This essay argues that humor can be used as an unstable weapon against oppressive language and concepts. Drawing from radical feminist Marilyn Frye, I discuss the difficulty of challenging systematic oppression from within and explore the capabilities of humor for this task. This requires expanding Cynthia Willett’s and Julie Willett’s approach to fumerism beyond affect to fully examine the work of humor in manipulating language, concepts, and imagery. For this expansion, I bring in research on feminist linguistics alongside other philosophers (...) of political humor to consider the connection between humor and world-making. I then link this with feminist world-breaking through Monique Wittig’s analysis of war machines and Trojan horses against heteropatriarchal language. Finally, I draw out the instability of humor as a war machine by investigating a bit where comedian Patti Harrison disguised herself as an official corporate brand platform to challenge the compulsory commodification of LGBTQ rights. (shrink)

An in-depth account of how critique and subversion have been integral parts of the history and development of Chinese philosophy from the classical period to the present.

Radical Intellectuals and the Subversion of Progressive Politics is a challenge to contemporary radical politics and political thought. This collection of essays critiques the dominant trends and figures on the left that have distorted the legacy of progressive politics, arguing that they have moved politics away from issues of class and economic power toward a preoccupation with culture and identity. The contributors discuss this new radicalism from the perspective of a more rational form of leftism capable of reviving (...) interest in a more politically relevant form of politics. (shrink)

This is a bold and vigorous Grant, writing on a topic about which he is passionate and deeply informed.

In this paper, I tried to analyze a couple of Kristeva's ideas and concepts. I tried to engage myself in the debate on whether Kristeva's semiotic politics could be seen as subversive enough to be feminist. I have claimed that some of her basic concepts can be read in a feminist manner, nonetheless Kristeva's oeuvre is packed with all sorts of ambiguities and ambivalences, which makes it hard to define her position towards feminism. At the end of this paper, I (...) also try to supplement Irigaray's conceptualization of the chora to the one of Kristeva, in order to stress that the latter's semiotic politics are feminist and subversive, but maybe a bit too 'maternal' instead of feminine. (shrink)

Velvet revolutions, continued-. The strange toppling of Slobadan Milošević ; "The country summoned me" ; Orange Revolution in Ukraine ; The revolution that wasn't ; 1968 and 1989 ; 1989! ; Velvet Revolution in past and future -- Europe and other headaches. Ghosts in the machine ; Are there moral foundations of European power? ; The twins' new Poland ; Exchange of empires ; Why Britain is in Europe ; Europe's new story ; National anthems ; "O chink, where is (...) thy wall?" ; The perfect EU member -- Islam, terror and freedom. La Alhambra ; Islam in Europe ; The invisible front line ; Against taboos ; Respect? ; Secularism or atheism? ; No if and no buts -- USA! USA!. Mr. President ; 9/11 ; Anti-Europeanism in America ; In defence of the fence ; Zorba the Bush ; Warsaw, Missouri ; Dancing with history ; Liberalism -- Beyond the West. Beauty and the beast in Burma ; Soldiers of the hidden Imam ; East meets West ; The brotherhood against Pharaoh ; Cities of no God ; Beyond race -- Writers and facts. The brown grass of memory ; The Stasi on our minds ; Orwell in our time ; Orwell's list ; Is "British intellectual" an oxymoron? ; "Ich bin ein Berliner" ; The literature of fact -- Envoi. Elephant, feet of clay ; Decivilization ; The mice in the organ. (shrink)

Introducing the work of three French feminists - Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Michele L Doeuff - "Sexual Subversions" provides access to the work of these writers. In doing so this book raises some key issues of relevance to feminist research, addressing debates around the nature of feminist theory; the relationship between feminist thinking theory; the relationship between feminist thinking and male-dominated areas of knowledge; the strategies appropriate for developing non-patriarchal or woman-centered knowledges. No book on French feminists would be (...) complete without including the contributions of Kristeva and Irigaray. The inclusion of Le Doeuff's work, which brings a different perspective to bear on the question of sexual difference, provides a counterbalance to literary appropriations of French feminism by Anglo-American readerships. Kristeva, Irigaray and Le Doeuff are the focal points of this study, precisely because each highlights the differences of the others, revealing the frameworks to which the others are committed. Nevertheless, while these writers do not present a common political or theoretical position or form a school, each does address the question of women's autonomy from male definition, affirms the sexual specificity of women, seeks out a femininity women can use to question the patriarchal norms and ideals of femininity and rejects the preordained positions patriarchy allots to woman. This book is intended for students and researchers in women's studies, philosophy and feminism. (shrink)

The weaponizing of scientific expertise to oppose regulation has been extensively studied. However, the relevant studies, belonging to the emerging discipline of agnotology, remain focused on the analysis of empirical corruption: of misinformation, doubt mongering, and other practices that cynically deploy expertise to render audiences ignorant of empirical facts. This paper explores the wrongful deployment of expertise beyond empirical corruption. To do so, I develop a broader framework of morally subversive expertise, building on recent work in political philosophy (Howard, (...) 2016). Expertise is subversive if it sets up its audience to fail morally, either intentionally or negligently. I distinguish three modes of subversive expertise: empirical subversion (the focus of agnotology), normative subversion and motivational subversion. Drawing on these distinctions, I offer a revisionary account of the Trump Administration’s regulatory science as a case study. I show that the Trump Administration’s use of expertise to dismantle climate regulation, contra the standard charge, cannot be explained using the resources of agnotology alone: the Administration produced highly reliable climate assessments, detailing the risks of climate change, candidly admitting the harms of its proposed policies, and still successfully deployed these findings to justify massive climate deregulation. The lesson of the analysis is that dismissing the expertise that underpins climate deregulation as empirically corrupt ‘anti-science’ both obscures its actual role in the politics of climate change and understates its wrongfulness: it misses the breadth of the assault on moral agency that sustains climate injustice. (shrink)

This paper argues, against technological and economic determinism, that the dominant model of industrial society is politically contingent. The idea that technical decisions are significantly constrained by ?rationality? ? either technical or economic ? is shown to be groundless. Constructivist and hermeneutic approaches to technology show that modern societies are inherently available for a different type of development in a different cultural framework. It is possible that, in the future, those who today are subordinated to technology's rhythms and demands will (...) be able to control it and to determine its evolution. I call the process of creating such a society ?subversive rationalization? because it requires technological advances that can only be made in opposition to the dominant hegemony. (shrink)

I discuss how the scientificity characterizing Adam Smith’s political economy has to exteriorize social conflict in order to sustain its objectivation of social interaction in terms of regulative laws. I claim that this exteriorization constitutes an internal point of subversion, not only because it resists economic objectivation, but first and foremost because it forces Smith to employ political strategies that both contradict and guarantee the scientificity of his theory. I show how the place of conflict in modern (...) economy, according to Smith, can actually be determined in three different ways: as a concrete place when it comes to the confrontations between workers and capitalists; as a theoretical place in the sense of being an arbitrary disturbance of the spontaneous organization of the market; and as a place that, as being the intersection between economic naturalization and social contingency, problematizes the scientificity of Smith’s political economy. In this sense, I develop three cases where Smith invokes an argumentative circularity that reveals the paradoxical politics of his economic scientificity, beyond its official laissez-faire politics: State coercion, monetary power and capitalist competition. (shrink)

I discuss how the scientificity characterizing Adam Smith’s political economy has to exteriorize social conflict in order to sustain its objectivation of social interaction in terms of regulative laws. I claim that this exteriorization constitutes an internal point of subversion, not only because it resists economic objectivation, but first and foremost because it forces Smith to employ political strategies that both contradict and guarantee the scientificity of his theory. I show how the place of conflict in modern (...) economy, according to Smith, can actually be determined in three different ways: as a concrete place when it comes to the confrontations between workers and capitalists; as a theoretical place in the sense of being an arbitrary disturbance of the spontaneous organization of the market; and as a place that, as being the intersection between economic naturalization and social contingency, problematizes the scientificity of Smith’s political economy. In this sense, I develop three cases where Smith invokes an argumentative circularity that reveals the paradoxical politics of his economic scientificity, beyond its official laissez-faire politics: State coercion, monetary power and capitalist competition. (shrink)

This book theorizes subversive action, a neglected mechanism in the new institutionalism literature. Subversive action is political in nature, secretly undermining some institutions to open up alternative ideas or to secure existing institutions by secretly undermining adversaries. An example is a politician who promises change in public, but does something else behind the scenes to preserve the status quo. The book addresses the nature and meaning of subversive action and the contexts that give rise to it, as well as (...) how it can work as an important mechanism behind institutional change and continuity. The book will interest students and scholars of public policy, public administration and political science. (shrink)

Scholarship onEcclesiazusae(as onWealth) has been largely divided between those who are in favour of a fantastical/positive reading of the play and view it as a celebration of comic energy void of serious social critique, and those who argue for an ironic/satirical interpretation and deem Praxagora's plan as a spectacular failure. The unsuccessful realization of the new political programme is often regarded as a commentary on the state of democracy at the time. Other views are more affirmative of the democratic (...) values of the play: Scholtz claims that the women inEcclesiazusaesucceed into putting into action Lysistrata's dream of a cohesive civic order, although, according to him, the play does not present ‘an unambiguouslyproorcontraviewpoint vis-à-vis gynaecocratic communalism’. Rothwell believes that the satire is directed against the greedydēmosrather than against Praxagora's plan. He sees the persuasion exercised by women as ‘a benevolent and indispensable force in democracy’, and argues that the women ofEcclesiazusae, like the women inLysistrata, strive to assure the continuity of the community; in his view, the play is about ‘the potential advantages of leadership in building a community’. Moodie also outright rejects a threatening or pessimistic reading, and makes the case that the audience is encouraged to take the women seriously as political actors owing to their unusual interaction with the audience and the rupture of dramatic illusion, which creates a rapport between the women and the audience. If the play is subversive, it is so only in its ‘non-satirical presentation of female leadership’. (shrink)

Subversive Pedagogies draws attention to creative and critical pedagogies as a resource for engaging pressing problems in global politics. The collection explores the radical potential of pedagogy to transform students, scholars, citizens and institutions. It brings together scholars and students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including international relations, political science, indigenous studies, feminist theory and theatre studies, as well as practitioners in theatre and the arts. These diverse voices explore innovative pedagogical practices that extend our understanding of where (...) pedagogy happens, invite critical assessment of the ways the neoliberal university shapes and restricts pedagogical engagement, and offer both theoretical and practical tools to explore more creative and broader understandings of what pedagogy can and should do. (shrink)

In his later years, Leo Tolstoy wrote numerous books, essays and pamphlets expounding his newly-articulated denunciations of all political violence, whether by dissidents or ostensibly legitimate states. If these writings have inspired many later pacifists and anarchists, it is partly thanks to his masterful deployment of the literary technique of ‘defamiliarisation’ – or looking at the familiar as if new – to shake readers into recognising the absurdity of common justifications of violence, admitting their implicit complicity in it, and (...) noticing the process which numbed them into accepting such complicity. This paper discusses Tolstoy’s use of the imagination to defamiliarise and denounce violence, first by citing several typical examples, then by reflecting on four of its subversive characteristics: its disruption of automated perception, its implicit concession of some recognition, its corrosion of conventional respect for traditional hierarchies, and its encouragement of empathy. (shrink)

Deconstructive and poststructuralist theories are commonly accused of rejecting all principles of justice and therefore “collaborating with evil.” A canonical example is Martha Nussbaum’s “The Professor of Parody” on the work of Judith Butler. The merits of Nussbaum’s argument and of the “common critique” turn on choosing between two alternative interpretations of Butler’s corpus and of poststructuralism in general. First, assumed in Nussbaum’s critique, is “universal poststructuralism.” Second is “contextual poststructuralism,” which is not susceptible to the common critique. According to (...) the latter and better reading of Butler, subversion and deconstruction take place within a background comprising relatively stable sets of norms, structures of meaning, practices and values. A background that is a necessary enabling condition of deconstructing and performing subversion or parody, and which may include moral norms and principles. Moreover, Nussbaum’s critique may be incommensurable with Butler’s project. Finally, ascribing Butler’s theory the general proposition of rejecting all norms and moral principles ignores the temporal and particularistic nature of Butler’s deconstructive agenda. (shrink)

In a survey spanning over half a century of his own work, Hirschman, among the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century on political economy, celebrates the ability to undermine one’s own claims and theories. Whereas skepticism toward other people’s work is not noteworthy, Hirschman argues, self-critque is crucial in relation “to one’s own generalizations or constructs.” But self-criticism and interpretive changes do “not in the end cancel out or refute the earlier findings”; rather, they help to define domains (...) of the social world where originally postulated relations do not hold. Exercises in “self-subversion,” while often experienced at first as traumatic, are eventually, as Hirschman’s own career attests, “rewarding and enriching.”. (shrink)

El amanecer del año 1994 nos sorprendió con la aparición pública del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. Más de dos décadas después empezamos a percibir la fuerza, dimensión e importancia que han tenido las mujeres -su voz, su lucha- no sólo en la organización del movimiento armado y civil que desde entonces sigue sin cesar; sino también en la articulación del pensamiento y la teoria en que sustentan y que sostiene su actuar. La política que se articula en las comunidades (...) zapatistas, en este sentido, ha reafirmado y cuestionado las luchas feministas del mundo y de América Latina. En particular, ha hecho visible lo prescindible que es la idea de las oposiciones, de las disyuntivas excluyentes. En vez de ello, ellas proponen pensar en dos nociones básicas: “todo está en par” y “el mundo parejo”. Como haré ver en este texto, estas dos cosas están a la base de su creación de una vida colectiva, de una política de lo común. Si esto es así y si pensamos que lo común es “la posibilidad de una política en femenino” entonces veremos que la zapatista es una subversión en femenino.The uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional surprised us all in the dawn of 1994. More than two decades later, we are starting to fully appreciate the force, dimension, and importance that women —their voices, their struggle—has had not only in the organization of the social and armed movement that is still very vigorous in Chiapas, but also in the theoretical and practical articulation of their thinking and acting. The politics that are currently in play in the Zapatista communities has reinforced and questioned the feminist struggles all over the world and in Latin America. In particular, it has made visible how thinking in terms of oppositions or exclusive dilemmas is and should be dispensable. We should rather start thinking in terms of “everything being in pair” and “an even world”. I will contend that these two notions support their construction of a collective life, of a politics of what is common. If this is true and if we think that what is common opens the possibility of politics in feminine, then it makes sense to think of the Zapatistassubversion as feminine. (shrink)

How contemporary Chinese art is creating “a philosophy of life, a philosophy of politics, and a natural philosophy,” as artist Qiu Zhijie says it must, is explored in this collection of essays by philosophers and art historians from America and China.

The problem of modernity occupies a central place in the political reflection carried out by Leo Strauss. Taking this into account, the fundamental aim of this paper is to analyze how this author understood and questioned the philosophic project proposed by modern thinkers. In this sense, we will try to comprehend how, from Strauss´s perspective, modernity, seeking to bring about in history the best political order through the abandonment of traditional esotericism and a radical politicization of philosophy, involves (...) an ideal of rationalization of human life that is ultimately problematic for both society and philosophy. (shrink)

Robert Zaretsky’s The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas offers a nuanced and engaging account of a thinker who to this date is mostly shunned by academic philosophy. As indicated by its subtitle, it explores five key concepts in Weil’s thought that according to Zaretsky “still reso-nate today. Or, I believe, should resonate”, given Weil’s obscurity. By linking each of these con-cepts to a particular episode or development in Weil’s more-than-eventful life, Zaretsky makes both his protagonist and the (...) contemporary challenges she deals with in her writings palpable. Es-pecially the first is no easy task, in view of the many paradoxes that surround Weil’s life and per-sonality: A secular Jew in the search of a Christian God, a pacifist eager to fight in the Spanish Civil war, a rationalist with mystic leanings, “a communist with a small c” (68) mistrustful of par-ties on either side of the political spectrum. Zaretsky demonstrates that it is precisely this ambiva-lence of Weil which makes her such a “subversive” and fascinating author who defies expectations and unnerves her readers. (shrink)

Salomón de la Selva (1893-1959) was a Nicaraguan writer/activist who authored many books of verse in Spanish, but only one in English: TropicalTown, And Other Poems (1918). Published in New York by John Lane–and regarded by Silvio Sirias as the first book of English verse published in the U.S.by a Latin American–Tropical Town exhibits a curious dynamic of avantgarde impulse: radically subversive in invoking counter-politics resisting U.S. colonial transnationalism, yet tending toward inherited, traditional aesthetic forms of poetry meant to legitimize (...) Selva’s Latin American identity with an impression of authority that contiguous Modernist experimental poetries could not. Through its sympathy for the U.S. immigrant’s nostalgia for homeland, coupled with express disapproval of U.S. international affairs, Tropical Town leaves a poetic record that challenges presuppositions about the integral relationships between ethos, aesthetics, and consciousness vis-à-vis assumed understandings of what constitutes radical poetry in the Modernist moment. (shrink)

The contribution attempts to integrate multiple perspectives of current largely heterogeneous graffiti scholarship. Referring to Bruno Latour’s concept »iconoclash«, we discuss graffiti from a cultural-theoretical point of view as a »version«. It appears as a semiotically oriented modification of spatially situated practices that regulate social life. Often, but not necessarily, these practices involve subversive qualities. The concept of »version« facilitates a non-normative and non-essentialist strategy of research. This enables an explorative research practice in which the complex matters of identity and (...) space politics that are associated with graffiti can be addressed. (shrink)

In Psychoanalysis as a Subversive Phenomenon, Amber M. Trotter explores processes of social change, highlights the role of ethics, and illuminates ways in which analytic theory and practice can disrupt contemporary American culture.

I explore Lacan’s theory of the subject by responding to two well-known criticisms of it, found in Borch-Jacobsen’s Lacan and Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy’s The Title of the Letter. I argue that the relation of the subject to language is an important part of Lacan’s theory, but his conception of the subject cannot be reduced to language, as the critiques allege. The real must be included in the picture too. I then discuss the situation of Lacan’s subject between language and the (...) real, and conclude with a contrast of Lacan’s subversion of the subject to a Derridean paleonymic approach. (shrink)

Avantgarde und Avantgarde-Forschung befinden sich aufgrund der mit dem Begriff verbundenen Verzeitlichung und Verräumlichung in einer permanenten Erklärungs- und Rechtfertigungssituation. Von Beginn an für tot erklärt, "spukt" das "Gespenst der Avantgarde" durch Kunst und Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Es hat grundsätzliche Fragen gestellt, die dieser Band diskutiert. Dazu gehört das immer wieder behauptete "Scheitern" der historischen Avantgarden, ihre Aufhebung in der Post-Avantgarde, gleichzeitig ihre (historische) Notwendigkeit, ihr Verhältnis zur Moderne und ihre zunehmende Vereinnahmung durch den Modernismus. Untersucht wird auch die (...) Bedeutung der Avantgarde für und ihre Infragestellung durch Prozesse gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung und ihre aktuellen Möglichkeiten und Erscheinungsformen in Kunst und Gesellschaft. So kommt nicht nur die heutige Situation von Avantgarde und Avantgarde-Forschung in den Blick, es sollen auch neue Perspektiven auf Kunst und Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts entwickelt und eine Positionsbestimmung von "Avantgarde heute" unternommen werden. (shrink)

Differing from the mainstream notion about deconstruction as a differential reading of texts, the paper views it primarily as a process of subversion of self-identity of a person who faces the ‘alterity’ of the other in a concrete ethical situation. Thus it is seen more as an existential experience of the individual rather than a socio-political process. It seeks a pathway from Derrida’s deconstruction of texts to Emmanuel Levinas’s trial of individuality by the ‘face’ of the other. The (...) face of the other that calls for the ethical responsibility of the ‘I’, challenges his autonomy. As human self-identities are unreal constructs produced by ontology through the integration of multiple experiences of phenomena into a uniform apperception of consciousness, its rupture alone will guarantee a passage to the realm of ‘otherness’. ‘Otherness’ manifested in the deconstruction of self-identity in ethics is viewed as more intense and radical than the subversion of identity that takes place in textual experience. (shrink)

versity is full of all manner of public activity: students talking, reading, dozing, playing cards; tables representing a wide variety of ethnic communities and clubs advertising their functions, soliciting membership, and serving as gathering places; and—~most directly related to the topic of this essay—students advocating mainly radical political causes, passing out material exposing and denouncing putative (and more often than not correctly imputed) wrongdoings by authorities ranging from the university administration to the federal government and beyond. It is true (...) that both university officials and students making use of this space count on its campus setting to informally discourage use of it by other than students, but the space admits of an indefinite variety of uses, and at least no members of the.. (shrink)

This paper engages the debate within the ‘democratic turn’ in Machiavelli scholarship, where an ‘institutional’ approach has celebrated Machiavelli's theorisation of the institutions under which the people can rule while a ‘no-rule’ approach has traced Machiavelli's attention to the popular capacity to subvert all relations of rule. What do we make of Machiavelli's concurrent reception as a champion of popular rule and an antagonist to all rule? I argue that both institutionalising and subversive impulses appear simultaneously in Machiavelli's works, though (...) in a dynamic for which neither of the democratic approaches adequately accounts – namely, a rhetorical dimension of Machiavelli's works wherein political knowledge unfolds from a continuous multiplicity of perspectives and the ensuing implication that perspective is crafted and shaped through political action. Perspectival readings of Machiavelli's accounts of the Capuan debate and the Ciompi rebellion thus reveal that both democratic approaches have neglected to question certain ‘princely’ orientations toward political action inherited in their conceptualisations of Machiavellian democracy. In contrast, I suggest that Machiavelli's comedy La Mandragola offers an opportunity to reframe perspective as a uniquely democratic phenomenon. Reading the comedy alongside the democratic turn, I argue that it enacts, satirises and even casts doubts on Machiavelli's princely lessons, in turn proposing a popular capacity to cultivate perspective in a newly organised public space. (shrink)

Fuller carries social constructionism to its bitter end in his theory of the “post-truth condition”—endemic to current life and to the entirety of Western Philosophy. According to Fuller, the gates to the elitist power/knowledge-games have been crashed by the democratic mob. Fuller implicitly extends Popper’s radicalism in the philosophy of science to political and social philosophy. Rather than Popper’s piecemeal social engineering for the purpose of minimizing human suffering, Fuller promotes revolutionary social change in the face of catastrophes. Fuller (...) pushes for a “proactionary” approach because the current vast social change refutes the fragility-assumption of Popper’s “risk-adverse” sociopolitical philosophy. (shrink)

Examines the nature and origins of Hobbes's Biblical criticism, concentrating on what has always seemed his most radical claim—the argument that the Pentateuch was written not by Moses but by a much later figure, Ezra the Scribe. It traces the origins of this theory, showing how some key elements of Hobbes's biblical criticism were already present in the mainstream tradition; but it argues that Hobbes's insistence on the grounding of the authority of the text in political authority did give (...) a radical new edge to his theory. Finally, it considers whether it is correct to describe Hobbes as having founded modern biblical criticism. (shrink)