scholarly journals Social ontology: Butler via Arendt via Loidolt

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-154
Author(s):  
Adriana Zaharijevic
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Short Contribution ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Book Discussion ◽  
Simple Reduction

This short contribution is written on the occasion of the book discussion of Sophie Loidolt?s Phenomenology of Plurality: Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity (2018) at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. It presents an attempt to read the two key notions Loidolt elaborates in her book - spaces of meaning and spaces of the public and private - from a critical perspective offered by Judith Butler?s taking up of Arendt?s work. Offering Butler?s conception of social ontology through several major points of contestation with Arendt, I argue against an all too simple reduction of her understanding of the political and normativity to poststructuralist ones.

scholarly journals The War Against Public Forgetfulness:Commemorating 1812 in Canada

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Eamon
Keyword(s):  
War Of 1812 ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
Government Of Canada ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Political Battle

In October 2011, the Government of Canada began a two-year, nation-wide celebration of the bicentenary of the War of 1812. The widely-criticized initiative returned the public eye to a traditional ‘interpretive tableau’ of war heroes, namely Isaac Brock, Tecumseh, Charles de Salaberry and Laura Secord. While the scope and expense of the federal government’s efforts have been unprecedented, the political battle to maintain certain memories of the War is one that is not new. A struggle against the forgetfulness of Canadians, and particularly young Canadians, has animated commemorations of the War for almost two centuries. Looking at a selection of past commemorative efforts this essay explores how the inertia of a traditional tableau of heroes has tended to overshadow other narratives and newer interpretations. Yet all is not lost. Using the example of the author’s exhibition, Faces of 1812, it is suggested that publicly-constructed histories can be employed as a useful departure point for the public historian and provide a foundation from which the public can obtain a broader, more critical perspective on both the commemorated events and history writ large.

State and Media in the English-Speaking Caribbean: The Case of Antigua

1995 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 654-665
Author(s):  
Leara Rhodes ◽  
Paget Henry
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Resource Model ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
Political Resource ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Caribbean

These authors examine the rise of the political resource model and the fall of the commodity model of the press in the Caribbean, concluding that a more equitable balance of power is needed between the public and private sectors of some Caribbean societies.

Public and Private Citizenship: From Gender Invisibility to Feminist Inclusiveness

1998 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raia Prokhovnik
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Specific Activity ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Realm ◽  
The Individual

Conceptions of citizenship which rest on an abstract and universal notion of the individual founder on their inability to recognize the political relevance of gender. Such conceptions, because their ‘gender-neutrality’ has the effect of excluding women, are not helpful to the project of promoting the full citizenship of women. The question of citizenship is often reduced to either political citizenship, in terms of an instrumental notion of political participation, or social citizenship, in terms of an instrumental notion of economic (in)dependence. The paper argues for the recognition of citizenship as gendered, and as an ethical, that is non-instrumental, social status which is distinct from both political participation and economic (in)dependence. What unites us as citizens, in our equal membership of the political community, need not rely on a conception of us as ‘neutral’ (abstract, universalized, genderless) individuals undertaking one specific activity located in the public realm, but can take account of the diverse ways in which we engage in ethically-grounded activities on the basis of our different genders, ethnic and cultural backgrounds and other differences, in both the public and private realms. A convincing feminist conception of citizenship necessarily involves a radical redefinition of the public/private distinction to accommodate the recognition of citizenship practices in the private realm. The paper builds on the observation that the concept of ‘citizenship’ is broader than the concept of ‘the political’ (or ‘the social/economic’), and contends that feminism provides us with the emancipatory potential of gendered subjectivity, which applies to both men and women. The recognition of gendered subjectivity opens the way to the recognition of the diversity of citizenship practices. It is not that women need to be liberated from the private realm, in order to take part in the public realm as equal citizens, but that women – and men – already undertake responsibilities of citizenship in both the public and the private realms.

Restitution and the Politics of Repair

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Zolkos
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Politics And Law

This book develops a political philosophic approach to restitution and repatriation of objects, by arguing that the development of restitutive norms in the West has been auxiliary to the emergence of modern state sovereignty. It draws on critiques of international law of cultural heritage return, and of its Western humanistic underpinnings, including the ontological binary distinction between things and persons. Rather than accept the restitutive goals of politics and law seeking to do justice for the past and to ‘undo’ the expropriations and dispossessions that have occurred, and are still occurring (be it in contexts of coloniality or war), this book looks at the limits and aporias of restitution in texts of philosophy, literature and social theory. As such, it identifies figures and objects situated beyond the possibility of restitution and repair. This includes analysis of the social fantasies and imaginaries that ‘prop’ our contemporary reparative politics—making the past ‘unhappen’, or cancelling out the occurrence of wrongs. What the analysed texts have in common is that they articulate restitution through the motifs of undoing and making-unhappen, as a reparative and curative procedure, and a prelapsarian return to a place, time or condition prior to the event of violence. Insofar as this reading uncovers the mythical-religious ‘substrate’ of the restitutive tradition, and illuminates the political and affective allures of prelapsarianism, this book also offers insights into Western secularism, not as disappearance of religious thought in the public domain, but as its ‘repression’ (in a psychoanalytic sense).

scholarly journals For-Profit Universities in the Political Economy of Higher Education

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Pusser
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
The Public ◽  
Higher Education Act ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Education Act

For-profit institutions loom much larger in the political economy of US higher education. In negotiations over the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the for-profit universities and their lobbying organizations have played a unique role in shaping policies affecting all higher education institutions. Can states preserve egulations that protect the public and private benefits of higher education while satisfying the profit demands of an evolving postsecondary market? As with most political contests, much will depend on the ability of a variety of postsecondary stakeholders to become involved in the political arena shaping higher education.

scholarly journals Bring Back Bentham: "Open Courts," "Terror Trials," and Public Sphere(s)

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Resnik
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Application Of Law ◽  
Private Providers ◽  
Private Power ◽  
A Site

The identification of courts as “open” and “public” institutions is commonplace in national and transnational conventions. But even as those attributes are taken for granted, the privatization of adjudication is underway. This Article explores how—during the last few centuries—public procedures came to be one of the attributes defining certain decision-making institutions as “courts.” The political and theoretical predicates for such practices can be found in the work of Jeremy Bentham, a major proponent of what he termed “publicity,” a practice he commended by detailing the architecture for various entities—from the Panopticon for prisoners to the Parliament for legislators and courts for judges. Bentham argued the utility of publicity in enhancing accuracy, public education, and judicial discipline.Moving forward in time, I examine various contemporary techniques in several jurisdictions that shift the processes of adjudication toward privatization. Included are the devolving adjudication to less-public government entities such as administrative agencies; outsourcing to private providers; and reconfiguring the processes of courts to render them more oriented toward settlement.For those appreciative of the role courts play in developing and protecting human rights, these new practices are problematic because adjudication can itself be a site offering opportunities to engage in democratic practices. The odd etiquette entailed in public adjudication under democratic legal regimes imposes obligations on government and disputants to treat each other—before an observant and often times critical public—as equals. Public and private power can be constrained by such performative requirements. When decision making takes place in public, the application of law to fact can engender normative contestation predicated on popular input. This claim of public adjudication’s democratic potential and utilities is, however, not an argument that the judgments provided and the norms developed will necessarily advance a shared view of the public welfare. Hence, while eager to re-engage Bentham, I offer different claims for publicity and less optimism about its consequences.

scholarly journals The Public–Private Dichotomy in Fascist Corporativism: Discursive Strategies and Models of Legitimization

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-33
Author(s):  
Maurizio Cau
Keyword(s):  
Legal Theory ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Collective Dimension ◽  
New Framework

The twentieth century starts with a rediscovery of the collective dimension that legal modernity had compressed. The vivid debate that came with the fascist corporatist experiment is an interesting observatory that lets us read this process against the light. According to the major part of Italian legal culture the corporatist cultural project seems to forewarn a new framework of the connections between public and private spheres, state and society, law and economics, statism and pluralism. Corporatism, which did not intend to build a non-statual model of authority, was an answer to the need to attribute legal value and legal autonomy to economic and social actors that weren’t adequately represented in the political and normative circuit. The paper is aimed at retracing some of the discursive strategies that characterized the corporatist experiment and the different legitimization models that were proposed by legal theory in order to rebuild the dichotomy between public and private spheres.

WHAT WAS THE FIRST AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE?

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELLIOT VERNON ◽  
PHILIP BAKER
Keyword(s):  
General Council ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
New Model ◽  
The Public ◽  
Charles I ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Networks ◽  
City Of London ◽  
Political Scene

ABSTRACTThis article examines the origins of the first Agreement of the people: a draft written constitution presented to the general council of the New Model Army on 28 October 1647. It argues that the Agreement was a document that emerged from concerns amongst some of the soldiery and their civilian allies that the terms of a projected settlement with Charles I, The heads of the proposals, would betray the political programme advanced in the army's earlier public statements, especially its Declaration, or, representation of 14 June 1647. As such, this article moves away from the traditional narrative of seeing the Agreement as a Leveller manifesto that was authored in a deliberate attempt to infiltrate the army, and thereby asks fresh questions about the political networks and the programme behind the document. What emerges is a picture of the post-first Civil War political scene that integrates parliamentary manoeuvrings with City of London politics and the public and private affairs of a politicized army. As a result, the article sheds new light on aspects of the constitutional crisis of the later 1640s.

The Janus Face of Governance Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Sørensen ◽  
Jacob Torfing
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Management Perspective ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
Private Actors

While the main current in the growing research on governance has praised its virtues, a critical undertow has insisted that governance carries the danger of depoliticization and democratic decline. Chapter 2 aims to complicate things by arguing that interactive forms of governance intending to involve a plethora of public and private actors in the governing of society and the economy are not in themselves depoliticizing or repoliticizing public governance. Much depends on how we talk about governance. Hence, while the public management perspective tends to depoliticize governance, the political science perspective has a sharper eye for the political choices, conflicts, and power struggles. If the political science perspective has a blind spot, it concerns the role of elected politicians in the exercise of political meta-governance. That role is further developed towards the end of the chapter, which also reflects on the limits of repoliticization.

10. Negligence: Duty of Care—Public Bodies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Lunney ◽  
Donal Nolan ◽  
Ken Oliphant
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Public Authority ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Considerations ◽  
Public Bodies

This chapter focuses on the negligence liability of public authorities. It discusses how negligence actions against public bodies may have both public and private law dimensions. The discussion of the public law dimension focuses on the mechanisms that have been employed in response to concerns about the political nature of some public authority decisions, and the fact that those decisions frequently involve the balancing of social or economic considerations, and the interests of different sections of the public. The discussion of the private law dimension of negligence actions against public bodies considers policy reasons for limiting the liability of public bodies and statutory responsibilities as a source of affirmative common law duties. The chapter concludes with a consideration of proposals for reform of the law in this area.

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