| Publisher: Helsinki University Press (Total: 2 journals) [Sort by number of followers]
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Redescriptions : Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory
Number of Followers: 4  Open Access journalISSN (Print) 2308-0914 - ISSN (Online) 2308-0906 Published by Helsinki University Press  [2 journals]
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- Shifting Meanings of Politics
Abstract: Published on 2022-12-01 11:49:03
- Paradigms for Political Action. A Draft for a Repertoire
Abstract: Whether politics is a separate sphere or an aspect of human action is a subject of academic controversy. I focus here on the political aspect of action, which is not exclusive of other aspects. There are no ‘naturally political’ issues nor is there anything completely devoid of a political aspect. I am now taking a step backwards to discuss the seemingly simple ‘political or not’ question, as compared to the ‘political in which sense’ question, which I have discussed elsewhere. In this article, I stay on the ideal–typical level, as I want to discuss alternative ways of marking the criteria for the political aspect, without discussing the views of other scholars in detail. I call the procedure for judging and naming this aspect political literacy, a way of making explicit the presence of the political aspect in some phenomena or questions. What is political at a certain time can, in other words, be judged as the result of a politicising reading of the phenomena in question. Here I shall construct a repertoire of certain ideal–typical criteria for marking the political aspects and making sense of actual disputes regarding the political. The repertoire includes the criteria of political action under such headings as expediency, partisanship, controversy and contingency. I regard the view of politics as belonging to a separate sphere as a zero option. All of the paradigms can be regarded as different facets of politics as a contingent activity. Published on 2022-12-01 11:45:21
- Towards a Radical Feminist Resignification of Vulnerability: A Critical
Juxtaposition of Judith Butler’s Post-Structuralist Philosophy and
Martha Fineman’s Legal Theory
Abstract: This research article aims to theoretically reconstruct a positive feminist conceptualization of vulnerability via a thorough systematization and critical comparison of Martha Fineman’s socio-legal philosophy and Judith Butler’s post-structuralist ethico-political theory. Through the introduction, the reader becomes familiar with numerous interdisciplinary re-articulations of vulnerability within the realms of contemporary feminist theory. The second subsection illustrates Fineman’s vulnerability approach in terms of an alternative ontological paradigm deriving from the recognition of our fundamentally fragile universal condition. It explores Fineman vulnerability theory’s normative implications in relation to the legitimate political organization of democratic societies and the fair function of their central institutions. The third subsection systematizes the dual texture of the Butlerian radicalization of vulnerability as an existential condition of irreducible relationality and a socio-historically contextualized and differentially allocated distribution of precarity among differently gendered, racialized, sexualized and nationalized subjects. Incidentally, the article elucidates the differentiations between the Butlerian conceptions of vulnerability, precariousness, precarity and dispossession and additionally investigates Butler’s revolutionary constellation of vulnerability and resistance. In the third subsection, this article designates the similarities and divergences between the two vulnerability frameworks and critically evaluates their epistemological capacity to reconstitute a politically empowering conceptualization of vulnerability within the heart of contemporary feminist theory. To that end, the author develops a critical assessment of Fineman theory’s epistemological, political and conceptual limitations in regard of its gender-blind universalistic structure. The author conclusively argues that Butler’s two-fold vulnerability perspective entails more nuanced theoretical conceptions and more empowering political devices for contemporary feminist struggles. Published on 2022-12-01 11:36:48
- The Role of Recognition for Relational Theories of Autonomy
Abstract: The article discusses the relationship between autonomy and recognition; it argues that recognition is a fundamental component in the development of autonomy-related competencies. Specifically, if autonomy is considered through the lens of relational accounts, recognition indeed affects self-authorization, or the ability that agents have to portray themselves as autonomous agents. Then, I define the concept of recognition by referring to Axel Honneth and Paul Ricoeur’s accounts of recognition. While Honneth’s conception falls into an essentialistic paradigm, Ricoeur’s one portrays recognition as a gift. In addition, I argue that Ricoeur’s theory of recognition allows a shift in the symbolic order of society through the concept of utopia. This shift helps in preventing marginalizing practices that are undermining the autonomy of minorities or economically disadvantaged subjects in a society. Published on 2022-12-01 11:23:40
- Is Conspiracism Endogenous to Populism' A Discursive-Theoretical
Analysis
Abstract: In recent years, in the era of multiple crises, there are many political parties and leaders that use conspiracy theories in their discourse, trying to explain facts and figures on politics, economy, society, environment and space. There is an ongoing debate in populism studies on the possible connection between the populist phenomenon and conspiracy theories, thus creating two main theoretical camps. On the one hand, there are many scholars who recognize a strong correlation between the two phenomena, with some of them believing that they are directly equated. On the other hand, there are several researchers who consider populism as a phenomenon with its own unique essence without predetermined characteristics. Hence, the question that arises here is: Is conspiracism endogenous to populism, or not' In this article, I first look at the definitions of conspiracy theories/conspiracism and populism, attempting to avoid stereotypical readings. After that, I highlight the discussion that takes place in academia around the internal features of the populist phenomenon and its possible connection with conspiracism, with the aim of showing that populism presents a unique logic, without a necessary connection to conspiracism. Finally, I focus on the Greek case of recent years, describing an example where the concept of conspiracy theory became a polemical tool against political rivals, negatively affecting politics and society. My analysis is based on post-structuralist theory and methodological tools of the Essex School of Discourse Analysis, taking into account aspects of other approaches to populism. Published on 2022-12-01 11:19:22
- Book Review: The Populist Century. History, Theory, Critique by Pierre
Rosanvallon, Polity Press, 2021, 223 pages. ISBN-13: 9781509546299
Abstract: In this book Pierre Rosanvallon develops his vision of populism, which at the same time serves to insist on his own proposals to renew our democracies, widely developed in his previous works. Critical of the literature that has addressed the topic, he offers a perspective based on his own theoretical presuppositions, which explains the subtitle of this work: a history of few moments of populism; its description as an ideology with common and characteristic elements; and a critique that becomes a defense of his views on democracy. Published on 2022-12-01 11:13:45
- Book Review: Rethinking Liberty before Liberalism edited by Hannah Dawson
and Annelien de Dijn, Cambridge University Press, 2022, 298 pages. ISBN:
9781108844567
Abstract: After Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Hamilton-Bleakley, Brett & Tully 2007), another of Quentin Skinner’s influential books Liberty before Liberalism (Skinner 1998) received its own ‘rethinking’ in the volume Rethinking Liberty before Liberalism. This is an excellent way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original work that was first delivered as Skinner’s Inaugural Lecture as Regius Professor of History at Cambridge at the end of 1997. As someone who has had Liberty before Liberalism on my syllabus for a few years now, I cannot but welcome a new publication aimed at rethinking Skinner’s book. After all, political science students I taught could not contain the temptation to ask what happened next, if anything, in the great story of freedom and what we ought to do with the discovery. For many of them living in a Russian authoritarian context the only feasible political alternative was classical liberalism, if not libertarianism. Learning about the idea of freedom as the absence of dependency was thus an eye-opening experience. The new volume has a lot to offer to those who developed a thirst for an intellectual sequel after reading the original work. Published on 2022-12-01 11:07:36
- Editorial: Injustices of Historical Kind
Abstract: Published on 2022-08-04 12:31:26
- Conceptualisations of Labour and the Making of the French Working Class in
the 1830s
Abstract: The emergence of the working class as a unified subject in France at the beginning of the 19th century was linked to transformations in the conceptualisation of work. At the beginning of the July Monarchy, two distinct conceptions of labour emerged within the nascent liberal and socialist movements. What they had in common was that they saw the working class as a single, unified entity, over and above the trade differences that had organised labour before the 1789 Revolution. But they differed in important respects. For the liberals, labour, as a social activity, put workers at risk of being influenced by immoral doctrines and examples of vice. In contrast to property, which led the middle classes to political moderation, work was seen as potentially radicalising workers, who therefore had to be kept under the supervision of the state and employers. For socialists, on the other hand, labour was an all-encompassing activity that should make the working class a hegemonic subject. Published on 2022-08-04 12:26:57
- Unifying Solidarity: The Concept of International Solidarity in Swedish
Social Democracy 1972–1985
Abstract: This article studies the concept of solidarity and the definition of international solidarity in congress materials dated 1972–1985 from the Swedish Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Arbetareparti, SAP) and its three branch organizations. On the one hand, it examines the different definitions and functions of the concept within the party at large, thereby adding to historical research on the recent history of Swedish social democracy. In source material published by youth, women’s, and religious wings affiliated with the SAP, the struggle for the meaning of the concept should become apparent, because these organizations represent both the traditional and official concept of solidarity that had been dominant in social democratic rhetoric, as well as the new, challenging concept of solidarity associated with the emerging solidarity movements of the 1970s. On the other hand, the article has a conceptual historical and theoretical aim, intending to understand how solidarity functions as a political and ideological concept for Swedish social democrats during the studied period of time. The study shows that solidarity as an ideological concept had a unifying function for Swedish social democracy. In the concept of solidarity and in the definition of international solidarity, the relevance and topicality of social democratic politics could be emphasized. This was done temporally by giving the contemporary political relevance of solidarity a historical dimension by presenting solidarity in general and international solidarity in particular as a social democratic concept with roots in the early years of the movement. By accentuating the history of the concept, solidarity, despite its obvious contemporary political link, was presented as a timeless social democratic concept, as central in the early twentieth century as in the 1970s and in the future. Thus, in a conceptual struggle with contemporary movements for solidarity and in polemic with the bourgeoisie’s attempts to relegate social democracy to the past, the relevance and topicality of social democratic politics was asserted through the concepts of solidarity and, in particular, the definition of international solidarity. Published on 2022-08-04 12:22:19
