As violent forms of border control have become increasingly diverse and prevalent, migrants and their allies have struggled to find adequate techniques for resistance. Without much notice from scholars and analysts, self-immolation has become part of this repertoire of resistance. Because migrant self-immolations take place in different countries and are committed by individuals of diverse nationalities, these events are treated as disconnected incidents: conflicts between specific migrants and the states which deny them entry. I argue that it is politically and analytically essential that we be able to “read” these events together. Towards this end, I propose one possible framework for analysis: reading these events as a form of migrant counterconduct that is produced by and responsive to specific modalities of border violence. In this article, I focus on migrant self-immolations “addressed” to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—the most visible international symbol of migrant management. Examining border violence through the politics of visibility and visuality, I show how borderwork makes it impossible to see, count, and account for the pain and death that result from violence at the border. Closely reading administrative procedures and border policing strategies, I show how self-immolation responds directly to these modes of violence and their attendant politics of visibility. Self-immolation brings migrant death into view, manifests the violence of the border, and powerfully counters state claims to “rescue” migrants.
{"title":"Sights of Violence: Self-Immolation at the Border","authors":"Archana Kaku","doi":"10.1086/726391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726391","url":null,"abstract":"As violent forms of border control have become increasingly diverse and prevalent, migrants and their allies have struggled to find adequate techniques for resistance. Without much notice from scholars and analysts, self-immolation has become part of this repertoire of resistance. Because migrant self-immolations take place in different countries and are committed by individuals of diverse nationalities, these events are treated as disconnected incidents: conflicts between specific migrants and the states which deny them entry. I argue that it is politically and analytically essential that we be able to “read” these events together. Towards this end, I propose one possible framework for analysis: reading these events as a form of migrant counterconduct that is produced by and responsive to specific modalities of border violence. In this article, I focus on migrant self-immolations “addressed” to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—the most visible international symbol of migrant management. Examining border violence through the politics of visibility and visuality, I show how borderwork makes it impossible to see, count, and account for the pain and death that result from violence at the border. Closely reading administrative procedures and border policing strategies, I show how self-immolation responds directly to these modes of violence and their attendant politics of visibility. Self-immolation brings migrant death into view, manifests the violence of the border, and powerfully counters state claims to “rescue” migrants.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"812 - 835"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47082287","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}
Democracy is in crisis. According to a dominant view, the problem is populism. Populists, critics argue, undermine democracy through its own procedural and normative logic. This essay calls the critique of populism into question. I argue that critics misrepresent the significance of populism for democratic politics in three ways. First, by reducing populism to a single political logic, critics confound important differences between different instances of populism. Secondly, by blaming populists for the maladies of contemporary democracies, critics wrongly exonerate centrist political forces. Thirdly, critics underestimate the structural deficiencies of contemporary democracy. The main task for proponents of democracy today is not to fight populism, but to address the more fundamental sources of democratic decay: rising inequality, the decline of mass democracy, maltreatment of immigrants and ethnic minorities, and climate change.
{"title":"What’s Wrong with the Critique of Populism","authors":"T. Skadhauge","doi":"10.1086/726437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726437","url":null,"abstract":"Democracy is in crisis. According to a dominant view, the problem is populism. Populists, critics argue, undermine democracy through its own procedural and normative logic. This essay calls the critique of populism into question. I argue that critics misrepresent the significance of populism for democratic politics in three ways. First, by reducing populism to a single political logic, critics confound important differences between different instances of populism. Secondly, by blaming populists for the maladies of contemporary democracies, critics wrongly exonerate centrist political forces. Thirdly, critics underestimate the structural deficiencies of contemporary democracy. The main task for proponents of democracy today is not to fight populism, but to address the more fundamental sources of democratic decay: rising inequality, the decline of mass democracy, maltreatment of immigrants and ethnic minorities, and climate change.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"768 - 783"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42583549","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}
This essay revisits Vilfredo Pareto’s attempt in his Treatise on General Sociology (1916) to classify the non-rational sentiments animating social and political life, considering implications for recent theories of affective politics. Long known for having combined an irrational psychology with a model of elite rule, Pareto has more recently been cited as a predecessor for behavioral economists. However, I show, Pareto described sentiments as sources of creativity as well as inertia and supposed they are modified by complex, reciprocal interactions with ideologies and environmental conditions. As I argue, Pareto’s dynamic account of residues jeopardized his methodological aspirations, portending challenges for those seeking to identify and manage popular sentiments today. By the same token, it prefigured theories of “affect” developed by scholars who envision sentiments not only as determinants of preferences and alignments but also as sources of their undoing and transformation. In light of Pareto’s problematic attempts to reconcile tensions in his study, I examine challenges facing those who align theories of affect with radical democratic programs. I conclude that radical democratic approaches to affective politics, like their managerial counterparts, are neither logically derived from nor precluded by human psychology per se, but instead compromised by prevailing configurations of sentiments, ideologies, and practices.
{"title":"Residues and Derivations: Vilfredo Pareto and Affective Politics","authors":"Kam Shapiro","doi":"10.1086/726280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726280","url":null,"abstract":"This essay revisits Vilfredo Pareto’s attempt in his Treatise on General Sociology (1916) to classify the non-rational sentiments animating social and political life, considering implications for recent theories of affective politics. Long known for having combined an irrational psychology with a model of elite rule, Pareto has more recently been cited as a predecessor for behavioral economists. However, I show, Pareto described sentiments as sources of creativity as well as inertia and supposed they are modified by complex, reciprocal interactions with ideologies and environmental conditions. As I argue, Pareto’s dynamic account of residues jeopardized his methodological aspirations, portending challenges for those seeking to identify and manage popular sentiments today. By the same token, it prefigured theories of “affect” developed by scholars who envision sentiments not only as determinants of preferences and alignments but also as sources of their undoing and transformation. In light of Pareto’s problematic attempts to reconcile tensions in his study, I examine challenges facing those who align theories of affect with radical democratic programs. I conclude that radical democratic approaches to affective politics, like their managerial counterparts, are neither logically derived from nor precluded by human psychology per se, but instead compromised by prevailing configurations of sentiments, ideologies, and practices.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"745 - 767"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44912834","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}
Accomplished populists are researched from distant quarters, long after their populist turn. Yet, populism—the attempt to represent the people through being the people—is not an overnight decision; it results from a gradual self-fashioning welded to the political trajectory of its bearer. This article proposes to explore populism diachronically as a political career. It builds on a seven-year ethnography of Indian student activism and political entry. Through combining qualitative longitudinal interviews, participant observation in North India, and discourse analysis, the article aims at contributing to three adjoining fields of inquiry: the sociology of political professionalization, the political theory of populism, and the anthropology of political becoming and subject-formation. First, I show how the embrace of populism is motivated by aspirations to gain leverage vis-à-vis political parties and group-based affiliations driving co-ethnic voting. Contra ideationalists, this case study reconsiders populism as a para-ideological attempt to become politically autonomous. Second, I argue that the claim of representative sameness at the core of any successful populist is inseparable from the one of hierarchical distinctiveness, embodied in the authoritative figure of the neta (leader). Third, I suggest that entering politics as a populist is not only about ad-hoc learning, but also about strategic unlearning.
{"title":"Populist Careers as Autonomy-Making: A Longitudinal Ethnography of Political Entry in North India","authors":"Jean‐Thomas Martelli","doi":"10.1086/726339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726339","url":null,"abstract":"Accomplished populists are researched from distant quarters, long after their populist turn. Yet, populism—the attempt to represent the people through being the people—is not an overnight decision; it results from a gradual self-fashioning welded to the political trajectory of its bearer. This article proposes to explore populism diachronically as a political career. It builds on a seven-year ethnography of Indian student activism and political entry. Through combining qualitative longitudinal interviews, participant observation in North India, and discourse analysis, the article aims at contributing to three adjoining fields of inquiry: the sociology of political professionalization, the political theory of populism, and the anthropology of political becoming and subject-formation. First, I show how the embrace of populism is motivated by aspirations to gain leverage vis-à-vis political parties and group-based affiliations driving co-ethnic voting. Contra ideationalists, this case study reconsiders populism as a para-ideological attempt to become politically autonomous. Second, I argue that the claim of representative sameness at the core of any successful populist is inseparable from the one of hierarchical distinctiveness, embodied in the authoritative figure of the neta (leader). Third, I suggest that entering politics as a populist is not only about ad-hoc learning, but also about strategic unlearning.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"784 - 811"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41733553","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}
Spring 2020’s resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests crystallized longstanding organizing against policing and punishment. While these uprisings were neither new nor novel, throughout 2020 calls to defund the police gained greater political traction. Ongoing co-resistance organized across movements for Indigenous and Black lives and against settler nation borders contested the legitimacy of the U.S. as a colonial and racial state, while more mainstream media began to ask if carceral “abolition” could be a desirable, if not entirely practical, goal. While the resultant partial counter-hegemonies were viewed somewhat skeptically by those in existing abolitionist work, many also saw potential in the widening circulation of “abolition” as a concept. Activists and scholars seeking to dismantle often taken-for-granted systems of criminalization and punishment have drawn on W.E.B. Du Bois’s framing of “abolition democracy” in Black Reconstruction in America to connect struggles against racialized chattel slavery and its unreconstructed aftermath to later twentieth and early twenty-first century struggles against the “prison industrial complex” or “carceral state.” Even if curiosity, or skepticism, fueled some purchasers of Mariame Kaba’sWe Do This ‘Til We Free Us, its status as a New York Times bestseller held out hope that actual readers of the volume—along with other books soon to be published by influential abolitionists— might grapple seriously with calls to radically reconstruct existing systems toward a more just and equitable world.
{"title":"Sexual Harm Beyond Policing","authors":"Gillian Harkins","doi":"10.1086/726480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726480","url":null,"abstract":"Spring 2020’s resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests crystallized longstanding organizing against policing and punishment. While these uprisings were neither new nor novel, throughout 2020 calls to defund the police gained greater political traction. Ongoing co-resistance organized across movements for Indigenous and Black lives and against settler nation borders contested the legitimacy of the U.S. as a colonial and racial state, while more mainstream media began to ask if carceral “abolition” could be a desirable, if not entirely practical, goal. While the resultant partial counter-hegemonies were viewed somewhat skeptically by those in existing abolitionist work, many also saw potential in the widening circulation of “abolition” as a concept. Activists and scholars seeking to dismantle often taken-for-granted systems of criminalization and punishment have drawn on W.E.B. Du Bois’s framing of “abolition democracy” in Black Reconstruction in America to connect struggles against racialized chattel slavery and its unreconstructed aftermath to later twentieth and early twenty-first century struggles against the “prison industrial complex” or “carceral state.” Even if curiosity, or skepticism, fueled some purchasers of Mariame Kaba’sWe Do This ‘Til We Free Us, its status as a New York Times bestseller held out hope that actual readers of the volume—along with other books soon to be published by influential abolitionists— might grapple seriously with calls to radically reconstruct existing systems toward a more just and equitable world.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"684 - 698"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42524051","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}
What does it mean to abolish the police? 1 Narrowly defined, the police are the state institution authorized to use violence against citizens, residents, and anyone else present in a given territory, to maintain public order and enforce the law. But by and large, contemporary abolitionists in the United States resist defining police in this narrow sense. Instead, they define the police expansively, to include not only private security forces and citizens who act as informal police deputies but also broader practices and institutions that surveil and control Black people and other marginalized groups. This expansive definition locates the police on a continuum with prisons and the carceral, and abolitionist scholars and activists have called for the abolition of the child welfare system, social work, and residential institutions for people with disabilities, among other demands. In part, this expansive definition of policing reflects the punitive nature of the contemporary U.S. state, in which racialized policing and punishment have either become entangled with or overtaken other state functions, such as the provision of basic
{"title":"The Revolutionary Politics of Abolition","authors":"Anna Terwiel","doi":"10.1086/726388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726388","url":null,"abstract":"What does it mean to abolish the police? 1 Narrowly defined, the police are the state institution authorized to use violence against citizens, residents, and anyone else present in a given territory, to maintain public order and enforce the law. But by and large, contemporary abolitionists in the United States resist defining police in this narrow sense. Instead, they define the police expansively, to include not only private security forces and citizens who act as informal police deputies but also broader practices and institutions that surveil and control Black people and other marginalized groups. This expansive definition locates the police on a continuum with prisons and the carceral, and abolitionist scholars and activists have called for the abolition of the child welfare system, social work, and residential institutions for people with disabilities, among other demands. In part, this expansive definition of policing reflects the punitive nature of the contemporary U.S. state, in which racialized policing and punishment have either become entangled with or overtaken other state functions, such as the provision of basic","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"662 - 672"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44757194","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}
This symposium grew from an observation. As advocacy of police abolition became increasingly prominent in the national press and in daily discourse following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, a latent tension within abolitionism became clear. On the one hand, public advocates of abolitionism drew a sharp distinction between abolition of police and withdrawal from social regulation, in order to counter those critics who cast police abolition as a step toward anarchy. In her widely read call for abolition, published in The New York Times in June 2020, Mariame Kaba makes the defense this way: “But don’t get me wrong. We are not just abandoning our communities to violence.We don’t want to just close police departments . . .We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society.” Or consider Angela Davis, in an interview on abolitionism given that same month: “Abolition is not primarily a negative strategy. It’s not primarily about dismantling, getting rid of—but it’s about re-envisioning, building anew.” On police defunding in particular, Davis clarified, “Defunding the police is not simply withdrawing funding for law enforcement and doing nothing else . . . It’s about shifting public funds to new services and new institutions,” to “mental health . . . to housing, to education, to recreation.” On the other hand, as abolitionism gained momentum in the course of 2020, no longer just the police but a whole range of institutions and agencies responsible for social regulation were cast as targets for abolition, as these were found to resemble
{"title":"Visions of Police Power: A Symposium on Abolition Politics","authors":"Jaeyoon Park","doi":"10.1086/726390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726390","url":null,"abstract":"This symposium grew from an observation. As advocacy of police abolition became increasingly prominent in the national press and in daily discourse following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, a latent tension within abolitionism became clear. On the one hand, public advocates of abolitionism drew a sharp distinction between abolition of police and withdrawal from social regulation, in order to counter those critics who cast police abolition as a step toward anarchy. In her widely read call for abolition, published in The New York Times in June 2020, Mariame Kaba makes the defense this way: “But don’t get me wrong. We are not just abandoning our communities to violence.We don’t want to just close police departments . . .We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society.” Or consider Angela Davis, in an interview on abolitionism given that same month: “Abolition is not primarily a negative strategy. It’s not primarily about dismantling, getting rid of—but it’s about re-envisioning, building anew.” On police defunding in particular, Davis clarified, “Defunding the police is not simply withdrawing funding for law enforcement and doing nothing else . . . It’s about shifting public funds to new services and new institutions,” to “mental health . . . to housing, to education, to recreation.” On the other hand, as abolitionism gained momentum in the course of 2020, no longer just the police but a whole range of institutions and agencies responsible for social regulation were cast as targets for abolition, as these were found to resemble","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"655 - 661"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44215862","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}
According to the most recent nationwide Point-in-Time Count, in January 2020 over 580,000 people in the United States reported experiencing homelessness, of which roughly 70% were individuals. Amongst the total population of reported households experiencing homelessness, around 60% were sheltered, and the rest lived in places not meant for habitation (streets, cars, parks, etc.). The percentage of individuals experiencing homelessness who were unsheltered, however, was above 50%. Individuals make up the vast majority of those who are unsheltered.Of the total number of those living in some formof shelter—emergency, transitional, or a Safe Haven—47.2% were Black or African American compared to Whites, who constituted 42.8%. Conversely, there were over twice as many unshelteredWhite people compared to Black people. Nationally, shelters are disproportionately comprised of Black orAfricanAmerican people, at similar rates as those for prisons. Given these numbers and given the broader connection between homelessness and carcerality, in part due to the criminalization of homelessness combined with the racialization of homelessness (40% of those experiencing homelessness in the U.S. are Black or African American), scholars have begun to analyze the carceral
{"title":"Shelter Abolition and Housing First: Rethinking Dominant Discourses on Homeless Management","authors":"Terrance Wooten","doi":"10.1086/726389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726389","url":null,"abstract":"According to the most recent nationwide Point-in-Time Count, in January 2020 over 580,000 people in the United States reported experiencing homelessness, of which roughly 70% were individuals. Amongst the total population of reported households experiencing homelessness, around 60% were sheltered, and the rest lived in places not meant for habitation (streets, cars, parks, etc.). The percentage of individuals experiencing homelessness who were unsheltered, however, was above 50%. Individuals make up the vast majority of those who are unsheltered.Of the total number of those living in some formof shelter—emergency, transitional, or a Safe Haven—47.2% were Black or African American compared to Whites, who constituted 42.8%. Conversely, there were over twice as many unshelteredWhite people compared to Black people. Nationally, shelters are disproportionately comprised of Black orAfricanAmerican people, at similar rates as those for prisons. Given these numbers and given the broader connection between homelessness and carcerality, in part due to the criminalization of homelessness combined with the racialization of homelessness (40% of those experiencing homelessness in the U.S. are Black or African American), scholars have begun to analyze the carceral","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"673 - 683"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44950831","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 the aftermath of the May 14, 2022, violent shooting attack by an eighteen-yearold white gunman, Payton Gendron, which killed ten black residents of Masten Park, BuffaloNY, a predominantly black neighborhood located on Buffalo’s East side, a range of responses were offered by this community. As expected, there was pain and anguish at Gendron’s brutal, ideologically driven plan to inflict as much black death as he possibly could. Driving more than two hours north to the Tops supermarket on Buffalo’s East side from his home on the outskirts of Binghamton, NY, Gendron’s motivation for the shooting was clearly laid out, specific in its intent and execution. The arithmetical logic of Gendron’s manifesto is the product of a deliberate set of racial (racist) calculations. Gendron’s logic is, as we shall see, imbricated in a notion of the biopolitical focused upon the right to choose, a right fundamental to the logic of neo-liberalism. As such, the biopolitical so delineated works to unveil a series of rights in which the ability to choose follows sequentially from the possession of capital, both racial and economic. A series of biopolitical rights that, moreover, itself derives from the protection afforded to some by the state’s sovereign violence; or, as Slavoj Žižek reminds us, by the state’s founding upon the principles of retaining unto itself an “excess” of “power.” Within the context of this symposium on abolition (of the police, principally), this essay offers an argument for expanding the targets for abolition—widening the contours of the abolition paradigm—by situating us within a discourse we might name, evocatively, a self-sublimating black fear.
{"title":"Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel","authors":"Grant Farred","doi":"10.1086/726438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726438","url":null,"abstract":"In the aftermath of the May 14, 2022, violent shooting attack by an eighteen-yearold white gunman, Payton Gendron, which killed ten black residents of Masten Park, BuffaloNY, a predominantly black neighborhood located on Buffalo’s East side, a range of responses were offered by this community. As expected, there was pain and anguish at Gendron’s brutal, ideologically driven plan to inflict as much black death as he possibly could. Driving more than two hours north to the Tops supermarket on Buffalo’s East side from his home on the outskirts of Binghamton, NY, Gendron’s motivation for the shooting was clearly laid out, specific in its intent and execution. The arithmetical logic of Gendron’s manifesto is the product of a deliberate set of racial (racist) calculations. Gendron’s logic is, as we shall see, imbricated in a notion of the biopolitical focused upon the right to choose, a right fundamental to the logic of neo-liberalism. As such, the biopolitical so delineated works to unveil a series of rights in which the ability to choose follows sequentially from the possession of capital, both racial and economic. A series of biopolitical rights that, moreover, itself derives from the protection afforded to some by the state’s sovereign violence; or, as Slavoj Žižek reminds us, by the state’s founding upon the principles of retaining unto itself an “excess” of “power.” Within the context of this symposium on abolition (of the police, principally), this essay offers an argument for expanding the targets for abolition—widening the contours of the abolition paradigm—by situating us within a discourse we might name, evocatively, a self-sublimating black fear.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"709 - 719"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43394766","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}
OurEditors’Note typically speaks to one or more of the many political controversies unfolding as we are writing, an effort to keep Polity timely, even if the production schedule adheres to a different sort of temporality. This issue’s tagline and theme of “taking account” works rather well for framing Trump’s indictment and the lack of political accountability on gun violence, climate change, reproductive justice, and police violence, for example. But rather than looking outward, as is our usual perspective, we decided for this Editors’ Note to turn inward and take a preliminary account of Polity itself under our co-editorship. This issuemarks themidpoint in our five-year term as co-editors of Polity, having now published ten issues of the journal. We thought it might be an appropriate moment, therefore, to considerwhat we have observed so far andwhat we aim to accomplish during the second half of our term. Fittingly, this issue also includes other sorts of accountings—a “Classics Revisited” symposium engaging a text that took political scientists to account for having only described what is rather than envisioning what might be done, a midterm election forecasting postmortem, and an “Ask a Political Scientist” with a scholar who demands that the discipline question its own assumptions about how politics works and where to study it. Likewise, each of the research articles offers an interpretive account of classic texts by Plato,Machiavelli, and Rousseau, respectively, and the debates they inspire. Serving as co-editors of Polity, which has been in print since 1968, publishing some of the finest scholarship in the field, is a genuine honor. In our editorial roles we have sought to build upon and expand the journal’s reach, reputation, and impact. We have aimed to fill the pages of Polity with innovative scholarship in the discipline from a range of voices, approaches, and perspectives. Indeed, one change we proposed in our bid to become editors was to increase the diversity of authors.
{"title":"Taking Account","authors":"Alyson Cole, Robyn Marasco, C. Tien","doi":"10.1086/725423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725423","url":null,"abstract":"OurEditors’Note typically speaks to one or more of the many political controversies unfolding as we are writing, an effort to keep Polity timely, even if the production schedule adheres to a different sort of temporality. This issue’s tagline and theme of “taking account” works rather well for framing Trump’s indictment and the lack of political accountability on gun violence, climate change, reproductive justice, and police violence, for example. But rather than looking outward, as is our usual perspective, we decided for this Editors’ Note to turn inward and take a preliminary account of Polity itself under our co-editorship. This issuemarks themidpoint in our five-year term as co-editors of Polity, having now published ten issues of the journal. We thought it might be an appropriate moment, therefore, to considerwhat we have observed so far andwhat we aim to accomplish during the second half of our term. Fittingly, this issue also includes other sorts of accountings—a “Classics Revisited” symposium engaging a text that took political scientists to account for having only described what is rather than envisioning what might be done, a midterm election forecasting postmortem, and an “Ask a Political Scientist” with a scholar who demands that the discipline question its own assumptions about how politics works and where to study it. Likewise, each of the research articles offers an interpretive account of classic texts by Plato,Machiavelli, and Rousseau, respectively, and the debates they inspire. Serving as co-editors of Polity, which has been in print since 1968, publishing some of the finest scholarship in the field, is a genuine honor. In our editorial roles we have sought to build upon and expand the journal’s reach, reputation, and impact. We have aimed to fill the pages of Polity with innovative scholarship in the discipline from a range of voices, approaches, and perspectives. Indeed, one change we proposed in our bid to become editors was to increase the diversity of authors.","PeriodicalId":46912,"journal":{"name":"Polity","volume":"55 1","pages":"441 - 447"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48612180","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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