A psychoanalytic conceptual framework for understanding populism

2021 ◽  
pp. 019145372110405
Author(s):  
Stefan Bird-Pollan

In this paper, I argue for two claims. The first is that all social and political thinking lies along a continuum and that the structure of each thought along the continuum is that of a basic desire for self-determination. Self-determination, I argued, occurs in a variety of ways including, importantly, at a variety of levels of intention. On the one hand, there are the relatively unreflective ways of understanding oneself as autonomous. I attributed this way of thinking of the Neo-Aristotelian conception of practical reason which is characteristic of conservatism. On the other side of the continuum, there is a rigoristic version of Kantian moral philosophy in which, to be autonomous, one must act exclusively from duty or from purely economic motivation. The second claims is that populism can be understood as a clash between different practical conceptions of autonomy which are brought into conflict as a result of the process of modern rationalization. This clash can, I argued, be clarified and also alleviated by appreciating that what the values which stand opposed in the “us vs. them” of populism and liberalism are based on a fundamentally similar conception of the value of autonomy but have come into conflict by sometime contingent historical processes which can be undone or steered in a different direction.

Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Oyeh O. Otu

This article examines how female conditioning and sexual repression affect the woman’s sense of self, womanhood, identity and her place in society. It argues that the woman’s body is at the core of the many sites of gender struggles/ politics. Accordingly, the woman’s body must be decolonised for her to attain true emancipation. On the one hand, this study identifies the grave consequences of sexual repression, how it robs women of their freedom to choose whom to love or marry, the freedom to seek legal redress against sexual abuse and terror, and how it hinders their quest for self-determination. On the other hand, it underscores the need to give women sexual freedom that must be respected and enforced by law for the overall good of society.


Philosophy ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Moore

The author begins with an outline of Bernard William's moral philosophy, within which he locates William's notorious doctrine that reflection can destroy ethical knowledge. He then gives a partial defence of this doctrine, exploiting an analogy between ethical judgements and tensed judgements. The basic idea is that what the passage of time does for the latter, reflection can do for the former: namely, prevent the re-adoption of an abandoned point of view (an ethical point of view in the one case, a temporal point of view in the other). In the final section the author says a little about how reflection might do this.


Politologija ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 73-94
Author(s):  
Aistė Noreikaitė

Although it is common to associate the thought of A. Jokubaitis with political philosophy, this article argues that his texts also allow us to talk about a specific moral philosophy of A. Jokubaitis. At the center of it we find an attempt to articulate and discuss the grounding ideas of morality. The article argues that the first two ideas – an idea of unconditional character of morality and an idea of ontological grounding – are related to Kant’s influence on A. Jokubaitis philosophy. These two ideas allow us to explain morality as an autonomous part of reality, which is different from the empirical one but nonetheless real. This part of reality is grounded in the first-person perspective of a moral subject and can be characterized by implicit normativity and unconditionality. The first-person perspective structures a radically different relation to our reality, which allows us to be agents, not simply spectators. Such an interpretation of Kant allows to associate A. Jokubaitis with his contemporary Kantians, such as Ch. Korsgaard, B. Herman, O. O’Neill, and A. Reath. However, the third idea, the one of a person, which becomes more visible in his book Politinis idiotas, transcends the Kantian conception of practical reason and encourages to perceive morality and its grounding in a much wider context. The concept of a person allows A. Jokubaitis to distance himself from Kantian rationalism and integrate social and mystical aspects of morality, which he has always found important.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 168-185
Author(s):  
Sethulego Z. Matebesi

A growing body of literature on urban and grassroots social movements is replete with case studies of citizens mobilizing against infrastructural development projects. These mobilizations, known as insurgent citizenship—the participation in alternative channels of political expression—take different forms and have various impacts. An investigation into the case of the mobilizing agenda of the Greater Bloemfontein Taxi Association (GBTA) against using a costly intermodal transport facility in Bloemfontein is aimed at highlighting the often neglected dilemma of how powerless citizens—for example, taxi owners—respond to state hegemony. Theoretically, the article is grounded in the conceptual framework of insurgent citizenship and, empirically, draws on narratives of a range of participants. The findings provide an understanding of the importance of organizational structure and leadership in the sustained insurgent action by the GBTA. It is argued that the insurgent action by the GBTA is produced mainly by—on the one hand—the conflictual relationship between government policies and practices and—on the other hand—grassroots resistance to their exclusionary and marginalizing effects. Furthermore, the findings elucidate that insurgent practice may be driven by neoliberal principles of competition, profit, and entrepreneurship.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Brem ◽  
Björn Ivens

The fields of frugal and reverse innovation as well as sustainability and its management have received tremendous interest in recent times. However, there is little literature on how both fields are related to each other. Hence, this paper gives an overview of research in both areas and provides a view of the relationship between frugal and reverse innovation, sustainability management and performance constructs. The link between frugal and reverse innovation on the one hand and sustainability performance on the other hand is established through a differentiated perspective on dimensions representing different fields of sustainability management, i.e. the sustainability of resources used in value creation, the sustainability of the actual value creation processes, and the sustainability of the outcomes of value creation processes. Moreover, we also argue for a positive link between the three dimensions of sustainability management and a company’s market performance.


2021 ◽  
pp. 297-343
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Guglielmo

Chapter 8 explores what happened to the US military’s black-white lines as American troops moved overseas. On the one hand, the US military transplanted these lines all around the world. While not identical to those on the home front, they also took multiple forms, involving everything from jobs and dances to courts-martial and minstrel performances. They also stemmed from the military’s paradoxical goals of winning a war for democracy while at the same time protecting white supremacy. On the other hand, fully achieving this latter goal became more difficult overseas because of locals’ warm relations with black Americans, the black-white comradeship of some American GIs, and the activism of black troops. Taken together, these developments chipped away at the black-white divide. At war’s end, Jim Crow in uniform was far from dead, but it lay moderately wounded just the same.


2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
TONY SHAW ◽  
TRICIA JENKINS

Film has been an integral part of the propaganda war fought between the United States and North Korea over the past decade. The international controversy surrounding the Hollywood comedy The Interview in 2014 vividly demonstrated this and, in the process, drew attention to hidden dimensions of the US state security–entertainment complex in the early twenty-first century. Using the emails leaked courtesy of the Sony hack of late 2014, this article explores the Interview affair in detail, on the one hand revealing the close links between Sony executives and US foreign-policy advisers and on the other explaining the difficulties studios face when trying to balance commercial and political imperatives in a global market.


Author(s):  
Paul Schor

This chapter discusses the integration of Chinese and Japanese into the US census. The American census added a new race it termed “Chinese” to its questionnaires beginning in 1870 and “Japanese” in 1890. The remarkable thing is that what was a nationality immediately became a race as well. Since 1850, the place of birth of all inhabitants had been recorded, whether or not they were immigrants, and in the case of non-European immigrants, two categories of origin were involved: on the one hand, foreign birth, and on the other hand, race, which was transmitted to the following generations. In spite of their small numbers, Asian immigrants were the object of disproportionate attention in the US census, to the point that in 1920, out of nine possible racial categories, five were Asian.


Author(s):  
Paul Schor

This chapter discusses changes in racial categorization in the early twentieth century with respect to the US census. Whenever there was a question of the racial classification of new populations, whether in the continental United States or in the territories acquired since 1867, the census always relied on the principles and techniques developed since 1850 to distinguish blacks from whites. Chief among these was the principle of hypodescent, in more or less rigid forms. However, the early twentieth century saw change occurring in two directions: on the one hand, the racialization of a growing number of non-European immigrants and their descendants; on the other, the weakening of the distinctions between the descendants of European immigrants. The remainder of the chapter details the disappearance of the “mulatto” category and the introduction and forcible elimination of the “Mexican” category.


2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lounnas Djallil

AbstractThis article analyses, the complex relationship between Tehran, Beijing and Washington on the Iranian nuclear issue. Indeed, China's policy towards Iran has often been described as ambiguous, in supporting Washington, on the one hand, while protecting Tehran, on the other hand. In this article, we argue that, in fact, Beijing policy vis-a-vis Tehran depends on the state of its relationships with Washington. Indeed, a closer analysis shows that China is using Iran as a bargaining chip with the United States on, among others, two key security issues, i.e., Taiwan and the oil supply. The guarantee of a secured oil supply from the Middle-East in addition to a comprehensive policy of the US with regard to Chinese security interests in Taiwan as well as the use of smart sanctions against Tehran, which would thus take into account, to a certain extent, Beijing economic interests in Iran, are, indeed, the guarantee of Beijing's support to the US policy towards Iran.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document