Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory最新文献

We can currently see the formation of new nationalist and racist parties or tendencies within established parties to lean towards right-wing politics within many European countries; from the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) in the Netherlands, Lega Nord or Lega in Italia, Vox in Spain, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, Front National in France, the Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden, Fidesz in Hungary, and Golden Dawn in Greece, to name only a few. At the same time, there has been a surge in racist, fascist, and antisemitic attacks within Europe. Since 1991, Neo-Nazi gangs have attacked migrants and members of antifascist groups, burned down housing facilities for asylum seekers (including facilities for Ukrainian refugees in 2022), disrupted social initiatives, and spread fear (BfV, 2022; cf. Speit, 2021). However, most of these activities were described as the criminal action of socially marginalized individuals, downplaying the organized structure behind these far-right activities and, thus, paving the way for more attacks.¹ Part of this paper is to show how the epistemic tools developed by the epistemology of ignorance literature can help to understand (a) why the organized structures of far-right movements are unintelligible within the dominant frame of intelligibility in Europe and (b) how the silence about far-right movements shifts the boundaries for what can be said or done, thus, having deeply problematic repercussions for who can feel safe in Europe. This paper has a modest aim: By bringing into focus contexts of social injustice that have not received much attention in the current literature and by understanding them with the help of existing research from the debate on problematic epistemic practices and philosophy of language, the paper aims to highlight some problematic practices.²

In this paper, I want to concentrate on a series of attacks carried out in Germany. From 2000 to 2007, the National Socialist Underground (NSU) succeeded in murdering 10 people, one police officer, and nine migrants in Germany. The victims are Enver Şimşek, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Süleyman Taşköprü, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Turgut, İsmail Yaşar, Theodoros Boulgarides, Mehmet Kubaşık, Halit Yozgat, and Michèle Kiesewetter. NSU also attempted to murder another 43 times, committed three bomb attacks in Nuremberg and Cologne, as well as 15 robberies. In addition to the three known members of the organization—Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos, and Uwe Böhnhardt—it remains an open question how many others were involved. However, it can be assumed that they had good connections with at least another 100–200 persons; including confidential informants, members of the German intelligence service and police force, and officials of extreme right-wing parties.³ Yet, instead of investigating even the possibility of a Neo-Nazi terrorist organization as relatives of the victims

In the established landscape of research in the social sciences, populism is seen as a type of politics that chiefly revolves around the distinction between the “people” and the “elite”.¹ Within this, different forms of populism can be distinguished—ranging from right-wing and authoritarian to liberal-centrist and religious varieties. In the camp of the political left, populism is often cast as essentially a democratic endeavor. Drawing on a conception of inclusive peoplehood, which is not opposed to other vulnerable social groups “below” but solely to the “elite above”, many authors emphasize that it is crucial to pursue a populist strategy in order to overcome existing hegemonies, democratic deficits, ossifications, and class-rule (Grattan, 2016; Howse, 2019; Kempf, 2020; McCormick, 2001; Mouffe, 2018). Throughout the past few decades, the landscape of research on left populism has grown considerably. Various studies have investigated the history of anti-establishment popular movements of the 19th century, such as the Narodniki in Russia or the American Populist Party (Canovan, 1981; Kazin, 1995). Further, research has also looked at how, from the 1990s, anti-neoliberal alliances in Latin America had their momentum, entered governmental office, and established a far-reaching renewal of constitutional orders (Linera, 2014; Weyland, 2013). And in particular, in the last decade, the rejuvenation of left politics in Europe and the United States has often relied on populist approaches (Katsambekis & Kioupkiolis, 2019).

Taking a more systematic stance, theories of radical democracy have sought to demonstrate that politics in modern societies is structured around the embodiment of the “people” as an empty signifier. From this perspective, it is not by accident that left varieties of populism can be recurrently observed; their persistence reflects that politics is, at its heart, not only concerned with policy-issues but with “constructing the people” (Laclau, 2014). Thus, populism may not be episodic, accidental, or a specific ideology that brings the vital interests of ordinary people to the fore. Rather, it must be seen as a generalizable discursive strategy—in the words of Ernesto Laclau: the “royal road”—when it comes to the strive for political power (Laclau, 2005, p. 67).² In recent years, a neo-Machiavellian strand of research has emerged that is not so much concerned with the discursive construction of peoplehood, instead focusing on the materiality of social power. Drawing inspiration from the political philosophy of Early Modernity and Niccolò Machiavelli's insights on the exercise of political rule, these approaches assume that societies are constantly split between the “plebian” people and the ruling elites (McCormick, 2001; Vergara,

Wherever one is in North America, one is on Indigenous lands. Some Indigenous peoples may have been exterminated or removed to other locations, and their contemporary presence may not be highly visible, yet this remains Indigenous land. Nevertheless, rarely do non-Indigenous individuals and institutions consider the responsibilities that come with the fact of being on Indigenous lands (cf. Asch, 2014). To a large extent, this is because settlers regard the state they control as holding a legitimate claim to sovereign authority. Not only is this a claim that bars rightful relationships with Indigenous peoples, it also discloses contemporary settler societies’ disconnection from their Earthboundedness (Asch et al., 2018; Borrows, 2018) because it extends both over peoples and lands.

I propose to consider how, from the locality of some settler states such as Canada and the United States, an intimate connection between the settlers’ claim to sovereignty, mastery and possession, and Modernity/Coloniality, is disclosed, which is significant for understanding the Anthropocene and for envisioning ways of acting otherwise that may help to remedy it. My claims regarding the Anthropocene and Modernity/Coloniality are thus perspectival; they do not pretend to offer complete and universal accounts of either, but rather hope to diagnose distinctive features of both, as experienced and disclosed from the underside of Modernity.

I see the Anthropocene, or the Age of Man, as a symptom of contemporary settler societies’ view of themselves as floating free from the land, to use Brian Burkhart's formulation (2019) and of their associated idea of Man. Man, in this context, does not refer to humanity as a whole, but rather to the Western white cis-gendered heteropatriarchal agent of Modernity/Coloniality (Mignolo, 2007, 2011; Yusoff, 2018) who is driven by a will to mastery and possession (Schulz, 2017; Singh, 2018). This Modern/Colonial Man presents himself as the universal subject, and thereby erases and disqualifies alternative ways of being human (Singh, 2018, Chapter Introduction).

I engage with First Nation and Native American—hereafter Indigenous—political thought and movements to articulate an alternative to the un-earthbound political practices and associated subjectivity of the Man of the Anthropocene. I use Indigenous as a collective shorthand, but my focus is on the distinct political experiences, struggles, and traditions of some of the Indigenous peoples of the lands now claimed by Canada and the United States and the radical alternatives they disclose to dominant Modern/Colonial lifeways, the significance of which extends far beyond their respective contexts. Although I appeal to the distinction between Indigenous and Western thoughts, this is not to essentialize or deny the complexities of either, but in refer