Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1177/07255136231165038
Raffaela Puggioni
{"title":"Rethinking the ordinary and the extraordinary: Reading Rancière’s dissensual politics through Kuhn","authors":"Raffaela Puggioni","doi":"10.1177/07255136231165038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136231165038","url":null,"abstract":"Jacques Rancière’s theorisation of the political has been particularly influential in investigating political struggles and social movements. By distinguishing between the police order – tasked with maintaining the dominant (hierarchical) system – and politics – aiming at breaking that system – Rancière suggests reading the political as a disruptive event. However, he does not specifically engage with the question of how politics affects and changes the police order. This is what this article aims at exploring. Building upon Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, I suggest approaching the police order in the same way Kuhn approaches ‘normal science’ and reading the political in the same way Kuhn reads revolutionary science. I ultimately suggest that Rancière’s theorisation of the political is limited because he does not (sufficiently) account for the interplay between police/politics nor for the emergence of an after-politics, that is, a new (ordinary) police order that emerges out of (extraordinary) political events.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"175 1","pages":"27 - 42"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48437586","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}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1177/07255136231165803
Kateřina Nedbálková
{"title":"‘I have to like it’: Working-class awareness among workers at a Bata shoe factory","authors":"Kateřina Nedbálková","doi":"10.1177/07255136231165803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136231165803","url":null,"abstract":"The working class has been interpreted within various disciplines and conceptual frameworks, some pointing to the gap between the depiction of the working class as a potentially active social force in the neoliberal deregulated global market and its portrayal as a suffering class of the marginal and excluded. In this text, I move behind this dichotomy to explore the everyday experiences of working-class men and women. Based on ethnographic research at the Bata shoe factory in the Czech Republic, I examine the meanings factory workers attach to their working classness. I investigate their sense of place in society in general. I argue that class matters in the workers’ perceptions of the self. On the one hand, the workers adopt the awareness of subalternity in relation to the educational and further the labor field that ranks them among the lowest positions. On the other hand, they take individual pride in their endurance of the hard work that shoemaking is believed to be. The committed work and emphasis on collectivity turn the microorganism of the factory into a place of mutual discipline, where the praised collectivity functions also as a tool for enhancing work effectivity, also in the interest of the management. By pointing to the concrete dimensions in which they balance the feelings of pride and shame, belonging, and symbolic displacement, I contribute to the sociological understanding of contemporary working classness.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"175 1","pages":"108 - 125"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43318200","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}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1177/07255136231168650
Mark T. Hewson
{"title":"Modernity and collective subjectivity in Marcel Gauchet","authors":"Mark T. Hewson","doi":"10.1177/07255136231168650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136231168650","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines Marcel Gauchet’s claim that the political history of religion is the key to a new understanding of contemporary liberal democratic societies in the shape that they have come to assume since the 1970s. The Disenchantment of the World presents a history of religion starting out from the thesis that, from the perspective of universal history, the primary function of religion can be identified with the production of the unity and identity of societies. Present-day liberal democracies, it is argued, perform the same function through an alternative disposition of the constitutive elements of collective life. Where religions institute the identity of the society by accepting dependence upon a supernatural origin, contemporary society is organized as a ‘subjective form of social functioning’, in the sense that it is able to create and transform itself. Gauchet argues that the central structural features of contemporary society – the administrative state, the separation of civil society and the freedom of individuals, and the global orientation to the future – allow the practical accomplishment of the ideal of autonomy announced by the tradition of modern and revolutionary political thought. The explication of this logic establishes the preconditions for the criticism of these societies, by showing the historical decision and the internal articulations that give them their cohesion.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"175 1","pages":"43 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45102498","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}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-03-23DOI: 10.1177/07255136231156130
Peter Lenčo
{"title":"The Other Social Science: Three centuries of common heterodoxy","authors":"Peter Lenčo","doi":"10.1177/07255136231156130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136231156130","url":null,"abstract":"This paper starts with the observation that at least for the last century there has been an orthodoxy in the social sciences characterized by sui generis structures of various kinds but also (paradoxically) by the unique role of individuals in their ability to intervene in the flow of events. This paper argues that there is a commonality to a number of challenges to orthodoxy that dates back to the beginnings of the social sciences themselves with Vico. Although many connections have been made between elements of these critiques (Latour’s connection to Whitehead, Deleuze’s connection to Tarde), this paper proposes to make such connections more explicit by focusing on a central commitment to or tendency towards a monism characterized by a univocal ontology. The implication is that these various alternatives perhaps have more in common than normally thought and can continue to learn from each other. Most importantly, they present a coherent and viable alternative to social science orthodoxy.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"175 1","pages":"3 - 26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46530227","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}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1177/07255136221121702
T. Lewis
{"title":"(De)facing the face of lecturing with Deleuze and Guattari","authors":"T. Lewis","doi":"10.1177/07255136221121702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136221121702","url":null,"abstract":"This paper articulates the separate accounts of facial education and lecturing found in A Thousand Plateaus in order to theorize a new concept of lecturing for a post-digital university. Many accounts of Deleuze and Guattari in educational theory turn away from lecturing as hierarchical and striated, yet this approach denies Deleuze and Guattari’s deterritorialization of the practice through their description of a lecture by the character Professor Challenger. When read alongside their plateau on facialization, Challenger’s unusual performance can be interpreted as an interruption of the abstract machine of facialization that animates traditional accounts of lecturing. The article concludes with implications for a de-faced form of lecturing for a post-digital university.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"174 1","pages":"98 - 117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42153458","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}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1177/07255136231154280
P. Wagner
{"title":"Johann Arnason’s unanswered question: To what end does one combine historical-comparative sociology with social and political philosophy?","authors":"P. Wagner","doi":"10.1177/07255136231154280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136231154280","url":null,"abstract":"Johann Arnason’s work combines the most erudite historical-comparative sociology, discussing highly knowledgeably enormous stretches of world-history, with the most subtle social and political philosophy, drawing creatively on the traditions of hermeneutics and phenomenology. Invariably, his works introduce more nuance and sophistication into the analysis of even very well studied socio-historical phenomena. At the same time, he addresses such major phenomena in terms of modernity, democracy and capitalism, agreeing that there often – maybe always – is a combination of empirical, conceptual and normative issues at work when analysing human history. Nevertheless, readers of his work may at the same time be impressed by the nuance and sophistication and at a loss with regard to what such further refinement of our socio-historical knowledge entails in terms of understanding our own time in its historical context. Searching through Johann Arnason’s work, this article identifies unexplored questions in the conceptual and historical relation between civilization, modernity, and equality and tries to understand why they have been left open.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"174 1","pages":"3 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43123442","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}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1177/07255136231154266
Nicholas Holm
{"title":"The limits of satire, or the reification of cultural politics","authors":"Nicholas Holm","doi":"10.1177/07255136231154266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136231154266","url":null,"abstract":"In the first decades of the 21st century, humour has been increasingly embraced as a legitimate means by which to cover, analyse and intervene in political issues. Most frequently, this political application of humour has been interpreted through the lens of ‘satire’: a term that evokes an idea of humour as a politically meaningful cultural act. Such an account of humour connects satire with the long-standing theoretical tradition of ‘cultural politics’ that explores the ability and mechanism of cultural forms to inform, inspire or enact political change. However, while satire may appear as the manifestation or culmination of a cultural political agenda, I argue that the concept ultimately works towards the closure of cultural political possibility. Drawing on the work of Georg Lukács and Fredric Jameson, I argue that satire is better understood as a form of reification that prematurely resolves how, when and why cultural forms can do politics.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"174 1","pages":"81 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43398829","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}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-01-31DOI: 10.1177/07255136221103921
Claire Colebrook
{"title":"Book review: The Human: Bare Life and Ways of Life","authors":"Claire Colebrook","doi":"10.1177/07255136221103921","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136221103921","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"174 1","pages":"144 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45525116","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}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-01-29DOI: 10.1177/07255136231152678
Brooke Wilmsen
{"title":"Book review: The End of the Village: Planning the Urbanization of Rural China","authors":"Brooke Wilmsen","doi":"10.1177/07255136231152678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136231152678","url":null,"abstract":"of political humanity. In everyday life, one might think of the vast number of bodily surveillance technologies that tie the supposed ‘we’ of political subjectivity to the monitoring of ‘bare life’: smart watches with health, efficiency and fitness apps; the commodification of time and life in the labor market; DNA and personality services; ‘life coaching’ to make us more efficient. Lechte’s book is a thoughtful genealogy that allows contemporary readers of Stiegler and Agamben to think about debts to Arendt, Bataille, Heidegger and phenomenology in general. It is also, more importantly, a new way of thinking critically about the conception of freedom that runs from Kant, through Marx and Hegel, to the present: only with the modern positing of mere subsistence can the norm of self-forming humanity be marked off from lives of the stateless, the pre-political and the not-yet human. Finally, by arguing that what is posited as bare life actually harbors the relationality and sense of ways and forms of life, Lechte contributes to future thinking about human life beyond the state form.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"174 1","pages":"147 - 150"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47201060","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}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-01-24DOI: 10.1177/07255136221148559
F. Vandenberghe
{"title":"Sociology as political philosophy: Alain Caillé’s anti-utilitarian sociology","authors":"F. Vandenberghe","doi":"10.1177/07255136221148559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136221148559","url":null,"abstract":"The article presents an overview of the intellectual trajectory of Alain Caillé, the founder and animator of the anti-utilitarian movement in the social sciences (MAUSS) in France. Going back to early influences of Claude Lefort, Karl Polanyi and Pierre Clastres, it shows the centrality of the symbolic constitution of the economy in the development of an intellectual front against rational choice. It also considers how Marcel Mauss’s famous Essay on the Gift has been developed into a ‘gift paradigm’ that aims to unify the various social sciences into a comprehensive alternative to the interest paradigm.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"174 1","pages":"21 - 41"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49568146","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}