Political Science Commons^™

Uk And The 'Razor-Wire Humanitarianism': The Refugee Crisis And The Aesthetic Of Violence, Yasmin Ibrahim

Fast Capitalism

When the 'refugee crisis' in Calais became an issue of renewed concern in the summer of discontent in 2015, UK's reticent stance towards the crisis was captured through its measured approach. A notable riposte from the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, was to send in yet more security fencing to fortify the borders in Calais to assuage the disaffect from the truckers and the public. Dubbing this as UK's 'razor wire humanitarianism', the paper examines how the material artefact of the razor wire is implicated in the aesthetic of violence towards the refugee and migrant bodies in the camps of …

The Politics Of Curiosity, Eva-Maria Swidler

Fast Capitalism

Curiosity, a simultaneously intellectual and emotional phenomenon, is surprisingly unstudied, yet pivotal for social critics and activists to understand. While recognizing curiosity as frequently positive and necessary for creating new solidarities and political movements, it also considers the social and political roots and consequences of incuriosity, apathy, and ignorance, including such topics as willful apathy as cultural resistance and self-defense, ignorance as an ethical choice, incuriosity as arrogance, and the generalized anxiety of neoliberal society and the shrinking of curiosity.

Author Biography

Eva-Maria Swidler, Curtis Institute of Music

Eva Swidler is an environmental historian and political economist with additional interest …

Covid-19 Enters College But To What Degree?, Christopher Willard

Fast Capitalism

This article considers the potential long term implications of university emergency responses to Covid-19. While empathetic responses are important in a time of crisis, emergency measures should not necessarily entail the infringement of or the abandonment of rights articulated in existing policies, procedures, collective agreements, or contracts. Areas of particular vulnerability include academic freedom, faculty workload, and intellectual property rights. The author also suggests that crisis responses by higher education may be seen as more of an intensification of neoliberal pressures than as signaling new pressures from the pandemic alone.

Author Biography

Christopher Willard, Alberta University of the Arts

Christopher …

Was Karl Marx An Ecosocialist?, Carl Boggs

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

Carl Boggs, National University

Carl Boggs is the author of many books in the fields of critical social theory, American politics, U.S. foreign policy and military history, film studies, and ecology. After receiving his Ph.D. at U.C., Berkeley he taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Carleton University in Ottawa, UCLA, USC, and U.C., Irvine. He is currently professor of social sciences at National University in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor to the magazine CounterPunch, is a member of the executive board of the Global Studies Association, and is involved with such journals as Theory …

Panic Learning Off (And On) The Covid Campus, Tara Brabazon, Jamie Quinton, Narelle Hunter

Fast Capitalism

Online learning has been flooded with platitudes, promises and possibilities for twenty years. Oversold and undertheorized, online learning reached its "moment' through the Covid lockdown. Underprepared staff and underfunded universities implemented online learning in a crisis. This was a zombie apocalypse of a context in which to summon innovation. This article activates Paul Virilio's University of Disaster to explore the COVID campus and classroom, entering panic learning.

Author Biographies

Tara Brabazon, Dean of Graduate Research / Professor of Cultural Studies Flinders University

Tara Brabazon is the dean of graduate research and professor of cultural studies at Flinders University, Australia, fellow …

Contemptable Safety: Coronavirus, Neoliberalism, And The Moral Value Of Universities, Mark K. Ryan

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

Mary K. Ryan, Washington & Jefferson College

Mary K. Ryan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Public Policy Program at Washington & Jefferson College. Mary received her Ph.D. in Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought from Virginia Tech. Mary's research on race, inequality, social justice, and democracy includes chapters in Poverty in American Popular Culture (McFarland); Protecting Whiteness: Whitelash and the Rejection of Racial Equality (University of Washington Press); Critical Insights: Civil Rights Literature Past and Present (Salem); Surveillance, Race, Culture (Palgrave Macmillan); and Spaces of Surveillance (Palgrave Macmillan) as well as journal …

The Pandemic Preferred User, Katie Ellis, Kai-Ti Kao, Tim Pitman

Fast Capitalism

As COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, universities acted quickly to move their core business of teaching and research online. Classes shifted to platforms such as Zoom, Webex, Collaborate and Microsoft Teams and teachers and students alike were expected to adapt. And they did. While there has been much discussion of the unpaid labour involved in making this shift and the difficulties inherent in merging work, study and domestic life, there has been little acknowledgement or analysis of inherent notions of the preferred user in this rapid shift to technology.

This paper draws on critical disability studies to offer a conceptual …

On The Current Situation: Normal Violences, Pandemics, Emergencies, Necropolitics, Zombies, And Creepy Treehouses, Jeremy Hunsinger

Fast Capitalism

This paper argues that the university is changing in the pandemic but it is the broader contexts of the university and specifically neoliberal politics that originated the change. It then identified several situations that upon witnessing undermine the neoliberal systems of legitimation.

Author Biography

Jeremy Hunsinger, Wilfrid Laurier University

Jeremy Hunsinger is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. He teaches and researches critical internet studies, infrastructure studies, cultural politics, and the politics of knowledge. He has co-edited several volumes including two volumes of the International Handbook of Internet Research.

Who Wouldn't Get The Joke?: Vile Sovereignty, Vanishing Mediators, And Trump, Simon Orpana, Evan Mauro

Fast Capitalism

This article considers Trump as an example of "vile sovereignty," a concept Michel Foucault put forward in the mid 1970s to describe "the exercise of power through the explicit disqualification of the person who wields it" (2003b: 35)—a "childish discourse" that disqualifies the speaker at the very moment that they are being appealed to as a figure of authority (36). We argue that this concept helps illuminate contemporary US politics, where Trump's carnivalesque flaunting of political decorum and morality paradoxically seem to buttress the power of his Republican Party. Building upon our theorization of the role vile sovereignty has played …

Capitalism, Racism, And Trumpism: Whitelash And The Politics Of Oppression, David G. Embrick, J. Scott Carter, Cameron Lippard, Bhoomi K. Thakore

Fast Capitalism

That the rising tide of fascism, headwinds of neoliberalism, or persistence of racism in the United States is institutional, systemic, and part of a long history of oppression towards various groups is not new news. The bigger question is how we got to a point in which overt manifestations of racism, sexism, faux democracy, and other forms of illegality and authoritarianism has once again become normalized. What does it mean when a sitting President claims that Mexican immigrants are rapists, criminals, and drug runners? How did we get to a point where we, collectively, are not as outraged as we …

Donald J. Trump And The Politics Of Democratic Dysfunction, Cary Fraser

Fast Capitalism

The United States has entered a profound crisis of governance and governability following the impeachment of Donald Trump by the House of Representatives and, after a parody of a Senate trial, was acquitted - to remain in office by the Senate controlled by a Republican majority. This essay seeks to analyze both the origins and context of the contemporary conundrum where one of the world's oldest representative systems of government has entered a phase of democratic dysfunction. Donald Trump is an elected President – on the basis of a minority of the popular vote cast in 2016 – who has …

Reactionary Technopolitics: A Critical Sociohistorical Review, Sean Doody

Fast Capitalism

This paper outlines a critical social history of reactionary media, political, and information networks ”what I refer to generally as technopolitics” in the United States and their significance to the hostility towards truth and fact that is a central feature of our political present. I begin with a critical review of the unique right-wing media and political ecosystem that emerged from the alliance between neoliberalism and social conservatism in the twentieth-century. In the second section, I focus on digitization, Trump, and the alt-right, and discuss the historical tethers connecting the latter to the cyber-libertarians and white supremacists operating on the …

Social Crises, Political Conflicts, And Cultural Contradictions Of Nixonland: Tracing Constitutional Crisis In The Usa From Nixon To Trump, Timothy W. Luke

Fast Capitalism

Many developments, like greater domestic turmoil, economic dislocation, social immobility, and political gridlock, suggest "the public" and "the private" are different domains with the US than they were decades ago in 1969 when President Nixon entered office. The constitutional state, as a theory and set of practices in the USA in the Nixon era was put under tremendous strains, and it seems clear that those pressures fractured it. After Vietnam, stagflation, Watergate, and the transitional Ford Administration, has it ever been the same? The Reagan-Bush assault on the New Deal and Great Society as well as the essentially permanent mobilization …

The Death Of Neoliberal Realism?, Zachariah William Wheeler

Fast Capitalism

Post-punk theorist Mark Fisher (d. 2017) shows how neoliberalism relies on a "reflexive impudence" imposed on politics and culture by the necessity of "realism." Neoliberalism puts fixed limits on how we can imagine the future, and what degree of deviation can be expected from participating in the political process. This paper takes seriously Fisher's perspective, analyzing recent political events in the U.S. as they relate to the use of neoliberalism as a deflationary political tactic. My analysis expands on how two different figures, Trump and Sanders, politicize discourse and develop consciousness outside of this pre-approved realism enforced by neoliberalism. Figures …

The Carnival King Of Capital, Charles Thorpe

Fast Capitalism

This paper argues that President Donald Trump may be understood as ruling through carnival. The theatrical reversal of conventional standards and rules, his carnivalesque incivility, is key to his political persona. It performs his claim to be an outsider, attacking and subverting the Washington DC establishment. But Trump's carnivalesque performance, far from undermining the dominant order, reflects it. What Trump represents is carnivalized capital, a financialized and globalized form of capital that has broken free of the social and legal restraints of the nation state. The carnivalesque chaos of Trump's presidency reflects the chaos of financialized capitalism.

Author Biography

Charles …

The Frailty Of The Strong Executive, Peter D. Ore, Andrew Paul Davis

Fast Capitalism

This essay reflects on the contemporaneous empowerment of the executive branch under the Trump administration with regard to other branches of government, as well as the disempowerment of the nation's bureacracy. We argue that this combination leads to a simultaneously unfettered, yet feeble executive that has little oversight, yet is routinely ineffective. We explore how tensions in organizational and political theory with regard to private and public governance have presaged this administrative move. This essay concludes by discussing why elite actors might support such an unencumbered, yet ineffective executive.

Author Biographies

Peter D. Ore, University of Arizona

Peter Ore is …

The United States Of Trump Corp.: The 'Not Normal/New Normal' Governing Style Of A Personal Brand, Steven Alfonso Panageotou, Joel M. Crombez

Fast Capitalism

Mired in inconsistency, contradiction, and scandal, Donald J. Trump's presidency appears to be anything but normal. This has prompted a great deal of searching among social scientists and journalists to understand what exactly is behind Trump's erratic governing style. These narratives center the new normal of American presidential politics on the extreme form of Trump's narcissistic behavior and his flagrant commitment to ethno-nationalist, authoritarian, and neoliberal practices. However, because these narratives rely on traditional political strategies and theories, they do not fully capture the most novel aspects of the Trump mode of governance. What is "not normal" about President Donald …

Making It Up As He Goes: Trump's Improvisational Rhetoric And The Hyper-Rhetorical Presidency, Richard Holtzman

Fast Capitalism

Trump disregards the norms of presidential communication by regularly speaking or tweeting off-the-cuff with seemingly little forethought or editorial input. As White House administrations institutionalized presidential speechwriting and strategic communications over the past century, meticulously-crafted rhetoric became the norm. Trump's improvisational rhetoric is the antithesis of the highly-professionalized, disciplined approach to political communication we have come to expect from the presidency. This essay takes the position that his reliance on improvisational rhetoric is more than a matter of communication; it is a matter of governance. Trump regularly uses improvised communication to make important policy decisions. In doing so, the president …

Introduction To "This Is Not Normal", David M. Arditi, Timothy W. Luke

Fast Capitalism

Author Biographies

David M. Arditi, University of Texas Arlington

David Arditi is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he serves as Director of the Center for Theory. He researches the impact of digital technology on society. His forthcoming book, Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians and Power in Society, explores the way musicians' dreams become their source of exploitation.

Timothy W. Luke, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Timothy W. Luke is a University Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science. Luke's areas of research specialization include environmental and cultural studies …

The Art Of The Deal, The Arts Of Democracy: Trump, Dewey, And Democracy, Nancy Sue Love

Fast Capitalism

Donald Trump's politics has been variously described as "neoliberal," "nationalist," "authoritarian," "populist," and even "fascist," and all these descriptors are appropriate in some respects. In this article, I explore the linkages between Trump, neoliberalism, and fascism through what may seem an unlikely aspect of his politics, that is, his artistry as a candidate and now the president. In elevating deal-making to an art form, Trump is not unique. Fascist leaders have long fancied themselves as artists and regarded politics as an art form. I argue that Trump's "art of the deal" materializes and normalizes the aesthetics of neoliberal capitalism; it …