Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory最新文献

{"title":"Expert accountability: What does it mean, why is it challenging—and is it what we need?","authors":"Silje Aa. Langvatn, Cathrine Holst","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12649","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12649","url":null,"abstract":"<p>When the Norwegian Parliament opened the southeastern Barents Sea for petroleum activity in 2013, it did so based on an impact assessment report prepared by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, 2012–2013). In 2016 the first licenses to drill in this area were awarded, and two environmental organizations sued the Norwegian state for awarding them. To prepare for the court case the organizations commissioned two economists with expertise in resource and environmental economics to review the impact assessment report and these commissioned economists quickly discovered major errors.</p><p>For one, the report did not discount the expected costs and future incomes—a standard procedure in such reports. Discounting with a 4% real interest rate would have reduced the estimated net income from opening the area by approximately 38%. This would make the opening a net loss (Greaker & Rosendahl, <span>2017a, 2017b</span>). The report also estimated the gross income in the scenario with low petroleum findings to be twice what the underlying numbers showed (Greaker & Rosendahl, <span>2017b</span>). These two mistakes together with optimistic estimates of employment numbers and the future oil price made it seem like there was no economic risk associated with opening, and this may have contributed to the Parliament's decision to open the area in spite of resistance from both environmentalists and the fishing industry (Greaker & Rosendahl, <span>2017a</span>; NTB, <span>2017</span>; Tomassen, <span>2017</span>).</p><p>A standard remedy when mistakes are made in political life is to find someone to hold to account. But when experts are involved in governance processes they are rarely held to account for their mistakes. This is sometimes seen as a legitimacy problem of expert-reliant governance, and warnings are given about handing over more power to “unaccountable” experts. So, is the solution to make experts more accountable?</p><p>The popularity of “accountability” as a remedy for all kinds of problems has led to inflation and fragmentation of meanings attributed to the term, and also to uncritical uses of accountability measures. Still, this article argues that accountability of experts remains crucial for addressing the legitimacy problems brought up by increasing expert dependency. Yet, instead of proposing a new type of accountability regime applicable to all contexts were experts take part, the article takes a step back and asks: What exactly does it mean to hold experts “accountable”? And what are the distinct challenges of expert accountability?</p><p>There are several studies of expert accountability in relation to particular institutions, such as public agencies (e.g., Busuioc, <span>2013</span>; Schillemans et al, <span>2021</span>), central banks (e.g., Heldt & Herzog, <span>2021</span>), judicial review (e.g., Contini & Mohr, <span>2007</span>), and parliaments (e.g., Crum, <span>2017<","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"98-113"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12649","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45731991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Psychoanalyzing democracies: Antagonisms, paranoia, and the productivity of depression","authors":"Felix S. H. Yeung","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12648","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12648","url":null,"abstract":"<p>When John Rawls crowned justice the ‘first virtue’ of social institutions, stability was its necessary presupposition. For what worth is there of just ideals if the social order they structure will flicker out of existence when under pressure? As Rawls (<span>2005</span>) wrote <i>Political Liberalism</i>, stability became a central concern for his theory of justice, and the “overlapping consensus” is his answer to this problem. The same concern about stability can be found in the works of Habermas, another key theorist of liberal democracy. Habermas (<span>1988, 1998</span>) describes how the only viable source of political legitimacy in the modern world is the socially integrating networks of communication. In his more recent works, he even considers liberal democracy the only viable institutional arrangement that can secure stable political coexistence in our conflict-ridden world.</p><p>Yet, really existing liberal democracies are far from stable. Followed by decades of neoliberal reform in major liberal democracies, public accountability of governments soon gave way to accountability to private <i>shareholders</i> of multinational capital. Inequalities were staggering, leaving many on the verge of destitution and precarity (Milanović, <span>2019</span>; Streeck, <span>2016</span>). Decades after neoliberal reforms have taken root and wreaked havoc, democracies are “undone.” The Left is now disoriented, while angry, disenfranchised masses are ‘re-politicizing’ the privatized world with a vengeance, turning to right-wing populisms of hatred, chauvinism, xenophobia, and misogyny (Brown, <span>2015</span>; Mouffe, <span>2018</span>).</p><p>For most ideal theorists, the problem with existing democracies is that liberal democratic ideals are misapplied.<sup>1</sup> They believe that as long as we reattune democracies to their ideals, inequalities will be kept in check, toxic populisms will disappear, and democracies will be stable once again. However, this account seems increasingly untenable: First, politically, the rise of populism in the liberal democratic West shows that politics guided by rationalist ideals are becoming unrealistically “utopian.” Second, these populist currents demonstrate how negative affects such as hatred, jealousy, and paranoid anxieties powerfully shape political life, calling into question the negligence of negative (especially antipathic) affects in ideal theories (Mouffe, <span>2005, 2009</span>). Thus, <i>if one's theory aims for stable democracies, then one must go beyond ideals, and the ‘affective deficit’ of rationalist ideal theories must be addressed</i>.</p><p>Some currents in political thought try to overcome this affective deficit. For instance, Nussbaum (<span>2013, 2018</span>) supplements liberal theory with her account of political emotions. She discusses negative emotions such as disgust, anger, and fear, and argues for the need to foster love and forgiveness, redirecting our emotional energies to pro","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"32-50"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12648","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47758993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thinking, meaning, and truth: Arendt on Heidegger and the possibility of critique","authors":"Jennifer Gaffney","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12647","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12647","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Few topics in Arendt's corpus have garnered more attention than her analysis of the dangers inherent in Adolf Eichmann's inability to think. Eichmann revealed what Arendt describes as the banality of evil, a new kind of evil born not of monstrous or demonic motives but of thoughtlessness (Arendt, <span>2006</span>, p. 54).<sup>1</sup> Yet, while Eichmann made clear the urgent need we have to think, scholars remain at odds as to whether Arendt succeeds in demonstrating that thinking itself has a role to play in preventing evildoing (Bernstein, <span>2000</span>; Biser, <span>2014</span>; Formosa, <span>2016</span>). My aim is to give new orientation to these debates by reconsidering Arendt's critical reception of Martin Heidegger in <i>The Life of the Mind</i> in relation to her claim that thinking must be understood terms of the quest for meaning rather than truth (Arendt, <span>1978</span>, Vol. 1, p. 15).<sup>2</sup> By developing Arendt's emphasis on meaning this way, I argue that she introduces to thinking a distinctive capacity for critique, one that she takes to be absent in Heidegger and that helps to distinguish her conception of thinking in its ability to intervene in the dangers of thoughtlessness.</p><p>While recent commentators have highlighted this capacity for critique in Arendt's notion of thinking, it has yet to be developed in relation to her critical reception of Heidegger in <i>The Life of the Mind</i> (Minnich, <span>2017</span>; Shuster, <span>2018</span>; Snir, <span>2020</span>). Arendt is typically portrayed in her later writings as distancing herself from Heidegger by adding to thinking a worldly or political dimension that prepares the way for judgment (Fine, <span>2008</span>; Koishikawa, <span>2018</span>; Maslin, <span>2020</span>; Taylor, <span>2002</span>; Zerilli, <span>2005</span>). Yet, in his well-known and largely unanswered criticism of Arendt, Richard Bernstein argues that this is not enough to show that she has distinguished adequately between the kinds of thinking that can prevent moral and political catastrophe and the kinds that cannot (Bernstein, <span>2000</span>, p. 291). Afterall, Heidegger's thinking remains close to the world, rooted in concepts like <i>aletheia</i> and <i>Gelassensheit</i> that bring thinking back to earth for the sake of contravening the reductive and dominating will of modern technoscientific rationality. Bernstein thus identifies a decisive problem for Arendt, arguing that while she may demonstrate the moral and political dangers of Eichmann's thoughtlessness, she seems unable to answer the question of why Heidegger's thinking could not condition him against similar vulnerabilities. My aim is to provide a new basis to answer this question by considering the critical distance thinking achieves from the world in its quest for meaning rather than truth, a distance that she suggests Heidegger collapses in his analysis of thinking.</p><p>There is much to be said about Heidegger's ","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"3-17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12647","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45448636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bent out of Shape: The Projection of Male Anxiety onto Busks and Stays in Early Modern Europe","authors":"Julia R. Miller","doi":"10.29173/cons29486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/cons29486","url":null,"abstract":"An interesting pattern emerges in the Early Modern Era of women taking control of their lives and bodies through the use of material culture, and men being terrified of this fact. Women often lacked agency in a world with ever-changing perceptions of not only femininity, but also of the female form. Clothing was then one of the few ways that these women who lacked power could control their body and their spheres. To those living in the Early Modern Era, clothing held far more meaning than it does in the modern day. The exchange of clothing among women was founded on and fundamental to the connections between them. It was transferred from “masters and mistresses to servants, from aunts to nieces, from sisters and brothers to younger siblings” in a “routine rotation” that was the life of a garment. Men and women alike understood the innate power of clothing in the Early Modern period and its ability to “transnature” the body it was on. Clothing had the power to “mold and shape” women into anything. Because of its transformative nature, for many women clothing was one of the few places where they could exert their control: through purchasing power, shaping their public presentation and—for lower class women—even manufacturing or selling.  Busks and stays are one item which was targeted by masculinity in the early modern period because of their connection to both women and sexuality more specifically.","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"57 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41305427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Banners, Banter and Boys: Feminism and Historical Distortion in Iron Jawed Angels","authors":"Julia Stanski","doi":"10.29173/cons29443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/cons29443","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the relationship between the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels and the historic events and figures it purports to represent. As a major film on the national women’s suffrage movement in the US, Iron Jawed Angels had great potential in terms of educating viewers on the lives and accomplishments of America’s suffragists. However, this paper argues that in modifying the character and story of activist Alice Paul to appeal to female, conservative, and American audiences, the movie diminishes Paul’s achievements and assumes that female spectators require the tropes of a “chick flick” to sustain their interest.","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46443362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Alcohol and Sports in Hemingway's Paris","authors":"J. Kelly","doi":"10.29173/cons29465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/cons29465","url":null,"abstract":"In the aftermath of the horrors of the First World War and during the years of American Prohibition, Paris became a cheap and popular tourist destination as well as the home to a new generation of aspiring writers from artists including Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway. Novels written during that period and memoirs remembering it have described the exciting, boozy community there but none have been read as widely as Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Moveable Feast (1964). This paper aims to discuss the ways in which alcohol and sports play a part in the community of American expatriates in 1920s Paris and how this can be seen in particular in Hemingway’s works. It will also discuss how the prevalence of alcohol and sports in this period affected Hemingway and his work for the rest of his life.","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46849116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond the Ideological Framework: Historiographical Approaches to Examining Agency Within Austrian World War Two Involvement","authors":"Aulden Maj-Pfleger","doi":"10.29173/cons29455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/cons29455","url":null,"abstract":"The Anschluss of Austria in 1938 was a major moment for Nazi expansion in Europe. This German annexation has often been framed to portray Austria as the “first victim” in Nazi aggression, placing blame for crimes agaisnt humanity on the Nazi ideology, rather than Austrian individuals or groups complicit with colaboration. This paper seeks to deconstruct this historiographical understanding based on ideology and analyze the impact of agency in examining Austria’s history with Nazism, the Holocaust, and coming to terms with problematic history. ","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46338014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Impact of the 1862-63 Smallpox Epidemic on British Columbia’s First Nations","authors":"R. Boone","doi":"10.29173/cons29451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/cons29451","url":null,"abstract":"The smallpox epidemic of 1862-63 had a devastating effect on British Columbia’s First Nations, impacting the lives of both individuals and communities. However, this paper argues that the colonial discourse surrounding the disease was equally harmful, as it posited that Indigenous peoples’ suffering was somehow inevitable due to their perceived biological differences and supposed moral deficiencies. This damaging colonial discourse enabled settlers to actively disregard their Indigenous neighbours’ suffering and, in doing so, to deny their very humanity.","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44121478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Communist Manifesto: A Weapon of Mass Destruction or A Tool for Tomorrow?","authors":"Cody Ritter","doi":"10.29173/cons29490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/cons29490","url":null,"abstract":"The term communism has long since been seen as largely derogatory, and the system it represents, a failure. Yet where do these notions of communism come from and are they reflective of the original ideals laid out by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels? This paper will look at some of the divergences from Marx’ and Engels’ original intent to the form communism took in eastern Europe’s state-socialism. The analysis remains limited in scope with the intent of offering a rethinking of how the works of Marx’ and Engels’ have been used and how it can still be used today. The issues seen within state-socialism and communism’s bureaucratism should not rob Marxist thought of all legitimacy. Instead, critically contemplating the original context and intent of the Manifesto can offer a renewed appreciation for their groundbreaking and radical work and remove some of the inherent prejudice against anything associated with socialism as being disproven and incompetent. The goal not being the re-establishment of socialism as a dominant force in the world today, but to ensure dialogue around issues do not settle on accepting the capitalist systems as some final form of social organization, but to continue to push for social improvement and equality.","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45863173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Diabolical Martyrdom: Urbain Grandier, the Transgressive Outsider, and the Surrogate Victim in The Possession at Loudun","authors":"Teagan Cameron","doi":"10.29173/cons29475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/cons29475","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout the 1630s, the town of Loudun, France, is gripped with an ongoing crisis of demonic possession that involves every member of the community.  As historian Michel de Certeau demonstrates in his book The Possession at Loudun, the townsfolk express and attempt to expel their anxieties through a surrogate victim: Urbain Grandier, the priest of Saint-Pierre-du-Marché, is judged and executed as a sorcerer.  In doing so, the Loudunais seem to closely follow the framework constructed by René Girard in his book The Violence and the Sacred for understanding the surrogate victim and their role in ritual sacrifice.  A transgressive stranger to the community, here Grandier, is symbolically purged, and with him all their sins, fears, and worries.  Grandier’s death, however, does not end the violence.  This paper will bring the works of de Certeau and Girard into dialogue in order to better understand the position of both Urbain Grandier and the exorcist Father Surin in the demonic possession at Loudun.  Although Grandier seems to be a perfect Girardian transgressive outsider and sacrifice, his death does not restore balance to the community; instead, the enigmatic Father Surin must also take on many characteristics of the surrogate victim in order to end the troubling events.","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43834012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}