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

{"title":"Not just war by other means: Cross-border engagement as political struggle","authors":"Lucia M. Rafanelli","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12719","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12719","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I call cases like this—cross-border political engagements including both kinetic and non-kinetic elements—<i>hybrid cases</i>.<sup>1</sup> It is not obvious how to understand the non-kinetic elements of hybrid cases. Should we understand them as warfare—conflicts between “enemies” locked in a “radically adversarial relationship” whose main task is to harm each other and whose main normative quandary is how much and what kind of harm they are permitted to inflict (see Walzer, <span>2017</span>, p. xiii)? Or should we understand them as some (other) kind of political struggle?</p><p>The question of which analytic frame to adopt is important, as, I will argue, there are serious democratic costs associated with understanding the non-kinetic elements of hybrid cases as warfare. In Counterinsurgency, understanding civilian casualty reports made by journalists, activists, and insurgents as acts of war would mean seeing them as acts meant to cause harm (by debilitating “enemy” forces) and as strategic communications whose purpose and value were, at best, unconnected to their truth. It would mean seeing their authors as potentially liable to attack—as Gross does when he describes journalists as “the foot soldiers of media warfare” (<span>2015</span>, p. 300) and argues they are therefore liable to harms including “capture, incarceration, expulsion, or the destruction or confiscation of their equipment” (<span>2015</span>, p. 269). And it would mean seeing their audiences as pawns to be manipulated by propagandists.</p><p>Understanding civilian casualty reports instead as part of a political struggle would mean seeing them as statements that could inform, inspire critical reflection, and form the basis of democratic deliberation and contestation—which might not be contained within the borders of a single state. It would mean seeing their authors as sources of potentially weighty claims deserving real consideration and seeing their audiences as interlocutors capable of judging and responding in good faith to those claims.</p><p>Existing scholarship does not often explicitly recognize the question of whether to understand the non-kinetic elements of hybrid cases as warfare or political struggle—let alone explicitly evaluate the costs and benefits of making one choice or another.<sup>2</sup> Nonetheless, some (e.g., Blank, <span>2017</span>; Gross, <span>2015</span>; Gross & Meisels, <span>2017a</span>; Kittrie, <span>2016</span>; Walzer, <span>2017</span>) tend to treat them more like warfare, and others (e.g., Jurkevics, <span>2019</span>; Miller, <span>2010</span>, pp. 247–57; Miller, <span>2018</span>; Valdez, <span>2019a, 2019b</span>) tend to treat them more like political struggle. Here, I make explicit the implicit assumptions behind these two approaches, argue that adopting the <i>war paradigm</i> (understanding the non-kinetic elements of hybrid cases as “warfare”) has significant democratic costs, and argue that adopting an alternate <i>poli","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 4","pages":"661-677"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12719","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135167044","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":"The public university as a real utopia","authors":"Martin Aidnik, Harshwardhani Sharma","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12716","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12716","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 4","pages":"688-704"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135462359","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":"Critique and praxis: A critical philosophy of illusions, values, and action By Bernard E. Harcourt, New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. p. 696, $30","authors":"Maeve Cooke","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12717","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12717","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 2","pages":"286-288"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135512051","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":"On old revolutions and new constitutions: Constituent power in the Chilean constituent process","authors":"Franco Schiappacasse","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12720","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12720","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 4","pages":"595-609"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135512061","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":"Degenerations of democracy By Craig Calhoun, Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, Charles Taylor, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2022, pp. 368. $29.95 (hbk). ISBN: 9780674237582","authors":"Julian Culp","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12718","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12718","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"124-126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136034542","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 domination of nature: A forgotten theme in critical theory?","authors":"Omar Dahbour","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12702","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12702","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 3","pages":"368-381"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135483201","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":"Identity politics and the democratization of democracy: Oscillations between power and reason in radical democratic and standpoint theory","authors":"Karsten Schubert","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12715","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12715","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Criticism against identity politics, both in public discourse and political theory, has intensified over the past decade with the rise of right-wing populism and the polarization of politics (Walters, <span>2018</span>). Such criticism portrays identity politics as a threat to democracy, alleging that it erodes community, rational communication, and solidarity. Drawing on radical democratic and standpoint theories, I argue for the opposite thesis; namely, that identity politics is crucial for the democratization of democracy. I show that democratization works through disrupting hegemonic discourse and is, therefore, a matter of power; and that such power politics are reasonable when following minority standpoints generated through identity politics. In other words, the universal democratic claims of equality and freedom can only become effective through their repeated actualization in particular power struggles.</p><p>Identity politics is a contested term. Nevertheless, there are systematic overlaps between current criticisms of identity politics that mainly repeat arguments that have been similarly articulated since the 1990s. Communitarians criticize identity politics as dividing the political community, liberals criticize it as disruptive of the public sphere and free deliberation (Fukuyama, <span>2018</span>; Habermas, <span>2020</span>; Lilla, <span>2017</span>), and Marxist and anarchist theorists argue that identity politics undermines the struggle for justice and emancipation and stabilizes state power through neoliberal diversity politics (Fraser, <span>1990, 2007</span>; Kumar et al., <span>2018</span>; Newman, <span>2010</span>; Táíwò, <span>2022</span>; for a critique of these debates, see Bickford, <span>1997</span>; Walters, <span>2018</span>; Young, <span>2000</span>, pp. 82−87; Paul, <span>2019</span>). Based on universalist accounts of the political,<sup>1</sup> all three positions share the concern that particularist identity politics conflates social positions with epistemological possibilities and political positions, resulting in standpoint fundamentalism. In other words, the critics claim that, in identity politics, it matters more who speaks than what is said.<sup>2</sup></p><p>Discussions about difference (Benhabib, <span>1996</span>), counterpublics (Fraser, <span>1990</span>), and inclusion (Young, <span>2000</span>) at the intersection of deliberative and Critical theory early criticized such universalist accounts of the political for their exclusionist effects. While these works offer valuable resources to construct the argument that strengthening identity politics is important for the development of more inclusive deliberations and institutions, they frame this as a correction of reason, leaving the aspect of power underdeveloped. To understand both the severe resistance against more inclusive politics and the strategic need for non-deliberative means to achieve it—such as protest, civil disobedience, “cancel cultu","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 4","pages":"563-579"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12715","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135193513","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":"The politics of flight refugee movements between radical democracy and autonomous exodus","authors":"Johannes Siegmund","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12714","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12714","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 4","pages":"532-544"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135193097","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 revolution will not be theorized: Neoliberal thought and the problem of transition","authors":"Thomas Biebricher","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12713","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12713","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Neoliberalism is a notoriously contested term, and even among those who principally subscribe to it, which is mostly its critics, fierce debates persist over its nature, how to study it properly—and whether it is still the appropriate conceptual armament to understand the contemporary world and an arguably emerging “post-neoliberalism” (Davies & Gane, <span>2021</span>). Not only is it controversial how neoliberalism should be defined—a governing rationality in the spirit of Foucault's governmentality lectures (Foucault, <span>2008</span>), a portfolio of certain policies, or a strategy of transnational capital to restore and safeguard profit rates (Harvey, <span>2005</span>)—but also on what level to study it, either that of “actually existing neoliberalism” (Brenner & Theodore, <span>2002</span>; Cahill, <span>2014</span>), a set of theories and arguments, or both.</p><p>My starting point and focus for most of this paper is neoliberal thought as it is represented by the writings of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, the German ordoliberals, and, importantly, James Buchanan. My aim is to develop a critical account of neoliberal thought that will abstain from explicitly normative criticisms and rather opt for a more indirect but effective and somewhat novel critique that holds neoliberalism to its own standards and shows how it fails to meet them or is pushed into adopting highly questionable positions in the attempt to do so. The argument proceeds as follows: As already suggested, the meaning of neoliberalism is heavily contested, so I will provide the basis of my argument by laying out a brief account of neoliberalism, which relies on a theoretical-historical reconstruction of its context of emergence around the middle of the 20th century. What I conclude from this reconstruction is that we are well-advised not to narrow down neoliberalism too much and not to downplay its internal heterogeneities. Therefore, rather than trying to isolate a number of doctrines or positions as quintessentially neoliberal or even considering them to be the “essence” of neoliberalism, I argue that what unites neoliberal discourse is not a set of positive convictions—although there is some significant overlap in certain areas—but rather a shared <i>problematic</i> that pertains to the preconditions of functioning markets.</p><p>Within that overall problematic, democracy is one of the most pressing problems according to neoliberal thinkers, because virtually all of them agree that it complicates the task of setting up and securing the workings of functioning markets significantly. Still, this basic agreement notwithstanding, neoliberal accounts of democracy display a considerable range of specific diagnoses as to the nature and source of its dysfunctionalities or even pathologies. Accordingly, the second step of the argument is a survey of some selected lines of critique of democracy as they are formulated by leading neoliberals. Among other things, this su","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 4","pages":"506-519"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12713","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135816164","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":"“What would I do?”: Political action under oppression in Arendt","authors":"Alzbeta Hajkova","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12704","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12704","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 3","pages":"311-323"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48496057","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}