If, today, ‘politics is in culture and culture is relentlessly political’ (Brown, 2002), if the domains of ‘the political’ and ‘the cultural’ can no longer be easily distinguished or kept separate, then contemporary political theory requires an understanding and analysis of cultural politics. This essay undertakes the first stages of such a project by trying to theorize ‘cultural politics’. I argue that ‘cultural politics’ proves to be an object of discourse — it indeed has a certain discursive existence — but (...) not an object of discipline, since no single field or discipline produces it as an object of knowledge. I read this disciplinary failure optimistically, arguing that the study of cultural politics requires a reorientation of theory. The sort of interdisciplinary and multiple-genre work needed to study cultural politics produces a conception of theory as fugitive. Fugitive theory must travel among disciplines, calling on a variety of theoretical and political resources to sustain itself; it refuses the very notion of ‘applied’ theory, insisting that theory ‘is already at work’ in politics (Butler, 1997). To link politics to culture is to practise fugitive theory. And the practice of fugitive theory therefore has the capacity to reveal and explore the workings of cultural politics. (shrink)

Examines the political significance of ideas about happiness through the work of utilitarian philosophers William Thompson and Jeremy Bentham. Happiness is political. The way we think about happiness affects what we do, how we relate to other people and the world around us, our moral principles, and even our ideas about how society should be organized. Utilitarianism, a political theory based on hedonistic and individualistic ideas of happiness, has been dominated for more than two-hundred years by its founder, Jeremy Bentham. (...) In Happiness, Democracy, and the Cooperative Movement, Mark J. Kaswan examines the work of William Thompson, a friend of Bentham’s who nonetheless offers a very different utilitarian philosophy and political theory based on a different conception of happiness, but whose work has been largely overlooked. Kaswan reveals the importance of our ideas about happiness for our understanding of the basic principles and nature of democracy, its role in society and its character as a social institution. In what is the closest examination of Thompson’s political theory to date, Kaswan moves from philosophy to theory to practice, starting with conceptions of happiness before moving to theories of utility, then to democratic theory, and finally to practice in the first detailed account of how Thompson’s ideas laid the foundations for the cooperative movement, which is now the world’s largest democratic social movement. Mark J. Kaswan is Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Brownsville and J. Robert Beyster and Michael W. Huber Fellow, Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations. (shrink)

Austerity politics, war in the Middle East and at other borders of the European Union, the rise of nationalisms, the emergence of populist parties and politicians, Islamophobia and the refugee crisis are amongst the recent developments suggesting the need for discussions about the theories and concepts that academic disciplines provide for making sense of societal, cultural and political transformations. In this article, we focus on the capacities of feminist political theories to undertake this task. By assessing different feminist approaches to (...) political analysis that range from focusing on women and men, to analysing gender, to doing intersectionality and to adopting post-structural and new materialist approaches, we explore the contributions and the limitations of each framework. This allows us to consider where feminist theoretical debates on gender and politics currently are, to assess old and new developments and to address lacunae in the debate. Our argument is that dominant approaches in political science influence the emergence and marginalisation of particular feminist frameworks for political analysis, but also that feminist theorising of gender and politics, in striving for recognition within mainstream political science, reproduces its own hegemonies and marginalisations. (shrink)

Political protests involving clashes with police are often delegitimized by governments for using “uncivil” and “violent” means. Drawing on a creative video clip made by a group of Gezi protestors, this paper theorizes an alternative response, which refuses the dichotomy between peaceful and violent struggles and instead seeks to transform the field of judgement. The protestors in the clip, by echoing a verse originally written by poet Cemal Süreya, reconstruct destructive activity – breaking billboards – playfully and detached from its (...) presumed ends. Placing their performances in conversation with Giorgio Agamben’s theory of mediality – means without end – I argue that the clip reconstructs political action in play-form, corroding the significance of the means-ends relationship. In doing so, it frustrates the usual grounds of judgement within which the meaning and value of protest activities are arbitrated. (shrink)

If, today, ‘politics is in culture and culture is relentlessly political’ (Brown, 2002), if the domains of ‘the political’ and ‘the cultural’ can no longer be easily distinguished or kept separate, then contemporary political theory requires an understanding and analysis of cultural politics. This essay undertakes the first stages of such a project by trying to theorize ‘cultural politics’. I argue that ‘cultural politics’ proves to be an object of discourse — it indeed has a certain discursive existence — but (...) not an object of discipline, since no single field or discipline produces it as an object of knowledge. I read this disciplinary failure optimistically, arguing that the study of cultural politics requires a reorientation of theory. The sort of interdisciplinary and multiple-genre work needed to study cultural politics produces a conception of theory as fugitive. Fugitive theory must travel among disciplines, calling on a variety of theoretical and political resources to sustain itself; it refuses the very notion of ‘applied’ theory, insisting that theory ‘is already at work’ in politics (Butler, 1997). To link politics to culture is to practise fugitive theory. And the practice of fugitive theory therefore has the capacity to reveal and explore the workings of cultural politics. (shrink)

The normative and metanormative pluralism that figures among core self-descriptions of democratic theory, which seems incompatible with democratic theorists’ practical ambitions, may stem from the internal logic of research traditions in the social sciences and humanities and in the conceptual structure of political theory itself. One way to deal productively with intradisciplinary diversity is to appeal to the idea of a meta-consensus; another is to appeal to the argument from cognitive diversity that fuels recent debates on epistemic democracy. For different (...) reasons, both strategies fail, such that a metatheoretical step aside may be desirable, one that entails modeling democratic theory after the public justification approach. (shrink)

A body of work has emerged in political philosophy which can be termed ‘the ethics of migration’. Within that literature, there has been an increased focus on issues of displacement and protection...

This thesis aims to rework Foucault’s care of the self so that it can be understood as a political activity that opens the possibility for a new type of subjectivity. I develop and exemplify this claim through an analysis of the digital. Firstly, I focus on Foucault’s ethical work, which I articulate and defend by reading the care of the self through the notions of body, critique and limits, thus envisioning a political activity from which a new subjectivity can emerge. (...) Ultimately, I understand the care of the self to be an embodied critical practice that aims at transgressing the limits of imposed truths and forms of life. The exercise of the care of the self, thus, permits for a conversion of power, which signifies the passing from a moment of subjection to one of subjectivation. Secondly, I employ such arguments in a more practical manner and analyse the digital and the subjection process it enacts. I argue that the digital, which I take as the exacerbated use of the internet through gadgets, is a complex tool-like space characterized by quantification, seclusion and symbiosis, and that such notions arise as a result of the mechanisms that uphold the digital: discipline, mediation of discourse and biopower. However, my interest here is not in these characteristics and mechanisms per se but about the subject they create. I claim that the digital serves to exemplify the making of the useful and docile bodies of the twenty-first century: depoliticized in their utility and docility insofar as they are made to take for granted the imposition of a contingent truth. Thirdly, I then explore how my political reading of the care of the self serves to ‘fight’ the depoliticized digital subject, where I claim that our attention should be directed towards the mundane, the everyday, and the regaining of it through thought exercises, which allow for the subject to rethink that which was once taken for granted and regarded as incontestable. In doing so, I argue for the value of the uncertain and the political possibility that rests within. (shrink)

Głównym celem tego artykułu jest wyjaśnienie, na czym polega specyfika instytucji wymogu uzyskania terytorialnego rozłożenia głosów w wyborach prezydenckich, który funkcjonuje w trzech wieloetnicznych państwach (Nigerii od 1979 r., Kenii od 1992 r. i Indonezji od 2001 r.) oraz określenie panujących w tych państwach warunków politycznych, które przyczyniły się do jej wprowadzenia i trwania. W końcowej części artykułu, dzięki porównaniu trzech kazusów, zostały wskazane szczegółowe różnice występujące obecnie między nimi. W artykule zostały również zaprezentowane wnioski dotyczące dotychczasowych doświadczeń związanych z (...) funkcjonowaniem przedmiotowej instytucji. Pozwolą one wstępnie ocenić, czy uprawnione jest stwierdzenie, że jej zastosowanie wpływa na obniżenie konfliktowych zachowań w relacjach między grupami etnicznymi i na budowanie międzyetnicznego porozumienia. (shrink)