Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Institutionalized Violence In The History Of Mind/Body Dualism And The Contemporary Reality Of Slavery And Torture: Reflections On Elaine Scarry And The Body In Pain, Wendy Lynne Lee

International Dialogue

Wendy Lynne Lee argues that the dualistic impulse Bibi Bakare-Yusef identifies in Elaine Scarry’s analysis of the experience of pain has its roots at least as far back as Aristotle’s hylomorphism, and that a clear view of contemporary structural inequality requires a grasp of how “mind” and “body” continue to inform even anti-dualist social theory. Lee argues that insofar as this impulse informs Scarry’s The Body in Pain, it distorts Scarry’s analysis of the experience of pain in ways that elide important aspects of that experience. Understanding the nature of this distortion, however, sheds light on some forms of violence …

Using Bourdieu To Answer Spivak: On The Study Of Historical Subaltern Religious Practices, Curtis Hutt

International Dialogue

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her 1988 publication “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” famously challenges the ability of scholars—educated and operating within the dominating power structures of oftentimes European colonizing transnational political and religious movements—to ever grasp subaltern religion. This skepticism logically extends to the work of historians investigating the obscured religious traditions of past cultures that have been overlooked, overwhelmed, and suppressed. In this paper, I lay out a restrained strategy inspired in part by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and based upon my own historical work for circumventing some forms of historical blindness that conceal subaltern pasts. In conclusion, a …

Rethinking Secularism: P. Harrison, É. Balibar, T. Asad: The Territories Of Science And Religion; Secularism And Cosmopolitanism: Critical Hypotheses On Religion And Politics; Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, And Calculative Reason, Sotiris Mitralexis

International Dialogue

I will discuss here three recent books that both directly and indirectly discuss religion and secularism, in different contexts and certainly from different perspectives; one by historian Peter Harrison, one by cultural anthropologist Talal Asad, and one by philosopher Étienne Balibar. All three authors have invested a sizable part of their scholarly career in studying religion/secularism, and the books reviewed are revised collections of relatively recent lectures and essays (rather than, for example, texts authored with the explicit purpose of comprising a monograph); this entails that each of these books is, so to speak, the distillate of a career in …

Genealogies Of Terrorism: Revolution, State Violence, Empire, Wendy L. Lee

International Dialogue

In Genealogies of Terrorism: Revolution, State Violence, Empire, Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson takes on the ambitious project of providing a broadly Foucauldian genealogical account of the concept and practice of “terrorism.” While I am not quite sure she summits every mountain she attempts to climb, Erlenbusch-Anderson makes a valuable contribution to an under-developed literature and she offers some tantalizing points of departure for future explorations of an important and timely subject. Genealogies is an eminently worthwhile read; while some grounding in Foucault (among others) is sure to enhance the experience, Erlenbusch-Anderson’s introduction provides an able road map, making the ascent up through …

Technology, Science, And “Post-Humanity”: Like A Thief In Broad Daylight: Power In The Era Of Post-Human Capitalism, Edward Sandowski, Betty J. Harris

International Dialogue

In this book, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Human Capitalism, Slavoj Žižek mulls over issues about technology and science in the contemporary world. This is a world which he thinks, plausibly, is dominated by global capitalism, a condition which he wishes to go beyond, to something better. The nature and distribution of power must be changed. Changes in the status of “humanity” and the notion of “post-humanity” concern him. One aspect of his difficult text is that he explores how post-humanity might symbolize, not solely our degraded condition. Rather, humanity and post-humanity (and fears …

The Elephant In The Room: Against Democracy, Peter Stone

International Dialogue

Unfortunately, any discussion of Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy (2017), which seeks to make a case for epistocracy and against democracy, raises the “Don’t think of an elephant” problem (Lakoff 2004). If you tell people not to think of an elephant, they immediately think of an elephant. If you tell people not to think about epistocracy, they will immediately think about epistocracy. And this is a pity, because epistocracy is a terrible idea, and nothing Brennan says proves otherwise.

Revolution And War In Contemporary Ukraine: The Challenge Of Change, Emma Mateo

International Dialogue

This November marks six years since Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests. Sometimes referred to as the “Revolution of Dignity,” the events of winter 2013–14 had far-reaching consequences not only for Ukraine’s government and Ukrainian national identity, but also for global geopolitics. After the corrupt Yanukovych government fell, Putin’s Russia annexed Crimea and became involved in separatist conflict in Ukraine’s eastern regions, under the premise of “protecting Russian speakers.” This edited volume investigates the events of 2013–14 and their impact on culture, politics, society and identities.

Triadic Coercion: Israel’S Targeting Of States That Host Nonstate Actors, Richard English

International Dialogue

This scholarly, serious-minded book represents a valuable addition to the Columbia University Press series, Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare. Considering the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict, Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili address the issue of what they term “triadic coercion—in which a state directs military threats or strikes at another state to force it to take action against a nonstate actor to which it offers shelter or assistance” (242). This tactic has been common enough to be historically significant, and the Israeli case that is examined here offers a useful laboratory within which to offer systematic consideration of the phenomenon.

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 9.

Political Realism In Apocalyptic Times, Gonzalo Bustamante Kuschel

International Dialogue

Alison McQueen’s book is a significant contribution to political theory and to the use of the history of political thought as a source of categories for thinking about current problems. Her central thesis revolves around three assumptions. First, the existence of “political realism” understood as a particular approach to evaluating politics—characterized by a defense of its own autonomy,1 political agonism,2 the rejection of both utopia and moralization in politics, and the preeminence of order and stability over any other criterion, including justice, in political decisions (10–12). This definition of “political realism” allows the author to group other writers who, though …

Art As A Political Witness, Lenore Metrick-Chen

International Dialogue

Kia Lindroos and Frank Möller, the editors of this volume, raise a serious question: Can art increase political awareness either through witnessing itself or by creating witnesses in its audience? Wisely, the book does not attempt to provide a single, definitive answer to these questions; instead, the editors explain that they selected authors who examine aesthetic forms of expression, with the intention of an inquiry into an expanded idea of who is a witness. Beginning with the definition of witness from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles as someone “who is or was present, and is able to …

Panel Discussion: Are Reparations Possible? Lessons To The United States From South Africa, Richard Goldstone, Lewis Gordon, Alecia Anderson

International Dialogue

Introduction: On September 25, 2019, the Honorable Richard Goldstone joined Dr. Lewis Gordon f or a conversation about reparations at the University of Nebraska at Omaha ( The public discussion was offered as part of a series of events for Human Rights Week. It was co sponsored by the Goldstein Community Chair for Human Rights, the Schwalb Cent er for Israel and Jewish Studies, and the UNO Department of Black Studies. Goldstone and Gordon were brought to the University of Nebraska at Omaha by the Leonard and Shirley Goldstein Center for Human Rights.

The Honorable Richard Goldstone, Dr. Lewis Gordon, …

The Omnibus Homo Sacer; What Is Philosophy?, Sotiris Mitralexis

International Dialogue

The Omnibus Homo Sacer brings together in 1336 pages all volumes of the twenty-year Homo Sacer project by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, written between 1990 and 2015, starting with Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life and concluding with The Use of Bodies. In line with Agamben’s division of the project, the Omnibus edition is divided into four parts (Part 1: Homo Sacer; Part 2: State of Exception, Stasis, The Sacrament of Language, The Kingdom and the Glory & Opus Dei; Part 3: Remnants of Auschwitz; and Part 4: The Highest Poverty & The Use of Bodies). Since the volumes …

Restating Orientalism: A Critique Of Modern Knowledge, Katlin Marisol Sweeney

International Dialogue

Wael B. Hallaq’s Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge interrogates what he proposes are canonized misconceptions of Orientalism by examining the trends in discourse that have emerged since the publication of Edward Said’s seminal work in 1978. It builds on Hallaq’s other contributions to the field on the topics of modernity, politics, and Islamic law over the last forty years, most notably Sharī’a: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament (Columbia University Press, 2013). In the paratextual material, Hallaq advises readers to treat Sharī’a and The Impossible State as …

Autonomy, Suffering, And The Practice Of Medicine: A Relational Approach, Michael A. Stanfield

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I argue that the conventional view of personal autonomy that is operational in contemporary American culture, bioethics and medical practice places undue emphasis on individualism and a limited range of personal qualities and attributes (such as self-sufficiency). Instead, I argue in favor of a relational approach to autonomy which recognizes that each person that exists has certain minimal connections or relations to others, and these connections/relations are identity-forming. Unfortunately, current medical practices have tended to overemphasize individuality and choice (consistent with the conventional view) while minimizing or excluding these relational aspects. As a result, informed consent and …

Facing Human Rights: Theorizing Out Of The Experience Of Suffering, Patrick Ahern

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In contending that “the freedom of philosophy is nothing but the capacity to lend a voice to unfreedom,” Adorno recognized that the role of philosophy is to illuminate the deformity of that which is deformed in the structures of power and the institutions that preserve the status quo. A critical treatment of those concepts that obfuscate the realization of emancipation led Adorno, along with Horkheimer, to claim that, “the purpose of human rights was to promise happiness even where power is lacking.” In other words, the language of human rights served to stifle the experiences of the oppressed classes under …

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

The Reliable Revisionist, Caitlyn Schaffer

Philosophy: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The present text explores how the topic of head and heart is much more complicated than one would expect, according to Paul Henne and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, contributors of Neuroexistentialism. “Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality” aims at figuring out the problem of which moral judgments we can trust, judgments from one’s head (revisionism) or judgments from one’s heart (conservatism). My hypothesis suggests the opposite of the authors, I believe that if you are a revisionist, your first order intuitions are reliable. After setting the framework, I make three main arguments. (A.) If you are able to self-correct then you can identify errors …

The Origin Of Power In The Need To Cooperate: Parallels Between Political And Economic Power, David Nagy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this essay, I argue that the power structures in both states and firms should be the same—for example, if state authorities are chosen via a democratic process, the same should hold for authorities in firms. This is because the source of power is the same in both realms, namely, economic and political power derives from its ability to facilitate cooperation. Hence, there is no plausible reason to defend a different power structure for states and firms. To argue this, I start in Chapter 1 by arguing against the most common theory of state power, which is that it …

Exploring Political Action And Socialization Through Group Improvisation Within The Music Of Frederic Rzewski And Cornelius Cardew, Marcel Rominger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the late 1960s, socialist composers, Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski, each established ensembles with the purpose of performing works consisting of experimental forms of improvisation. By employing group improvisation, and including untrained, non-musicians within their performances, they strove to use these ensembles as a model for society itself; this model includes a dissolution of the hierarchy among performers and the barrier between performer and audience. Improvisation helped music resist commodification by the culture industry or appropriation by authoritarian regimes for the purpose of propaganda. This dissertation aims to explore how Cardew and Rzewski constituted effective socialization and political action …