Just What Is Ontological Political Theory Meant to do? The Method and Practice of William E. Connolly

2020 ◽  
pp. 003232172092549
Author(s):  
Clayton Chin
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Critical Appraisal ◽  
Systematic Evaluation ◽  
Methodological Development ◽  
Ontological Difference ◽  
Normative Power ◽  
Critical Reflexivity ◽  
Ontological Turn

This article provides a critical appraisal of the ontological method of political theorizing through an examination of the methodological development of the work of William E. Connolly. Connolly has often been taken as a paradigmatic figure of the ‘ontological turn’. This is not only because of the significance of his work in the field but because he is one of its major methodological articulators. However, there has been no systematic evaluation of that method and its development. This paper rectifies that lacuna by critically illustrating Connolly’s turn from a post-positivistic interpretivism to his much noted ‘onto-political method’. It argues that the latter, while usually thought to be modelled on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, is structured by Heidegger’s understanding of ontological difference. The paper then argues that this leads to several problematic tendencies within Connolly’s model that undermine the critical-explanatory and normative power of his methodology by compromising the critical reflexivity ontology is meant to provide. All of this raises some concerns and criticisms of the use of ontological method of political theorizing, which has escaped sustained methodological analysis and scrutiny.

Friedrich Nietzsche

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Lemm
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Georges Bataille ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Point Of Reference

Readers of Giorgio Agamben would agree that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) is not one of his primary interlocutors. As such, Agamben’s engagement with Nietzsche is different from the French reception of Nietzsche’s philosophy in Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Georges Bataille, as well as in his contemporary Italian colleague Roberto Esposito, for whom Nietzsche’s philosophy is a key point of reference in their thinking of politics beyond sovereignty. Agamben’s stance towards the thought of Nietzsche may seem ambiguous to some readers, in particular with regard to his shifting position on Nietzsche’s much-debated vision of the eternal recurrence of the same.

scholarly journals "Pensamento do fora", conhecimento e pensamento em educação: conversações com Michel Foucault

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 613-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cintya Regina Ribeiro
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Maurice Blanchot

O presente trabalho visa problematizar a suposta constituição virtuosa entre educação e conhecimento oriunda de certa herança cultural da modernidade ocidental. A problemática ancora-se na indagação difusa, porém insistente, a ecoar no campo educacional: "o que é o ato do pensar, em educação, na contemporaneidade?". A tomada das condições atuais do pensamento como um problema de pesquisa educacional coloca em questão a histórica articulação entre conhecimento e pensamento reflexivo, obrigando ao confronto de certos amálgamas pedagógicos caros ao campo educacional moderno. Tal enfrentamento se realiza na companhia dos pensadores Michel Foucault e Friedrich Nietzsche, dada a relevância estratégica de suas produções, particularmente acerca da linguagem, da produção da verdade e de suas implicações nos modos de conhecer e pensar. Busca-se operacionalizar uma crítica da linguagem em direção a uma crítica do pensamento em educação, na chave de uma problematização ético-política. Nesse trabalho, tal plataforma analítica configura-se a partir das discussões de Michel Foucault - tanto em relação à questão do pensamento do fora, tal como elaborada por Maurice Blanchot, como em relação ao pensamento da diferença, tal como formulado por Gilles Deleuze. Sugerimos que a exploração desse debate possa atuar como um exercício de exterioridade ou de pensamento diferencial no jogo com o conhecimento e com o pensamento reflexivo presentes no campo educacional - seja no âmbito dos fazeres pedagógicos cotidianos da escola, seja no campo da produção da pesquisa educacional.

scholarly journals A potência dos Discursos: um pensar sobre as mulheres, a natureza e o Pampa

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana Corrêa Pereira Schlee ◽  
Isabel Ribeiro Marques ◽  
Renata Lobato Schlee
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
Rio Grande Do Sul

Em constante desassossego que nos acompanha, problematizamos alguns ditos e não ditos atrelados a discursos relacionados a mulheres, a natureza e o pampa do Rio Grande do Sul. Esses olhares que tanto se inquietam se sustentam sob o aporte teórico de autores da vertente teórica denominada filosofia da diferença, como Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze e Friedrich Nietzsche juntamente a intercessores que se debruçam sobre as questões de gênero, como Sandra Garcia, Mary Castro e Miriam Abromovay. Analisamos algumas construções históricas e culturais que evidenciam um antropocentrismo, bastante marcado por um androcentrismo neste Pampa. Entrelaçadas nessas teias discursivas, pinçamos mulheres, e colocamos algumas inquietações como potência para pensarmos as tramas discursivas que se articulam nesses jogos, nessas relações que se pautam na figura masculina e atribuem às mulheres, a tarefa do cuidado com a natureza.  Assim pensamos no quanto esses discursos são fabricados em processos culturais, sustentados em relações de poder que fazem emergir verdades e saberes dados como naturais nos interstícios da educação ambiental.

14. Power

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Owen
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Community Power ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility ◽  
Power Play

This chapter examines the roles that the concept of power play in the understanding of politics as well as the different modes of power. Recent political theory has seen a variety of views of power proposed, and these views have significantly different implications for conceptualizing the scope and form of political activity. Two main views concerning power are the locus of contemporary debate. The first, ‘agency-centred’ view, emerges in the Anglo-American debate that follows discussions of community power in American democracy. The second, ‘non-agency-centred’ view, emerges from the post-structuralist work of Michel Foucault. At stake, in the debate between them, are how we distinguish between injustice and misfortune, as well as how we approach the issues of freedom and responsibility. The chapter explores this debate and presents a case study on racialized inequality in America, along with Key Thinkers boxes featuring Foucault and Steven Lukes.

Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Tampio
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Fuel Economy ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regulatory State ◽  
Agonistic Democracy ◽  
Political Question ◽  
Fuel Economy Regulations

In the 1980s and 1990s, a central debate in academic political theory was between liberals and communitarians, Kantians and Hegelians, Rawls and his critics. Bonnie Honig’s Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (1993) disrupted this debate and argued that surface disagreements conceal an underlying consensus that the purpose of political theory is to answer, once and for all, the fundamental political questions. Drawing upon and transforming the work of Hannah Arendt and Friedrich Nietzsche, Honig argues that democracy requires attentiveness to the remainders of politics and a proclivity to contestation. To show the continuing relevance of Honig’s conception of agonistic democracy, I criticize Cass Sunstein’s account of the regulatory state for its displacement of politics, focusing on how his advocacy of fuel economy regulations occludes the political question of rethinking public transportation.

28. Nietzsche

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Widder
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Death Of God ◽  
Ascetic Ideal ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
The One ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Genealogy Of Morals

This chapter examines Friedrich Nietzsche's political philosophy, first by focusing on his claim that the ‘death of God’ inaugurates modern nihilism. It then explains Nietzsche's significance for political theory by situating him, on the one hand, against the Platonist and Christian traditions that dominate political philosophy and, on the other hand, with contemporary attempts to develop a new political theory of difference. The chapter also considers Nietzsche's genealogical method and proceeds by analysing the three essays of On the Genealogy of Morals, along with his views on good and bad, good and evil, slave morality, the ascetic ideal, and the nihilism of modern secularism. Finally, it reviews contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche's relation and relevance to political theory and how his philosophy has inspired a broader set of trends that has come to be known as ‘the ontological turn in political theory’.

Staatskritik und Radikaldemokratie

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Critical Appraisal ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
The Relationship

This anthology discusses Jacques Rancière’s political thinking from the perspective of political theory. It particularly focuses on the relationship between democracy, governance and statehood. The first contributions discuss key theoretical concepts in Rancière’s thinking, which is then addressed in terms of its discrepancies. In this context, the authors address the areas in which Rancière’s political theory and other works from the 20th and 21st centuries that relate to democratic and political theory overlap and clash. In a final section, the authors subject Rancière’s political thinking to a critical appraisal using queer and feminist, postcolonial and anarchistic theorisations in order to highlight its shortcomings and to use Rancière to challenge Rancière. With contributions by Marvin Dreiwes, Matthias Flatscher, Mareike Gebhardt, Johannes Haaf, Anastasiya Kasko, Alexander Kurunczi, Christian Leonhardt, Thomas Linpinsel, Niklas Plätzer, Kenneth Rösen, Luca Sagnotti, Sergej Seitz, Anna-Terese Steffner de Marco and Carolin Zieringer.

Theatre - power - subject: On Dragan Živadinov's Elizabethan Trilogy

Maska ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (157) ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Bojan Anđelković
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Shed Light

The text offers a philosophical reflection on the cycle of five performances that form the Elizabethan Trilogy project (2008-2013) by director Dragan Živadinov. By introducing four conceptual pairs - theatre and sovereignty, words and things, the subject and the mask, and difference and repetition - it also attempts to reflect on Živadinov's entire opus and on the meaning of his theatre. At the centre of attention in the theatre of repetition, which is opposed to the theatre of representation, there is the relation between theatre, sovereignty and the subject; the author of this text tries to shed light on this relation by drawing on Antonin Artaud's concept of the theatre of cruelty and possible connections between theatre and the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze.

scholarly journals Verdades educacionais no Brasil e na Espanha

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 674-694
Author(s):  
Paula Corrêa Henning
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Michel Foucault

O presente artigo tem como propósito analisar dois acontecimentos discursivos da história da Educação Ambiental (EA) no Brasil e na Espanha. Toma-se como corpus analítico do estudo os ordenamentos jurídicos a respeito da Educação em ambos os países e os atravessamentos de definições estabelecidas por eventos e documentos internacionais sobre a educação destinada as preocupações ambientais. O primeiro acontecimento refere-se a presença da interdisciplinar nos espaços escolares; o segundo trata-se da configuração daquilo que a UNESCO institui como um desdobramento da EA no cenário atual, a Educação para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável (EDS). A partir da problematização acerca do conceito de verdade e da governamentalidade neoliberal, o texto assume os estudos pós-estruturalistas, especialmente a partir de Friedrich Nietzsche e Michel Foucault. É tensionando os valores de verdade que essas construções carregam que o exercício da crítica radical proposta por Foucault possa ser, minimamente, operado por nós.

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