{"title":"Thank You to Our Reviewers","authors":"","doi":"10.1086/726439","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726439","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135367501","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}
Police abolitionists in the United States understand police power to be a key domestic instrument of state power. Abolitionists examine police use of violence, and argue that it too often extends far past any legitimate use. Examining policies and practices, they advocate profound reforms that would shift social control away from the exercise of repressive violence and toward constructive interventions in the lives of troubled citizens. Here I argue that to take the full measure of police power in the U.S. requires a deeper assessment of the police’s role in the organizing of political order than abolitionists contemplate. I suggest that the police constitute a crucial linchpin between social order and sovereign power that cannot be eliminated without eliminating the state itself. To develop this argument, I employ the work of Michel Foucault on the origins of the police and Jonathan Obert in his study of the role of violence in the creation of the U.S. of political order in the nineteenth century. I fit Foucault’s understanding of the function of the police in the development of disciplinary society to the circumstances of the American case. I then provide an assessment of the current state of the extent and depth of police power in the United States. I conclude that attempts to abolish the police will be thwarted unless and until abolitionists better understand how police power operates as a constitutive instrument of neoliberal governance. Consequentially, the appropriate orientation for abolitionists is not to focus on defunding or reducing police department budgets, and/or shifting funds to mental health and social worker interventions, butmore explicitly to promote greater equality in American economy and society, and more radically, to advocate for new forms of democratic governance. Given current political circumstances in the United States,
{"title":"The Police Abolitionist Movement and the Neoliberal Paradox","authors":"Thomas L. Dumm","doi":"10.1086/726441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726441","url":null,"abstract":"Police abolitionists in the United States understand police power to be a key domestic instrument of state power. Abolitionists examine police use of violence, and argue that it too often extends far past any legitimate use. Examining policies and practices, they advocate profound reforms that would shift social control away from the exercise of repressive violence and toward constructive interventions in the lives of troubled citizens. Here I argue that to take the full measure of police power in the U.S. requires a deeper assessment of the police’s role in the organizing of political order than abolitionists contemplate. I suggest that the police constitute a crucial linchpin between social order and sovereign power that cannot be eliminated without eliminating the state itself. To develop this argument, I employ the work of Michel Foucault on the origins of the police and Jonathan Obert in his study of the role of violence in the creation of the U.S. of political order in the nineteenth century. I fit Foucault’s understanding of the function of the police in the development of disciplinary society to the circumstances of the American case. I then provide an assessment of the current state of the extent and depth of police power in the United States. I conclude that attempts to abolish the police will be thwarted unless and until abolitionists better understand how police power operates as a constitutive instrument of neoliberal governance. Consequentially, the appropriate orientation for abolitionists is not to focus on defunding or reducing police department budgets, and/or shifting funds to mental health and social worker interventions, butmore explicitly to promote greater equality in American economy and society, and more radically, to advocate for new forms of democratic governance. Given current political circumstances in the United States,","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"699 - 708"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49225925","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}
Danielle Allen is one of our most profound and inspiring democratic theorists. Although difficult to place in any one tradition of democratic thought or tie to a model of democracy, the centerpiece of her work has always been the citizen. The challenges and responsibilities of democratic citizenship furnish the lens through which she has written about democracy—from how to repair racial divides to build an effective pandemic response—as well as how she has organized for democracy, and finally run for office in a democracy. Institutions, elites, classes, social movements, experts, and policy play a role in her work on democracy. But she always comes back to the fundamental need for citizens to embrace and ethically commit to constitutional democracy and a shared public good. For Allen, no race of devils (to invoke Kant’s famous dictum) can sustain the solidarity and common purpose needed to keep democracy afloat. In times of crisis, we need to redouble our efforts to repair a collective sense that we are all in this thing together. Allen has an uplifting and positive view of citizen potential, but it is not utopian. She does not expect ordinary citizens to reach extraordinary levels of civic virtue and knowledge. But she does think—and I follow her here—that ordinary citizens (mostly) can move beyond toxic factionalism and senseless and destructive policy preferences. In this she pushes back against what I see as a growing and alarming trend in democratic studies—particularly the empirical study of American politics. This trend is spearheaded by what I call the new Schumpeterians who are doubling down on the old citizen competency trope in an age of digital misinformation and hyper polarization. Questioning whether citizens are epistemically and ethically up to the job of governing themselves is as old as democracy itself. But modern science, especially experimental neuro, social, and political psychology,
{"title":"Citizenship in Times of Crisis: A Comment on Danielle Allen’s Democratic Theory","authors":"S. Chambers","doi":"10.1086/726482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726482","url":null,"abstract":"Danielle Allen is one of our most profound and inspiring democratic theorists. Although difficult to place in any one tradition of democratic thought or tie to a model of democracy, the centerpiece of her work has always been the citizen. The challenges and responsibilities of democratic citizenship furnish the lens through which she has written about democracy—from how to repair racial divides to build an effective pandemic response—as well as how she has organized for democracy, and finally run for office in a democracy. Institutions, elites, classes, social movements, experts, and policy play a role in her work on democracy. But she always comes back to the fundamental need for citizens to embrace and ethically commit to constitutional democracy and a shared public good. For Allen, no race of devils (to invoke Kant’s famous dictum) can sustain the solidarity and common purpose needed to keep democracy afloat. In times of crisis, we need to redouble our efforts to repair a collective sense that we are all in this thing together. Allen has an uplifting and positive view of citizen potential, but it is not utopian. She does not expect ordinary citizens to reach extraordinary levels of civic virtue and knowledge. But she does think—and I follow her here—that ordinary citizens (mostly) can move beyond toxic factionalism and senseless and destructive policy preferences. In this she pushes back against what I see as a growing and alarming trend in democratic studies—particularly the empirical study of American politics. This trend is spearheaded by what I call the new Schumpeterians who are doubling down on the old citizen competency trope in an age of digital misinformation and hyper polarization. Questioning whether citizens are epistemically and ethically up to the job of governing themselves is as old as democracy itself. But modern science, especially experimental neuro, social, and political psychology,","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"857 - 864"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47348943","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}
Danielle Allen begins her 2010 book,Why Plato Wrote, with a seemingly simple question: Why did Plato, that most famous of ancient philosophers, write things down? The question seems simple, but it evokes complex possibilities. Allen’s question reminds us that being a philosopher—being a person who loves wisdom—can, as a practicalmatter, entailmultiplemodes of action.A love ofwisdom can be expressed in thinking, in speaking, in writing, in teaching, in being a student, in questioning, in listening, in observing, in creating, and in doing all sorts of other human activities. It can entail engaging with other people or retreating from them. It can involve participation in formal academic institutions or the avoidance of them. As a philosopher, Plato had choices among all these and other possibilities, choices about how to pursue his love of wisdom in theworld. Furthermore, evenwithin the act of writing Plato had many choices. He had choices about how to write, choices about what to write, choices about to whom he would write, and choices about how much time to spend writing. Plato had, in short, lots of choices about how to practice theorizing. By reminding us that Plato had choices about how to practice theorizing, Allen’s question does two important things. First, it blurs the conventional line between theory and practice. And it invites reflection, especially among those of us who have been credentialed by the academy as “philosophers” or “theorists,” about the extent to which our professional norms and identities can be limiting, so much so that they point us away from wisdom (or the good life) rather than toward it. That Allen pushes her inquiry of Plato in these directions should be no surprise. From the very beginning of her adult life, Allen has questioned—sometimes implicitly
{"title":"Why Allen Ran","authors":"Susan McWilliams Barndt","doi":"10.1086/726436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726436","url":null,"abstract":"Danielle Allen begins her 2010 book,Why Plato Wrote, with a seemingly simple question: Why did Plato, that most famous of ancient philosophers, write things down? The question seems simple, but it evokes complex possibilities. Allen’s question reminds us that being a philosopher—being a person who loves wisdom—can, as a practicalmatter, entailmultiplemodes of action.A love ofwisdom can be expressed in thinking, in speaking, in writing, in teaching, in being a student, in questioning, in listening, in observing, in creating, and in doing all sorts of other human activities. It can entail engaging with other people or retreating from them. It can involve participation in formal academic institutions or the avoidance of them. As a philosopher, Plato had choices among all these and other possibilities, choices about how to pursue his love of wisdom in theworld. Furthermore, evenwithin the act of writing Plato had many choices. He had choices about how to write, choices about what to write, choices about to whom he would write, and choices about how much time to spend writing. Plato had, in short, lots of choices about how to practice theorizing. By reminding us that Plato had choices about how to practice theorizing, Allen’s question does two important things. First, it blurs the conventional line between theory and practice. And it invites reflection, especially among those of us who have been credentialed by the academy as “philosophers” or “theorists,” about the extent to which our professional norms and identities can be limiting, so much so that they point us away from wisdom (or the good life) rather than toward it. That Allen pushes her inquiry of Plato in these directions should be no surprise. From the very beginning of her adult life, Allen has questioned—sometimes implicitly","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"844 - 850"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45170098","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}
Danielle Allen is known for refashioning diverse traditions, texts, and histories in the service of improving American political life. From ancient Greek to American to Black to contemporary thought, from social science to educational policy, even to public health, Allen has developed an oeuvre greater than the sum of its parts. Allen’s touchstone is democracy—its justice, along with its practical advantages as a regime. This focus on democracy is timely, immediately, because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an irredentist, Eurasianist assault on the liberal democratic international order, but also, more broadly, because of democracy’s retreat across the globe. Is democracy the best regime for addressing crises such as COVID-19 or climate change, or should we turn to strongmen and authoritarians? Political scientists have recently been tempted to raise this question, just as they were once tempted, in the 1930s, to wonder whether American democracy could improve its efficiency and discipline via fascist Germany’s example. Danielle Allen leads our efforts to explain why this temptation is a delusion, why, at its best, democracy is both prudentially and morally superior to hierarchical, nondemocratic regimes. Allen’s work contributes to American democracy by newly articulating the regime’s highest ambitions, capacities, and promise.
{"title":"An American Political Theorist between History and Utopia","authors":"Ryan K. Balot","doi":"10.1086/726435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726435","url":null,"abstract":"Danielle Allen is known for refashioning diverse traditions, texts, and histories in the service of improving American political life. From ancient Greek to American to Black to contemporary thought, from social science to educational policy, even to public health, Allen has developed an oeuvre greater than the sum of its parts. Allen’s touchstone is democracy—its justice, along with its practical advantages as a regime. This focus on democracy is timely, immediately, because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an irredentist, Eurasianist assault on the liberal democratic international order, but also, more broadly, because of democracy’s retreat across the globe. Is democracy the best regime for addressing crises such as COVID-19 or climate change, or should we turn to strongmen and authoritarians? Political scientists have recently been tempted to raise this question, just as they were once tempted, in the 1930s, to wonder whether American democracy could improve its efficiency and discipline via fascist Germany’s example. Danielle Allen leads our efforts to explain why this temptation is a delusion, why, at its best, democracy is both prudentially and morally superior to hierarchical, nondemocratic regimes. Allen’s work contributes to American democracy by newly articulating the regime’s highest ambitions, capacities, and promise.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"865 - 871"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47536058","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}
Reading this set of responses to my work left me feeling profoundly awed and humbled, ready to settle into a deep silence. I am awed to have been seen and understood so well. The acts of recognition performed by these five scholars are remarkable. Recall that I am someone whose intellectual life has been shaped in almost all dimensions by lessons from Ralph Ellison’s treatment of invisibility. For me, to feel visible in this way is a liberation, an affirmation that we human beings are in fact capable of seeing the other, that condition of “being at home in the world, which is called love, and which we term democracy.” But then to be seen, in the full, is also to feel exposed and therefore necessarily humbled, even chastened, with regard to the gap between aspiration and performance. Careful what you wish for! Still, to meet such extraordinary, generous acts of recognition without response would be rough ingratitude, and a violation of political and philosophical friendship. A response is called for. Themost important point is this: every scholar here has seenme accurately. To a person they have understood my aspirations. To a person, each author pinpointed problems and tensions in my work that have in fact motivated my most recent effort, Justice by Means of Democracy. Ryan Balot has traced some of the deepest intellectual challenges in my work: can there be freedom without politics? My answer to that, contra Balot, is no, and I finally tackle that question fully in the new book, a book that these respondents
{"title":"Feeling Seen","authors":"D. Allen","doi":"10.1086/726477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726477","url":null,"abstract":"Reading this set of responses to my work left me feeling profoundly awed and humbled, ready to settle into a deep silence. I am awed to have been seen and understood so well. The acts of recognition performed by these five scholars are remarkable. Recall that I am someone whose intellectual life has been shaped in almost all dimensions by lessons from Ralph Ellison’s treatment of invisibility. For me, to feel visible in this way is a liberation, an affirmation that we human beings are in fact capable of seeing the other, that condition of “being at home in the world, which is called love, and which we term democracy.” But then to be seen, in the full, is also to feel exposed and therefore necessarily humbled, even chastened, with regard to the gap between aspiration and performance. Careful what you wish for! Still, to meet such extraordinary, generous acts of recognition without response would be rough ingratitude, and a violation of political and philosophical friendship. A response is called for. Themost important point is this: every scholar here has seenme accurately. To a person they have understood my aspirations. To a person, each author pinpointed problems and tensions in my work that have in fact motivated my most recent effort, Justice by Means of Democracy. Ryan Balot has traced some of the deepest intellectual challenges in my work: can there be freedom without politics? My answer to that, contra Balot, is no, and I finally tackle that question fully in the new book, a book that these respondents","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"872 - 876"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41536473","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}
I have known Danielle Allen since I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago. During the time that I was her student, she taught me both ideas that can be found in books and ideas about how to live in the world. From her, I learned about the Declaration, Alexis de Tocqueville, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and a host of others—and, just as importantly, I learned lessons about how to be a scholar, how to be a citizen, and how to be a compassionate human being. About scholarship, I learned that texts are alive, and their livingness is evidenced by their ability to vex and fascinate us, as well as their capacity to impart lessons, give warnings, and be of use. I also learned that as those who seek to produce knowledge our rigor must not be rigid and bound by tradition but must instead be adept, agile, and capacious. I came to understand that genre is a tool, and its transformation is our right as scholars and storytellers, because what we do is not bloodless. Our work is not about adding to the tome of knowledge that sits in history for folks to flip through, but we are instead meant to help apprehend the world as it is and to draft blueprints for other possible worlds where domination is not the most common habit of society. I learned that we must facilitate citizenship at as many levels as possible. That we must both be able to perceive and also actively value the enactment of citizenship through engagement with not only politics and the social sciences but also through the humanities, arts, and civil society. Most importantly, I learned that the knowledge embedded in the practical experiences of those who are seeking change in the world outside of higher educational institutions and political halls is as essential as any syllogism or data that we glean from those who consider themselves expert.
{"title":"Danielle Allen and the Continuous Project of American Making","authors":"Deva Woodly","doi":"10.1086/726659","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726659","url":null,"abstract":"I have known Danielle Allen since I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago. During the time that I was her student, she taught me both ideas that can be found in books and ideas about how to live in the world. From her, I learned about the Declaration, Alexis de Tocqueville, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and a host of others—and, just as importantly, I learned lessons about how to be a scholar, how to be a citizen, and how to be a compassionate human being. About scholarship, I learned that texts are alive, and their livingness is evidenced by their ability to vex and fascinate us, as well as their capacity to impart lessons, give warnings, and be of use. I also learned that as those who seek to produce knowledge our rigor must not be rigid and bound by tradition but must instead be adept, agile, and capacious. I came to understand that genre is a tool, and its transformation is our right as scholars and storytellers, because what we do is not bloodless. Our work is not about adding to the tome of knowledge that sits in history for folks to flip through, but we are instead meant to help apprehend the world as it is and to draft blueprints for other possible worlds where domination is not the most common habit of society. I learned that we must facilitate citizenship at as many levels as possible. That we must both be able to perceive and also actively value the enactment of citizenship through engagement with not only politics and the social sciences but also through the humanities, arts, and civil society. Most importantly, I learned that the knowledge embedded in the practical experiences of those who are seeking change in the world outside of higher educational institutions and political halls is as essential as any syllogism or data that we glean from those who consider themselves expert.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"851 - 856"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48185309","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}
WhenI entered graduate school at Harvard in 1975 as part of a strongly felt but ill-specified quest for personal and political meaning, I had no clear sense of what constituted “academic success.” Although my family had long prized college education, no one in it had ever pursued an academic career. I soon learned that there were prevailing notions of what we grad students should dream about achieving, but they were disputed. At Harvard, the highest rank was University Professor; but some University Professors were seen as having won fame outside academia, without truly major intellectual contributions. Many in academia regarded the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where Einstein ended up, as the Valhalla for truly major intellectual contributors. Some, however, disparaged it as a privileged haven for abstract thinkers choosing to disconnect from the real world. The figure who seemed to command the most universal respect on campus, bordering on worship, was John Rawls, who many saw as one of the greatest political philosophers not just of our time but all time. However, the impact of his then-recent magnum opus, A Theory of Justice, remained to be seen. Rawls was best known for proposing the difference principle, holding that all economic inequalities should benefit the least advantaged within the national community. Nearly a half-century later, few would be audacious enough to contend that his work has brought us much closer to that goal in America or the world. Danielle Allen is currently the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard, the chair that John Rawls once held, and she was formerly the UPS Foundation Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. She directs Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics, to which John Rawls was a seminal contributor. She is a member of the nation’s two oldest academic honorary societies, the American
{"title":"Ask a Political Scientist Symposium on the Contributions of Danielle Allen: Introduction","authors":"Rogers M. Smith","doi":"10.1086/726440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726440","url":null,"abstract":"WhenI entered graduate school at Harvard in 1975 as part of a strongly felt but ill-specified quest for personal and political meaning, I had no clear sense of what constituted “academic success.” Although my family had long prized college education, no one in it had ever pursued an academic career. I soon learned that there were prevailing notions of what we grad students should dream about achieving, but they were disputed. At Harvard, the highest rank was University Professor; but some University Professors were seen as having won fame outside academia, without truly major intellectual contributions. Many in academia regarded the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where Einstein ended up, as the Valhalla for truly major intellectual contributors. Some, however, disparaged it as a privileged haven for abstract thinkers choosing to disconnect from the real world. The figure who seemed to command the most universal respect on campus, bordering on worship, was John Rawls, who many saw as one of the greatest political philosophers not just of our time but all time. However, the impact of his then-recent magnum opus, A Theory of Justice, remained to be seen. Rawls was best known for proposing the difference principle, holding that all economic inequalities should benefit the least advantaged within the national community. Nearly a half-century later, few would be audacious enough to contend that his work has brought us much closer to that goal in America or the world. Danielle Allen is currently the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard, the chair that John Rawls once held, and she was formerly the UPS Foundation Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. She directs Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics, to which John Rawls was a seminal contributor. She is a member of the nation’s two oldest academic honorary societies, the American","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"836 - 843"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42058600","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}
One of the most politically radical of all cultural and literary theorists in the North-Atlantic world, Fredric Jameson’s work remains mostly terra incognita in North-Atlantic academic political theory. Aside from rare invocations of this or that essay or book, there has not been sustained treatment of Jameson’s relentlessly politicizing vocation of dialectical criticism. It has neither been mined by scholars of political theory, nor systematically reconstructed, engaged, or criticized. Yet serious engagement with Jameson could initiate a discussion that simultaneously sheds light on the political import of his form of dialectical criticism, offers an occasion to think through “the internal politics” of theoretical discourses, and how his formulations of dialectical criticism contribute to an earthly understanding of political theory. Obviously, it is impossible to do justice to the vast intellectual breath and range of Jameson’s work in one essay. This essay, accordingly, offers a brief exposition of the main tenets of his dialectical criticism, the internal politics of his defense of Theory, and how both relate to his theorization of utopia, for the sake of a rearticulation of the critical vocation of political theory. Out of and through this engagement with Jameson the essay reflects on the ways in which Jameson’s dialectical criticism offers some indications to recast his own account of utopia from the perspective of a more earthly and profane conception of political theorizing.
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