancient Hebrew, and Ancient Rome. Each of these traditions has its own history of the concepts of the “family” and of the “household”. Bodin refers to ancient traditions for polemics, but eventually offers his own understanding, not only of the concepts of “famille” and “ménage”, but also of the term «République», defined as the Republic, a term that (with some reservations) refers to the modern notion of state. The very fact that these concepts are being used signifies the division of the political space into the spheres of the private and the public. Furthermore, the concepts of the “family” and of the “household” are key to understand the essence of sovereignty as the supreme authority in the Republic. The author concludes that the difference between Bodin’s concepts of the “family” and the “household” lies not only in the possession of property and its legal manifestation, but also in the fact that the “household” is seen by Bodin as the basis of the Republic, the first step in the system of subordination to the authority.

scholarly journals Feminist critique of liberalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erma Ivoš
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
The Political ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Radical Feminist ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Important Position ◽  
Radical Transformation

In this essay the author deals with the achievement of feminist critiques of liberalism at the end of the century. The central thesis is the controversy of the public/private dichotomy as the main important position of the feminist argument. The differences between critical approach to the public/private dichotomy are explained through cultural, radical feminist and androginy arguments about the fact that the public sphere is patriarchaly constructed with strong effect to the private sphere. That is why feminist use the therm “liberal patriarchalism“. The author concludes that the political theory and practise are resistent to the feminist arguments, that radical transformation of democratic theory and practic is far from the possibility to be transformed what means that the context of feminism and its critique of liberalism will still remain the same.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document