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Abstract: Few concepts in the western theoretical canon warrant decolonial scrutiny more than that of dignity. This paper begins from the well-known bifurcation between a hierarchical dignity-as-status and the more universal concept of dignity that rose to prominence in the mid-twentieth century, before then opting for a less trodden but more productive rupture that emerged simultaneously in the global explosion of anti-colonial resistance and its theoretical elaborations. Among these, the decolonial Caribbean couplet of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon offers a powerfully decolonized formulation of dignity that sets out from the racial exclusion of the colonized from humanity, offering an alternative that is both more concrete than its Eurocentric counterpart and firmly anchored in struggles against the indignity of the colonial world. This subterranean concept of decolonial dignity, I argue, resurfaces in a remarkably clear form decades later in Mexico’s Zapatista insurgency, which both posits and exemplifies a dynamic and material notion of dignidad rebelde, or dignity-in-rebellion. PubDate: 2025-04-16
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Abstract: The proliferation of conspiracy theories is seemingly on the rise. Among them, are many that are explicitly racist. Examples of this include Great Replacement Theory, White Genocide, QAnon, and Eurabia, which each convey the idea white people are being covertly attacked and replaced. In this article, we examine the structure of these conspiracy theories and argue that their proliferation in liberal-democratic societies is not a coincidence. Our argument is three-fold. First, we argue the proliferation of racist conspiracy theories in liberal-democratic societies has been enabled by the racial contract that underpins them. Second, we argue that in these contexts, even conspiracy theories that are seemingly non-racial, can be underpinned by structures of race and racialisation. This is because in liberal-democratic contexts, the other (who conspires) is always-already racialised, even if racialisation is disavowed. We therefore argue that the categorisation of conspiracy theories as being either ‘racial’ or ‘non-racial’ constitutes a postracial manoeuvre that obscures the racialising function of conspiracy theorising in liberal-democratic societies. Finally, we argue that the dominant trend of attributing the rise of conspiracy theories to the notion we are living in a ‘post-truth era’ obscures the connection between liberal-democratic societies and racist conspiracy theories, effectively solidifying the postracial conceptualisation of both. We argue the ‘post-’ of ‘post-truth’ works to sever the past from the present, thereby masking historical continuities of racism and depicting conspiracy thinking as a ‘new’ problem stemming from the margins of society. By contrast, we argue the phenomenon, and its attendant racism, originates from the mainstream of liberal-democratic society. PubDate: 2025-04-12
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Abstract: How can a populist leader make the claim ‘I’m not a politician’ while competing for or even holding the highest political office' And if populist leaders are not politicians, as they claim not to be, then what are they in the minds of their supporters' To answer these questions, this article focuses on the antipolitics of right-wing populist movements. We argue that the negative moral connotations that politics itself has in the minds of many populist supporters compel populist leaders to appropriate nonpolitical symbolism to separate themselves from the ‘corrupt’ political sphere. We then show how right-wing populists posit the family and familial rule as a counter-ideal for societal organization and a preferable alternative to the ‘corrupt’ world of politics and political rule. Right-wing populist efforts to restructure the political realm after the familial realm helps explain some of its most distinctive features, such as ostentatious nepotism, norm-breaking, and anti-pluralism. PubDate: 2025-04-10
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Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Recent methodological debates about normative political theory have raised questions about the relation between facts and values and between empirical social science and normative political theory. Jonathan Floyd’s normative behaviorism and Tariq Modood’s normative sociology are two prominent views about these relations. The two approaches see different kinds of social science facts as relevant. Floyd argues that behavioral patterns involving insurrection and crime are especially relevant as grounds for normative principles, whereas Modood argues that discussions of principles of multicultural equality should pay special attention to the expressed views of members of the minorities in question. The two approaches, furthermore, have different views of the nature of normativity and of the type of social science that is relevant to normative political theory. These differences show how such methodological differences have implications for what political theorists should do and which methods they should employ. PubDate: 2025-03-20
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Abstract: In this article, I diagnose a key weakness in contemporary defenses of transformative prefigurative politics: they appear to expect existing institutions, like the existing state, to erode or change in tandem with prefigurative experimentation, opening them to be dismissed as implausible. Though some abjure engagement with existing state power while others embrace it, both appear to assume state power will have a given effect on prefigurative experimentation, and their theories of social transformation seem to turn on these assumptions. To address this shortcoming, I turn to the political thought of M.K. Gandhi. Unlike contemporary theorists, Gandhi connects his theory of prefigurative construction to his theory of noncooperation, which explains the intentional breaking of institutions. In providing a theory of the destructive moment of social transformation, Gandhi reconciles his state-skepticism with his limited embrace of the state, which contemporary defenses of prefigurative politics struggle to do. Because he understands state power as conditional on cooperation, Gandhi accounts for both the constructive and destructive moments of social transformation and provides a theory less likely to be dismissed. His example, I argue, is instructive for defenders of prefigurative politics today, especially as they think through working with and against the existing state. PubDate: 2025-03-18
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Abstract: Legal scholars, privacy advocates and major tech corporations all coalesce around one single idea. Data should be considered property. Legal analysts point to the ability of governments to regulate property, privacy advocates argue that personal rights would be better protected through a property model, and large tech companies want to claim ownership over data as a proprietary trade secret. I argue that the tendency to view data as property is a result of the long legacy of enlightenment philosophy surrounding property. In particular, John Locke has a special hold on the public imaginary, and his twin concepts of self-ownership and the labor theory of accumulation lead us to conceptualize data as a special form of property. However, the property model of data has significant drawbacks. By commodifying data, we commodify ourselves and allow for colonial theories of enclosure to dominate the discourse. Instead, I propose an alternative framing of data, drawn from the work of Judith Butler, whose ideas allow us to see data as an extension of the performance of identity. Drawing on both Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter I argue that viewing data as part of the performance of identity allows us to mitigate the harms of a property model and reconsider our relationship with our data. PubDate: 2025-03-13
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: A number of authors make a seemingly compelling case for holding the victim of a wrong morally obliged to accept the genuine apology of the wrongdoer. This is a crucial issue in questions of reparative justice, since reparation typically requires not just the giving but also the acceptance of an apology. Yet it is a case that we should ultimately reject. If it is credible to think that the victim might suffer anew in exercising any duty of this kind, that suffering must be factored into the moral reckoning from the outset. It is only if we can be sure that the victim will not suffer again by attending to, and ultimately accepting, the wrongdoer’s apology that it would be right to impose upon her any duty of this kind. Yet, in all non-trivial cases, the victim’s burden is unknowable in advance and has the potential to be considerable. In such situations, I argue, the victim has no duty to accept the wrongdoer’s apology. There are limits, too, to the utility of the bipartite victim-wrongdoer account of reparation on which such arguments are typically predicated. For the harm the wrongdoer causes is not exclusively suffered by the immediate victim but also by the community of all potential victims. Genuine reparative justice requires more than a recalibration of the relative moral standing of the wrongdoer and the victim through the giving and receiving of an apology. I consider how this might be achieved without imposing upon the victim a burden that fails to achieve the moral reckoning anticipated. PubDate: 2024-12-31
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Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
