<p>In April 2022, Barack Obama was invited by Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center to deliver a keynote address on the “Challenges to Democracy in the Digital Information Realm.” The former US president made the trip to the “heart of the Silicon Valley,” as he put it, to issue a stern warning: social media are “one of the biggest reasons for democracies weakening” (Obama <span>2022</span>). Coming from someone widely recognized to have employed digital technology to great effect in his presidential campaigns (Cogburn and Espinoza-Vasquez <span>2011</span>; Harfoush <span>2009</span>), this statement echoes a broader disenchantment with the Internet's democratic promises. Gone are the days when the Web was seen as a panacea to democratic deficit. Only a decade ago, social and political theorists predicted that new, networked, communicative processes would improve collective decision-making, challenge the top-down logic of mass media, and provide activists with means to resist excessive state authority (Castells <span>2013</span>; Shirky <span>2009</span>). Today, social media are most often associated with misinformation, the rise of populism, polarization, and democratic decay (Bimber and Gil de Zúñiga <span>2020</span>; Boulianne et al. <span>2020</span>; McKay and Tenove <span>2021</span>; Sunstein <span>2018</span>).</p><p>Underlying these debates is the question of digital technology's impact on politics. Like newspapers two centuries ago or broadcast media in the past century,1 social media have altered the functioning of representative democracies in manifold ways. At the empirical level, extensive research has explored whether they favor the creation of “echo chambers” (Barberá <span>2020</span>; Dubois and Blank <span>2018</span>; Garrett <span>2009</span>), whether they amplify radical content (Halpern and Gibbs <span>2013</span>; Huszár et al. <span>2021</span>), or whether increased social media use induces polarization (Bail <span>2021</span>; Boxell et al. <span>2017</span>; Dubois and Blank <span>2018</span>; Yardi and Boyd <span>2010</span>).</p><p>For their part, political theorists have overwhelmingly attempted to make sense of the impact of digital technology on democracy with reference to Jürgen Habermas's work on the public sphere (Chambers and Gastil <span>2021</span>; Dahlgren <span>2005</span>; Dean <span>2003</span>; Dommett and Verovšek <span>2021</span>; Fuchs <span>2014</span>; McKay and Tenove <span>2021</span>; Sevignani <span>2022</span>). This should not come as a surprise since Habermas was the first to comprehensively theorize the importance of the public sphere to democracy and dedicated considerable attention to the constitutive role of media in structuring it (Habermas <span>2015</span>). However, the substantial evolution of his theories over four decades and his later contributions to the deliberative tradition of democratic thought have also muddied the waters and led many theorists to conflate the publ
2022年4月，奥巴马应斯坦福大学网络政策中心的邀请，发表了题为“数字信息领域对民主的挑战”的主题演讲。这位美国前总统前往“硅谷的心脏地带”，用他的话说，是为了发出一个严厉的警告：社交媒体是“民主削弱的最大原因之一”（奥巴马2022）。来自一个被广泛认为在总统竞选中使用数字技术产生巨大影响的人(Cogburn和Espinoza-Vasquez 2011；Harfoush 2009)，这一说法反映了对互联网民主承诺的更广泛的觉醒。网络被视为解决民主赤字的灵丹妙药的日子已经一去不复返了。就在十年前，社会和政治理论家预测，新的、网络化的交流过程将改善集体决策，挑战大众媒体自上而下的逻辑，并为活动家提供抵抗过度国家权力的手段(Castells 2013；Shirky 2009)。如今，社交媒体最常与错误信息、民粹主义兴起、两极分化和民主衰退联系在一起(Bimber和Gil de Zúñiga 2020；Boulianne et al. 2020；McKay and Tenove 2021；桑斯坦2018)。这些争论背后的问题是数字技术对政治的影响。就像两个世纪前的报纸或上个世纪的广播媒体一样，社交媒体以多种方式改变了代议制民主的运作。在经验层面上，广泛的研究探讨了他们是否赞成创建“回音室”(barber<e:1> 2020；Dubois and Blank 2018；Garrett 2009)，它们是否放大了激进的内容(Halpern and Gibbs 2013；Huszár et al. 2021)，或者社交媒体使用的增加是否会导致两极分化(Bail 2021；Boxell et al. 2017；Dubois and Blank 2018；Yardi and Boyd 2010)。就政治理论家而言，他们绝大多数都试图通过参考j<s:1>根·哈贝马斯关于公共领域的工作来理解数字技术对民主的影响(Chambers and Gastil 2021；达利2005;院长2003;Dommett和Verovšek 2021；福克斯2014;McKay and Tenove 2021；Sevignani 2022)。这并不令人惊讶，因为哈贝马斯是第一个将公共领域对民主的重要性全面理论化的人，并对媒体在构建民主中的构成作用给予了相当大的关注（哈贝马斯2015）。然而，他的理论在过去40年里的实质性演变，以及他后来对民主思想的协商传统的贡献，也使水变得浑浊，导致许多理论家将公共领域与协商民主混为一谈。因此，这种趋势是衡量——即使有时只是隐含地——社交媒体实践与审议规范(Chambers and Gastil 2021；达利2001;院长2003;Papacharissi 2002;罗莎2022)，排除了更开放地使用公共领域概念所产生的可能性，直到21世纪之交，公共领域概念一直在政治理论中盛行。我在本文中认为，通过指出数字技术在改变哈贝马斯的《公共领域的结构转型》（Structural Transformation of the public sphere）中所描绘的自由的、资产阶级的公共领域与其对立的克敌——哈贝马斯在该作品的序言中称为“平民”（plebeian）——之间的权力平衡方面的作用，恢复这一定义可以为社交媒体对公共领域的影响提供新的视角。他的一些德国批评者，如亚历山大·克鲁格和奥斯卡·奈格（net and Kluge 2016），称其为“无产阶级”。借鉴他们的见解，但有意识地偏离他们的术语，我认为，我们可能有充分的理由认为，社交媒体支持了“大众公共领域”，它既深深陷入消费主义逻辑，又承载着一种在当前媒体环境中仍未实现的解放承诺。我做这项工作的目的是双重的。首先，它可能会为新兴的当代公共领域学术研究提供新的方向，恢复大量关于大众公众的工作，并展示其对我们这个数字时代的重要性。此外，它可以通过勾勒出一种基于法兰克福学派（以及早期哈贝马斯）对内在批判的方法论承诺的社会媒体的激进民主观点，为民主理论开辟新的途径。文章的第一部分捍卫了对公共领域的理解，这种理解不依附于审议传统，并且这种理解与重新评估技术变革对民主的影响的相关性。事实上，用南希·弗雷泽（Nancy Fraser）的话来说，公共领域仍然是民主理论和实践的关键（弗雷泽1992,111）；如果它不受审议价的束缚，它也可以用来询问流行的实践，并从中重建不同的规范理想。 通过对哈贝马斯作品的回应，第二部分追溯了公共领域的“二元”理论，在这个理论中，主导的或资产阶级的公共领域与其对立的对应物之间进行了霸权斗争。在斯图尔特•霍尔（Stuart Hall）著作的基础上，我认为，在数字时代，“大众公共领域”（popular public sphere）一词最好地捕捉了当代反公众与资本主义之间的连锁关系。第三部分探讨了在大众公共领域与资产阶级公共领域的斗争中，社会媒体对大众公共领域的影响。首先，它假设社交媒体的情感支持有利于大众公共领域；其次，数字技术为大众表达创造了一个持久的论坛，一个比历史先例更接近制度的“强大”公共领域的论坛。正如哈贝马斯对资产阶级公共领域所做的那样，我在内在批判的传统中工作，在第四部分也是最后一部分，我从大众公共领域自己的规范视界来批判社会媒体的当代功能，我认为这可以被广泛地解释为激进民主。从这个角度来看，社交媒体的解放承诺和缺点都有了新的认识。自1962年《公共领域的结构转型》（the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere）出版以来，“公共领域”的概念在民主理论中发挥了关键作用，并在不同学科（社会学、媒体与传播学或政治理论，仅举几例）之间引发了学术辩论；卡尔霍恩1992;达利2001;Mouffe 2002 b;Papacharissi 2002)。然而，这个术语存在概念模糊性。一方面，它经常被描绘成一种具有审慎意味的规范性标准，可以应用于信息空间(正如学术文章所暗示的那样，这些文章询问社交媒体或互联网是否构成公共领域：Dean 2003；Kruse et al. 2018；Papacharissi 2002)。另一方面，哈贝马斯自己始终如一地把公共领域描绘成一个概念，它指定了一个公共舆论形成的场所，从那里出现了历史上的规范，但仍然对变化和争论开放。本节认为，区分更广泛的公共领域概念和从资产阶级公共领域的程式化形象重建的协商理想是至关重要的，因为如果没有这种区分，对社交媒体对民主影响的评估就会系统地依赖于协商民主，并不可避免地导致悲观主义。公共领域通常与哈贝马斯的著作联系在一起，从他1962年的开创性著作开始。《结构转型》一书源于他的适应性论文，将现代公共领域的出现追溯至18世纪末和19世纪初的某个资产阶级环境，当时公众从私人的、经济的动机中出现（Calhoun 1999,5），并开始在西欧城市的沙龙或咖啡馆里讨论和质疑专制国家。对于哈贝马斯来说，当这些拥有财产的人开始把他们的私人生活划入讨论与公共生活有关的事务——通过理性批判的论证——行政、法律、政治的时候，标志着资产阶级公共领域的出现。反对专制国家，资产阶级公共领域在整个欧洲大陆宪政的出现中发挥了关键作
{"title":"Social Media, Democracy, and the Popular Public Sphere","authors":"Antoine Sander","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12773","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12773","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In April 2022, Barack Obama was invited by Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center to deliver a keynote address on the “Challenges to Democracy in the Digital Information Realm.” The former US president made the trip to the “heart of the Silicon Valley,” as he put it, to issue a stern warning: social media are “one of the biggest reasons for democracies weakening” (Obama <span>2022</span>). Coming from someone widely recognized to have employed digital technology to great effect in his presidential campaigns (Cogburn and Espinoza-Vasquez <span>2011</span>; Harfoush <span>2009</span>), this statement echoes a broader disenchantment with the Internet's democratic promises. Gone are the days when the Web was seen as a panacea to democratic deficit. Only a decade ago, social and political theorists predicted that new, networked, communicative processes would improve collective decision-making, challenge the top-down logic of mass media, and provide activists with means to resist excessive state authority (Castells <span>2013</span>; Shirky <span>2009</span>). Today, social media are most often associated with misinformation, the rise of populism, polarization, and democratic decay (Bimber and Gil de Zúñiga <span>2020</span>; Boulianne et al. <span>2020</span>; McKay and Tenove <span>2021</span>; Sunstein <span>2018</span>).</p><p>Underlying these debates is the question of digital technology's impact on politics. Like newspapers two centuries ago or broadcast media in the past century,1 social media have altered the functioning of representative democracies in manifold ways. At the empirical level, extensive research has explored whether they favor the creation of “echo chambers” (Barberá <span>2020</span>; Dubois and Blank <span>2018</span>; Garrett <span>2009</span>), whether they amplify radical content (Halpern and Gibbs <span>2013</span>; Huszár et al. <span>2021</span>), or whether increased social media use induces polarization (Bail <span>2021</span>; Boxell et al. <span>2017</span>; Dubois and Blank <span>2018</span>; Yardi and Boyd <span>2010</span>).</p><p>For their part, political theorists have overwhelmingly attempted to make sense of the impact of digital technology on democracy with reference to Jürgen Habermas's work on the public sphere (Chambers and Gastil <span>2021</span>; Dahlgren <span>2005</span>; Dean <span>2003</span>; Dommett and Verovšek <span>2021</span>; Fuchs <span>2014</span>; McKay and Tenove <span>2021</span>; Sevignani <span>2022</span>). This should not come as a surprise since Habermas was the first to comprehensively theorize the importance of the public sphere to democracy and dedicated considerable attention to the constitutive role of media in structuring it (Habermas <span>2015</span>). However, the substantial evolution of his theories over four decades and his later contributions to the deliberative tradition of democratic thought have also muddied the waters and led many theorists to conflate the publ","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 2","pages":"330-342"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12773","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144520253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Citizens who do not want to be represented are a challenge for conventional representative claim-makers, but this does not mean the end of representation as such. Post-representative movements such as the <i>Gilets Jaunes</i> rejected any notions of representation, yet they produced medially and politically recognized spokespersons. The <i>Gilets Jaunes</i> movement organized and mobilized their physical protests digitally, and what fueled the digital messages of new representative entrepreneurs were not interests or identities, but affective experiences (Rosanvallon <span>2022</span>, 88–104; Le Bart <span>2020</span>, 40–56). The case of the <i>Gilets Jaunes</i> draws attention to a particular form of representative claims: <i>affective representative claims</i>. They shift the key dynamic of representation from claim-making to represent a political cause or a socio-political identity to claims that are centered around speaking for collectively shared affective states. These claims allow one to only speak for oneself <i>while</i> simultaneously being able to speak for others due to the indeterminacy and universality of affect and emotion. In the context of widespread distrust in parties and institutionalized representation, affective representative claims give insight into new forms of organizing politically disaffected citizens.</p><p>Despite the intense affectivity of contesting institutionalized representation (Magni <span>2017</span>; Granjon <span>2021</span>; Flinders and Hinterleitner <span>2022</span>; Sullivan <span>2021</span>, Celis et al. <span>2021</span>) and notions of affective polarization in Western democracies (Reiljan <span>2020</span>; Hobolt et al. <span>2021</span>), constructivist theories overly focus on how elite actors employ affective cues in their representative claims to mobilize constituencies (Mouffe <span>2022</span>; Disch <span>2021</span>, Saward <span>2010, 2020</span>; Brito Viera <span>2015</span>; Knops and de Cleen <span>2019</span>, 172), and thus overlook how affective representative claims can empower <i>non-elite actors</i> to challenge and contest conventional forms of representation.</p><p>Understanding affective forms of representation is important not only because of the high affectivity of the current political constellation but also due to the structural change of the public sphere induced through social media. The dissemination of authorship widens the scope of representative claim-makers and potential audiences (Habermas <span>2022</span>), and the affective affinity of social media (Sunstein <span>2017</span>; Papacharissi <span>2015</span>; Staab and Thiel <span>2022</span>; Hindman <span>2018</span>) has the potential to bring “affective publics” together (Papacharissi <span>2015</span>), who produce their own representatives in turn. Investigating the representative dynamics that emerge from the affective architecture of social media gives insights into new forms of collectivization an
不想被代表的公民对传统的代议制索赔人来说是一个挑战，但这并不意味着代议制本身的终结。像黄马甲这样的后代表运动拒绝任何代表的概念，但他们产生了媒体和政治上认可的代言人。黄马甲运动以数字方式组织和动员了他们的实体抗议活动，推动新代表性企业家的数字信息的不是兴趣或身份，而是情感体验(Rosanvallon 2022, 88-104；Le Bart 2020, 40-56)。黄马甲的案例引起了人们对代表性主张的一种特殊形式的关注：情感代表性主张。他们将代表的关键动力从提出代表政治事业或社会政治身份的主张转变为以代表集体共有情感状态为中心的主张。由于情感和情感的不确定性和普遍性，这些主张允许一个人只为自己说话，同时也能够为他人说话。在政党普遍不信任和代表制制度化的背景下，情感代表主张为组织政治上不满的公民提供了新的形式。尽管对制度化代表的竞争具有强烈的情感(Magni 2017；格2021;Flinders and Hinterleitner 2022；Sullivan 2021, Celis et al. 2021)和西方民主国家情感两极分化的概念(Reiljan 2020；Hobolt et al. 2021)，建构主义理论过度关注精英演员如何在他们的代表声明中使用情感线索来动员选民(Mouffe 2022；Disch 2021, Saward 2010, 2020；Brito Viera 2015；Knops和de Cleen 2019, 172)，因此忽视了有效的代表性主张如何使非精英行动者能够挑战和挑战传统的代表性形式。理解表达的情感形式之所以重要，不仅是因为当前政治星座的高度情感，还因为社交媒体引发的公共领域的结构性变化。作者身份的传播扩大了代表性主张者和潜在受众的范围（Habermas 2022），以及社交媒体的情感亲和力(Sunstein 2017；Papacharissi 2015;Staab and Thiel 2022；Hindman 2018)有可能将“情感公众”聚集在一起（Papacharissi 2015），他们反过来产生自己的代表。调查社交媒体情感架构中出现的代表性动态，可以深入了解在侵蚀和改变社会和政治身份的背景下，社会集体化和动员的新形式(Jäger 2023；Reckwitz 2022;Rosanvallon 2022, 80-83；Cole et al. 2023, 399-403；达森奈维尔和霍格2018；Asenbaum 2023)，以及形成新的集体表现类别的方法，这些类别是通过情感状态的表达构成的，并由非精英演员行使。本文分为三个部分：第一部分讨论了建构主义理论在情感和情感方面的不足。在第二部分，对情感代表性主张的概念进行了概念化，结合Jacline Mouraud在黄马甲运动开始时的病毒式自拍视频来说明情感代表性主张的逻辑和政治解剖。第三部分讨论了社交媒体对情感代表主张的影响，强调了情感代表主张是如何在社交媒体上提供的，以及数字受众如何塑造和授权他们自己的代表。建构主义表征理论强调表征的程序特征。Michael Saward（2006,2010）的开创性作品将代表性主张理解为一种通过解读受众的某些属性并将自己呈现为具有共同品质和属性的理想代表来调用选民的方式。代表是宪法、政治主体化和新集体动员的核心(Saward 2010；Disch 2011, 2014, 2021)。然而，情感和情感在精英代表主张中大多被理解为动员选民的战略要素。将表征理解为身份的话语建构（Mouffe 2013, 125页），Chantal Mouffe（2013）强调了“政治身份构成中的激情依恋”的重要性（第96页）。因此，动员“政治和生态性质的影响，其接合可以导致‘人民’的建设”（Mouffe 2022, 76）最近被提出作为左翼动员绿色革命的重要战略（另见Latour和Schultz 2022, 37-43）。 同样，Lisa Disch认为，唤起对文化符号的依恋，不一定是好的论据（Disch 2021, 101-102），可以导致成功的动员。她已经认识到情感手段，例如，怨恨是一种独特的表达方式，“用普通人用来区分社会群体的语言编码政治信息”（Disch 2021, 63）。这与Saward（2020）关于形状转换代表性的讨论有关，其中政治家不断利用不同背景下的不同角色和资源来实现成功的代表性主张（第75-76页）。因此，当政治家想要更真实地展示自己或通过情感手段动员潜在的不满时，他们可以利用情感寄存器。但在所有这些描述中，情感代表的主张被想象成精英暗示，在“一个分化和密集中介化的政治世界”（Saward 2020, 85）中，精英政治家“照顾她说话的对象”（Saward 2020, 85）（战略性地）实现代表。最近的分析集中在政治精英如何在代表性主张中使用情感线索（Knops和De Cleen 2019），而忽视了非精英情感代表性主张在社会运动的出现中发挥的重要作用，例如占领运动（van De Sande 2020）或黄马甲（Hayat 2022）。在黄马甲事件中，对该运动的批评针对的是代表性机构，这些机构无法在决策过程中理解或融入看似特殊的情感生活经历（Le Bart 2020, 40-48）。通过情感手段忽视对动员的关注导致建构主义代表性理论低估了新兴的非精英代表通过情感代表性主张的作用，这些主张不太关注动员，而是关注当前的特定情绪。有效的代表性声明可以赋予非精英演员权力，因为它们的进入门槛更低：它们可以在一时冲动下做出，不需要事先考虑太多。此外，这些权利要求并不一定需要具有明确的代表性，甚至不需要带有代表性意图。将自我呈现为情感的带有一种真实性和亲切感，可以填补与制度化政治之间的差距，因为制度化政治被认为是技术上的遥远和冷漠(Coleman and Moss 2022, 6；Noordzij, De Koster, and Van Der Waal 2021)。此外，情感代表性主张可以在不授予“包涵性交叉元叙事”的情况下实现政治存在（Cammaerts 2021, 349），因为它们允许每个人在通过强调个人经验促进人际关系和潜在政治联系的同时，不把自己定位于政治。黄马甲不想让共同经历的集体被政治立场所中和（Lianos 2019），因此，在对政治机构不信任的时候，有效的代表性主张可以赋予权力。情感代表主张所带来的存在超越了固定的社会或集体身份（如Phillips 1995年所发展的那样），从而允许更多的关系和流动的集体身份表达和表现（Asenbaum 2023,57 - 85）。例如，黄马甲对不满和不稳定的表达将不同的职业链聚集在一起，这些职业超越了阶级身份、经验和兴趣（Rosanvallon 2022, 55-58）。因此，重要的是要解决另一个疏忽，这是由于动员焦点的建构主义理论的代表性。在这里，情绪被描绘成躺在街上的元素，只是等待被代表企业家捡起。Louise Knops（2022）认为，情感模仿愤怒的过程是黄马甲运动出现的核心。但她的情感和情感方程式（Knops 2022, 3）导致她错过了情感动员的一个关键动态——将集体共享的情感转化为行动的“临界点”（Kn
{"title":"Affective Representation: Social Media's Implications for Political Representation","authors":"Tobias Lappy","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12772","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Citizens who do not want to be represented are a challenge for conventional representative claim-makers, but this does not mean the end of representation as such. Post-representative movements such as the <i>Gilets Jaunes</i> rejected any notions of representation, yet they produced medially and politically recognized spokespersons. The <i>Gilets Jaunes</i> movement organized and mobilized their physical protests digitally, and what fueled the digital messages of new representative entrepreneurs were not interests or identities, but affective experiences (Rosanvallon <span>2022</span>, 88–104; Le Bart <span>2020</span>, 40–56). The case of the <i>Gilets Jaunes</i> draws attention to a particular form of representative claims: <i>affective representative claims</i>. They shift the key dynamic of representation from claim-making to represent a political cause or a socio-political identity to claims that are centered around speaking for collectively shared affective states. These claims allow one to only speak for oneself <i>while</i> simultaneously being able to speak for others due to the indeterminacy and universality of affect and emotion. In the context of widespread distrust in parties and institutionalized representation, affective representative claims give insight into new forms of organizing politically disaffected citizens.</p><p>Despite the intense affectivity of contesting institutionalized representation (Magni <span>2017</span>; Granjon <span>2021</span>; Flinders and Hinterleitner <span>2022</span>; Sullivan <span>2021</span>, Celis et al. <span>2021</span>) and notions of affective polarization in Western democracies (Reiljan <span>2020</span>; Hobolt et al. <span>2021</span>), constructivist theories overly focus on how elite actors employ affective cues in their representative claims to mobilize constituencies (Mouffe <span>2022</span>; Disch <span>2021</span>, Saward <span>2010, 2020</span>; Brito Viera <span>2015</span>; Knops and de Cleen <span>2019</span>, 172), and thus overlook how affective representative claims can empower <i>non-elite actors</i> to challenge and contest conventional forms of representation.</p><p>Understanding affective forms of representation is important not only because of the high affectivity of the current political constellation but also due to the structural change of the public sphere induced through social media. The dissemination of authorship widens the scope of representative claim-makers and potential audiences (Habermas <span>2022</span>), and the affective affinity of social media (Sunstein <span>2017</span>; Papacharissi <span>2015</span>; Staab and Thiel <span>2022</span>; Hindman <span>2018</span>) has the potential to bring “affective publics” together (Papacharissi <span>2015</span>), who produce their own representatives in turn. Investigating the representative dynamics that emerge from the affective architecture of social media gives insights into new forms of collectivization an","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 2","pages":"343-355"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12772","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144520162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>In the very late 1920s, Freud wrote a small book called <i>Civilization and its Discontents</i>. It goes something like this. We have entered civilization. We are no longer allowed violence. As a result, you, my middle- or upper-class reader, will be unhappy. Don't worry. It's normal. I'm here to tell you that the alternative is worse. You can be unhappy, or you can be ‘a potential helper or sexual object’ (48) in a state of nature: abused, degraded, exploited and tortured. Welcome to civilization!</p><p>The book has its critics and not without reason. But for this paper, many have largely had things backward, and on one point in particular. Many different parties, Erich Fromm, for example, cry that Freud is ideologically disposed to see violence where there simply is not any—he universalizes the pathological and engages in groundless myths about a brutal state of nature for which no evidence has as yet been found (<span>2013</span>). I will later defend Freud against these objections, largely by agreeing on both points but also positing that they are much less devastating to a theory of drives than detractors may think. My critique, which is the core of this paper, is that Freud was ideologically disposed to see “civilized man” as being deprived of violence in situations where the opposite was in fact the case, that is, his larger problem is being blind to where violence is perhaps most prevalent, rather than imagining it to exist in places where it is absent, principally because he refused to consider that violence, like sex, can be sublimated. In the 1960s, Marcuse found that the civilized were happy and at ease and not, as Freud suggested, always on the cusp of a revolt against guilt and repression (<span>2002</span>, 82). One of the reasons posited by Marcuse is that civilization <i>enhances</i> opportunities for violence rather than <i>removing</i> them (<span>1971</span>, 74–75, <span>1966</span>, 85–87)—“civilized man” has access to a smorgasbord of new forms of sublimated violence, while retaining the right to roll back into direct forms at any time. This revision would be an interesting paper in itself. But civilization is not static, and therefore this paper has a different focus.</p><p>The argument is, in short, that <i>Civilization and its Discontents</i> was nonsense in its own time. The fantasy of “civilized man” being under threat by his own undischarged violence was ridiculous as Marcuse later pointed out. “Civilized man,” in Freud's time, and perhaps even more so in Marcuse's, was in fact the most destructive being to ever have come into existence. His “normal” way of life created enormous pain, suffering, death, and environmental destruction: It is not possible to argue against the basic thesis that human beings have done more harm since embarking on industrial forms of civilization than any so-called “savage” could have ever dreamed of. When Freud noted that “civilized man” was generally polite to his neighbor—if that neigh
{"title":"On Technics and Technology as a Modification of the Death Drive","authors":"Lachlan Ross","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12780","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12780","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In the very late 1920s, Freud wrote a small book called <i>Civilization and its Discontents</i>. It goes something like this. We have entered civilization. We are no longer allowed violence. As a result, you, my middle- or upper-class reader, will be unhappy. Don't worry. It's normal. I'm here to tell you that the alternative is worse. You can be unhappy, or you can be ‘a potential helper or sexual object’ (48) in a state of nature: abused, degraded, exploited and tortured. Welcome to civilization!</p><p>The book has its critics and not without reason. But for this paper, many have largely had things backward, and on one point in particular. Many different parties, Erich Fromm, for example, cry that Freud is ideologically disposed to see violence where there simply is not any—he universalizes the pathological and engages in groundless myths about a brutal state of nature for which no evidence has as yet been found (<span>2013</span>). I will later defend Freud against these objections, largely by agreeing on both points but also positing that they are much less devastating to a theory of drives than detractors may think. My critique, which is the core of this paper, is that Freud was ideologically disposed to see “civilized man” as being deprived of violence in situations where the opposite was in fact the case, that is, his larger problem is being blind to where violence is perhaps most prevalent, rather than imagining it to exist in places where it is absent, principally because he refused to consider that violence, like sex, can be sublimated. In the 1960s, Marcuse found that the civilized were happy and at ease and not, as Freud suggested, always on the cusp of a revolt against guilt and repression (<span>2002</span>, 82). One of the reasons posited by Marcuse is that civilization <i>enhances</i> opportunities for violence rather than <i>removing</i> them (<span>1971</span>, 74–75, <span>1966</span>, 85–87)—“civilized man” has access to a smorgasbord of new forms of sublimated violence, while retaining the right to roll back into direct forms at any time. This revision would be an interesting paper in itself. But civilization is not static, and therefore this paper has a different focus.</p><p>The argument is, in short, that <i>Civilization and its Discontents</i> was nonsense in its own time. The fantasy of “civilized man” being under threat by his own undischarged violence was ridiculous as Marcuse later pointed out. “Civilized man,” in Freud's time, and perhaps even more so in Marcuse's, was in fact the most destructive being to ever have come into existence. His “normal” way of life created enormous pain, suffering, death, and environmental destruction: It is not possible to argue against the basic thesis that human beings have done more harm since embarking on industrial forms of civilization than any so-called “savage” could have ever dreamed of. When Freud noted that “civilized man” was generally polite to his neighbor—if that neigh","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"450-463"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12780","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145102252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic Against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back","authors":"Gianfranco Casuso","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12775","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12775","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 2","pages":"371-372"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144520146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>The role of experts in contemporary democracies has become one of the most politicized and pressing issues of our time and has been deeply debated within normative political theory. Given the technical complexity of current political challenges, we have witnessed a significant shift of power from governments and politicians to technocratic institutions and experts (Radaelli <span>1999</span>; Bickerton and Accetti-Invernizzi <span>2015</span>; Dargent <span>2015</span>). In the view of proponents of epistocracy (Brennan <span>2016</span>; López-Guerra <span>2014</span>), this shift is not only inevitable but necessary. As democratic systems are characterized by structural epistemic distortions (polarization, bias, short-termism), they cannot make sound policy choices (McKenzie <span>2016</span>) as confirmed by the spread of populist movements (Galston <span>2018</span>; Müller <span>2016</span>). Epistocracy argues for limiting the role of citizens and representative institutions, while granting more power to those who have the appropriate knowledge (Jeffrey <span>2018</span>). However, this shift toward epistocracy faces substantial criticism from other scholars (Gunn <span>2019</span>; Moraro <span>2018</span>). They contend that it is not only incompatible with the democratic framework because of its failure to recognize citizens as equals but also the cause of rather than the solution to democratic distortions (Mouffe <span>2018</span>; Friedman <span>2019</span>). According to this perspective, when citizens lose control over decision-making, they can only expose this democratic failure by supporting anti-establishment movements (Berman <span>2019</span>, <span>2021</span>). The spread of populist movements in both Europe and the United States (Muirhead and Rosenblum <span>2019</span>; Urbinati <span>2019</span>) and their open skepticism toward expertise, which is seen as an expression of elite attempts to curb popular power, confirm this diagnosis.</p><p>Even if we agree that the epistocratic view is incompatible with a democratic framework, this perspective is correct in claiming that current democratic systems need to provide not only procedurally fair but also epistemically sound answers to complex problems for which ordinary citizens do not have the appropriate expertise. While epistocracy might not offer the solution, a populist dismissal of expertise cannot serve as an alternative. A proper normative model of democracy, we thus contend, should rely on experts without undermining the control of citizens. To achieve this aim, it is crucial to delve into and gain a deeper understanding of how expertise can be best integrated into democratic systems while addressing the issue of how to enable ordinary citizens to evaluate and oversee expert claims. In a nutshell, it is necessary to reflect on the division of labor between experts and citizens. As recently highlighted by Moore (<span>2021</span>), there are three primary models for co
专家在当代民主中的作用已经成为我们这个时代最政治化和最紧迫的问题之一，并在规范的政治理论中进行了深入的辩论。鉴于当前政治挑战的技术复杂性，我们目睹了权力从政府和政治家向技术官僚机构和专家的重大转移（Radaelli 1999； Bickerton和Accetti-Invernizzi 2015； Dargent 2015）。在贵族政治的支持者看来（Brennan 2016; López-Guerra 2014），这种转变不仅是不可避免的，而且是必要的。由于民主制度的特点是结构性认知扭曲（两极分化、偏见、短期主义），它们无法做出合理的政策选择（McKenzie 2016），民粹主义运动的蔓延证实了这一点（Galston 2018; m<s:1> ller 2016）。上位政治主张限制公民和代议制机构的作用，同时赋予那些拥有适当知识的人更多权力（Jeffrey 2018）。然而，这种向贵族政治的转变面临着其他学者的大量批评（Gunn 2019; Moraro 2018）。他们认为，它不仅与民主框架不相容，因为它没有承认公民是平等的，而且也是民主扭曲的原因而不是解决方案（Mouffe 2018; Friedman 2019）。根据这一观点，当公民失去对决策的控制权时，他们只能通过支持反建制运动来暴露这种民主失败（Berman 2019, 2021）。民粹主义运动在欧洲和美国的蔓延（Muirhead and Rosenblum 2019; Urbinati 2019），以及他们对专业知识的公开怀疑，这被视为精英试图遏制大众权力的一种表现，证实了这一诊断。即使我们同意上位论观点与民主框架不相容，这种观点在声称当前的民主制度不仅需要在程序上公平，而且需要在认识上合理地回答普通公民不具备适当专业知识的复杂问题时也是正确的。虽然官僚政治可能无法提供解决方案，但民粹主义对专业知识的摒弃也不能作为一种替代方案。因此，我们认为，一个适当的民主规范模式应该依靠专家，而不损害公民的控制。为了实现这一目标，在解决如何使普通公民能够评估和监督专家主张的问题的同时，深入研究和深入了解如何将专业知识最好地融入民主制度是至关重要的。简而言之，有必要反思专家和公民之间的分工。正如Moore（2021）最近强调的那样，在民主社会中，考虑专家和公民之间的关系和分工有三种主要模型：代表性、参与性和联邦性。第一个模型认为专家和公民之间的关系是通过政治代表制度来调解的。第二种模式提倡参与式专业知识的形式，即专家直接参与公民陪审团和微型公众等公共论坛。第三种模式利用专家知识来支持和推进自组织协会和社会团体的目标。在本文中，我们对这场辩论的贡献集中在专家和公民之间关系的第一个模型上，特别强调政党的作用。传统上，代表性专业知识的概念与议会联系在一起，这与韦伯（1994,179）的建议一致，即立法机构应该拥有强大而独立的知识资源。我们试图增加另一个方面，表明民主专业知识的一个关键方面存在于政党内部，按照党内审议的原则运作。事实上，当政党得到适当和规范的监管时，它们可以作为公民和专家之间的中介。此外，我们认为，通过党员和专家参与的党内审议，公民可以对专家提案施加控制，而不需要直接与专家接触，这可能是过分的要求。仔细审查专业知识需要一定程度的知识、经验和技术论证技巧，而这些通常是普通公民所缺乏的。因此，我们的贡献与最近的理论尝试一致，即扩大机构在促进公共领域科学的讨论、评估和争论方面可以发挥的作用（Moore 2017; Pamuk 2021），尽管特别关注政党。 “此外，专家之所以被认为是专家，不仅是因为他们对某一问题有真正的信念，熟悉其特定科学领域内的观点和论点，而且还因为他们能够利用这些证据和真正的信念来解决与他们的专业领域有关的难题和问题：“一个专家拥有（认知）知识……去他的信息库的正确部门，并对这些信息进行适当的操作”（Goldman 2001, 91-92）。从这个意义上说，伪专家根据定义不是专家，因此他们没有资格在政党内进行合作和审议。政党选择合作伙伴的专家不能是伪专家，而应该是科学界的成员，鉴于他们的科学背景、参与和贡献，他们在各自的领域被公认为相关和可靠的来源。事实上，重要的是，由于他们在组织中有可以直接与专家互动的中间人物，当事人比普通公民更有能力通过考虑和评估其证据来源来识别真正的专业知识，例如专家的论证表现、该领域其他专家的一致意见、专家的业绩记录以及专家的兴趣和偏见（Almassi 2007; Anderson 2011; Goldman 2001; Lane 2014）。一个相关的担忧是，在政党内部捍卫专家的作用可能会导致普通公民对专业知识产生偏见，并将其政治观点片面地建立在党派理解的基础上。我们的回应是，我们的模型(1)确保了一个特征的可见性和问责制，即政党内专家的作用，这是当代政党不可避免的特征；(2)承认专家和党员之间的关系是受约束的，可以由他们的社区和广大公众来评估；并且(3)并不意味着参与公共辩论和话语的唯一专家应该是那些与政党合作的专家。让我们简单地集中讨论这几点。首先，政党不可避免地依赖专家来制定他们的政策和计划，但他们可能会在不向公众提供细节的情况下完成这项任务，而公众只会看到最终的结果。在这种情况下，公民将无法获得证明专家和各方所做选择的理由，并且由于公民将被视为他人所做决定的接受者，因此将无法实现适当的劳动分工。相反，我们的模式确保公众能够获得专家和公民之间合理的交流，以确保问责制和控制。其次，由于我们的模型限制了专家和政党之间的互动，公民意识到，呈现给他们的是平等之间理性交换的结果，而不是政党成员对被动专家的强加。在这种背景下，对专家的信任将得到培养，因为公民将清楚地看到他们在制定政策建议和提高其知识质量方面的积极作用。此外，我们的观点要求专家对科学界负责，并让公众看到科学界的一些成员是否对专家的偏见提出了一些担忧。这些特征不仅使公民能够接触到认识论上合理的建议，而且还确保公民能够根据其优点评估这些建议，即在党派价值观和认识论上的合理性之间取得平衡。最后，我们并不主张参与公共辩论和话语的唯一专家应该是那些与政党合作的专家。相反，不参与政党的专家可能会用他们的知识和判断为公众舆论做出贡献，扩大公共话语中的证据。正如已经解释的那样，本文的目的是揭示通常不被考虑的民主专业知识的层次，而不忽视其他形式的重要性。此外，我们要强调，我们确实是在提倡一种形式的党派专门知识。正如之前在阐述科学有效性原则时所概述的那样，从我们的角度来看，政党应该聘请在某种程度上与政党的价值观和规范框架保持一致的专家和政策顾问。这不应该令人惊讶或担忧。事实上，越来越多的实证文献表明，即使在政府和行政领域，政治建议也日益政治化（Craft 2015）。 在政策建议中，程序性和政治性考虑（Craft and Howlett 2013）对实质性和技术性方面进行补充，以解决日益增长的对治理合法性、代表性和有效性的需求，这一点似乎越来越重要（Hustedt and Veit 2017）。同样，我们认为政党的计划和政策需要与其规范性承诺相一致的技术指导。这种考虑使我们能够提供最后的澄清：专家、政党领导人和党员之间的互动并不构成一种分
{"title":"Enhancing Democratic Expertise Through Intra-Party Deliberation","authors":"Enrico Biale, Giulia Bistagnino","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12771","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The role of experts in contemporary democracies has become one of the most politicized and pressing issues of our time and has been deeply debated within normative political theory. Given the technical complexity of current political challenges, we have witnessed a significant shift of power from governments and politicians to technocratic institutions and experts (Radaelli <span>1999</span>; Bickerton and Accetti-Invernizzi <span>2015</span>; Dargent <span>2015</span>). In the view of proponents of epistocracy (Brennan <span>2016</span>; López-Guerra <span>2014</span>), this shift is not only inevitable but necessary. As democratic systems are characterized by structural epistemic distortions (polarization, bias, short-termism), they cannot make sound policy choices (McKenzie <span>2016</span>) as confirmed by the spread of populist movements (Galston <span>2018</span>; Müller <span>2016</span>). Epistocracy argues for limiting the role of citizens and representative institutions, while granting more power to those who have the appropriate knowledge (Jeffrey <span>2018</span>). However, this shift toward epistocracy faces substantial criticism from other scholars (Gunn <span>2019</span>; Moraro <span>2018</span>). They contend that it is not only incompatible with the democratic framework because of its failure to recognize citizens as equals but also the cause of rather than the solution to democratic distortions (Mouffe <span>2018</span>; Friedman <span>2019</span>). According to this perspective, when citizens lose control over decision-making, they can only expose this democratic failure by supporting anti-establishment movements (Berman <span>2019</span>, <span>2021</span>). The spread of populist movements in both Europe and the United States (Muirhead and Rosenblum <span>2019</span>; Urbinati <span>2019</span>) and their open skepticism toward expertise, which is seen as an expression of elite attempts to curb popular power, confirm this diagnosis.</p><p>Even if we agree that the epistocratic view is incompatible with a democratic framework, this perspective is correct in claiming that current democratic systems need to provide not only procedurally fair but also epistemically sound answers to complex problems for which ordinary citizens do not have the appropriate expertise. While epistocracy might not offer the solution, a populist dismissal of expertise cannot serve as an alternative. A proper normative model of democracy, we thus contend, should rely on experts without undermining the control of citizens. To achieve this aim, it is crucial to delve into and gain a deeper understanding of how expertise can be best integrated into democratic systems while addressing the issue of how to enable ordinary citizens to evaluate and oversee expert claims. In a nutshell, it is necessary to reflect on the division of labor between experts and citizens. As recently highlighted by Moore (<span>2021</span>), there are three primary models for co","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"493-502"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12771","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145102333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>On September 18, 2012, 2 weeks before the country's parliamentary elections, video footage that exposed the sexual humiliation, rape, and torture of male inmates in Georgian prisons provoked outcry in many streets and households of the Republic of Georgia. Following years of harsh political and economic reforms (Gugushvili <span>2017</span>), the videos were a culmination point of the authoritarian practices employed by the governance under then President Mikheil Saakashvili (2004–2013) and his circle of close political allies, who were assembled around the political party called the United National Movement (UNM). Simultaneously, they heralded the beginning of a new political administration that, initially branding itself ‘social democratic’ (Civil.ge 2012), would, as part of its electoral campaign, promise to “restore justice”1 (Austin <span>2018</span>; see also Varney <span>2017</span>). In years to come, then new and now incumbent political party, Georgian Dream (GD) would continuously instrumentalize and abuse this slogan to justify its own authoritarian and violent hold on power<sup>2</sup>.</p><p>At the same time, far from the spotlight of international attention, 18 September 2012 marked a catalyst for the social formation of something else. A wave of anger and excitement went through the small groups of young students who called themselves communist, Marxist, socialist, social democratic, anarchist, and feminist (G3). Most were in their early 20s and studied in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. Similar to the popular slogan of then incoming party GD's, they demanded an alternative political vision of a “more just” future (G17). Less than 1 year had passed since 14 of these students (Barkaia <span>2014</span>, 33, G9) had established a joint collective and left-wing student group called Laboratoria1918 at Tbilisi State University (TSU).3 This group evolved from a small initiative of three students (called Targme, which is Georgian for “translate”) who demanded that the university administration provide students with Georgian translations of basic social science literature (G3 and G6).</p><p>On September 18, 2012, many of the young students took to the streets and angrily recited chants to “destroy the system.” Soon, the protests grew larger, and Laboratoria1918 members assumed “a vanguard role” (Barkaia <span>2014</span>, 63) in cross-group mobilization. Following a “police raid and crackdown on May 1, [Labor Day] 2013, and the subsequent arrests of […] Laboratoria1918 members”, the group fragmented and gradually dissolved until 2014 (G9, via social media exchange, August 2024). More than 10 years have passed since then and the back then young leftists have become adults. How do these former young leftists, who were born around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and in close proximity to these protests, remember the past in terms of (in-)justice? How do these narratives relate to their prefigured imaginaries of justice? What roles
{"title":"Memorializing and Prefiguring (In-)Justices: Perspectives From the 1990s Leftist Generation in Georgia","authors":"Veronika Pfeilschifter","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12768","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12768","url":null,"abstract":"<p>On September 18, 2012, 2 weeks before the country's parliamentary elections, video footage that exposed the sexual humiliation, rape, and torture of male inmates in Georgian prisons provoked outcry in many streets and households of the Republic of Georgia. Following years of harsh political and economic reforms (Gugushvili <span>2017</span>), the videos were a culmination point of the authoritarian practices employed by the governance under then President Mikheil Saakashvili (2004–2013) and his circle of close political allies, who were assembled around the political party called the United National Movement (UNM). Simultaneously, they heralded the beginning of a new political administration that, initially branding itself ‘social democratic’ (Civil.ge 2012), would, as part of its electoral campaign, promise to “restore justice”1 (Austin <span>2018</span>; see also Varney <span>2017</span>). In years to come, then new and now incumbent political party, Georgian Dream (GD) would continuously instrumentalize and abuse this slogan to justify its own authoritarian and violent hold on power<sup>2</sup>.</p><p>At the same time, far from the spotlight of international attention, 18 September 2012 marked a catalyst for the social formation of something else. A wave of anger and excitement went through the small groups of young students who called themselves communist, Marxist, socialist, social democratic, anarchist, and feminist (G3). Most were in their early 20s and studied in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. Similar to the popular slogan of then incoming party GD's, they demanded an alternative political vision of a “more just” future (G17). Less than 1 year had passed since 14 of these students (Barkaia <span>2014</span>, 33, G9) had established a joint collective and left-wing student group called Laboratoria1918 at Tbilisi State University (TSU).3 This group evolved from a small initiative of three students (called Targme, which is Georgian for “translate”) who demanded that the university administration provide students with Georgian translations of basic social science literature (G3 and G6).</p><p>On September 18, 2012, many of the young students took to the streets and angrily recited chants to “destroy the system.” Soon, the protests grew larger, and Laboratoria1918 members assumed “a vanguard role” (Barkaia <span>2014</span>, 63) in cross-group mobilization. Following a “police raid and crackdown on May 1, [Labor Day] 2013, and the subsequent arrests of […] Laboratoria1918 members”, the group fragmented and gradually dissolved until 2014 (G9, via social media exchange, August 2024). More than 10 years have passed since then and the back then young leftists have become adults. How do these former young leftists, who were born around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and in close proximity to these protests, remember the past in terms of (in-)justice? How do these narratives relate to their prefigured imaginaries of justice? What roles","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"527-539"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12768","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145102130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cycles of Oligarchy, Democracy, and Authoritarianism: Lessons from the United States","authors":"Jean L. Cohen","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12769","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 2","pages":"212-231"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144519635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Otto Kirchheimer and militant democracy","authors":"Benjamin A. Schupmann","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12763","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12763","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 1","pages":"3-17"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143581411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The sense of direct action","authors":"Clinton Peter Verdonschot","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12766","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 1","pages":"110-123"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143582083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The year 1776 saw the publication of two of the Enlightenment's landmark texts: Edward Gibbon's multivolume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Adam Smith's multivolume Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Each was the work of an erudite scholar deeply learned in ancient and modern history. Each reflected its author's intimate conversance with the 18th century's leading theories of political economy and moral philosophy. And each in time would launch an intellectual revolution in its particular branch of social science. Yet for all this, the two works also share a further, less well appreciated similarity: both are inquiries into the causes of the decline and demise of nations.
Today we tend to associate this inquiry with Gibbon more than Smith. The Smith we have come to know is a theorist of growth and “the natural progress of opulence” and not a theorist of decline (WN 3.1).1 Yet while his insights into growth undeniably constitute his most recognized contribution to the emergence of modern political economy, reading Smith exclusively as a theorist of growth can lead us to miss the sophistication of his inquiry into the causes of national decline. What follows thus reverses the causal arrow that has led other scholars to read Gibbon by way of Smith's influence (e.g., Pocock, 1999, pp. 309–329, 2003, pp. 372–399), and instead revisits Smith through the lens of Gibbon's key political problem in order to bring to the fore Smith's understudied inquiry into the causes of national decline and fall.
The chief benefit of this reading lies in how it clarifies an underappreciated paradox at the core of Smith's project.2 At the heart of this paradox lies Smith's understanding of the necessary tension between national opulence and national power. Put simply, Smith taught that national opulence is ultimately inimical to national power; the paradox, in short, is that the very growth that political economy seeks to promote ultimately proves counter to the nation's political interests.3 Thus even as “the great object of the political economy of every country, is to increase the riches and power of that country” (WN 2.5.31), Smith repeatedly would argue that the discrete project of increasing a country's riches subverts the discrete project of increasing a country's power. Smith furthermore believed that this paradox was both natural and necessary. This is especially clear in the way he frames the paradox in his lectures on jurisprudence: “it must happen that the improvement of the arts and commerce must make a great declension in the force and power of the republic in all cases” (LJA iv.81; italics added). Or again: “wherever therefore arts and commerce engage the citizens, either as artisans or master tradesmen, the strength and the force of the city must be very much diminished” (LJA iv.85; italics added).
{"title":"Adam Smith's inquiry into the nature and causes of the death of nations","authors":"Ryan Patrick Hanley","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12760","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The year 1776 saw the publication of two of the Enlightenment's landmark texts: Edward Gibbon's multivolume <i>History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i>, and Adam Smith's multivolume <i>Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations</i>. Each was the work of an erudite scholar deeply learned in ancient and modern history. Each reflected its author's intimate conversance with the 18th century's leading theories of political economy and moral philosophy. And each in time would launch an intellectual revolution in its particular branch of social science. Yet for all this, the two works also share a further, less well appreciated similarity: both are inquiries into the causes of the decline and demise of nations.</p><p>Today we tend to associate this inquiry with Gibbon more than Smith. The Smith we have come to know is a theorist of growth and “the natural progress of opulence” and not a theorist of decline (WN 3.1).<sup>1</sup> Yet while his insights into growth undeniably constitute his most recognized contribution to the emergence of modern political economy, reading Smith exclusively as a theorist of growth can lead us to miss the sophistication of his inquiry into the causes of national decline. What follows thus reverses the causal arrow that has led other scholars to read Gibbon by way of Smith's influence (e.g., Pocock, <span>1999</span>, pp. 309–329, <span>2003</span>, pp. 372–399), and instead revisits Smith through the lens of Gibbon's key political problem in order to bring to the fore Smith's understudied inquiry into the causes of national decline and fall.</p><p>The chief benefit of this reading lies in how it clarifies an underappreciated paradox at the core of Smith's project.<sup>2</sup> At the heart of this paradox lies Smith's understanding of the necessary tension between national opulence and national power. Put simply, Smith taught that national opulence is ultimately inimical to national power; the paradox, in short, is that the very growth that political economy seeks to promote ultimately proves counter to the nation's political interests.<sup>3</sup> Thus even as “the great object of the political economy of every country, is to increase the riches and power of that country” (WN 2.5.31), Smith repeatedly would argue that the discrete project of increasing a country's riches subverts the discrete project of increasing a country's power. Smith furthermore believed that this paradox was both natural and necessary. This is especially clear in the way he frames the paradox in his lectures on jurisprudence: “it <i>must</i> happen that the improvement of the arts and commerce <i>must</i> make a great declension in the force and power of the republic in all cases” (LJA iv.81; italics added). Or again: “wherever therefore arts and commerce engage the citizens, either as artisans or master tradesmen, the strength and the force of the city <i>must</i> be very much diminished” (LJA iv.85; italics added). ","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 1","pages":"184-197"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12760","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143581549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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