Over the last several decades, slow travel has been garnering increasing attention, especially with regards to the climate crisis and the many harms that result from global tourism. The defenders of slow travel claim that traveling slowly benefits not only the environment but also the local communities most affected by tourism, as well as the travellers themselves. This kind of defence, while seeming to be intuitively correct, is missing a sustained argument that explains why this is the case. In this (...) paper, we fill this explanatory gap by relying on philosopher Albert Borgmann’s theory of devices and focal practices to provide a theoretical ground for the claims made about traveling fast and slow. (shrink)

The start of the 21st century has seen the very concept of the political become devalued, and the body-politic has become a casualty of the nihilism and neurosis afflicting western cultures. Kristeva’s call for the rehabilitation of public life, of the political, and for the rethinking of freedom, it seems, comes at the right time. Her proposed politics of revolt and Rancière’s radically democratic politics of the no-part are valuable attempts to effect such a rehabilitation. By turning to these two (...) figures and placing them in dialogue we can gain a renewed appreciation for what democracy ought to be and begin to conceptualize and re-envision what a healthy, optimally-functioning democratic body-politic looks like. Kristeva’s proposed rehabilitation of public life, particularly when viewed alongside Rancière’s, lands her squarely in the company of other theorists who propose a politics of radical democracy to solve the current political problematic. Her conception of a ‘democracy of the multiple’ challenges the current pluralistic democracies in place today. (shrink)