Pub Date : 2000-01-01DOI: 10.1080/14797580009367188
Ross Abbinnett
Abstract The purpose of the article is to evaluate the ethical and political conclusions that Ulrich Beck draws from his account of ‘civilization risks’. I have argued that the categories of ‘life’, ‘the organic’, and the ‘technological’ which are presented in Risk Society, presuppose a certain metaphysics of ‘natural’ human identity; and that it is the inscription of this identity in the politics of risk administration which opens the possibility of an absolutely legitimized regulation of nature, humanity, and society. Thus, in order to evaluate the ‘risk’ entailed in the ethical and political strictures of Beck's ‘world risk society’, I have had recourse to the expositions of time, presence, identity and technology which Derrida has given in Of Grammatology (1976) and Specters of Marx (1994a). It is through these expositions that I have tried to work through the idea of an ecological politics that would remain sensitive to the events of difference and alterity precipitated by its own ‘cosmopolitan’ interventions.
{"title":"Science, technology and modernity: Beck and Derrida on the politics of risk","authors":"Ross Abbinnett","doi":"10.1080/14797580009367188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797580009367188","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The purpose of the article is to evaluate the ethical and political conclusions that Ulrich Beck draws from his account of ‘civilization risks’. I have argued that the categories of ‘life’, ‘the organic’, and the ‘technological’ which are presented in Risk Society, presuppose a certain metaphysics of ‘natural’ human identity; and that it is the inscription of this identity in the politics of risk administration which opens the possibility of an absolutely legitimized regulation of nature, humanity, and society. Thus, in order to evaluate the ‘risk’ entailed in the ethical and political strictures of Beck's ‘world risk society’, I have had recourse to the expositions of time, presence, identity and technology which Derrida has given in Of Grammatology (1976) and Specters of Marx (1994a). It is through these expositions that I have tried to work through the idea of an ecological politics that would remain sensitive to the events of difference and alterity precipitated by its own ‘cosmopolitan’ interventions.","PeriodicalId":296129,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Values","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124797117","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}
Pub Date : 2000-01-01DOI: 10.1080/14797580009367185
Jon Simons
Abstract Several critics of Foucault, notably Alan Megill and Jürgen Habermas, accuse Foucault of being an ‘aestheticist’. As such, Foucault fails to realise that the very appeal to aesthetics is made possible by modernity's rationalization, which offers better resources for emancipation than dangerous aestheticizations. This paper argues that such criticisms mistakenly deploy only certain modernist notions of aesthetics against Foucault. There are some fair grounds for holding that Foucault does appeal to such conceptions of aesthetics in his theorization of transgression, not least because of his interest in modernist, avant‐garde writers and artists such as Roussel and Magritte. Yet, overall, Foucault's interest in avant‐garde aesthetics is not modernist in the sense understood by his critics. Foucault tends to focus on modernist illustration of the absence of foundations for representation and language, adopting a paraesthetic angle of critique. The limiting conditions that make representation possible can be seen in this light as both contingent yet necessary. Foucault's model of critique is developed in his early analyses of avant‐garde art and then expanded to cover subjectivity and the aesthetics of existence in his later philosophical critical ethos of modernity. Foucault uses avant‐garde art as a critical mode of reflection, to analyse and rethink the limits of the present.
{"title":"Modernist misapprehensions of Foucault's aesthetics","authors":"Jon Simons","doi":"10.1080/14797580009367185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797580009367185","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Several critics of Foucault, notably Alan Megill and Jürgen Habermas, accuse Foucault of being an ‘aestheticist’. As such, Foucault fails to realise that the very appeal to aesthetics is made possible by modernity's rationalization, which offers better resources for emancipation than dangerous aestheticizations. This paper argues that such criticisms mistakenly deploy only certain modernist notions of aesthetics against Foucault. There are some fair grounds for holding that Foucault does appeal to such conceptions of aesthetics in his theorization of transgression, not least because of his interest in modernist, avant‐garde writers and artists such as Roussel and Magritte. Yet, overall, Foucault's interest in avant‐garde aesthetics is not modernist in the sense understood by his critics. Foucault tends to focus on modernist illustration of the absence of foundations for representation and language, adopting a paraesthetic angle of critique. The limiting conditions that make representation possible can be seen in this light as both contingent yet necessary. Foucault's model of critique is developed in his early analyses of avant‐garde art and then expanded to cover subjectivity and the aesthetics of existence in his later philosophical critical ethos of modernity. Foucault uses avant‐garde art as a critical mode of reflection, to analyse and rethink the limits of the present.","PeriodicalId":296129,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Values","volume":"123 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124517107","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}
Pub Date : 2000-01-01DOI: 10.1080/14797580009367184
M. Yar
Abstract In the recent critique of ‘Western metaphysics’ by post‐structuralist and postmodern theorists, there has emerged a distinctive line of thought which seeks to apply such critique to the domain of political theory. This paper approaches Hannah Arendt's conceptualisation of the political as a proto‐type of such a theorisation, deploying as it does key elements of the Heideggerian (and more broadly, phenomenological) position so as to rethink the nature of the political. By delineating the specifically ‘post‐metaphysical’ moments of Arendt's theory and its corresponding critique of political modernity, I endeavour to illuminate both the advantages and pitfalls of contemporary efforts at developing a philosophical conception of the political on the basis of a neo‐Heideggerian position.
{"title":"Arendt's Heideggerianism: Contours of a ‘Postmetaphysical’ political theory?","authors":"M. Yar","doi":"10.1080/14797580009367184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797580009367184","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the recent critique of ‘Western metaphysics’ by post‐structuralist and postmodern theorists, there has emerged a distinctive line of thought which seeks to apply such critique to the domain of political theory. This paper approaches Hannah Arendt's conceptualisation of the political as a proto‐type of such a theorisation, deploying as it does key elements of the Heideggerian (and more broadly, phenomenological) position so as to rethink the nature of the political. By delineating the specifically ‘post‐metaphysical’ moments of Arendt's theory and its corresponding critique of political modernity, I endeavour to illuminate both the advantages and pitfalls of contemporary efforts at developing a philosophical conception of the political on the basis of a neo‐Heideggerian position.","PeriodicalId":296129,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Values","volume":"259 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115901351","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}
Pub Date : 2000-01-01DOI: 10.1080/14797580009367186
S. Fullagar
Abstract This paper explores the cultural value of desiring nature through reading the travel narratives of Val Plumwood and Alphonso Lingis with the writings of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). As Game (1991) suggests this textual practice produces different ways of writing the social that undoes the nature/culture opposition informing popular discourses and much cultural theory. Rethinking the value of nature/culture relations has tended to be the domain of environmental philosophy. Yet a cultural analysis also has much to contribute to current debates around value and identity, embodiment and representations of desire. Such a shift requires rethinking the sensory relation between self and nature through the mediation of language. Two quite distinctive experiences of awe provide texts for this analysis. In the desire to know non‐human nature as other, Lingis and Plumwood are moved by a wish to become nearer, to move beyond the bounds of an identity premised on a cultural relation of mastery over nature. These are compelling narratives, for they do not simply indulge the reader in a romantic appreciation of nature's wildness, as if nature was simply an object of aesthetic contemplation and background to the unfolding drama of human identity. These journeys involve disturbing transformations of self; Plumwood travels into the dangerous waters of the crocodile's territory in Kakadu National Park, Australia, while Lingis encounters the uninhabitable terrain of the Antarctic. The reverberating effects of awe produce a movement of becoming ‐ becoming‐animal, becoming‐nature, which contests the Hegelian desire for mastery of nature and the teleological structure of desire itself aimed at unity. Awe as a profoundly disturbing relation, threatens to undo the dominant fantasy of human identity as pure culture, separate from the realm of nature, body and materiality.
{"title":"Desiring nature: Identity and becoming in narratives of travel","authors":"S. Fullagar","doi":"10.1080/14797580009367186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797580009367186","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores the cultural value of desiring nature through reading the travel narratives of Val Plumwood and Alphonso Lingis with the writings of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). As Game (1991) suggests this textual practice produces different ways of writing the social that undoes the nature/culture opposition informing popular discourses and much cultural theory. Rethinking the value of nature/culture relations has tended to be the domain of environmental philosophy. Yet a cultural analysis also has much to contribute to current debates around value and identity, embodiment and representations of desire. Such a shift requires rethinking the sensory relation between self and nature through the mediation of language. Two quite distinctive experiences of awe provide texts for this analysis. In the desire to know non‐human nature as other, Lingis and Plumwood are moved by a wish to become nearer, to move beyond the bounds of an identity premised on a cultural relation of mastery over nature. These are compelling narratives, for they do not simply indulge the reader in a romantic appreciation of nature's wildness, as if nature was simply an object of aesthetic contemplation and background to the unfolding drama of human identity. These journeys involve disturbing transformations of self; Plumwood travels into the dangerous waters of the crocodile's territory in Kakadu National Park, Australia, while Lingis encounters the uninhabitable terrain of the Antarctic. The reverberating effects of awe produce a movement of becoming ‐ becoming‐animal, becoming‐nature, which contests the Hegelian desire for mastery of nature and the teleological structure of desire itself aimed at unity. Awe as a profoundly disturbing relation, threatens to undo the dominant fantasy of human identity as pure culture, separate from the realm of nature, body and materiality.","PeriodicalId":296129,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Values","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125531829","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}
Pub Date : 1999-10-01DOI: 10.1080/14797589909367174
Catherine Kratz
{"title":"Transparency and the European Union","authors":"Catherine Kratz","doi":"10.1080/14797589909367174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797589909367174","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":296129,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Values","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123892664","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}
Pub Date : 1999-10-01DOI: 10.1080/14797589909367180
F. Adler
Abstract This essay attempts to confront one of the major problems associated with multiculturalism, namely the hostile divisiveness stemming from newly articulated constructs of difference. Synthesizing hermeneutic concepts derived from Gadamer and Rorty, I develop an approach called xenologica which, unlike the problematic universalism associated with the Enlightenment, values difference but, at the same time, promotes mutual recognition, tolerance and solidarity. Xenologica, for illustrative purposes, is applied to one of the most contentious domains of difference, race, with the aim of overcoming some of the theoretical and practical limitations of classic antiracism.
{"title":"Antiracism, difference and xenologica","authors":"F. Adler","doi":"10.1080/14797589909367180","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797589909367180","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay attempts to confront one of the major problems associated with multiculturalism, namely the hostile divisiveness stemming from newly articulated constructs of difference. Synthesizing hermeneutic concepts derived from Gadamer and Rorty, I develop an approach called xenologica which, unlike the problematic universalism associated with the Enlightenment, values difference but, at the same time, promotes mutual recognition, tolerance and solidarity. Xenologica, for illustrative purposes, is applied to one of the most contentious domains of difference, race, with the aim of overcoming some of the theoretical and practical limitations of classic antiracism.","PeriodicalId":296129,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Values","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114758961","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}
Pub Date : 1999-10-01DOI: 10.1080/14797589909367177
Z. Bańkowski
Abstract Transparency generates a paradox. For the way that we make things transparent is by simplification which at the same time masks all the information and thus contributes to opacity. The paper looks at how this paradox is played out in the contexts of the interplay between legal rules and particularity and between political representation and complete democracy. This raises questions of the Rule of Law and the functions and meanings of democratic legitimacy and though these are different questions, they are closely related and overlapping. Finally, it looks at how the issues come into focus in questions of governance of an entity like the EU which should not be seen either on the model of a union of states or a nation state itself.
{"title":"Transparency and the particular","authors":"Z. Bańkowski","doi":"10.1080/14797589909367177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797589909367177","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Transparency generates a paradox. For the way that we make things transparent is by simplification which at the same time masks all the information and thus contributes to opacity. The paper looks at how this paradox is played out in the contexts of the interplay between legal rules and particularity and between political representation and complete democracy. This raises questions of the Rule of Law and the functions and meanings of democratic legitimacy and though these are different questions, they are closely related and overlapping. Finally, it looks at how the issues come into focus in questions of governance of an entity like the EU which should not be seen either on the model of a union of states or a nation state itself.","PeriodicalId":296129,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Values","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131960301","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}
Pub Date : 1999-10-01DOI: 10.1080/14797589909367181
Martin B. Elvins
Abstract This article examines the issue of illicit drug control across three broad levels of analysis. On one level, it examines the nature of the response to a ‘global phenomenon’ and its impact on national sovereignty. On a second level, it considers emergent state forms and practices and their relationship to global changes; and, thirdly, it grounds the analysis temporally and empirically in the contemporary European Union (focusing on the issues raised in relation to an emergent European Police Office, better known as Europol). The complex, evolving and essentially fragmented character of state power is placed in the context of the classic state functions of authority and control. This is set against the growing transnational role of expert knowledge in policy‐making, and concludes with an assessment of the political implications that can be drawn from analysis of this complex set of factors.
{"title":"Drugs, the state and global change: A contemporary European perspective","authors":"Martin B. Elvins","doi":"10.1080/14797589909367181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797589909367181","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the issue of illicit drug control across three broad levels of analysis. On one level, it examines the nature of the response to a ‘global phenomenon’ and its impact on national sovereignty. On a second level, it considers emergent state forms and practices and their relationship to global changes; and, thirdly, it grounds the analysis temporally and empirically in the contemporary European Union (focusing on the issues raised in relation to an emergent European Police Office, better known as Europol). The complex, evolving and essentially fragmented character of state power is placed in the context of the classic state functions of authority and control. This is set against the growing transnational role of expert knowledge in policy‐making, and concludes with an assessment of the political implications that can be drawn from analysis of this complex set of factors.","PeriodicalId":296129,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Values","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127652846","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}
Pub Date : 1999-07-01DOI: 10.1080/14797589909367170
William A. Callahan
Abstract This essay looks to the complex intercultural relations of China and Korea to highlight two important issues in political theory and international relations: the transnational nature of world politics and the limits of analytical binaries such as East‐West and tradition‐modernity. Discussions of international politics in East Asia characteristically address issues of security and development studies. More recently, Confucianism has been mobilized as part of the clash of civilizations of Asia with the West. This essay will consider how cultural boundaries are negotiated within the region via an analysis of the workings of the transnational discourse of Confucianism in the construction of Korean identity. While many make truth claims about what ‘Confucianism’ means in Korea, this essay examines the discursive economies of ‘Confucian events’ in three overlapping social spaces: official, mass media, and academic. This essay will show the diversity of Confucianism within East Asia, and underline how r...
{"title":"Negotiating Cultural Boundaries: Confucianism and trans/national identity in Korea","authors":"William A. Callahan","doi":"10.1080/14797589909367170","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797589909367170","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay looks to the complex intercultural relations of China and Korea to highlight two important issues in political theory and international relations: the transnational nature of world politics and the limits of analytical binaries such as East‐West and tradition‐modernity. Discussions of international politics in East Asia characteristically address issues of security and development studies. More recently, Confucianism has been mobilized as part of the clash of civilizations of Asia with the West. This essay will consider how cultural boundaries are negotiated within the region via an analysis of the workings of the transnational discourse of Confucianism in the construction of Korean identity. While many make truth claims about what ‘Confucianism’ means in Korea, this essay examines the discursive economies of ‘Confucian events’ in three overlapping social spaces: official, mass media, and academic. This essay will show the diversity of Confucianism within East Asia, and underline how r...","PeriodicalId":296129,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Values","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130114229","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}
Pub Date : 1999-07-01DOI: 10.1080/14797589909367172
Richard Fitch
{"title":"Instituting the virtual: An interview with Mark C. Taylor","authors":"Richard Fitch","doi":"10.1080/14797589909367172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797589909367172","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":296129,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Values","volume":"7 4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123639998","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}