Both Rawls and Walzer argue for a supreme emergency exemption and are commonly thought to do so for the same reasons. However, far from ‘aping’ Walzer, Rawls engages in a reconstruction of the exemption that changes its focus altogether, making clear its dependence on an account of universal human rights and the idea of a well-ordered society. This paper is therefore, in the first instance, textual, demonstrating that Rawls has been misinterpreted in the case of supreme emergency. In the second (...) instance the approach is reconstructive, providing a reinterpretation of Rawls that fits his treatment of supreme emergency with his broader commitments in just war and international relations. This reinterpretation enables us to draw out a pattern of argument that Rawls appears to share with a much more strident liberal cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

The article focuses on Oakeshott’s attempt to maintain a categorial distinction between political philosophy and normative prescription. It accepts the thrust of Oakeshott’s argument against rationalism in politics, but contends that the residual normative dimension in Oakeshott’s thinking should not be dismissed as philosophically irrelevant. The article takes seriously the practical demands made on agents in difficult circumstances. It focuses specifically on what may be said to be going on when we ‘pursue intimations’. By concentrating on what Oakeshott actually does (...) the article places Oakeshott much closer to the mainstream in western political philosophy. (shrink)

Through an analysis of policy texts, population statistics and a targeted sample from the popular press, this paper both furthers knowledge about changing meanings of working motherhood in the contemporary US, and proposes a refinement to existing conceptual work relating to how wage-work and care-work are combined. I focus analysis on recent US social policy which grants new rights and protections for women seeking to combine lactation and wage-work (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2011). I critique this (...) policy through Bernise Hausman’s work on the politics of motherhood, arguing that it represents a form of work-life integration that is particularly burdensome for working mothers. I further argue that maternal practice as well as well as expectations of working motherhood in the contemporary US are being reshaped around the demands of neoliberalism, producing what I term ‘neoliberal motherhood’. I assert that this policy represents a way of combining wage-work and care-work that is not captured within existing feminist theory, and suggest that a re-working of theory in this area is needed in order to address cases in which embodied care-work is enfolded within the time and space of wage-work. (shrink)

The recently retired Homeland Security Advisory System constituted a main means by which the intensity of the terrorist threat was communicated to the United States' public. An examination of its inner workings and its social impact shows the System as part of a modality of government: an encapsulation of intelligence-led governmentality. Informed by the political philosophy of Cornelius Castoriadis, I contextualise this modality as a settling of fundamental tensions inherent in modern sociopolitical culture, those between the principle of social and (...) personal autonomy, and that of rational mastery of people and nature. These principles are strongly connected to democratic and oligarchic political organisation, respectively, and they give rise to different justifications of state authority. In turn, they pertain to the fundamental question of whether scientific expertise on politics is possible. (shrink)

In the eighteenth century, Rousseau argued that the principal source of human unhappiness was our tendency to make invidious comparisons when humans were forced to cooperate in the pre-social state of nature. This increased proximity fuelled a desire for status and relative position which is the main source of the unhappiness in modern civilisation. I argue, first, that there is now substantial evidence supporting Rousseau's view that status matters much more to individuals than do absolute levels of wealth. However, I (...) also argue that there is mounting evidence that Rousseau failed to appreciate the extent to which our desire for status is natural. According to some evolutionary biologists, human beings evolved in an environment of scarcity and resource competition, where each individual's position was closely linked to his or her prospects for survival and reproductive success. Consequently, we are adapted by evolution to compete for status and relative position, which leads to a situation in which most people end up less happy. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a proliferation of approaches which have redefined our understanding of political power and the state. These contemporary state theories have philosophical and theoretical antecedents that can be traced to post-classical social and political thought: their influences can be traced to feminism, structuralism and poststructuralism, cultural theory, network analysis and globalisation theory. The classical theories of Marx, Weber and Durkheim are altogether less important in contemporary state theory. In Social Theory, the State and Modern Society, (...) Mike Marinetto considers the philosophical and theoretical heritage of modern state theory and then critiques the theories that have evolved from this legacy. Topics covered include: * The poststructural state * Governance and the decentred state * The gendered state * The cultural turn in state theory * The state in a global context * The past, present and future of state theory Social Theory, the State and Modern Society is key reading for students of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy. It is also of interest to researchers and academics with an interest in state theory. (shrink)

The history of what we now term international relations theory is as rich and as complex as any area in the history of political thought. Yet in the last few decades one particular type of political philosophy has come to be almost unambiguously associated with liberal international relations theory. The dominance of Kantian cosmopolitanism in contemporary liberal international relations theory is quite remarkable. Its position is challenged, within liberalism, only by the utilitarian cosmopolitanism of thinkers such as Peter Singer and, (...) from outside the liberal tradition, by communitarians such as Michael Walzer or Alasdair MacIntyre. At least, this is how the debate is portrayed in the current literature. In this article I want to suggest that the biggest challenge to Kantian cosmopolitanism comes from within the neo-Kantian tradition. (shrink)

There is a tension between pessimism and optimism running through Mark Bevir's thesis in Democratic Governance. The intellectual apprehension on display is directed, in the main, at the state of the modern democratic polity. Indeed, Bevir's Democratic Governance is characterised by, on the one hand, a pessimistic unease about the condition of today's increasingly fragmented and unaccountable polity. This article examines the chief sources of Bevir's pessimism. These concerns over the present state of democracy are informed by Bevir's theoretical approach (...) to modern democratic processes and institutions. In this respect, Democratic Governance draws upon the Anglo-governance school, associated with political scientists such as Rod Rhodes, Martin Smith, as well as Bevir himself. At the same time, he goes beyond Anglo-governance, offering a more philosophical appreciation of governance. In what I term the Interpretive School of Governance, Bevir conducts an historical anthropology of the cultural imperialism of modernist thinking in the public sphere, of which the pursuit of joined-up governance is one such example. The dominance of modernism, with its faith in positivist empiricism and scientific models, has further augmented the fragmentation, cynicism and democratic alienation surrounding the modern polity. On the other hand, Bevir hankers for an optimistic vision of a democratic tomorrow that is better than today's democracy. The alternative is a form of participatory democracy, which is pluralistic both philosophically and in terms of policy practice. For reasons which are considered, this more optimist vision is sketched out rather than outlined in detail. (shrink)

This article explores the political potential of Slavoj Žižek's theory of ideology by unraveling its psychoanalytic presuppositions. Rather than a descriptive account of ideological procedures, Žižek's ideology critique leads to a sophisticated understanding of agency that calls into question the subject's unconscious attachment to his or her sociosymbolic universe. In terms of leftist anticapitalism, the key battle concerns the subject's pathological attachment to what is repudiated. Following from this awareness, Žižek suggests that capitalism can be effectively attacked only by questioning (...) its concealed anchoring point: that is, liberal democracy. (shrink)

The article looks at Žižek’s understanding of subjectivity in relation to the process of subjectivation. It begins by outlining the impact of Hegel and Lacan on Žižek’s formulation of the subject, and then reflects on the political strategies that might emerge from such formulation. The second part considers how Žižek’s take on the notion of subtraction activates the transformative capacity of the subject, while in turn intersecting with the transformative potential of the social. To substantiate the relevance and topicality of (...) Žižek’s approach, the final section of the article uses the category of subtraction to propose a reading of the current economic crisis. (shrink)

Žižek’s notion of subtraction, or “Bartleby politics,” is modeled on Hermann Melville’s character ‘Bartleby the Scrivener,’ who to every request enigmatically repeats ‘I would prefer not to’. Far from inviting inaction or cynicism, in Žižek’s view, this refusal translates into a politics demanding that we actively assume as our own the inconsistency of the socio-symbolic order we inhabit.

This article aims to outline the contours of a Žižekian field of critical enquiry where Žižek's own propositions are taken seriously through the unravelling of their least explicit consequences. We begin by looking at Žižek's notions of subjectivity and subjectivation in relation to Lacan's theory of desire and Hegel's theory of the subject. In the first part we delineate the impact that Žižek's two main theoretical sources have had on his formulation of subjectivity, focusing specifically on the question of negativity. (...) From there, we discuss the political strategies that Žižek's conceptualisation of subjectivity might inspire, particularly in connection with his recent take on subtraction. Does Žižek's theory of the subject allow us to imagine and put to work the transformative capacity of the subject, in turn triggering the transformative potential of the social? Finally, we propose a reading of the current economic crisis through the category of subtraction that demonstrates the political relevance and topicality of Žižek's approach. (shrink)

The article maps Žižek’s notion of agency against the background of Foucault’s theory of power, especially as it emerged from Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality. It argues that the awareness of the state of subjection is a necessary but not sufficient cause to effect social change, since any given subjection is inevitably eroticised, sustained by the disavowed pleasure we derive from being caught in a power mechanism. By considering the Foucauldian insight that knowledge is by definition drawn (...) in the workings of power, we maintain that critical theory needs to reflect on the difference between resistance to power and the political act, thus marking the limits of epistemic practices as such. Rooted in the notion of the psychoanalytic act as radically shifting the symbolic coordinates of a given subject, Žižek’s theorizations of social transformation go a long way in achieving this. Whether they amount to a model for social change based on collective political practice, however, remains questionable. (shrink)