Political Theory Commons^™

Sloterdijk’S Cynicism: Diogenes In The Marketplace, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

No abstract provided.

The Ister: Between The Documentary And Heidegger’S Lecture Course Politics, Geographies, And Rivers, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

The Ister, the 2004 documentary by the Australian scholars and videographers, David Barison, a political theorist, and Daniel Ross, a philosopher, appeals to Martin Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course, Hölderlins Hymne «Der Ister»and the video takes us «backward» as the river flows: beginning from the Danube’s delta where it ends in the sea and «journeying» with it to its source in the Alps. the value of the Barison/Ross documentary for both political theory and philosophy is its illustration of the technological incursions or assaults on the river itself, that is to say: its representation of the ‘uses’ and hence of the …

On The Analytic-Continental Divide In Philosophy: Nietzsche's Lying Truth, Heidegger's Speaking Language, And Philosophy, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

This article explores the question of the nature of the differences between analytic and continental styles of philosophizing, raising the political stakes of the professional differentiation between, and especially: the denial of the difference between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. Discusses the question of the annexation of the philosophical themes of continental philosophy on the part of analytic philosophy, annexation because it is not dialogical or hermeneutical, appropriation or cooption simply by refusing the distinction between styles altogether.

Reception Of The Antigone, Andrés Henao Castro, Melissa Mueller

Andrés Fabián Henao-Castro

No abstract provided.

Mindscapes And Landscapes: Hayek And Simon On Cognitive Extension, Leslie Marsh

Leslie Marsh

Hayek’s and Simon’s social externalism runs on a shared presupposition: mind is constrained in its computational capacity to detect, harvest, and assimilate “data” generated by the infinitely fine-grained and perpetually dynamic characteristic of experience in complex social environments. For Hayek, mind and sociality are co-evolved spontaneous orders, allowing little or no prospect of comprehensive explanation, trapped in a hermeneutically sealed, i.e. inescapably context bound, eco-system. For Simon, it is the simplicity of mind that is the bottleneck, overwhelmed by the ambient complexity of the environmental. Since on Simon’s account complexity is unidirectional, Simon is far more ebullient about the prospects …

Breve Perspectiva Crítica Sobre El Gobierno Abierto Y El Open Data, Lucas Jolías, Alejandro Prince

Lucas Jolías

Las ciberculturas y sus apóstoles aportan cada tanto tiempo y de forma incremental, nuevos conceptos o memes, es decir, unidades teóricas de información cultural transmisibles entre individuos, mentes o generaciones. Algunos de estos conceptos son vacíos, otros son comerciales, varios son sólo nuevos nombres de viejas ideas, pero todos de alguna manera connotan los cambios o tendencias de lo que en forma general podemos denominar la Sociedad del Conocimiento. Algunos de estos conceptos mueren a poco de nacer, otros cobran fuerza y vida propia (como la “web 2.0”), suman fans o detractores, y hasta se institucionalizan. De estos, y entre …

Presupuesto Participativo En Argentina: Análisis De Su Evolución Y Estudio De Caso, Lucas Jolías, Alejandro Prince, Ana Doria

Lucas Jolías

Las sociedades de los países occidentales con sistemas democráticos representativos están tendiendo, en los últimos tiempos, a implementar políticas públicas de Democracia Directa y Semi-Directa, a través de acciones y políticas participativas con la intervención de los ciudadanos en las decisiones de gobierno. El Presupuesto Participativo se convirtió en uno de los procesos más consolidados y genuinos de este tipo de ejercicio de democracia. En la Argentina, desde comienzos de siglo, algunos municipios han comenzado a implementar esta práctica, sin embargo, son al día de hoy experiencias esporádicas y no existe una marco común de acción que las agrupe. En …

O Cidadão E O Estadista, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Fala-se muito em crise, naturalmente em mudanças políticas, e até em regeneração dos partidos. Cremos que esta é fundamental. Ou tal ocorre, ou virá, mais dia menos dia, após esta ou aquela convulsão, a ditadura e o partido único, sob qualquer bandeira, normalmente populista. Muitos estão já a atiçar o lume antipartidário e antidemocrático, como ocorreu noutros tempos. E apontando já os bodes expiatórios a sacrificar, enquanto os verdadeiros responsáveis passam ao largo... Por outro lado, não é Estadista quem quer. São precisas virtudes e qualidades. Não uma competência mitificada e abstrata. Mas projeto político e capacidade, experiência, etc.

Analysis - Toward A New American Military., Adam Lowther, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

In releasing the United States Department of Defense’s (DoD) Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense and Defense Budget Priorities and Choices in January 2012, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta offered a rationale for the administration’s reductions in defense spending. By stating that the shift in strategic direction is an effort to “put our fiscal house in order” and a response to the 2011 Budget Control Act, which requires DoD to reduce spending by $487 billion between fiscal years 2012 and 2021, the United States’ NATO partners in Europe were given considerable reason for …

Corruption And Human Rights: Exploring The Relationships, Berihun Adugna Gebeye

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Corruption is a global phenomenon which every society faces though its degree of severity varies from country to country. Despite its long history, there is no single universally agreed upon definition of corruption. Moreover, its causes, forms and impacts are diverse and multi-faceted. Understanding corruption by itself is a complex undertaking. However, it is agreed that corruption is inimical to public administration, undermines democracy, degrades the moral fabrics of the society and violates human rights. The pain of corruption touches all the human family but it disproportionately affects the vulnerable sections of the society. It reinforces discrimination, exclusion and arbitrariness. …

Queers Resisting Zionism: On Authority And Accountability Beyond Homonationalism, C. Heike Schotten, Haneen Maikey

C. Heike Schotten

A critical response to Jasbir Puar and Maya Mikdashi's "Pinkwatching and Pinkwashing: Interpenetration and Its Discontents"

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 2

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces

Images Of Muslims In Evangelical Christian And Secular Right-Wing Discourse, Kristian Steiner

International Dialogue

This is a comparative content analysis of the construction of Islam and Muslims in two Swedish publications—the newspaper Världen idag and the journal SD-Kuriren, the official organ of the Sweden Democrats—representing the Swedish Evangelical Christian right and the Swedish political right, respectively. The aim is to see both agreement and differences in their Muslim-related discourse from 2006–2007. Both news products share basic assumptions about Muslims and Islam. The main theme in the editorials and articles is the Muslim threat, in some cases combined with a Western retreat. Världen idag also focuses on Islam’s alleged incompatibility with democracy. In both media …

Pilgrimage In Turbulent Contexts: One Hundred Years Of Pilgrimage To The Holy Land, Curtis Hutt

International Dialogue

In this paper, I review select developments in the last one hundred years of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic pilgrimage to sites found today in Israel and the Occupied Territories. I argue that only by viewing the pilgrimages under analysis as dissipative systems, is one able to explain historical change in this most turbulent of contexts. When combined with an understanding of pilgrimage as social action, this approach enables historians of religions to account for not only the restructuring of pilgrimages over time but also to understand dynamics surrounding ritual birth and death. Furthermore, the political strategies of traditionalists and revivalists …

How To Arrive At A Judeo-Christian-Islamic Culture And Civilization, Enes Karić

International Dialogue

I am delighted to be invited to speak at this gathering, even though I am unfamiliar with many of the subjects to be discussed. The organizer of these meetings in Sarajevo suggested “Christianity and Islam: An Islamic Perspective” as the title for my talk. I have chosen another. Regardless of the title, I must admit that this is a difficult subject for me to address, as if I were standing at the foot of a mountain range of which the peaks are now lost in clouds silhouetted against a blue sky. Besides, what is Islam these days if not what …

Hval I Djeva [The Praised And The Virgin]: Tom I: Vječnost U Vjesničkim Otkrivanjima [Vol. I: Eternity In Prophetic Revelation], 333pp.; Tom Ii: O Trajanju I Prekidu [Vol. Ii: On Continuity And Discontinuity], 251pp.; Tom Iii: Sabiranje Rasutog [Vol. Iii: Reuniting The Scattered], 420pp., Desmond Maurer

International Dialogue

A book by Rusmir Mahmutćehajić is always an event. His books are normally relatively short and always make a clear argument, albeit an argument many are unwilling to hear. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, he goes straight to the heart of the matter—and his theme is always the same—how to live a good life and how to be a good person, under the troubling conditions of modernity. His answer is also consistent—it is by the embrace of plurality and difference in the service of this one goal, the ethically good life, an embrace that is …

Malo Znanja. O Drugome U Muslimanskim Vidicima, Mile Babić

International Dialogue

No abstract provided.

On The Other: A Muslim View, Mile Babić

International Dialogue

The original Bosnian title of Rusmir Mahmutćehajić's book, Malo znanja, means “Little Knowledge” and comes from the Qur’an (17:85). It encapsulates the author’s fundamental insight and the fundamental thesis of the book, a thesis that places him securely in a current of thinkers conscious of their own ignorance that runs from Socrates to Nicholas of Cusa, from Socrates’ “I know that I know nothing” to Cusanus’ docta ingnorantia (learned ignorance). It is not accidental that I mention no thinkers of the modern period, caught up as they were by modernity's will for power, carried off into the realms of absolute …

International Relations In The Post-Industrial Era [Rephrasing The Third World], Owen Mordaunt

International Dialogue

Arthur Natella begins his book by stating that the concept of the “Third World” is out of date. The dominant attitude is that Third World people would to see things as they are seen by First World nations and do things their way if they are better educated. But the standard for measuring social values, according to Natella, is outdated, for various reasons. Among these is the fact that the United States is a debtor nation. Secondly, it is no longer a “manufacturing-based society” but one that is “service-based” or an “information-gathering nation, with its advanced technology often more geared …

Globalectics: Theory And The Politics Of Knowing, Annika Hughes

International Dialogue

“Life after theory is a text.” —Derrida, “Following Theory: Jacques Derrida,” 27

A bit like Schrödinger’s cat, it is unclear to me whether or not theory has died and if it has, whether or not it should be resurrected. If it has indeed died and needs to be brought back to life, future theorists should certainly read Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o before trying to revive it. For if Derrida’s theory is correct and life after theory is a text, one of the texts on that reading list should include Thiong’o’s account of a …

Readings In Globalization: Key Concepts And Major Debates, Paul C. Sondrol

International Dialogue

George Ritzer and Zeynep Atalay’s unique anthology introduces students to major concepts in globalization via chapters from a variety of disciplinary approaches to familiarize the reader with the broad sweep of globalization in the 21st century. Readings in Globalization integrates easily digested synthesis into well-crafted essays. More experienced tastes will appreciate the mixing of new primary research in with older data found in some of the chapters. These findings by distinguished authors offer a rich assessment of the globalization in international relations.

Foreign Front: Third World Politics In Sixties West Germany, Bruce Garver

International Dialogue

In Foreign Front, Quinn Slobodian presents a thorough, critical, and well documented account of how West German and foreign students cooperatively organized and led large public demonstrations from February 1961 onward against repressive policies of Third World dictatorships and imperialistic great powers. Simultaneously this joint activity accelerated the political radicalization of German students while enlarging their understanding of international affairs. Foreign students initiated many of these demonstrations in order to protest injustice and suppression of dissent by their home governments. In doing so, they were helped by their German fellow students to utilize the free press and civil liberties in …

Yahudi Yerleşimleri: Postmodern Bir İşgal, Ali Balci

Ali Balci

No abstract provided.

Precarity As Capture: A Conceptual Reconstruction And Critique Of The Worker-Slave Analogy, Franco Barchiesi

Franco Barchiesi

No abstract provided.

When Is It Best To Remember? Maintaining The Sacred Center: The Bosnian City Of Stolac, Ed Marques

International Dialogue

The town, Stolac, has a long history of vibrancy as a strategic commercial town and a Center of culture in the southern part of Bosnia—spawning writers, poets, scholars and artists, an amount disproportionate to its size. Maintaining the Sacred Center: The Bosnian City of Stolac, is the latest book of Rusmir Mahmutćehajić, who carries on the heritage of his own hometown: Stolac. His book begins with a quote from the Quran and a line of poetry by Stolac-native Mak Dizdar—Bosnia’s leading poet in the 20th century. Both the Quran and the poetry of Mak Dizdar are returned to throughout the …

Living Beyond The End Times: Living In The End Times, Edward Sandowski, Betty J. Harris

International Dialogue

In Living in the End Times, Slavoj Žižek takes up themes many of which he has explored elsewhere in his numerous works embodied in varied media. This Slovenian origin cosmopolitan philosopher and cultural critic uses many types of outlets and modes of expression (books and scholarly journal articles, but also journalistic publications, TV interviews, appearances in documentary films, etc.) to explore variegated subject matter. He responds to politics in an age of increasing globalization by taking up a global range of issues, and responds to the multimedia environment which conveys ideology as false consciousness with his own multimedia works, possibly …

Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues On The Left, Leonard Harris

International Dialogue

Three concepts occupy each author: universal features of human nature, hegemonic social conditions, and social identities considered as universal kinds. The authors present their individual views and note where they are in agreement and address differences. The result is an intellectual conversation among the authors that takes the reader through fascinating ideas and distinctions; ideas and distinctions that have continued to occupy the authors since the publication of their conversation.

The Invisible Arab: The Promise And Peril Of The Arab Revolution, Daniel G. Acheson-Brown

International Dialogue

Marwan Bishara’s The Invisible Arab: The Promise and Peril of the Arab Revolution (2012) is a must-read for students and scholars of the Middle East and the Arab world. The author is a senior political analyst for Al Jazeera English channel, and is also editor of Al Jazeera’s show “Empire.” Bishara spent many hours doing first-hand reporting from the streets of the Arab uprisings of 2011. He presents an intense book, organized in an essay format, with relevant topical sections.

Ecos Do Ipiranga. Autonomia, Cidadania E Justiça No Brasil, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

O grito do Ipiranga é um belo mito de independência. O Brasil é cultural e juridicamente uma realidade que está a construir uma interessantíssima identidade nacional, colhendo dos outros o que interessa, mas sobretudo afirmando-se com autonomia. E já pode exportar produtos jurídicos próprios, como, pela sua visibilidade, a publicidade televisiva das sessões do Supremo Tribunal Federal.