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

{"title":"Adorno and the categories of resistance","authors":"Henry W. Pickford","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12652","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12652","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45037950","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":"Four epistemic reasons to consult religious traditions","authors":"Matthias Kramm","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12651","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12651","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In recent years, we can speak of an anti-liberal appropriation of the concepts of religion, tradition, and religious tradition. The label of religious tradition has been used to divide and mobilize voters. With the support of the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian president Vladimir Putin has presented himself as the defender of traditional values against the liberal West (Agadjanian, <span>2017</span>). In Poland, religious groups have criticized the liberal European project in the name of the Catholic tradition (Szumigalska, <span>2015</span>). This raises the question of whether and how religious traditions can be addressed in liberal democratic states.</p><p>In political philosophy and political theory, religion has often been reconstructed with a focus on beliefs (Asad, <span>2012</span>). According to this notion of religion, belief has primacy over ritual, which has led to a neglect of religion as an embodied way of life that is manifested in individual behavior, in social practices, and in institutions (Mahmood, <span>2009</span>). This emphasis on the role of religious beliefs has also led to a neglect of the role of religious traditions. Only few authors have argued that appeals to religious traditions can advance a discussion (Asad, <span>2009</span>; MacIntyre, <span>1984</span>; Scruton, <span>1984</span>). During the last years, however, a group of philosophers has begun to re-evaluate the justificatory role of tradition (Casal, <span>2021</span>; Cohen, <span>2011</span>; Heath, <span>2014</span>; Robson, <span>2020</span>; Scheffler, <span>2010</span>; Wall, <span>2016</span>). These philosophers defend the position that if certain conditions are met, traditions can, to some extent, be valuable. More recently, Bardon (<span>2020</span>) and Laborde (<span>2020</span>) have engaged in a more specific discussion on the value of religious traditions in public deliberation.</p><p>Consulting tradition is a prominent practice within religious communities because traditions provide epistemic resources on the basis of which political or ethical problems within the community can be addressed (Audi, <span>2000</span>, p. 117).¹ March distinguishes between two methods by which religious communities consult tradition to address problems in their communities: an “appeal or reference to traditional religious commitments or practices” and an “appeal to practical wisdom or moral insight found in traditions of religious thought” (March, <span>2013</span>, p. 527).² Following March's distinction, I differentiate between two strategies of problem-solving. Political and ethical problems can be addressed by reaffirming the tradition and the <i>practical values</i> for maintaining it; alternatively, they can be addressed by consulting one's tradition and its <i>epistemic resources</i> for problem-solving. Consulting a tradition—whether one's own or a tradition in which one does not participate—consists in identifying the epistemi","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12651","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48507645","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":"Richard J. Bernstein in memoriam","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12650","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12650","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48959521","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":"Expert accountability: What does it mean, why is it challenging—and is it what we need?","authors":"Silje Aa. Langvatn,&nbsp;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 &amp; 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 &amp; 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 &amp; 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 &amp; Herzog, <span>2021</span>), judicial review (e.g., Contini &amp; 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":null,"pages":null},"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.¹ 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":null,"pages":null},"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).¹ 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).² 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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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}