None Like Us begins with a story of familial cleavage. Though he does not explicitly delve into its contours, Stephen Best describes a graduation dinner that reveals (to him) a distance between him and his father. Another attendee describes this separation (on the part of father) as having been born from a conflict between pride and disgust— the father is proud of his son’s success, but it also announces an unassimilable difference between the two. Best likens this to an injunction to community within Black studies, which he describes as not only uncomfortable but problematic: “the feeling that I am being invited to long for the return of a sociality that I never had, one from which I suspect (had I ever shown up) I might have been excluded” (1). This narrative is meant to explain Best’s project, which is to decouple Black studies’ relationship between the archive and community. However, this is not just any archive but that of the transatlantic slave trade, which has traditionally undergirded the idea of a Black diaspora, a term that itself has been understood to refer not only to a shared history but to common cultural, aesthetic, and religious practices. Best bristles not only at the mandate to think with slavery when thinking about Blackness but also the assumption that this history provides a useful form of commonality. Ultimately, Best aims to uncover and work with a productive version of negation: “This coveted alienation would entail a gesture best parsed as a kind of doubled movement: away from the ‘clenched little
{"title":"Surfaces, Subjectivity, and Self-Denial","authors":"Amber Jamilla Musser","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0021","url":null,"abstract":"None Like Us begins with a story of familial cleavage. Though he does not explicitly delve into its contours, Stephen Best describes a graduation dinner that reveals (to him) a distance between him and his father. Another attendee describes this separation (on the part of father) as having been born from a conflict between pride and disgust— the father is proud of his son’s success, but it also announces an unassimilable difference between the two. Best likens this to an injunction to community within Black studies, which he describes as not only uncomfortable but problematic: “the feeling that I am being invited to long for the return of a sociality that I never had, one from which I suspect (had I ever shown up) I might have been excluded” (1). This narrative is meant to explain Best’s project, which is to decouple Black studies’ relationship between the archive and community. However, this is not just any archive but that of the transatlantic slave trade, which has traditionally undergirded the idea of a Black diaspora, a term that itself has been understood to refer not only to a shared history but to common cultural, aesthetic, and religious practices. Best bristles not only at the mandate to think with slavery when thinking about Blackness but also the assumption that this history provides a useful form of commonality. Ultimately, Best aims to uncover and work with a productive version of negation: “This coveted alienation would entail a gesture best parsed as a kind of doubled movement: away from the ‘clenched little","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"13 10 1","pages":"153 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83426827","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}
Abstract:This article critically evaluates Roberto Esposito's analysis of political ontology. The author begins by reconstructing elements of Esposito's original argument and inviting further elaboration of certain important conceptual moves made within, with particular focus on the underspecified relationship between (self) reflection and ontology, or between knowing and being. In the second part of the essay, the author examines the implications of these questions for theorizing the distinction between democracy and totalitarianism.
{"title":"Political Ontology and the Dialectics of Democracy","authors":"R. Nichols","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article critically evaluates Roberto Esposito's analysis of political ontology. The author begins by reconstructing elements of Esposito's original argument and inviting further elaboration of certain important conceptual moves made within, with particular focus on the underspecified relationship between (self) reflection and ontology, or between knowing and being. In the second part of the essay, the author examines the implications of these questions for theorizing the distinction between democracy and totalitarianism.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"32 1","pages":"110 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81013153","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}
First of all, I would like to thank the contributors Robert Nichols, Benoît Dillet, and Vanessa Lemm— together with the editors Cesare Casarino, Maggie Hennefeld, John Mowitt, and Simona Sawhney, indeed— for the intelligence and the commitment with which everyone commented on my essay. These comments identified not only the internal problems of the text but also pushed the argument well beyond the limits of this single text by opening problems and questions that both complicated and enriched it. I responded to some of these comments, especially in relation to Deleuze and Lefort, in the volume actually occasioned by the essay and similarly titled Instituting Thought. Three Paradigms of Political Ontology. The volume has been published in Italian by Einaudi, and it is currently in the process of being translated into English by Polity Press. As for Deleuze— whose ontologicalpolitical pathway from his earliest to his last writings I tried to analyze in this book— I have partially corrected an overly clearcut interpretation that, as presented in the essay, appeared to Dillet to flatten a more complex and articulated position. It is true that Deleuze’s oeuvre displays the trace of the negative, as a tone that is irreducible to an otherwise pervasive ontological euphoria. Many of his pages are marked with contours of death and destruction. But they also arise from or are traversed by the flows of desire. As Vanessa Lemm has keenly grasped, I experienced a theoretical shift with regard to my position in relation to Deleuze’s theory in general (and I do not deny it). The shift can be noticed when
{"title":"The Creative Force of Institutions: A Reply to Benoît Dillet's, Vanessa Lemm's, and Robert Nichols's Responses to \"Three Paradigms of Political Ontology\"","authors":"Roberto Esposito, Mariaenrica Giannuzzi","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0020","url":null,"abstract":"First of all, I would like to thank the contributors Robert Nichols, Benoît Dillet, and Vanessa Lemm— together with the editors Cesare Casarino, Maggie Hennefeld, John Mowitt, and Simona Sawhney, indeed— for the intelligence and the commitment with which everyone commented on my essay. These comments identified not only the internal problems of the text but also pushed the argument well beyond the limits of this single text by opening problems and questions that both complicated and enriched it. I responded to some of these comments, especially in relation to Deleuze and Lefort, in the volume actually occasioned by the essay and similarly titled Instituting Thought. Three Paradigms of Political Ontology. The volume has been published in Italian by Einaudi, and it is currently in the process of being translated into English by Polity Press. As for Deleuze— whose ontologicalpolitical pathway from his earliest to his last writings I tried to analyze in this book— I have partially corrected an overly clearcut interpretation that, as presented in the essay, appeared to Dillet to flatten a more complex and articulated position. It is true that Deleuze’s oeuvre displays the trace of the negative, as a tone that is irreducible to an otherwise pervasive ontological euphoria. Many of his pages are marked with contours of death and destruction. But they also arise from or are traversed by the flows of desire. As Vanessa Lemm has keenly grasped, I experienced a theoretical shift with regard to my position in relation to Deleuze’s theory in general (and I do not deny it). The shift can be noticed when","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"31 1","pages":"143 - 149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75912889","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 1995, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of South Africa declared the death penalty to be unconstitutional. The judgment and concurring opinions in State v. Makwanyane relied, along with other precedents, on Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court case that, following a moratorium, brought about an end to executions in the United States, until Gregg v. Georgia opened the way four years later for their resumption under more restricted conditions. The South African justices find noteworthy Justice William Brennan’s affirmation, in Furman, of human dignity as a value guiding his concurring opinion. A right to dignity is enshrined in South Africa’s constitution (State v. Makwanyane, ¶¶ 57– 58). In the judgment in Makwanyane, as well as in several of its concurring opinions, human dignity is connected to ubuntu— the idea that a person is a person through other people— an African ethics of reciprocity invoked in the epilogue of the 1993 interim South African constitution (State v. Makwanyane, ¶¶ 130– 31, 223– 27, 237– 63, 307– 13). This reference to ubuntu leads to an appeal to recognize “African law and legal thinking as a source of legal ideas, values and practice.” It is then noted that, prior to the imposition of colonial law, although people suspected of witchcraft were sometimes summarily killed, and killings took place in the context of military discipline, this is not how murderers were punished: meaning that the equivalent of judicial killing was not practiced in precolonial southern Africa (State v. Makwanyane, ¶¶ 365– 83).
1995年，南非共和国宪法法院宣布死刑违宪。State v. Makwanyane案的判决和一致意见，以及其他先例，都是基于1972年美国最高法院的弗曼诉格鲁吉亚案(Furman v. Georgia)。该案在暂停执行死刑之后，终结了美国的死刑执行，直到四年后格雷格诉格鲁吉亚案为在更严格的条件下恢复执行死刑开辟了道路。南非的法官们发现，威廉·布伦南大法官在弗曼案中对人类尊严的肯定是一种指导他的一致意见的价值，这一点值得注意。尊严权被载入南非宪法(State v. Makwanyane，¶¶57 - 58)。在Makwanyane一案的判决中，以及它的几个一致意见中，人的尊严与乌班图(ubuntu)有关——一个人通过他人成为一个人的想法——这是1993年南非临时宪法结语中援引的一种非洲互惠伦理(State v. Makwanyane，¶¶130 - 31,223 - 27,237 - 63,307 - 13)。这种对乌班图的提及导致了一种呼吁，即承认“非洲法律和法律思想是法律思想、价值和实践的源泉”。然后需要指出的是，在实行殖民法之前，虽然怀疑有巫术的人有时会被立即杀害，而且杀戮是在军事纪律的背景下进行的，但这并不是对杀人犯的惩罚方式:这意味着在殖民前的南部非洲没有类似于司法处决的做法(State v. Makwanyane，¶¶365 - 83)。
{"title":"After the Death Penalty","authors":"M. Sanders","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0023","url":null,"abstract":"In 1995, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of South Africa declared the death penalty to be unconstitutional. The judgment and concurring opinions in State v. Makwanyane relied, along with other precedents, on Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court case that, following a moratorium, brought about an end to executions in the United States, until Gregg v. Georgia opened the way four years later for their resumption under more restricted conditions. The South African justices find noteworthy Justice William Brennan’s affirmation, in Furman, of human dignity as a value guiding his concurring opinion. A right to dignity is enshrined in South Africa’s constitution (State v. Makwanyane, ¶¶ 57– 58). In the judgment in Makwanyane, as well as in several of its concurring opinions, human dignity is connected to ubuntu— the idea that a person is a person through other people— an African ethics of reciprocity invoked in the epilogue of the 1993 interim South African constitution (State v. Makwanyane, ¶¶ 130– 31, 223– 27, 237– 63, 307– 13). This reference to ubuntu leads to an appeal to recognize “African law and legal thinking as a source of legal ideas, values and practice.” It is then noted that, prior to the imposition of colonial law, although people suspected of witchcraft were sometimes summarily killed, and killings took place in the context of military discipline, this is not how murderers were punished: meaning that the equivalent of judicial killing was not practiced in precolonial southern Africa (State v. Makwanyane, ¶¶ 365– 83).","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"73 1","pages":"177 - 185"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76463463","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}
Abstract:This article discusses Roberto Esposito's three paradigms of political ontology: destitution, constitution, and institution, based respectively on (post-)Heideggerian, Deleuzian, and neo-Machiavellian/Lefortian concepts. The essay argues that we need to enlarge this conception of political ontology to make room for other ontological theorizing and therefore presents a fourth paradigm, restitution, derived from social anthropology with the aim to integrate environmental justice in the three-fold framework. Restitution here accounts for multiple worlds, composed of different modes of existence. In late capitalist ontology, there is no room for other ontologies. Esposito misses that there are at least a thousand political ontologies that cannot be subsumed into an overarching whole. Restituting is not about reifying or preserving existing ontologies but about reclaiming practices, techniques, and local knowledges for new problems arising from extractivism, the climate emergency, and technological disruptions.
{"title":"The Missing Politics of Restitution: Answering Esposito's Triptych of Political Ontology","authors":"Benoit Dillet","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0019","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article discusses Roberto Esposito's three paradigms of political ontology: destitution, constitution, and institution, based respectively on (post-)Heideggerian, Deleuzian, and neo-Machiavellian/Lefortian concepts. The essay argues that we need to enlarge this conception of political ontology to make room for other ontological theorizing and therefore presents a fourth paradigm, restitution, derived from social anthropology with the aim to integrate environmental justice in the three-fold framework. Restitution here accounts for multiple worlds, composed of different modes of existence. In late capitalist ontology, there is no room for other ontologies. Esposito misses that there are at least a thousand political ontologies that cannot be subsumed into an overarching whole. Restituting is not about reifying or preserving existing ontologies but about reclaiming practices, techniques, and local knowledges for new problems arising from extractivism, the climate emergency, and technological disruptions.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"10 1","pages":"125 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89047651","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}
Abstract:With the rise of authoritarianism across the globe, debates about freedom of expression have become increasingly urgent in countries like India and the United States. However, these debates do not manifest uniformly. In India the freedom of expression rights of a novelist like Perumal Murugan are denied, while in the U.S. freedom of expression rights are used by conservatives like Charles Murray in public campaigns to promote deliberately provocative speech. This essay compares the Murugan and Murray cases in the interests of advancing our thinking about freedom of expression. Opening new lines of inquiry into freedom of expression via a decolonization of theory, it underscores the limits of liberal Millian ideas and proposes the value of alternative neo-Buddhist notions of ahimsa.
{"title":"The Ruse of Freedom: A Comparative Essay on Ahimsa and Freedom of Expression","authors":"Perumal Murugan","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:With the rise of authoritarianism across the globe, debates about freedom of expression have become increasingly urgent in countries like India and the United States. However, these debates do not manifest uniformly. In India the freedom of expression rights of a novelist like Perumal Murugan are denied, while in the U.S. freedom of expression rights are used by conservatives like Charles Murray in public campaigns to promote deliberately provocative speech. This essay compares the Murugan and Murray cases in the interests of advancing our thinking about freedom of expression. Opening new lines of inquiry into freedom of expression via a decolonization of theory, it underscores the limits of liberal Millian ideas and proposes the value of alternative neo-Buddhist notions of ahimsa.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"41 1","pages":"1 - 34"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90792783","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}
Abstract:Esposito distinguishes between three different and paradigmatic ways in which contemporary political thinkers from Heidegger to Agamben, through Deleuze and Lefort, have conceived the postmetaphysical assemblage of politics, being, and difference. First, the article discusses the concept of difference and negation that is employed by Esposito in his reconstruction of the positions of Heidegger and Deleuze. Second, it questions Esposito's political ontology of conflict by discussing it in relation to the views of Schmitt and of proponents of agonistic politics, which may appear to be closely related to it. The study concludes by asking about the place of biopolitics in this account of political ontology and tries to address this peculiar absence of biopolitics in a text written by one of its main theorists.
{"title":"Esposito's Political Ontology: Difference, Conflict and Community","authors":"V. Lemm","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0018","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Esposito distinguishes between three different and paradigmatic ways in which contemporary political thinkers from Heidegger to Agamben, through Deleuze and Lefort, have conceived the postmetaphysical assemblage of politics, being, and difference. First, the article discusses the concept of difference and negation that is employed by Esposito in his reconstruction of the positions of Heidegger and Deleuze. Second, it questions Esposito's political ontology of conflict by discussing it in relation to the views of Schmitt and of proponents of agonistic politics, which may appear to be closely related to it. The study concludes by asking about the place of biopolitics in this account of political ontology and tries to address this peculiar absence of biopolitics in a text written by one of its main theorists.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"26 1","pages":"111 - 124"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81746015","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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