My title both denies and affirms the core claim of the essay by Paul Kahn beneath which this comment appears. I agree for the most part with Kahn’s depiction of the actuality of the United States, but I disagree with his overarching categorization of this as “civil war.” I do not believe a second U.S. civil war is sensu stricto either in progress or even in prospect. The political situation in the United States is not a war. This is a fact that Kahn himself is hardly unaware of, although he seeks to avert it through a redefinition of the term “war.” I will hence contest this redefinition.
{"title":"The Second American Civil War Is Not Taking Place","authors":"M. Kelly","doi":"10.3817/0322198149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3817/0322198149","url":null,"abstract":"My title both denies and affirms the core claim of the essay by Paul Kahn beneath which this comment appears. I agree for the most part with Kahn’s depiction of the actuality of the United States, but I disagree with his overarching categorization of this as “civil war.” I do not believe a second U.S. civil war is sensu stricto either in progress or even in prospect. The political situation in the United States is not a war. This is a fact that Kahn himself is hardly unaware of, although he seeks to avert it through a redefinition of the term “war.” I will hence contest this redefinition.","PeriodicalId":43573,"journal":{"name":"Telos","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80099211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
When attempting to undertake any exploration of the merits that deconstruction may have within the sphere of theology, the natural starting place is the work of John Caputo. Caputo has been instrumental in the formation of radical theology, theopoetics, and a hermeneutics of the event as new, or perhaps very old, ways of wrestling with how we are to traverse the delicate sphere of the Divine generally and the work of Jesus of Nazareth specifically. Thus, his expertise in the realm of theory will serve as a vital foundation for how we might begin to formulate a functional theoaktion and theo-ethic as we ourselves try to navigate what it means to be Catholic and live the Gospel message within the postmodern epoch through my chosen lens of the work done by Dorothy Day and the backdrop of Jesus’s ministry.
{"title":"“With Desire I Have Desired”: Enjoying the Face of the Other as Political Theology: John Caputo and Dorothy Day Situating Hospitality as Divine Encounter","authors":"Martin Tomszak","doi":"10.3817/0322198023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3817/0322198023","url":null,"abstract":"When attempting to undertake any exploration of the merits that deconstruction may have within the sphere of theology, the natural starting place is the work of John Caputo. Caputo has been instrumental in the formation of radical theology, theopoetics, and a hermeneutics of the event as new, or perhaps very old, ways of wrestling with how we are to traverse the delicate sphere of the Divine generally and the work of Jesus of Nazareth specifically. Thus, his expertise in the realm of theory will serve as a vital foundation for how we might begin to formulate a functional theoaktion and theo-ethic as we ourselves try to navigate what it means to be Catholic and live the Gospel message within the postmodern epoch through my chosen lens of the work done by Dorothy Day and the backdrop of Jesus’s ministry.","PeriodicalId":43573,"journal":{"name":"Telos","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75376635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The high-water mark of globalization has passed. New competitions continue to emerge in a decidedly multipolar international system. As the United States views China and Russia as strategic competitors or worse, an array of mid-level powers—Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, the BRICS, and so forth—try to navigate this complex system and pursue their national interests. Meanwhile, no matter how much the United States and the European Union both believe themselves part of a single “West,” divergent interests tend to drive them apart, even as tensions within the EU itself have grown sharper. In order to describe part of this increasingly competitive environment, an analytic distinction between so-called “civilizational states” and “liberal empires” seems to provide a framework to analyze international political processes in starkly contrasting terms.1 To some extent, the two terms repackage the terminology of the Cold War era that contrasted closed and open societies, and if we are indeed entering a new Cold War, the return of these categories is arguably appropriate. Yet more is surely at stake than a repetition of the historical competition between Communism and democracy, and the focus on the contrast between allegedly civilizational states and liberal empires may be missing a key part of the picture. Let’s take a closer look at the two concepts and then ask whether this binary provides an adequate toolkit to understand, for example, the conflict in Ukraine. To anticipate the conclusion: those who celebrate Russia as a “civilizational state” doing battle with the evil “liberal empire” of the West miss the key point in the conflict, the will of the Ukrainian people to assert their autonomy as a nation and to resist foreign occupation.
{"title":"Empire, State, Nation: Glory to Ukraine","authors":"R. Berman","doi":"10.3817/1222201189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3817/1222201189","url":null,"abstract":"The high-water mark of globalization has passed. New competitions continue to emerge in a decidedly multipolar international system. As the United States views China and Russia as strategic competitors or worse, an array of mid-level powers—Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, the BRICS, and so forth—try to navigate this complex system and pursue their national interests. Meanwhile, no matter how much the United States and the European Union both believe themselves part of a single “West,” divergent interests tend to drive them apart, even as tensions within the EU itself have grown sharper. In order to describe part of this increasingly competitive environment, an analytic distinction between so-called “civilizational states” and “liberal empires” seems to provide a framework to analyze international political processes in starkly contrasting terms.1 To some extent, the two terms repackage the terminology of the Cold War era that contrasted closed and open societies, and if we are indeed entering a new Cold War, the return of these categories is arguably appropriate. Yet more is surely at stake than a repetition of the historical competition between Communism and democracy, and the focus on the contrast between allegedly civilizational states and liberal empires may be missing a key part of the picture. Let’s take a closer look at the two concepts and then ask whether this binary provides an adequate toolkit to understand, for example, the conflict in Ukraine. To anticipate the conclusion: those who celebrate Russia as a “civilizational state” doing battle with the evil “liberal empire” of the West miss the key point in the conflict, the will of the Ukrainian people to assert their autonomy as a nation and to resist foreign occupation.","PeriodicalId":43573,"journal":{"name":"Telos","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89491717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
To compare, or not to compare? Since when did that become a question? As long as the discipline of comparative literature is situated in the singular discourse of absolute equity, to compare has become a tabooed concept and action. As Zhang Longxi laments, “In the postmodern critique of fundamentals, we are told not to essentialize anything and not to hold things in a metaphysical hierarchy, as though any kind of comparison or differentiation, any value judgment, or any order of things would result in a repressive regime that privileges one and, of necessity, excludes all other alternatives.”1 This reluctance to make value judgments has led the field of comparative literature to turn to world literature as a way of overcoming a Eurocentric bias by integrating discussion of non-European literature. World literature attempts to thereby go beyond national traditions and eliminate bias to promote a universal culture of literature that advocates equity but avoids comparison. David Damrosch sets up an opposition between national literatures and world literature in which the study of the former historically contextualizes a literary text whereas the latter decontextualizes it. In defining world literature, he writes, “I take world literature to encompass all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language.”2 Accordingly, the world literature idea does not establish relationships between cultural traditions. Instead, it focuses on traveling texts in order to set up a universal culture. Zhang Longxi, for instance, tries to imagine a global canon of literature that consists of “a relatively stable set of canonical works from the world’s different literary traditions.”3 This canon does not depend on its development within a particular historical tradition. Instead, such a global canon attempts to establish a worldwide tradition maintained within the minds of some comparative/world literature professors. Zhang Longxi’s recent idea of world literature (which conflicts with his earlier ideas about comparison4) tends to dissolve cultural traditions into a unified world literature as a set of core texts that takes a form of objectivity and universality.
{"title":"Third Term Comparison","authors":"Sijia Yao","doi":"10.3817/0622199011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3817/0622199011","url":null,"abstract":"To compare, or not to compare? Since when did that become a question? As long as the discipline of comparative literature is situated in the singular discourse of absolute equity, to compare has become a tabooed concept and action. As Zhang Longxi laments, “In the postmodern critique of fundamentals, we are told not to essentialize anything and not to hold things in a metaphysical hierarchy, as though any kind of comparison or differentiation, any value judgment, or any order of things would result in a repressive regime that privileges one and, of necessity, excludes all other alternatives.”1 This reluctance to make value judgments has led the field of comparative literature to turn to world literature as a way of overcoming a Eurocentric bias by integrating discussion of non-European literature. World literature attempts to thereby go beyond national traditions and eliminate bias to promote a universal culture of literature that advocates equity but avoids comparison. David Damrosch sets up an opposition between national literatures and world literature in which the study of the former historically contextualizes a literary text whereas the latter decontextualizes it. In defining world literature, he writes, “I take world literature to encompass all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language.”2 Accordingly, the world literature idea does not establish relationships between cultural traditions. Instead, it focuses on traveling texts in order to set up a universal culture. Zhang Longxi, for instance, tries to imagine a global canon of literature that consists of “a relatively stable set of canonical works from the world’s different literary traditions.”3 This canon does not depend on its development within a particular historical tradition. Instead, such a global canon attempts to establish a worldwide tradition maintained within the minds of some comparative/world literature professors. Zhang Longxi’s recent idea of world literature (which conflicts with his earlier ideas about comparison4) tends to dissolve cultural traditions into a unified world literature as a set of core texts that takes a form of objectivity and universality.","PeriodicalId":43573,"journal":{"name":"Telos","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72414408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
If globalization is understood as Westernization or Americanization, then its opposite would be nationalization or localization. The sociologist Roland Robertson introduced the term “glocalization” to refer to the essence of globalization: “Its central dynamic involves the twofold process of the particularization of the universal and the universalization of the particular.”1 Yet this “twofold process” has never been equally “twofold” and balanced for both sides. If, in its initial stages, “globalization” means that Western powers unilaterally push their economy, politics, and culture onto the entire world, then rather paradoxically it is this same process of Westernizing the “rest” of the world that awakens the national or local consciousness, and thus arouses resistance to it in numerous forms, which is manifested not only in the developing countries that have been subjected to globalization but also in the strong powers like the United States that impose globalization upon others. Globalization produces its opponents, and they are global opponents. For example, it is not that China does not want to continue (economic) globalization today but rather that former global powers are demanding to cut their ties with non-Western countries. It seems that we have ironically come to the opposite side of globalization and started a movement of “de-globalization.”
{"title":"Doing Western Studies in China: Its Nature and Methods","authors":"Huimin Jin","doi":"10.3817/0622199035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3817/0622199035","url":null,"abstract":"If globalization is understood as Westernization or Americanization, then its opposite would be nationalization or localization. The sociologist Roland Robertson introduced the term “glocalization” to refer to the essence of globalization: “Its central dynamic involves the twofold process of the particularization of the universal and the universalization of the particular.”1 Yet this “twofold process” has never been equally “twofold” and balanced for both sides. If, in its initial stages, “globalization” means that Western powers unilaterally push their economy, politics, and culture onto the entire world, then rather paradoxically it is this same process of Westernizing the “rest” of the world that awakens the national or local consciousness, and thus arouses resistance to it in numerous forms, which is manifested not only in the developing countries that have been subjected to globalization but also in the strong powers like the United States that impose globalization upon others. Globalization produces its opponents, and they are global opponents. For example, it is not that China does not want to continue (economic) globalization today but rather that former global powers are demanding to cut their ties with non-Western countries. It seems that we have ironically come to the opposite side of globalization and started a movement of “de-globalization.”","PeriodicalId":43573,"journal":{"name":"Telos","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74385964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Timothy W. Luke, Screens of Power: Ideology, Domination, and Resistance in Informational Society, revised edition. Foreword by Ronald J. Deibert. Candor, NY: Telos Press Publishing, 2020. Pp. xxiii + 340.
《权力的屏幕:信息社会中的意识形态、统治与反抗》，修订版。Ronald J. Deibert作序。《坦率》，纽约:Telos出版社，2020年。Pp. xxiii + 340。
{"title":"On the Spectacles of Market Society","authors":"J. Wennström","doi":"10.3817/0922200210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3817/0922200210","url":null,"abstract":"Timothy W. Luke, Screens of Power: Ideology, Domination, and Resistance in Informational Society, revised edition. Foreword by Ronald J. Deibert. Candor, NY: Telos Press Publishing, 2020. Pp. xxiii + 340.","PeriodicalId":43573,"journal":{"name":"Telos","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85218350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this text, I am going to deal with the concept of tolerance. This concept plays a central role in the tradition of liberal thinking. But it is used in literature rather loosely, which has the potential to cause misunderstandings. I will work within the semantic framework of expressivism. I’m not saying that this particular metaethical theory is necessary to understand the concept of tolerance. The main thesis of my text is that tolerance is a second-order attitude. To tolerate X means to suppress one’s own disapproval of X. This thesis is metaethically neutral. The reader can accept it no matter what metaethical theory he holds. Even a moral realist, moral error theorist, or moral constructivist can admit that tolerance is suppressed disapproval. However, expressivism is very suitable for my purpose because it analyzes the meanings of moral sentences in terms of practical attitudes. This semantic framework helps me to test my language intuitions about the concept of tolerance.
{"title":"Tolerance as Suppressed Disapproval","authors":"Tomáš Sobek","doi":"10.3817/0622199107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3817/0622199107","url":null,"abstract":"In this text, I am going to deal with the concept of tolerance. This concept plays a central role in the tradition of liberal thinking. But it is used in literature rather loosely, which has the potential to cause misunderstandings. I will work within the semantic framework of expressivism. I’m not saying that this particular metaethical theory is necessary to understand the concept of tolerance. The main thesis of my text is that tolerance is a second-order attitude. To tolerate X means to suppress one’s own disapproval of X. This thesis is metaethically neutral. The reader can accept it no matter what metaethical theory he holds. Even a moral realist, moral error theorist, or moral constructivist can admit that tolerance is suppressed disapproval. However, expressivism is very suitable for my purpose because it analyzes the meanings of moral sentences in terms of practical attitudes. This semantic framework helps me to test my language intuitions about the concept of tolerance.","PeriodicalId":43573,"journal":{"name":"Telos","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86992863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The issue as to what constitutes a “civil war” is an interesting one. The idea that it is something more than an armed conflict is very useful as it allows us to understand those forms of attenuated civil conflict and discord in a more profound way. “Civil wars,” understood as chronic civil conflict, can last for decades, even centuries, with low-level conflict reaching crises that result in violence from time to time.
{"title":"Of Civil Wars and Where They Lead: Some Reflections","authors":"G. Melleuish","doi":"10.3817/0322198155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3817/0322198155","url":null,"abstract":"The issue as to what constitutes a “civil war” is an interesting one. The idea that it is something more than an armed conflict is very useful as it allows us to understand those forms of attenuated civil conflict and discord in a more profound way. “Civil wars,” understood as chronic civil conflict, can last for decades, even centuries, with low-level conflict reaching crises that result in violence from time to time.","PeriodicalId":43573,"journal":{"name":"Telos","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83550016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2009, libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”1 Thiel’s statement challenged the basic premise of much of Western politics: the liberal democratic consensus that treats economic freedom and political democracy as two guiding stars to be pursued in tandem.2 In the decade since, the rise in conservative populist movements and leaders from Brexit to Bolsonaro, and particularly the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, led many scholars to conclude that the liberal democratic consensus had collapsed–or was never really a consensus to begin with.3 The question then becomes: what will replace liberal democracy?.
{"title":"From Neoreaction to Alt-Right: A Schmittian Perspective","authors":"Courtney Hodrick","doi":"10.3817/0322198090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3817/0322198090","url":null,"abstract":"In 2009, libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”1 Thiel’s statement challenged the basic premise of much of Western politics: the liberal democratic consensus that treats economic freedom and political democracy as two guiding stars to be pursued in tandem.2 In the decade since, the rise in conservative populist movements and leaders from Brexit to Bolsonaro, and particularly the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, led many scholars to conclude that the liberal democratic consensus had collapsed–or was never really a consensus to begin with.3 The question then becomes: what will replace liberal democracy?.","PeriodicalId":43573,"journal":{"name":"Telos","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75080639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
When it comes to methodologies of comparison between China and the West, it is difficult to recall many meaningful discussions based on the conventional, by now largely obsolete, textbook formula of “influence studies” and “parallel studies” as stock “methods” in comparative literature as an academic discipline.1 To compare, say, landscape poetry or female protagonists in Chinese and European literary traditions almost invariably leads to something too capricious or too general. Such studies often result in mere explanations, even descriptions, of cultural features or aesthetic distinctions standing outside the space of critical interpretation.
{"title":"China and the West: Methodologies for Comparison","authors":"Xudong Zhang","doi":"10.3817/0622199020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3817/0622199020","url":null,"abstract":"When it comes to methodologies of comparison between China and the West, it is difficult to recall many meaningful discussions based on the conventional, by now largely obsolete, textbook formula of “influence studies” and “parallel studies” as stock “methods” in comparative literature as an academic discipline.1 To compare, say, landscape poetry or female protagonists in Chinese and European literary traditions almost invariably leads to something too capricious or too general. Such studies often result in mere explanations, even descriptions, of cultural features or aesthetic distinctions standing outside the space of critical interpretation.","PeriodicalId":43573,"journal":{"name":"Telos","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88809002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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