The Crowd

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Malabou
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One

What if we took the phrase la démocratie à venir at its word? In other words, what if we understood ‘democracy to come’ as the abrupt arrival of the people, as the instant in which a crowd floods in with overwhelming force? Reading Jacques Derrida alongside Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power, ‘The Crowd’ answers these questions by considering Derrida's ‘democracy to come’ in terms of political figuration rather than representation. Through the tropes of touch, masking and flight, this paper explores the play of distances that occurs between members in the crowd and in turn suggests an inextricable link between democratic thought, on the one hand, and, on the other, the metamorphoses that the crowd precipitates. Between fluidity and paralysis, individual and collective, this paper grapples with a surprising aporia—that democracy is the aristocratic secret of the crowd. ‘The Crowd’ was originally presented as ‘La Foule’ at the 2002 Cerisy Conference, La démocratie à venir (Autour de Jacques Derrida), which explored the political significance of Derrida's work.

Scatter 2

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Bennington
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Political ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
The One ◽  
Nuremberg Trials

Scatter 2 identifies politics as an object of perennial difficulty for philosophy—as recalcitrant to philosophical mastery as is philosophy’s traditional adversary, poetry. That difficulty makes it an attractive area of attention for any deconstructive approach to the tradition from which we inevitably inherit our language and our concepts. Scatter 2 pursues that deconstruction, often starting, and sometimes departing, from the work of Jacques Derrida, by attending to the concepts of sovereignty on the one hand, and democracy on the other. Part I follows the fate of a line from Book II of Homer’s Iliad, where Odysseus asserts that “the rule of many is no good thing, let there be one ruler, one king,” as it is quoted and misquoted, and progressively Christianized, by authors including Aristotle, Philo Judaeus, Suetonius, the early Church Fathers, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, Jean Bodin, Etienne de la Boétie, up to Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson, and even one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, before being discussed by Derrida himself. Part II begins again, as it were, with Plato and Aristotle, and tracks the concept of democracy as it regularly impacts and tends to undermine that sovereignist tradition, and, more especially in detailed readings of Hobbes and Rousseau, develops a notion of “proto-democracy” as a possible name for the scatter that underlies and drives the political as such, and that will always prevent politics from achieving its aim of bringing itself to an end.

The People, Rhetoric, and Affect: On the Political Force of Du Bois'sThe Souls of Black Folk

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
MELVIN L. ROGERS
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Black Folk ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
Souls Of Black Folk ◽  
Racial Lines ◽  
The One

In recent decades, the concept of “the people” has received sustained theoretical attention. Unfortunately, political theorists have said very little about its explicit or implicit use in thinking about the expansion of the American polity along racial lines. The purpose of this article in taking up this issue is twofold: first, to provide a substantive account of the meaning of “the people”—what I call its descriptive and aspirational dimensions—and second, to use that description as a framework for understanding the rhetorical character of W.E.B. Du Bois's classic work,The Souls of Black Folk, and its relationship to what one might call the cognitive–affective dimension of judgment. In doing so, I argue that as a work of political theory,Soulsdraws a connection between rhetoric, on the one hand, and emotional states such as sympathy and shame, on the other, to enlarge America's political and ethical imagination regarding the status of African-Americans.

Insistering Derrida: Cixous, Deconstruction, and the Work of Archive

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Verne Harris
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
National Library ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One

Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius: The Secrets of the Archive is the lecture Jacques Derrida gave in 2003 at an event to honor Hélène Cixous and mark the donation of her archive to the National Library of France. The lecture was a moving tribute to Cixous (her corpus, her genius, her archive), but it was also Derrida's reading of Cixous' "secrets of the archive". This essay explores "the secrets" - those of Cixous, those of Derrida - along two primary lines of enquiry. On the one hand, the question of archival stakes - what stakes are at play in archive? On the other, the question of the work of archive. For both Cixous and Derrida the work of archive is an endless opening to what is being "othered" and a tireless importuning of a justice-to-come. The work of archive is justice. But what does that work look like? Is there a deconstructive praxis in archive shaped by the call to, and of, justice? What stranger emerges from an insistering of the familiar Derridean formulations?

scholarly journals Model orzecznictwa w sprawach o wykroczenia w Polsce Ludowej

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 125-136
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Liżyńska ◽  
Anna Płońska
Keyword(s):  
Social Factor ◽  
The Other ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Court Proceedings ◽  
The One

The authoritarian ideology that guided the authorities of the communist Polish state did not remain indifferent to the emerging model of jurisprudence in petty offence cases. Eliminating the possibility of court proceedings, the location of adjudicating boards in petty offence cases at national councils, the introduction of collegial jurisprudence exercised by the social factor, giving the jurisprudence an educational character, and abandoning it in favour of severe penalties implemented for hooligan petty offences — these are just some of the features that distinguish the jurisprudence model in petty offence cases in the People’s Republic of Poland. The pursuit of the authorities to subordinate the individuals by, on the one hand, handing over the jurisprudence in petty offence cases into the hands of the people, and, on the other hand, filling the adjudication boards with members subordinate to the authority, did not bring independence in the decisions issued. It is evidenced, for example, by the excessive repressive adjudication boards judgments issued against participants of the political crisis of March 1968. The Authors present the development of the model of jurisprudence in petty offence cases in the controversial period of the communist regime.

scholarly journals Mourning and Grievability: Several Remarks on Judith Butler’s Politics of Living Together

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 97-121
Author(s):  
Aleksander Kopka
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Bond ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Living Together ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One

In this article, I focus on the function of the notions of precariousness, vulnerability, and grievability of life in Judith Butler’s writings, and reflect upon their place in a broader context of the thought of what I call, following Jacques Derrida, “originary mourning.” On the one hand, therefore, I want to reconstruct Butler’s task of rethinking the possibi-lity of creating a community based on the equal allocation of precariousness and grievability. Such a reflection allows Butler to treat grievability as an insightful and unique passageway to the problematics of safeguarding of life and equality between living beings. On the other hand, by referring to the writings of Jacques Derrida, I want to inscribe Butler’s notions of precariousness and grievability in a broader framework of mourning, to show how every constitution of a social bond based on the principle of shared precariousness and vulnerability inevitably has to come up against the paradox of its genesis.

The Russian Doukhobors and their Religious Teachings

1915 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-81
Author(s):  
Aurelio Palmieri
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
Religious Sects ◽  
The One

Of all European countries Russia is the most prolific in religious sects. Distrust of the Orthodox state church, on the one hand, which is regarded as too closely allied to the political power and unmindful of its duties to the people, and, on the other, religious ignorance with its consequent superstition, have given rise to innumerable sects, which range from religious nihilism to the most rigid traditionalism.

scholarly journals Humpty Dumpty Populism

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 140-160
Author(s):  
Rafael Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
The People ◽  
Simon Bolivar ◽  
Humpty Dumpty ◽  
The One ◽  
The Invisible

This article analyzes Venezuelan Chavismo as an unstable formation gnawed by the unsolvable contradiction between, on the one hand, the politico-theological ambition to totalize sociality as a visible ‘people’ collected around the invisible ‘Spirit’ of Venezuela’s ‘Founding Father’ Simón Bolívar and, on the other, the non-totalizable theopolitical energies of a social field suffused with myriad globalized ‘spirits’ that admits no clear-cut demarcation between ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ or ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’. Incapable of totalizing sociality as a discrete ‘society’, the political logic informing Chavismo, as with other recent populisms, shifts from hegemony to ‘dominance without hegemony’, a situation where, à la Humpty Dumpy, the ‘people’ is whatever is ‘lovingly’ decreed as such from above, always in tension with a host of deconstructive, often theopolitically imbued agencies and spirits.

Early History of Elis and Pisa: Invented or Evolving Traditions?

Klio ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mait Kõiv
Keyword(s):  
Early Period ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

SummaryThe article discusses the development of ethnic and political identities, and the related traditions concerning the past, in Archaic and Classical Elis and Pisa. It shows that the earliest signs of Pisatan identity can be traced to the sixth century BC, and that the Eleans of the valley of Peneios on the one hand, and the people dwelling in the valley of Alpheios (i.e. the Pisatans) and the so-called Triphylia farther south on the other, nourished distinct traditions about their heroic past, which reflect distinct ethnic identities. Instead of assuming that the Pisatans as a group was intentionally constructed and its ‚history‘ invented during the political disturbances of the fourth century BC, we must accept that the Eleans and the Pisatans had since an early period developed and mutually re-negotiated the traditions confirming their identities and promoting their interests in the changing historical conditions.

Negotiating Identity in Malaysia: Multi-Cultural Society, Islam, Theatre and Tourism

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salleh Yaapar
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
The Other ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Negotiation Of Identity ◽  
The People ◽  
Domains Of Life ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One

AbstractIdentity is something quite stable but is also malleable and flexible. Although it is often defended, it is also continuously contested and negotiated. This is even more so for communities in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural countries emerging from colonial experiences. This essay will focus on the negotiation of identity in Malaysia, involving historical and present-day relations between the Malay-Muslim majority and the rest of the citizens of the country. The discussion will be made with specific reference to Islam, multi-cultural society, literature/theatre and tourism. It will show that up to the present, national identity, as more or less an assemblage of a set of markers and values, is still an elusive notion. It is still being negotiated in different domains of life, including literature, theatre and tourism, and probably will continue to be negotiated for sometime to come. The process of negotiation is a painful one. Negotiation among ethnic groups requires a degree of openness and tolerance. It involves the authorities on the one hand, and the people of various ethnic groups on the other in the difficult search for a commonly accepted parameter or basic constituents.

scholarly journals Thinking the Political with Jean-Luc Nancy

Stasis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-38
Author(s):  
Janar Mihkelsaar
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

In this article, I argue that at the center of Jean-Luc Nancy’s approach to the political lies the thinking of subject as that of relation. Throughout the historical actualizations of, for example, the individual, the state, or the people as a subject, the problematic of relation is one that has retreated and now demands to be subjected to a retreatment. When the arche-teleological presuppositions that constitute subject as that which is given enter the phase of deconstruction, subject comes to present itself as nothing but the activity of relating itself to itself. I respond to Nancy’s call to invent “an affirmation of relation” by way of rethinking the logics of sovereignty and democracy. While sovereignty unites, posits, finitizes, and finishes the self of the people, a post-68 democracy pluralizes, infinitizes, and disfigures the identity of the people. Between sovereignty and democracy, notwithstanding their conflicting tenets, the relation is not that of reciprocal exclusion. One is rather the correlative of the other. Without the one, the other would not make any sense. Through this Janus-faced economy of the political, the people can experience its own “reality”—to experience relation itself. The affirmation of relation is what gives and keeps free the voided site of the political for the infinite self-institution of the people, and for that reason is political par excellence.

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