Political Philosophy

In the second chapter, Deva Woodly outlines the components of the political philosophy she has observed in the Movement for Black Lives. She argues that radical Black feminist pragmatism is a new approach to politics, one that takes lessons from many twentieth-century ideologies and forges them into a political ethic for our times. There are four constitutive elements and five substantive elements of this political philosophy. The constitutive elements are pragmatic imagination, social intelligence, democratic experimentation, and liberatory aim. The substantive elements are political claim, radical mandate, intersectional lens, margin-to-center ethics, and the politics of care.

Justice beyond repair: Negative Dialectics and the politics of guilt and atonement

This article draws out a critical, yet under-appreciated political theme in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, namely his emphasis on guilt and atonement. First, the article assesses how Adorno’s Marxism allows him to think justice and guilt beyond the familiar legalistic frame. Second, the article reconstructs Adorno’s treatment of guilt as a distinctly political capacity to imagine one’s boundedness and indebtedness to others, and the affective engine enabling us to engage in a political ethic distinct from familiar categories of reparation. Third, the article shows how the themes of guilt and atonement give us a more complete picture of Negative Dialectics. This inquiry also intervenes in contemporary debates regarding the political status and emancipatory potential latent within guilt-feelings, and claims Adorno gives us a path forward to imagine the relation between guilt and politics in a novel way.

Beyond Monks and Mushrooms

This chapter lays the intellectual-historical groundwork for thinking about the “virtues of vulnerability,” by mapping the concept of humility inherited in Western thought from Christianity, and the concept of autonomy inherited from liberalism. After detailing what these inherited concepts are, it argues that they are problematic from the perspective of embodied agency and citizenship-subjectivity, and develops alternative versions that bolster, not undermine, democratic practice. Confucian political theory provides a nontheological but deeply relational conception of humility, including concrete practices for cultivating a distinctly political ethic that is not about lowliness, self-denial, or subordination to authority. Feminist philosophy’s concept of “relational autonomy” provides an account of autonomy as an ongoing process that requires supportive social conditions and networks of relations, not mere non-interference. Bringing these traditions together, this chapter develops the conceptual framework and political vocabulary of the project, and begins to flesh out an important new concept of humility-informed-relational-autonomy.

Administrative Repair

This chapter describes the routine work of “paichusuo” patrolmen, which presents the theoretical goal of specifying their particular contribution to the city's order. It characterizes the unique professional competence of patrolmen as a kind of “administrative repair” that deploys the power of inscription to facilitate the political processes by which people curate their common world. The chapter also explores some of the techniques Taiwanese police use to do their work. It focuses on the nature of the boundary that sets police power apart from the other kinds of power at work in the city's political metabolism. It also demonstrates what unconventional possibilities the idea of a police power grounded in a political ethic of care might reveal.

Mass Rallies: An Overview of Santri Rejection on the Five-day School Policy in Indonesia

The Regulation of Ministry of Education and Culture No. 23 of 2017 concerning School Day resulted in a tremendous wave of protest. The public takes part in different sides, the pro and the contra. This research uses a hermeneutical paradigm with causal historical analysis. The results of the study show that the refusal among the pesantren community is based on a robust doctrine of the fiqh rules as a form of orthodoxy and adherence to the values taught by the pesantren. Second, the government is playing with language on its policy. In the context of full-day school regulation, the government still uses euphemism as a strategy of education political ethic. Third, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) has a very central role in rejecting the five-day school policy.

Ética e direitos humanos no trabalho de assistentes sociais na Saúde | Ethics and human rights in the work of social workers in healthcare

O Conselho Federal de Serviço Social (CFESS) vem, nas últimas décadas, construindo iniciativas para fomentar o debate ético-profissional e dos direitos humanos em diversas frentes de intervenção. Desta forma, o presente artigo analisa as repercussões da ação política do CFESS no campo da ética e dos direitos humanos no cotidiano de trabalho de assistentes sociais do Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS). Neste sentido, o artigo é fruto de uma pesquisa realizada com profissionais de Mossoró (RN), concluída em 2017. Constatamos que as ações promovidas pelo CFESS têm uma significativa repercussão e vêm ganhando materialidade no cotidiano de trabalho dos assistentes sociais, reforçando o posicionamento ético-político defendido pelo Serviço Social brasileiro nas últimas quatro décadas.Palavras-Chave: ética; direitos humanos; Serviço Social; saúde. Abstract – In the last decades, the Federal Council of Social Work (CFESS) has been implementing initiatives to promote ethical-professional and Human Rights debate on several fronts. In this sense, this article analyzes the impact of CFESS’s political action concerning ethics and Human Rights in the daily work of social workers of the Unified Health System (SUS). The article is the result of a survey carried out with professionals from Mossoró, Rio Grande do Norte concluded in 2017. We find that the actions promoted by CFESS have a significant repercussion and are gaining materiality in the daily work of social workers, reinforcing the political-ethic positioning advocated by Brazilian social work over the last four decades.Keywords: ethics; human rights; social work; healthcare.

Aesthetic as genetic: The epistemological violence of gaydar research

In recent years, “gaydar” has come under increasing scientific scrutiny. Gaydar researchers have found that we can accurately judge sexual orientation at better than chance levels from various nonverbal cues. Why they could find what they did is typically chalked up to gender inverted phenotypic variations in craniofacial structure that distinguish homosexuals. This interpretation of gaydar data (the “hegemonic interpretation”) maintains a construction of homosexuality as both a “natural kind” and an “entitative” category. As a result, culturally and historically contingent markers of homosexuality are naturalized under the guise of gaydar. Of significant relevance to this article’s critique of gaydar research is that the hegemonic interpretation is presented as politically advantageous for LGB people by its authors, an undertheorized assumption that risks sanctioning an epistemological violence with unfortunate, demobilizing sociopolitical consequences. This critique is contextualized within current debates regarding intimate/sexual citizenship and advocates, instead, for a queer political ethic that considers such cultural erasure to be politically untenable.