History appears already to the young Gramsci as a system of forces in unstable balance, which struggle to position themselves on the side of history, to identify with it. For this reason, in his reading of Marxism, the unity of history is a result, the product of a successful strategy of hegemony building. This article reviews the Gramscian theory of hegemony and tries to show its coherence with the philosophy of praxis, that is, with the notion of the fundamentally practical (...) nature of reality. In particular, it is argued that, on the one hand, a crisis of hegemony must be understood as disintegrating a hegemonic system, which allows subordinated hegemonic moments to emerge; on the other hand, the crisis itself is determined by the formulation of hegemonic discourses that try to escape their condition of subordination. (shrink)

Discourse is central in promoting – or hindering – social change. This paper discusses the ethical-political dilemmas that academics face in developing progressive discourses on social welfare in the hegemonic crisis of neoliberalism. A central dilemma concerns the (implicit or explicit) target of their discourse. Speaking to elites reproduces dominant values and interests, reinforcing central elements of neoliberalism such as economisation and de-politicisation. Moreover, this approach remains technocratic (i.e. academics act as experts), thereby failing to address citizens’ distrust (...) towards ‘scientific evidence’ that characterises the hegemonic crisis of neoliberalism. A possible alternative is to work together with civil society and marginalised groups for promoting an oppositional discourse. In this way scholars may contribute to the democratisation of the public sphere but may fail to influence the content of policies, remaining trapped in marginal political positions. The paper illustrates this tension focusing on ‘social investment’. This discourse – which is today the most important framework for welfare reform among academics – emphasises the economic benefits of social policy for promoting alternatives to welfare retrenchment. Building on a research project aimed at re-thinking social investment from Sen's capability perspective, the paper discusses the conditions for developing a post-neoliberal discourse on social welfare. (shrink)

Different evocations of “crisis” create distinct categories that in turn evoke certain social reactions. Post-2008, Greece became the epicentre of the “financial crisis”; simultaneously, since 2015 with the advent of the “refugee crisis,” it became the “hotspot of Europe.” What are the different vocabularies of crisis? Moreover, how have both representations of crisis facilitated humanitarian crises to become phenomena for European and transnational institutional management? What are the hegemonically constructed subjects of the different crises? The (...) everyday reality in the crisis-ridden hotspot of Europe is invisible in these representations. It is precisely the daily, soft, lived, and unspoken realities of intersecting crises that hegemonic discourses of successive, overlapping, or “nesting crises” render invisible. By shifting the focus from who belongs to which state-devised category to an open-ended, polyvocal account of capitalist oppressions, we aim to question the state’s and supranational efforts to divide the “migrant mob” into discrete juridical categories of citizens (emigrants), refugees, and illegal immigrants, thereby undermining coalitional struggles between precaritised groups. (shrink)

Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Contemporary and Historical Human Challenges brings together a range of original contributions that seek to critically interrogate the concept of 'crisis', a seemingly omnipresent and defining metonym of our times. Both international and interdisciplinary in perspective, the leading doctoral scholars and early-career researchers represented in this volume unsettle hegemonic notions of crisis (and possible remedies) by exploring both a very wide range of extant crises (in and of politics, (...) economics, communities, technologies, urban policy, literary representation, media studies, language learning, nationalisms and national identity, and the legitimation of the state), as well as the roots of our contemporary understandings of crisis and the politics of 'crisis representation'. The book is broadly divided into two sections, 'Politics and Society' and 'Arts, Media and Humanities'. Originating in the University of Salford Arts, Media and Social Sciences Postgraduate Research Conference of 2010, Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety provides both an accessible and wide-ranging general introduction to various applications of the concept of crisis, as well providing a more specialist resource for students exploring crisis in one of the many disciplinary fields represented in this collection. Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety will be of particular interest to students with interdisciplinary interests that encompass cultural studies, literary theory, media studies, politics, sociology and urban studies. (shrink)

In the context of the worsening economic crisis analogies tend to be drawn between the economic and political crisis in Europe of the 1920s and 1930s and the current situation. Now as then, it is argued, there is the risk that a systemic economic crisis and the crisis of representative politics will in turn lead to authoritarian outcomes. Rarer, however, is the idea that the current political and economic crisis may lead to a “progressive” outcome. (...) This article examines both options under the light of the thinking of one of the most important interpreters of political crisis and change in the 1920s and 1930s: Antonio Gramsci. One of the central arguments in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is the crisis of parliamentarism and democratic politics. Gramsci did not limit his analysis to the crisis however. His theoretical undertaking also consisted in the attempt to imagine the conditions for moving beyond the democratic crisis in a progressive manner. What emerges is an existing continuity between the Gramscian categories of Cesarism-Bonapartism, economic-corporative State, hegemonic crisis and contemporary politics, particularly with reference to phenomena such as populism, technocracy and neo-liberalism; the utility of the conceptual category of Passive Revolution to comprehend the current forms of exerting power and building social consent; the potential fruitfulness of Gramsci’s schemata on counter-hegemonies, to understand the changes in the party-organization and the possibilities of building counter-hegemonies. (shrink)

For over a decade now we live under an economic crisis, its metastases, and its effects. Since the turn of the century, we live under recurring security crises and state attempts to prevent them. This article examines the temporal horizons of the strategies the neoliberal state employs to combat the spectre of crisis in its two quintessential fields of action: the economy and security. It notes a pronounced contrast: whereas security strategy is pre-emptive, economic strategy is reactive. These (...) two opposite strategies aim to the same result: to cancel the future. Security strategy seeks to pre-emptively neutralise the possibility of non-liberal politics, canceling the possibility of political change. By not intervening proactively, economic strategy seeks to guarantee that the economy will remain as it is, averting economic change. This attempt of the state to cancel the future is symptomatic of a malaise affecting the capitalist class. Having fully conquered social resistance, the capitalist class tries to render the moment of its triumph permanent, fixing society in an eternal present. For the first time in its history, the capitalist class has neither vision nor appetite for the future. This signals its hegemonic implosion. (shrink)

It has been argued that globalization assists the USA to gain a hegemonic position, allowing it to export its culture. Because this exportation leads to the domination by American culture of the local cultures of importing countries, which are the key element in sustaining their citizens’ national identity, citizens of these countries are unable to protect state sovereignty from this cultural invasion. In order to prevent a political crisis arising from such an invasion, these countries will adopt the (...) strategy of cultural localization. However, this top-down approach overestimates the influence of hegemonic cultures and, thus, overlooks the dynamic nature of cultural development that is generated by people’s agency. This essay rejects this top-down model by arguing that texts cannot dominate people, and that people influence their existence and value. (shrink)

Since 2015, the ‘refugee crisis’ is possibly the most photographed humanitarian crisis in history. Photographs taken, for instance, in Lesvos, Greece, and Bodrum, Turkey, were instrumental in generating waves of public support for, and populist opposition to “welcoming refugees” in Europe. But photographs do not circulate in a vacuum; this book explores the visual economy of the ‘refugee crisis,’ showing how the reproduction of images is structured by, and secures hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and ‘race,’ essential to (...) the functioning of bordered nation-states. Taking photography not only as the object of research, but innovating the method of photographìa— the material trace of writing/grafì with light/phos—this book urges us to view images and their reproduction critically. Part theoretical text, part visual essay, "Reproducing Refugees" vividly shows how institutional violence underpins both the spectacularity and the banality of ‘crisis.’ This book goes about synthesising visual studies with queer, feminist, postcolonial, post-structuralist, and post-Marxist theories. "Reproducing Refugees: Photographìa of a Crisis" offers theoretical frameworks and methodological tools to critically analyse representations, both those circulated through hegemonic institutions, and those generated from ‘below’. It carves a space between logos and praxis, ways of knowing and ways of doing, by offering a new visual language that problematises reified categories such as that of the ‘refugee’ and makes possible disruptive, alternative, resistant perceptions. The book contributes to the fields of migration and border studies, critically engaging visual narratives drawn from migration movements to question dominant categories and frameworks, from a decolonial, no-borders, queer feminist perspective. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It used to be said that shame culture waned in early modernity, but there is a growing body of historiography on the vital role that recognition and the opinion of others continued to play. Honour mattered; for some it was the mark and the maker of your true self. While philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, Hume, Smith, and Rousseau disagreed in their evaluations of the phenomenon, they were united in thinking that the great engine of recognition whirred like furious (...) clockwork through human society. When one listens to voices from the margins of power, however, to formerly enslaved black women and men, and white women, one hears a different story – that the machine is broken. I argue that, albeit from incomparable positions, they articulate a theory of misrecognition in the face of systematic power. Sensitive to the entanglements of epistemology and naturalised inequality, they offer a politics of vision that deconstructs the punitive lenses of gender and race which render people invisible and misunderstood, and in so doing they try to write themselves into view. They offer an account of the mysterious intractability of hegemonic ways of seeing that poses a challenge to both the putatively laissez-faire economy of recognition of their enlightened contemporaries, and to the emancipatory teleology of modern recognition theorists. (shrink)

This article focuses on critical realist analysis of concrete processes of structure formation and realization of structural propensity. It aims to explain the reasons for the rise and fall of the neoliberal regime in Iceland that led to the extreme expansion of the Icelandic financial system and its crisis. The article argues that the neoliberal regime was actively constructed by economic and political actors within the framework of the particular structural characteristics of Iceland. It claims that rigid structural conditions (...) due to the very small size of the economy and severe problem of oligopoly undermined the neoliberal utopia of perfect market competition. In order to develop this argument, the paper observes how power elites actively affect public opinion and establish their hegemonic position in the political system. (shrink)

The current crisis of neoliberalism is calling into question the relevance of key international institutions. We analyze the origins, nature, and possible impacts of the crisis through comparing two such institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Both originated in the post-World War II U.S.-led hegemonic order and were transformed as part of the transition to global neoliberalism. We show that while the IMF and the WTO have been part of the same (...) hegemonic project, their distinct institutional features have put them on significantly different trajectories. Historical differences in the two institutions’ systems of rules have placed the IMF in a more vulnerable position than the WTO, which provides clues to the future contours of global economic governance. (shrink)

All migration politics are reproductive politics. The nation-state project of controlling migration secures the racialised demographics of the nation, understood as a reproducible fact of the social and human body, determining who is differentially included, who is excluded, and who is exalted. In this commentary, we put forward a provocation about methodological heteronormativity and its omnipresence in the discourse surrounding the so-called “refugee crisis.” By methodological heteronormativity, we refer to the ways states, supranational organisations, hegemonic ideologies, but also (...) solidarity movements and critical scholars construct the figure of the (un)deserving “refugee.”. (shrink)

A monster stalks the earth—a sluggish, craven, dumb beast that takes fright at the slightest noise and starts at the sight of its own shadow. This monster is the market. The shadow it fears is cast by a light that comes from the future: the Keynesian crisis of expectations. It is this same light that causes the world’s leaders to tremble before the beast. They tremble, Jean-Pierre Dupuy says, because they have lost faith in the future. What Dupuy calls (...) Economy has degenerated today into a mad spectacle of unrestrained consumption and speculation. But in its positive form—a truly political economy in which politics, not economics, is predominant—Economy creates not only a sense of trust and confidence but also a belief in the open-endedness of the future without which capitalism cannot function. In this devastating and counterintuitive indictment of the hegemonic pretensions of neoclassical economic theory, Dupuy argues that the immutable and eternal decision of God has been replaced with the unpredictable and capricious judgment of the crowd. The future of mankind will therefore depend on whether it can see through the blindness of orthodox economic thinking. (shrink)

In the present essay, I argue that the current EU governance reflects a contradiction between the presumption of a European constitutional framework based on human rights, democracy and the rule of law and the recently adopted economic stability governance defined outside the horizon of the EU treaties. I propose to understand this scenario through the prism of two distinct and context-specific assumptions: a political-sociological hypothesis for which internal contradictions of capitalism are thought to be capable of ‘self-displacing’ to other societal (...) sectors and a political-philosophical thesis for which EU governance is connected to a decrease in democratic legitimacy and right-standards due to hegemonic control by economic powers. Both hypotheses testify to the lowering of the standards of protection of fundamental rights and member states’ regulatory capacities as well as to an overall de-constitutionalization of the EU architecture. (shrink)

This paper aims to discuss human experience in the Anthropocene geological era based on contemporary social theorists as Žižek and Badiou. I propose that, in face of the environmental crisis, techno-ecological corporative style sustainability is a perverse response; and this circuit can only be broken by a radical version of environmentalism that antagonizes the hegemonic discourse of our production-and-consumption system – emphasizing politics. The paper is divided into four parts where: a) the term Anthropocene, created by Paul Crutzen (...) among others, is described as the configuration of an era when biosphere disappears as an externality and becomes subordinated to the ensemble of knowledge and powers of liberal-capitalism; b) based on Alain Badiou, I describe the subject as resulting from an event’s truth progressing as fidelity; and the fact that not even the vision of environmental death have had the power to create new environmentalist subjects in place of consumer subjects; c) I analyze the perverse structure of denial that shows the reverse of the hole made positive - namely the appearing of techno-ecological products inviting us to enjoy a qualified consumption as the positived reverse of the environmental crisis; d) finally, after a brief comment about the currents which fight for hegemony in the discursive field of environmentalism, I discuss how the radical ecologism proposes to break the perverse circuit of techno-efficient sustainability by means of the political antagonism. (shrink)

The paper investigates the distinctly Chinese intertwining of expertise and state & financial capital to enrich the current understanding of neoliberalism as a hegemonic governing rationale. Since the summer of 2015, China has been experiencing one of its most severe financial crises since the adoption of a ‘socialist market economy’ in 1978. However, globally circulating narratives have failed to look beyond a Western-centric corollary, rehashing a critique of the Chinese one-party system and its lack of a ‘genuine’ free market. (...) By exploring the specific genealogy of Chinese capitalism, and the distinctive Chinese financial-market structure, the article will show how the scientific authority of experts formulated amongst neoliberal thinkers never permeated the Chinese idea of knowledge. In the Chinese variety of financial capitalism, expertise is seen to lie not so much in the wisdom of individual experts as in their socio-political support, which legitimises their economic interventions. (shrink)

This article presents findings of a research carried out among pro-refugee individuals in social media in Hungary. During the so-called refugee crisis that emerged in the summer of 2015, anti-immigrant sentiments in the Hungarian public were fueled by a strong governmental campaign. This unusually strong propaganda campaign created a strong hegemonic discourse. Nevertheless, a pro-refugee counterpublic opposing the hegemonic discourse also emerged. The article discusses existing scholarly literature on the phenomenon and how it appears in and is (...) shaped by the digital sphere. The empirical findings focus on two characteristics of the pro-refugee counterpublic. First, we look at the political affiliations of this counterpublic. Second, we ask if the different digital affordances used by the counterpublic and their combinations indicate the formation of a community. The methodological ambition of the article is to present a digital data-driven approach, based on data provided by Facebook, which allows the individual profiling of each user. The connections and schemata of these profiles provide the analytical background of the present research. We aim to illustrate that such a digital approach has a number of advantages over traditional sociological methods, especially in the research of subaltern counterpublics. (shrink)

How are we to understand and analyse the constitutional tension in Turkey between the judiciary and the political sphere? In this article the issue is mirrored in the political crisis which started in April 2007 with the nomination of Abdullah G l as presidential candidate by the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP). The more detailed empirical background consists primarily of the dress code problematics including the matter of party closure. Theoretically, the “hegemonic preservation” thesis elaborated by (...) Ran Hirschl turned out to be a useful instrument when it comes to explaining this political crisis as well as the origin of the so-called new constitutionalism. This is illustrated by the judicial activism in the headscarf affair as well as by the eagerness of the Republican People's Party (CHP), as the political representative of the secular establishment, to play the 'Atat rk card' and to submit the protection of their interest to an independent judiciary and not to the uncertainties of the mechanisms of majoritarian democracy. However, with regard to the current Turkish case my analysis also shows that Hirschl's thesis is too static and should be complemented with a more dynamic perspective of constitutional politics as a repeated game. One example of this is that even if the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) had declared the constitutional amendment on the headscarf invalid and voted for economic sanctions against the AKP, it did not close the party down. (shrink)

ABSTRACTUsing a frame analysis approach this paper examines how The Irish Times and the Irish Independent portrayed public sector workers during Ireland's economic crisis. Using a sample of coverage from 2009 and 2010 it discusses the five media frames identified in this analysis, three of which were hegemonic and two of which were counter hegemonic. In this paper, I argue that coverage of the public sector by each newspaper was imbalanced and inaccurate. This paper also finds that (...) both newspapers were strong advocates of austerity cutbacks in the public service as a solution to Ireland's financial crisis, frequently representing this idea as ‘fact’ while simultaneously delegitimising those opposing this viewpoint. (shrink)

A monster stalks the earth—a sluggish, craven, dumb beast that takes fright at the slightest noise and starts at the sight of its own shadow. This monster is the market. The shadow it fears is cast by a light that comes from the future: the Keynesian crisis of expectations. It is this same light that causes the world’s leaders to tremble before the beast. They tremble, Jean-Pierre Dupuy says, because they have lost faith in the future. What Dupuy calls (...) Economy has degenerated today into a mad spectacle of unrestrained consumption and speculation. But in its positive form—a truly political economy in which politics, not economics, is predominant—Economy creates not only a sense of trust and confidence but also a belief in the open-endedness of the future without which capitalism cannot function. In this devastating and counterintuitive indictment of the hegemonic pretensions of neoclassical economic theory, Dupuy argues that the immutable and eternal decision of God has been replaced with the unpredictable and capricious judgment of the crowd. The future of mankind will therefore depend on whether it can see through the blindness of orthodox economic thinking. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between nonviolence and trustworthiness. I focus on questions of accountability for people in midlevel positions of power, where multiple loyalties and responsibilities create conflicts and where policies can push people into actions that reinstate hegemonic relations. A case study from crisis counseling is presented in which the management of the case exacerbated previous violence done to a biracial female. The importance of resistance to dominant ideology is scrutinized.

This article aims to be what Jasbir Puar referred to as ‘an unfolding archive’. It makes a critical intervention at a historical crisis point as it is unfolding. It sets out to examine the logic that writes the relations between bodies, borders and kin during the political crisis that transpired at the border of Belarus and Poland in 2021. I think of this logic in terms of a ‘grammar’, drawing on the idea articulated by Hortense J. Spillers, where (...) ‘American grammar’ fleshes out the connection between slavery, kinship, nation-building and the processes of gendering. I examine the rubrics of the hegemonic national grammatics in contemporary Poland, which establishes who counts as kin and who belongs to the nation in the context of the border crisis. I offer the concept of ‘declining’ kinship to seek generative (im)possibilities to articulate affinities and solidarities running against the dominant system of reproductive nationalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article explores the discursive configuration of paid work by Greek employees, shedding light to the symbolic pores they mobilize in order to craft its meaning as well as to the micro- and macrosocial implications of their argumentation strategies. Building upon a social constructionist epistemology, 22 in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed using tools and techniques provided by critical approaches to discourse analysis. The ‘school’, the ‘journey’, and the ‘slavery’ repertoires, as I named them, were the three discursive (...) patterns identified, each one grounded in different assumptions about the social universe and thus legitimizing or challenging the hegemonic fixations of the meaning of work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While multiple crisis phenomena have sparked experimentation with alternative forms of production and consumption on the micro level, it is not clear if and how these alternative practices may become hegemonic and thus displace capitalism as the hegemonic order on the macro level, rather than merely fostering pockets of a solidarity economy within capitalism. This question is hard to research, because it relates to post-capitalist futures rather than actual events or phenomena in the past or present. (...) In this article, I propose a methodological framework for studying the transformative potential of counter-hegemonic initiatives. Building on debates on causality and prediction within Critical Realism, I introduce the concept of ‘ex-ante’ retroduction. Using this mode of reasoning helps to identify possible generative mechanisms for the viability and achievability of alternative futures which can then be empirically investigated. (shrink)

Gramsci, An italian marxist intellectual politically active when fascism rose and later imprisoned by mussolini, Offers a sensitive and non-Stereotyped communist interpretation of fascism. He rejected the crude "fascism as last stage of capitalism thesis," the view that it was merely the "agent of the big bourgeoisie" and even the view that it reflected a particular set of class interests. He recognized that it was not merely reactionary, That it had complex internal divisions, That it exemplified the "relative autonomy of (...) politics," and that it was best understood as a response to a "hegemonic crisis.". (shrink)

The crisis of the American-led international order would seem to open up new opportunities for rising states—led by China, India, and other non-Western developing countries—to reshape the global order. As their capacities and influence grow, will these states rise up and integrate into the existing order or will they seek to overturn and reorganize it? The realist hegemonic perspective expects today's power transition to lead to growing struggles between the West and the “rest” over global rules and institutions. (...) In contrast, this essay argues that although America's hegemonic position may be declining, the liberal international characteristics of order—openness, rules, and multilateralism—are deeply rooted and likely to persist. And even as China seeks in various ways to build rival regional institutions, there are stubborn limits on what it can do. (shrink)

Ricoeur speaks to the unfolding ‘post-crisis’ period of the academic humanities through his dialectic between the hermeneutics of faith and suspicion, a construct that carries forward the critical impulse which academic bureaucracies want to repress in answer to their corporate masters, while at the same recognizing the value of reformist impulses that will generate strategic alignments and substantive benefits. This article identifies the tensions of the double hermeneutic, where it is successful and unsuccessful, and maps Ricoeur’s view of ethical (...) responsibility in the academic politics of the 1960s onto the academic politics of today. The article concludes that Ricoeur’s particular value on this subject lies in the courage with which he dared to place unfashionable reformist possibilities in an honest and productive dialogue with the radical suspicion of hegemonic structures. (shrink)

The failure to effectively confront major challenges facing humanity, most importantly, the global ecological crisis, it is argued, is due to the failure of those analysing the root causes of these challenges to engage with and invoke political philosophy to find a way out, and concomitantly, the failure of ethical and political philosophers to effectively engage with the deep assumptions, power structures and dynamics actually operative in the current world-order. It is claimed that this is due to a tacit (...) acceptance of a cultural dualism manifest in the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, with the humanities having been marginalized by the sciences. To overcome this dualism and marginalization of the humanities, and to defend communitarian ethical and political philosophy in a way that both challenges mainstream thinking and engages with the world as it is, with the potential to inspire and orient people for effective action, it is shown how communitarian ethical and political philosophy can be defended and developed through ecology incorporating the notion of ecopoiesis. It is shown how this can serve to create an effective counter-hegemonic culture, integrated as a dialogic grand narrative, uniting and orienting people to create a multi-polar world-order as an ecological civilization. (shrink)

This essay explores the matter of hegemony in the global system from the standpoint of global capitalism theory, in contrast to extant approaches that analyse this phenomenon from the standpoint of the nation‐state and the inter‐state system. It advances a conception of global hegemony in transnational social terms, linking the process of globalisation to the construction of hegemonies and counter‐hegemonies in the twenty‐first century. An emergent global capitalist historical bloc, lead by a transnational capitalist class, rather than a particular nation‐state, (...) bloc of states, or region, is pursuing a hegemonic project. The US state is seen as the point of condensation for pressures from dominant groups to resolve problems of global capitalism. US‐led militarisation is a contradictory political‐military response to the crisis of global capitalism, characterised by economic stagnation, legitimacy problems and the rise of counter‐hegemonic forces. (shrink)

In this essay, I reflect on the way that the COVID-19 pandemic deepens the care crisis and the radical, democratic transformation this turning point demands. Beginning with an assessment of the status of the free-riding on care and the gender division of labor, I continue with an analysis of the hegemonic justifications that, as Wendy Brown has shown, underpin such unbalance. I conclude with some remarks on the imminent challenge to advance towards a model of state, society and (...) citizenship capable of securing a sustained and co-responsible social compromise with the care of the community. (shrink)

The hegemonic discourse of sustainable development adopted as an international alternative solution to the socio-ecological crisis has implied a progression of the modern utopian project and most importantly, an intrinsic contradiction and omission that positions sustainable development as something that is not in any place. To understand, discuss, and transcend this oxymoron, we first review the modern utopian project and analyze its paradigmatic and ontological assumptions about knowledge, time, and space. Second, we show that sustainable development just re-adapted (...) the founding premises of the modern utopias. Third, to transcend the modern utopian facet of sustainable development, we suggest an understanding of sustainability that stems from a topographical way of thinking. We suggest this approach allows us to seek alternatives to the modern epistemology and ontology that have shaped the current dominant vision of sustainable development. Finally, we propose to move from the modern utopia of sustainable development to the praxis of topographical sustainabilities to trigger a more comprehensive and relational praxis of sustainability. (shrink)

This book challenges the hegemonic view that economic calculation represents the ultimate rationality. The West legitimises its global dominance by the claim to be a rational, democratic, science-based and progressive civilisation. Yet, over the past decades, the dogma of economic rationality has become an ideological black hole whose gravitational pull allows no public debate or policy to escape. Political leaders of all creeds are held in its orbit and public language is saturated by it. This dogma has pervaded all (...) spheres of life, ushering the age of post-rationality, especially in English speaking countries. The authors discuss several aspects of post-rational global capitalism still dominated by the Anglosphere: hyper-competition, hyper-consumption, inequality, volatile global financial markets, environmental degradation and the unforeseen effects of the internet-mediated communication revolution. The book concludes by discussing some utopian and dystopian future scenarios and asking whether the West can transcend its crisis of rationality. (shrink)

This article argues that hegemonic cosmopolitan narrativity fails to frame a complex cosmopolitan normativity. The hegemonic cosmopolitan narrative celebrates a mobile selfhood merely hospitable to the encountered, mobile diversity that comes ashore. A recent educational-theoretical ‘refugee-crisis’ initiative serves as an illustration of the normative shortcomings of the new cosmopolitanism. The implicit normativity of the dominant cosmopolitan narrativity is, I claim, politically too weak to cover the normative surplus of a more critical cosmo-politics. Cosmopolitanism should be recast to (...) make higher ethico-political demands on the global self and world for the cultivation of neglected ecological and relational sensibilities. (shrink)

Why a hermeneutical philosophy of the natural sciences? It is necessary to address the philosophic crisis of realism vs relativism in the natural sciences. This crisis is seen as a part of the cultural crisis that Husserl and Heidegger identified and attributed to the hegemonic role of theoretical and calculative thought in Western societies. The role of theory is addressed using the hermeneutical circle to probe the origin of theoretic meaning in scientific cultural praxes. This is (...) studied in Galileo's discovery of the phases of Venus; the practice of measurement; the different theories and practices of space perception; the historicality and temporality of scientific research communities which ground paradigm change; and the process of discovery. The paper draws particularly from the work of Heidegger. Though envisaging all science and scholarship, the highlighted theme is research in the natural sciences. (shrink)

This paper analyses the hegemony of the growth paradigm through the example of its naturalisation in capitalist production and consumption relations. Applying a combination of theoretical elements from the Marxian tradition, the Regulation approach and Bourdieusian sociology, emphasis is placed on how the growth imperative is reflected in people's minds and bodies. It becomes hegemonic because it appears to be the natural way of steering economy and society. As a result, all people – including working people – benefit from (...) the continuation of growth. To overcome the growth paradigm, activists would need to build on a crisis of the ‘objective’ structures of economy and society. (shrink)

This introduction to the Queer Death Studies special issue explores an emerging transdisciplinary field of research. This field critically, reflexively and affirmatively investigates and challenges conventional normativities, assumptions, expectations, and regimes of truths that are brought to life and made evident by current planetary scale necropolitics and its framing of death, dying and mourning in the contemporary world. It is set against the background of traditional engagements with the question of death, often grounded in Western hegemonic and normative ideas (...) of dying, dead and mourning subjects and bodies, on the one hand; and on the other contemporary discourses on human and nonhuman death and extinction, directly linked to the environmental crisis, capitalist and post/colonial extractivist necropolitics, material and symbolic violence, oppression and inequalities, and socio-economic, political and ecological unsustainabilities. By bringing together conceptual and analytical tools grounded in feminist materialisms and feminist theorising broadly speaking, queer theory and decolonial critique, the contributions in this special issue strive to advance queerfeminist methodologies and ontological, ethical and political understandings that critically and creatively attend to the problem of death, dying and mourning in the current environmental, cultural, and socio-political contexts. (shrink)

This article addresses the question as to whether it is logically possible to fashion a discourse exclusively for the natural environment. Could such a discourse emerge without colonization by other social spheres acting as proxy? The prospects appear to be rather bleak, for even in the case of two apparently non-human-directed or non-committal discourses, that of extensionist ethics and new sophisticated management (of environmental crises), the latent social-constructionism built into both renders them monistic discourses hegemonically mapping the territories of what (...) they refer to. It becomes increasingly difficult to escape the human epistemic locatedness anti-anthropocentric critics demand. Despite this, such an exercise offers us the benefit of being mindful of what the crisis of social-scientific discourses amounts to as well as what to expect of discourse analysis as such. Furthermore, the prospects of the two discourses examined are being mapped onto two modified models drawing on Foucault and Deleuze thus helping us understand the pattern of our diverse environmental responses. Ecological thinking is perhaps the first subject-matter that transcends or shatters discourse boundaries and strains both imagination and human powers when selecting between conceptual frameworks, making us aware of the ineluctable feature of social-constructionism present in our social thought. (shrink)

A educação brasileira está estruturada a partir da colonialidade do saber (QUIJANO, 2005) que permeia a história do nosso território, determinando uma monocultura da mente (SHIVA, 2003) na forma como entendemos o mundo. No entanto, uma educação que tem em seu cerne currículos monoculturais e silencia de diferentes maneiras o pensamento próprio e local, leva a uma relação subalterna com o conhecimento. Diante de enormes desafios que o mundo contemporâneo em crise tem imposto, é necessário que repensemos os currículos escolares (...) a fim de promover uma educação mais significativa para o mundo que está por vir. Com este artigo, temos como objetivo apontar caminhos para lidar com as diferenças no contexto escolar, ressignificando o que de fato é “daninho” para o mundo de hoje. Analisaremos a relação entre a monocultura da mente e do solo e a colonialidade do saber, apontando o potencial dos saberes não hegemônicos para resistir à colonialidade e suas consequências. Traremos como proposta uma filosofia erva-daninha que procura aprender com aquilo que foi descartado e considerado “daninho” pelo saber hegemônico, e que apresenta saberes e estratégias que nos permitem resistir aos desafios contemporâneos de maneira humanizada. Palavras-chave: Colonialidade; Diferenças; pluralidade; Direitos Humanos; Monocultura. The weed philosophy as a proposal for the decolonization of knowledge in education and resistance to contemporary challenges Abstract: Brazilian education is structured based on the coloniality of knowledge (QUIJANO, 2005) that permeates the history of our territory, determining a monoculture of the mind (SHIVA, 2003) in the way we understand the world. However, an education that has monocultural curricula at its core silences own and local thinking in different ways, leads to a subordinate relationship with knowledge. In view of the enormous challenges that the contemporary world in crisis has imposed, it is necessary that we rethink school curricula in order to promote a more meaningful education for the world to come. With this article, we aim to point out ways to deal with differences in the school context, redefining what is in fact “harmful” for today's world. We will analyze the relationship between the monoculture of mind and soil and the coloniality of knowledge, pointing out the potential of non-hegemonic knowledge to resist coloniality and its consequences. We will bring as a proposal a weed philosophy that seeks to learn from what was discarded and considered "harmful" by hegemonic knowledge, and that presents knowledge and strategies that allow us to resist contemporary challenges in a humanized way. Keywords: Coloniality; Differences; Plurality; Human Rights; Monoculture. La filosofía de la maleza como propuesta de descolonización del saber en educación y resistencia a los desafíos contemporáneos Resumen: La educación brasileña está estructurada en base a la colonialidad del saber (QUIJANO, 2005) que impregna la historia de nuestro territorio, determinando un monocultivo de la mente (SHIVA, 2003) en la forma en que entendemos el mundo. Sin embargo, una educación que tiene currículos monoculturales en su núcleo y silencia de diferentes maneras el pensamiento proprio e local, conduce a una relación subordinada com el conocimiento. Frente a los enormes desafíos que el mundo contemporáneo en crisis ha impuesto, necesitamos repensar los planes de estudio escolares para promover una educación más significativa para el mundo venidero. Con este artículo, nuestro objetivo es señalar formas de lidiar con las diferencias en el contexto escolar, volviendo a significar lo que de hecho es "perjudicial" para el mundo de hoy. Analizaremos la relación entre el monocultivo de la mente y el suelo y la colonialidad del saber, señalando el potencial del saber no hegemónico para resistir la colonialidad y sus consecuencias. Traeremos como propuesta una filosofía de la maleza que busca aprender de lo descartado y considerado “nocivo” por los saberes hegemónicos, y que presenta saberes y estrategias que nos permiten resistir los desafíos contemporáneos de forma humanizada. Palabras clave: Colonialidad; Diferencias; Pluralidad; Derechos Humanos; Monocultivo. (shrink)

Place mouse over image continent. 2.1 (2012): 36–39. From an ethical and political perspective, people and property can hardly be separated. Indeed, the modern political subject – that is, the individual, the person, the self, the autonomous actor, the rational self-interest maximizer, etc. – has taken shape in and through the elaboration, institutionalization, and enactment of that which rightfully belongs to it. This thread can be traced back perhaps most directly to Locke’s notion that the origin of the political state (...) occurs when people rise above the state of nature by ceding the power to prosecute offenses. The rule of law begins then with a defense of the right to property. People become subjects by adhering to the social contract, which they do by deferring the defense of their own property to the state. In this light, the response of the United States federal government to the financial crisis of 2008 appears to many as a breach of the social contract. The chant “banks got bailed out, we got sold out” states the claim plainly. Why exactly did some subjects (e.g., the banks) have their property defended by the state (i.e., through the variety of programs including TARP, the discount window at the US Federal Reserve, etc.), when other subjects (e.g., homeowners) found themselves without protection of their property rights, forced to default on mortgage debts and face dispossession? Even if the rhetoric about “too big to fail” can be believed, and the collapse of the financial system would lead to negative consequences for people who had little or no connection to the activities that brought it about, such consequences need not call into question the notion that everyone stands equally before the law. To occupy, then, appears as a form of civil disobedience, an intentional, retaliatory breach of the social contract by those who feel that they have lost the support of the state to which they ceded their power as sovereign agents. The visible and the invisible The violation of property rights of people who have recognition, protection and power under the law destabilizes their very status as citizens and tests the limit of democracy. Does the financial system force the dematerialized victimization of individuals? Do people become numbers, or worse still, percentages of unemployed, tranches of defaulted mortgages and foreclosures? Are they perhaps instead disenfranchised prospectively from the privileged position occupied by virtual entities and actors such as those involved in the derivatives markets, always already exiled back into the physical, visible realm? The line of conflict appears to be drawn between invisibility/absence/deferral and visibility/presence/realization. The demonstrators occupy an excess property of those subjects, namely, the banks and financial elite, who did receive recognition and protection under the law. By domesticating this excess property, rendering its invisibility visible within the political economy, the protesters raise a new form of threat to the hegemonic order. To occupy, then, involves a rejection of the order under which the “99%” have been subjected to erasure. The occupation seeks creatively to establish a new means of communication and law for its subjects. In the face of an existing power structure that is increasingly disenfranchising the majority of people while consolidating nodes of power and influence, the “occupation”, or the work of the Occupy movement, involves seizing a space that refuses the rules of the existing, allegedly corrupt sovereign state. This refusal of governance extends even to include a steadfast refusal to articulate a strategy, to formulate a list of demands, to converse with the sovereign power on the grounds of its own conventions, to put forth a leader, to resolve the ambiguity of the movement into a discreet identity, face, or voice. Do these tactics provide a resolution to the problem that was its genesis? Not in such a direct and easily resolved manner, but it remains difficult to imagine a direct and simple resolution to the problematic of the breach of the social contract. The ambiguity of the situation has generated significant interest within the broader populace, though many people sympathetic to the cause appear to be frustrated because the movement has not simply put forward a short list of concrete demands, or even a set of leaders and spokespeople, much less a resolution. And yet, this lack of coherence appears as a resolution of a problem generic to protest movements in the past, where individual leaders can be removed or discredited, and lists of demands can be co-opted by others holding more political power. Meanwhile, the ambiguity has compelled imitations on a global scale, with the Occupy Wall Street participants consciously taking actions that can be replicated by anyone anywhere without significant cost. These actions have taken place not in a peripheral location such as a parking lot in New Jersey, but instead close to the centers of power and governance, adjacent to Wall Street, close to the White House, on college campuses, etc. This spontaneous archipelago of protests becomes an irritant, a negation of the accepted order of protests, but when the protesters themselves move outside of their encampments, they are escorted by the police, constantly monitored and maintained so that a permanent state of paranoid persecution takes hold. To occupy, occupying, occupation – these actions involve a variable degree of danger – are you willing to step into a different space, where the rule of law is unclear and evolving? Are you presenting yourself as a representative of the majority, the 99%? Who has a sense of belonging to the 99%? This previously invisible population becomes a focal point of political power, garners increasing public support, infects the public dialogue. The government recognizes this population by forcing it from the occupied space, removing the element of possession of property. It is at this point of conflict, in the struggle to hold the physical property, where the greatest friction and violence occurs. Scaling the rule of law While occupied, the property calls for a redress of grievances, a restoration of the rule of law. The Occupy movement does not select and put forward individuals or leaders, it puts forward places – the occupied property represents the point of conflict, not the individual. And it is this very property that the government then tries to reclaim. The movement remains faceless, anonymous, uncounted, or rather counted only as a mass, the self-labeled mass of 99%. These spaces are like refugee camps or favelas, but constructed to unite the political life and private life of the protesters. This objective is presented as a tactical necessity, as all other means of protest and communication have failed, leaving only the option of seizing, holding, occupying a property. But to what end, exactly? Can anyone deliberately return to the prior social contract, embrace, affirm, and govern in strict accordance with the earlier relationship to property, following the logic of Locke’s arguments? In this respect, the contemporary crisis indicates a new, transitional phase in the way that property operates, or rather, in the balance between real and virtual value. The roots of the crisis lay in the massive overvaluation of property caused by lax lending practices, as more people were encouraged to borrow more money, which drove up the prices of property. At the same time, these individual properties, these mortgages for homes actual families lived in and worked to support, were bundled into securities that could be bought, sold, and speculated on. The reduction of a physical house or piece of real estate to an almost incalculably small element in an investment vehicle appears as a scaling of the hedge that radically diminishes the value of any individually owned property. Moreover, a number of recently-innovated financial products allow investors to hedge in new ways, to deliberately spread risk around a portfolio in hopes of bringing returns even when the individual mortgage defaults. At the level of the ‘free’ market, these virtual negative valuations are designed to balance the physical positive valuation, though many of the biggest lenders are now being investigated for controlling both sides of this valuation, the positive and the negative, to facilitate both the creation and failure of the investments and to profit from both. The ability to benefit from both the negative and positive value of an investment is a result of a technologically enabled capacity to operate within a complex field. These layered and scaled investment vehicles and the simultaneous negation of their value together represent a commingling of the virtual and physical existence that is both complex and multiple. The valuation of a virtual property has tremendous power to change the valuation of the physical - either injecting it with or depriving it of funds, pumping in or draining life and energy. This situation has roots of its own – the notion of property advanced e.g., throughout the enclosure movement in Britain was, from the outset, an imposition of virtuality (i.e., the concept of law, the institutions associated with ownership, etc.) on the physical reality of land. 1 The difference today is that technological trading platforms combined with innovations within the financial services industry have enabled the reduction of each individual property receiving or losing value in scale to an almost atomic level. In turn, the number of properties held simultaneously and valued as a massive, multiple wholes – i.e., the derivatives market in mortgage-backed securities – is a new phenomenon made possible through the application of similar technologies and institutional structures. And those actors who can trade in these layers of complexity can then profit from the new phase of disassociation of the virtual and the physical – unconcerned with and operating at such a virtual distance from the individual residing physically on a particular piece of real estate that they no longer feel the tug of the physical tying them back to the physical, operating literally as in a video game, in a virtually distanced world. What can or should be done about this situation? Answers lie outside the scope of this current essay, but merit consideration in the near future… NOTE 1) Hernando de Soto has emphasized this dimension by empirically demonstrating its non-existence in many countries in The Mystery of Capital. (shrink)

This article investigates the appearance of a defined form of masculinity within various aspects of identity in the Muslim and Malay communities in Southeast Asia. This appearance enables for a multilayered understanding of masculinity and hegemonic masculinity which is reinforced by various institutions that fosters and defines the various components of identity. This is by itself a source of tension for men both for the expectations and performance of masculine roles as well as the struggle for a coherent masculinity (...) despite the tensions from the different aspects of identity. Additionally, this article further posits that the very existence of masculinity in these various overlapping aspects presents an opportunity for obscurity by design for the purposes of mystifying masculinity, its functions and ultimately its authority in various institutions and situations. Therefore, the resulting tension and difficulty in defining masculinity on its own terms is the result of this purposeful obscurity where definition, enforcement, policing, and the construction of meaning can only be done through understanding the intersectional location of masculinity. To attempt to dissect this, the article explores masculinity via the following threads, where do we explore the tenets of hegemonic masculinity and the ‘normal’ man? Where are roles and definitions of masculinity obscured by design? And the following debate around the crisis of masculinity. (shrink)

This article analyses the Swedish TV series Hållbart näringsliv (HN) to study hegemonic discursive formations over the meaning of the climate crisis. Combining new materialist approaches in discourse studies with a political ecology understanding of the socio-ecological entanglement, we propose the concept of technocratic solutionism to understand how the neo-liberal green economy secures instrumentalist discourses on nature in the Swedish context. The discourse-theoretical analysis of nine HN episodes identifies four nodal points which articulate the technocratic solutionist discourse: capital’s (...) leading role, Nordic exceptionalism, substitutionalism and long-termism. We argue that the climate crisis can be understood as a materiality that dislocates capitalist assemblages, which then, in response, deploy a techno-solutionism discourse to protect the core principles of economic growth and profitability while marginalizing potential radical alternatives. (shrink)

Modernity’s grand plans were designed far from where we stand today. The prerogative of progress as an ideological imperative that defined colonialism as a natural balance between the ‘developed’ societies’ moral duty to rescue ‘underdeveloped’ peoples from their fate of myth and superstition created education. Education that functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic and aesthetics of the status quo and to bring about conformity to the hegemonic cultural form of (...) western technological consumer capitalism. This article explores whose education and for whom was it created by the imperial ideologies, not of nineteenth- or twentieth-century colonialism but for twenty-first-century western technological consumer neo-colonialism. From South Africa’s Apartheid era Liberation before education to Paulo Freire’s practice of freedom, this article questions the practices of new technologies, art and technology education at the edge of the disenfranchised. The traditional frameworks of education are on an ideological and methodological crisis worldwide. The hegemony of knowledge has ruptured away from academia. The linearity of thought has burst open as an omni-directional array. The hierarchy of authorship is contested and the audiences are becoming users and participants. As the ubiquity of information technologies, the emergence of connectedness, cheap chips and the presage of the Internet of things permeates every aspect of a particular section of people clustered in specific cities and spread out around the globe, a unique consciousness is evolving where a new collaboration paradigm is gaining a place of balance between us, nature and our technologies, our positions on social justice, and is evolving a symbiotic outlook at other cultures and societies. (shrink)

It is time for a paradigm shift in our study of world capitalism and the global ruling class. The statecentrism informing much theorization and analysis of world politics, political economy, and class structure is less and less congruent with 21st century world developments. Global capitalism represents a new stage in the ongoing and open-ended evolution of world capitalism, characterized by the rise of transnational capital and a globally integrated production and financial system commanded by a transnational capitalist class, or TCC, (...) that attempts to exercise its class power through transnational state apparatuses. The TCC, as the new global ruling class, has been attempting, albeit with limited success, to construct a global hegemonic bloc in which one group, the TCC, exercises leadership and imposes its project through the consent of those drawn into the bloc, while those from the majority who are not drawn into this hegemonic project, either through material rewards or ideological mechanisms, are contained or repressed. Global capitalism is in crisis. A popular revolt is spreading worldwide, thus posing many challenges. Transformative struggles must be informed by an accurate analysis of global capitalism and its ruling class. (shrink)

This brief response to Will Davies clarifies and expands a number of the core arguments of the article ‘The Emergence of Neoliberalism: Thinking through and Beyond Michel Foucault’s Lectures on Biopolitics’ (published in TCS 31(4): 3–27). It is argued that it is a mistake to treat Foucault as a neoliberal because his lectures on biopolitics centred on the emergence of different trajectories of neoliberal reason. Instead, Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism can be read as a critical history, one that is partial (...) and incomplete but which nonetheless can be used as a starting point to think historically and critically about neoliberalism. It is suggested that a more nuanced history of neoliberalism, however, can be developed by paying closer attention to the complex relationship between neoliberal reason and the earlier liberal ideas of the 19th century – in particular those of John Stuart Mill. Finally, a claim is made for the value of historical analysis for understanding and responding to the challenges of the post-crisis present, to a situation in which neoliberal ideas appear to have a near-hegemonic grip over popular politics and discourse. (shrink)

This article explores the cultural dimension in democratic struggle from the vantage point of the public sphere. It proposes that in the public sphere there take place competing and changing interpretations over the `public' through continuous articulation of two analytically distinct representations of public interest - democratic and communal discourses. In an empirical study of the recent credibility crisis in Hong Kong, the author demonstrates first, how the governing coalition sought to maintain its authority through a discourse of `administrative (...) efficiency' embedded in the hegemonic narrative of success, and second, how the challenging discourse of democracy regained momentum through de-mystification of the hegemonic narrative in the event of governing crises. The case study of the recent bird flu crisis offers a specific account of political and cultural challenge to bureaucratic paternalism in the postcolonial context. It is argued that the challenge was powerfully presented as the crisis became a dramatic moment of meaning reconstruction through ironic narrativizing and democratic encoding in the public sphere. (shrink)

Numerous scholars in the social sciences and humanities have speedily analysed and interpreted the COVID-19-induced social and political crisis. While the commitment to address an urgent topic is to be appreciated, this article suggests that the combination of confidence in the applicability of one’s tools and belief in the certainty of the available knowledge can be counter-productive in the face of a phenomenon that in significant respects is unprecedented. Starting out from the plurality of forms of knowledge that are (...) mobilized to analyse COVID-19 and its consequences as well as the lack of any clearly hegemonic knowledge, the article tries to understand how a limited convergence in the politico-medical responses to the crisis emerged, and speculates on what would have happened if this had not been the case. In conclusion, it is argued that this pandemic demands a greater awareness of the uncertainty of our knowledge and of the consequences of our actions, both in terms of being situated in time and of aiming at timeliness. (shrink)

This paper proposes different approaches to design, referring to gambiarra practices and artifacts and their relation to complexity theory, evoking critical theorists that take undecidability into account in order to link gambiarra to operations that breed complexity and responsibility. The word gambiarra comes from Brazilian slang and describes an intervention or artifact meant to provide a provisory solution to an unexpected event or crisis. This kind of alternative design differs radically from conventional design because it does not come from (...) formally trained, engineer-minded, projects. Instead, it lacks control, stability and durability. As it offers no permanent solution, it opens room for further accidents and is messy, especially if compared to a conservative model for creation that praises human predominance, soundness and efficiency. Therefore, gambiarra often has negative connotations that this analysis aims to challenge, by relating it to principles of complexity theory. Complexity theory is a transdisciplinary field for research aimed at the organization of living systems, with a vast understanding of networks and what life and govern are. It gathers insights from different disciplines to explore the interconnectivity between individuals, their systems and environment. It unveils how ambivalent information/noise relationships are fundamental for the increase of diversity in a system. It also displays the intelligent dynamics resulting from seemingly insignificant neighborhood relations that collectively make it possible to adapt and continuously change structures. With that in mind, the “deficient” aspect of gambiarra becomes more valuable, as it hints at a potential to generate new information and structures beyond entropic models that perpetuate the same logics across time. Michel Serres’s information theory presented in the book The Parasite is brought up in comparison to gambiarra, in order to explore the potential of interdependent ambiguous relationships that may not fit in dominant forms of discourse. Concomitantly, Vilém Flusser’s notion of responsibility reinforces the argument that a fabric of dynamic differences can emerge out of mutual engagement and indeterminacy. Underlying, this paper concerns with drafting ecological discourses and practices that can embrace contradictions and the plurality of worlds, noticing complex phenomena that have been pushed to the margins, while also decentralizing from hegemonic models. It questions the predominance of the prevailing design paradigm in the search for non-eurocentric and non-anthropocentric human-environment relationships and forms of provision of human needs. (shrink)

The exemplary value of individual moral and political acts provides a unique vantage point for inquiring into the role of the creative imagination in social life. Drawing on Kant’s concept of productive imagination, I argue that an act’s exemplification of a fitting response to a moral or political problem or crisis is comparable to the way that a work of art expresses the ‘thought’ or ‘idea’ to which it gives voice. The exercise of practical reason, or phronesis, is akin (...) to the way that a work augments the practical field of our experiences in this respect. For, like a work of art, the act produces the rule to be followed by means of the example that it sets. Accordingly, I explain how the injunction issuing from the act can be credited to the way that the singular case summons its rule. The singular character of the injunction issuing from the act thus brings to the fore the relation between reflective judgment and this injunction’s normative value. The conjunction of reason, action, and the creative power of imagination offers a critical point of access for interrogating the normative force of claims rooted in individual acts. By setting reason, action, and imagination in the same conceptual framework, I therefore highlight the creative imagination’s subversive role in countering hegemonic systems and habits of thought through promoting the causes of social and political struggles. (shrink)

The Alternative to the Neoliberal System of Globalisation and Militarism. Imperialism today and the Hegemonic Offensive of the United States. Capitalism has entered the age of obsolescence. The new technological revolution saves both labour and capital and thus delegitimates the domination of the second over the first. The US leader of the new imperialist system does not provide capital to its peripheries ,but absorbs the surplus generated in the whole world in order to maintain its wasteful consumption .The devastating (...) dimension of accumulation is thus reinforced ,as the case of an eventual further expansion of agricultural capitalism illustrates it . The power system responds to these features of senility by resorting to more violence and giving up the universal values of its origins ,thus leading to a crisis of democratic legitimity. (shrink)

From the viewpoint of the constitutional crisis in Europe, slow UN reforms, difficulties implementing the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court, and tensions between human rights and trade, Mireille Delmas-Marty's 'journey through the legal landscape' of the early years of the 21st century shows it to be dominated by imprecision, uncertainty and instability. The early 21st century appears to be the era of great disorder: in the silence of the market and the fracas of arms, a world overly (...) fragmented by anarchical globalisation is being unified too quickly through hegemonic integration. How, she asks, can we move beyond the relative and the universal to build order without imposing it, to accept pluralism without giving up on a common law? Neither utopian fusion nor illusory autonomy, Ordering Pluralism is her answer: both an epistemological revolution and an art, it means creating a common legal area by progressive adjustments that preserve diversity. Since an immutable world order is impossible, the imaginative forces of law must be called upon to invent a flexible process of harmonisation that leaves room for believing we can agree on - and protect - common values. 'The book is timely and relevant to the practical concerns of those who work with, and within, the legal system. We must thank Professor Delmas-Marty for her fine work.' From the foreword, Stephen Breyer, Washington, DC. (shrink)