Mobilized by Injustice: Criminal Justice Contact, Political Participation and Race

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Bringing hope to crisis: critical thinking, ethical action and social change

This paper departs from this point to consider whether and how crisis thinking contributes to practices of affirmative critique and transformative social action in late-capitalist societies. I argue that different deployments of crisis thinking have different ‘affect-effects’ and consequences for ethical and political practice. Some work to mobilize political action through articulating a politics of fear, assuming that people take most responsibility for the future when they fear the alternatives. Other forms of crisis thinking work to heighten critical awareness by disrupting existential certainty, asserting an ‘ethics of ambiguity’ which assumes that the continuous production of uncertain futures is a fundamental part of the human condition (de Beauvoir, 2000). In this paper, I hope to illustrate that the first deployment of crisis thinking can easily justify the closing down of political debate, discouraging radical experimentation and critique for the sake of resolving problems in a timely and decisive way. The second approach to crisis thinking, on the other hand, has greater potential to enable intellectual and political alterity in everyday life—but one that poses considerable challenges for our understandings of and responses to climate change...

Post-Political Ontologies and the Problems of Anti-Anthropocentrism: Reply to Tsouvalis

Judith Tsouvalis mounts a lively and interesting critique of the post-foundational Left’s theorisations through the marshalling of Latourian insights into the possibilities for a more grounded, pragmatic and concrete approach to political action. Tsouvalis takes Latour’s appropriation of John Dewey’s philosophical pragmatism (classically stated in the 1927 [1954] work, The Public and Its Problems) to argue that problems enable Dingpolitik – object or problem-orientated politics – through assembling concrete plural publics around matters of shared concern and contestation. She counter positions this pragmatic politics of concern, through which new communities of understanding are formed, to the abstract and ‘anthropomorphic’ critiques of the ‘post-political condition’ which offer little in the way of a constructive engagement in the collective making of a better world.

The prostitute and the client : challenging the dualisms

Certain ways of knowing the prostitute and the client predominate. He is understood through the discourse of sexology, she is understood through the discourses of psychology, psychoanalysis, economics and feminism. However, while the prostitute and the client appear to be known through unrelated and diverse discourses, such ways of knowing are organised through the dualisms of sex and gender, victim and agent, mind and body. Moreover, these ways of knowing are directly related to popular discourse, policy and legislation on the topic. This paper examines the relationship between ways of knowing the prostitute and the client, and political action in Australia. it argues that inadequate theoretical conceptualisations are often at the heart of poorly conceived praxis - in this case Australian policy and legislation. This paper will demonstrate that re-thinking the theory can lead to new ways of acting.

Queering cyberspace : fan fiction communities as spaces for expressing and exploring sexuality

The social construction of sexuality over the past one hundred and fifty years has created a dichotomy between heterosexual and non-heterosexual identities that essentially positions the former as “normal” and the latter as deviant. Even Kinsey’s and others’ work on the continuum of sexualities did little to alter the predominantly heterosexist perception of the non-heterosexual as “other” (Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin 2007; Esterberg 2006; Franceour and Noonan 2007). Some political action and academic work is beginning to challenge such perceptions. Even some avenues of social interaction, such as the recent proliferation of online communities, may also challenge such views, or at least contribute to their being rethought in some ways. This chapter explores a specific kind of online community devoted to fan fiction, specifically homoerotic – or what is known colloquially as “slash” – fan fiction. Fan fiction is fiction, published on the internet, and written by fans of well-known books and television shows, using the characters to create new and varied plots. “Slash” refers to the pairing of two of the male characters in a romantic relationship, and the term comes from the punctuation mark dividing the named pair as, for example, Spock/Kirk from the Star Trek television series. Although there are some slash fan-fiction stories devoted to female-female relationships – called “femmeslash” – the term “slash” generally refers to male-male relationships, and will be utilized throughout this chapter, given that the research discussed focuses on communities centered around one such male pairing.

Legal education and the 'idealistic student': using Foucault to unpack the critical legal narrative

It appears that few of the students holding ‘socially idealistic’ goals upon entering law school actually maintain these upon graduation. The critical legal narrative, which explains and seeks to act upon this shift in the graduate’s ‘legal identity’, posits that these ideals are repressed through power relations that create passive receptacles into which professional ideologies can be deposited, in the interests of those advantaged by the social and legal status quo. Using the work of Michel Foucault, this paper unpacks the assumptions underpinning this narrative, particularly its arguments about ideology, power, and the subject. In doing so, it will argue this narrative provides an untenable basis for political action within legal education. By interrogating this narrative, this paper provides a new way of understanding the construction of the legal identity through legal education, and a new basis for political action within law school.

The role of the internet and digital technologies in the struggle for recognition of the forgotten Australians

Our contemporary public sphere has seen the 'emergence of new political rituals, which are concerned with the stains of the past, with self disclosure, and with ways of remembering once taboo and traumatic events' (Misztal, 2005). A recent case of this phenomenon occurred in Australia in 2009 with the apology to the 'Forgotten Australians': a group who suffered abuse and neglect after being removed from their parents – either in Australia or in the UK - and placed in Church and State run institutions in Australia between 1930 and 1970. This campaign for recognition by a profoundly marginalized group coincides with the decade in which the opportunities of Web 2.0 were seen to be diffusing throughout different social groups, and were considered a tool for social inclusion. This paper examines the case of the Forgotten Australians as an opportunity to investigate the role of the internet in cultural trauma and public apology. As such, it adds to recent scholarship on the role of digital web based technologies in commemoration and memorials (Arthur, 2009; Haskins, 2007; Cohen and Willis, 2004), and on digital storytelling in the context of trauma (Klaebe, 2011) by locating their role in a broader and emerging domain of social responsibility and political action (Alexander, 2004).

Panem et circenses : law, law and power in The Hunger Games

Like many cautionary tales, The Hunger Games takes as its major premise an observation about contemporary society, measuring its ballistic arc in order to present graphically its logical conclusions. The Hunger Games gazes back to the panem et circenses of Ancient Rome, staring equally cynically forward, following the trajectory of reality television to its unbearably barbaric end point – a sadistic voyeurism for an effete elite of consumers. At each end of the historical spectrum (and in the present), the prevailing social form is Arendt’s animal laborans. Consumer or consumed, Panem’s population is (with the exception of the inner circle) either deprived of the possibility of, or distracted from, political action. Within the confines of the Games themselves, Law is abandoned or de‐realised: Law – an elided Other in the pseudo‐Hobbesian nightmare that is the Arena. The Games are played out, as were gladiatorial combats and other diversions of the Roman Empire, against a background resonant of Juvenal’s concern for his contemporaries’ attachment to short term gratification at the expense the civic virtues of justice and caring which are (or would be) constitutive of a contemporary form of Arendt’s homo politicus. While the Games are, on their face, ‘reality’ they are (like the realities presented in contemporary reality television) a simulated reality, de‐realised in a Foucauldian set design constructed as a distraction for Capitol, and for the residents of the Districts, a constant reminder of their subservience to Capitol. Yet contemporary Western culture, for which manipulative reality TV is but a symptom of an underlying malaise, is inscribed at least as an incipient Panem, Its public/political space is diminished by the effective slavery of the poor, the pre‐occupation with and distractions of materiality and modern media, and the increasing concentration of power/wealth into a smaller proportion of the population.

ICANN and the concept of democratic deficit

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an institution besieged. It has endeavored to be democratic but its attempts to do so have been disastrous. The typical explanation for this is that the problem is with ICANN: it fails to meet its democratic obligations. My view is that the problem is with our understanding of "democracy." Democracy is an empty concept that fails to describe few, if any, of our genuine political commitments. In the real world, the failings inherent in "democracy" have been papered over by some unusual characteristics of the physical political process. However, in online trans-national institutions like ICANN, democracy is exposed as a poor substitute for a number of other conceptions of our political commitments. This Article seeks to articulate these political commitments and to explain why democracy and ICANN are such a poor mix. It begins by charting the rise of ICANN and its attempts to be democratic. It then explains why democracy is an empty shell of a concept. It then explores some features of democracy and ICANN, explaining why the online world exposes limitations in implications of democracy such as the nature of the demos, the idea of constituencies, direct democracy, voting, and the like. It concludes that ICANN's example demonstrates that democracy is in fact anything but a coherent general theory of political action. We need to consider, then, whether we should continue to berate ICANN for its undemocratic actions.

Intercultural Dialogues in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability : Embedding Indigenous Perspectives

Embedding Indigenous perspectives in early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) upholds social and political action goals that support a holistic approach to promoting sustainability in educational contexts. Such goals should be responsive to particular contexts and their histories to ensure local issues are a focus of sustainability alongside global areas of concern. This chapter explores how intercultural dialogues and priorities foreground broader themes of sustainability that attend to local issues around culture and diversity, and equity in relations between groups of people. Attending to such themes in educational practice unsettles a standard environmental narrative and broadens the scope and potential for ECEfS in early years settings. Strengthening intercultural priorities in ECEfS requires a commitment to reflective practices that attend to the influence of one's cultural background on teaching and learning processes. Educators committed to reflective practices provide even greater capacity for children to act as change agents (Davis, 2008, 2010) around multiple dimensions of sustainability.

Käytännöt ja ajattelu Michel Foucault'n filosofiassa

Practices and Thought in Michel Foucault s Philosophy The present thesis examines Michel Foucault s (1926-1984) notion of practice and argues that it is an essential concept in his philosophy, especially in his analysis of knowledge, power and ethics. The thesis reveals a previously neglected chronological and methodological unity in Foucault s work. The first chapter clarifies Foucault s philosophy by outlining it according to four central themes. First, the main philosophical goal of his historical studies is to analyse how human subjects have become objects of their own thinking. Second, this goal calls for methodological precaution to avoid all anthropological universals. Third, Foucault s studies are directed towards fields of practices. Fourth, the analysis of practices is executed along three axes: knowledge, power and ethics. The second chapter concerns the notion of practice in Foucault s archaeological method. Foucault s archaeological analysis is not directed towards objects and subjects as such, but to the way that the rules of discursive practice form them in the discourse. Many commentators have neglected Foucault s concept of practice when discussing his ideas concerning rules of discourse and limits of knowledge. I argue that Foucault s analysis concerning the limits of knowledge relates to local and contingent rules of discursive practice, not to transcendental rules of thinking in general. The third chapter deals with power relations and practices. I clarify Foucault s concept of dispositif by defining it as a functional ensemble of practices, and argue that this concept is crucial to his understanding of power relations. I stress a conceptual definition, which separates relations of power from the practices of government and show that the latter is based on the idea that power relations are integrated into practices. This conceptual clarification also helps in understanding Foucault s critique concerning modern practices of power. The fourth chapter examines Foucault s way of perceiving ethics as a practice. He separates three essential dimensions in morals: moral codes, moral behaviour and practices of self. His ethics concern practices of self and he studies how these practices have constituted different relations that subjects have to themselves, to others and to their societies. I argue that Foucault s own ethical views can be found in the ideas on the importance of practices of self in the modern world, and emphasize that these ideas should be connected to his views concerning the tradition of the Enlightenment, and to his own political action.

Striving for the Impossible : The Hegelian background of Judith Butler

This study analyses the Hegelian roots of the subject-theory and the political theory of Judith Butler. Butler can be seen as the author of "gender performativity". Butler claims that subject's identities are linquistic "terms". Linquistic identities are performative and normative: they produce, according to cultural rules, the identities which they just claim to describe. Butler's theory of the performativity of identities is based on her theory of identities as "ek-static" constructions. This means that there is a relation between the self and the Other in the heart of identities. It is claimed in this study that Butler's theory of the relation between the self and the Other, or, between the subject and the constitutive outside, is based on G.W.F. Hegel's theory of the dialectics of recognition in The Phenomenology of Spirit. Especially the sections dealing with the relation between "Lord" and "Bondsman" set the theoretical base for Butler's theory. Further, it is claimed that Hegel's own solution for the enslaving and instrumentalizing relation between the self and the Other, reciprocal recognition, remains an important alternative to the postmodernist conception supported by political theorists like Butler. Chapter 2, on Hegel, goes through the dialectics of recognition between the self and the Other in The Phenomenology of Spirit up until the ideal of reciprocal recognition and absolute knowledge. Chapter 3 introduces two French interpretations of Hegel, by Alexandre Kojéve and Louis Althusser. Both of these interpretations, especially the Kojevian one, have deeply influenced the contemporary understanding of Hegel as well as the contemporary thought - presented e.g. in the postmodern political thought - on the relations between the self and the Other. The Kojévian Marxist utopia with its notion of "the End of History" as well as the Althusserian theory of the Interpellative formation of subjects have influenced how Hegel's theory of the self and the Other have travelled into Butler's thought. In chapter 5 these influences are analyzed in detail. According to the analysis, Butler, like numerous other poststructuralist theorists, accepts Kojéve's interpretation as basically correct, but rejects his vision of "the End of History" as static and totalitarian. Kojéve's utopian philosophy of history is replaced by the paradoxical idea of an endless striving towards emancipation which, however, could not and should not be reached. In chapter 6 Butler's theory is linked to another postmodern political theory, that of Chantal Mouffe. It is argued that Mouffe's theory is based on a similar view of the relation of the self and the other as Butler's theory. The former, however, deals explicitly with politics. Therefore, it makes the central paradox of striving for the impossible more visible; such a theory is unable to guide political action. Hegel actually anticipated this kind of theorizing in his critique of "Unhappy Consciousness" in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Keywords: Judith Butler, G.W.F. Hegel, Chantal Mouffe, Alexandre Kojéve, Postmodernism, Politics, Identities, Performativity, Self-consciousness, Other

The Restless Love of Thinking : The Concept Liebe in Hegel's Philosophy

The German philosopher G.W.F.Hegel (1770–1831) is best known for his idealistic system philosophy, his concept of spirit [Geist] and for his dictum that the existing and the rational overlap. This thesis offers a new perspective: it examines the working of the concept ‘love’ in Hegel’s philosophy by looking at the contexts and function he puts it to, from his earliest writings to the very last lectures he gave. The starting point of the inquiry is that he applied the concept Liebe to different contexts for different purposes, but each time to provide an answer to a specific philosophical problem. His formulation, reformulation and use of ‘love’ give possible solutions to problems the solving of which was crucial to the development of his thought as a whole. The study is divided into three parts, each analysing the different problems and solutions to which Hegel applied the concept of love. The first part, "Love, morality and ethical life", examines these interconnected themes in Hegel’s early work. The main questions he addressed during this period concerned how to unite Kant’s philosophy and the Greek ideal of the good life. In this context, the concept ‘love’ did three things. First, it served to formulate his grounding idea of the relation between unity and difference, or the manifold. Secondly, it was the key to his attempt to base an ideal folk religion on Christianity interpreted as a religion of love. Finally, it provided the means to criticise Kant’s moral philosophy. The question of the moral value of love helped Hegel to break away from Kant’s thought and develop his own theory about love and ethical life. The second part of the study, "Love and the political realm", considers the way 'Liebe' functions in connection with questions concerning the community and political life in Hegel’s work. In addition to questioning the universal applicability of the concept of recognition as a key to his theory of social relations, the chapters focus on gender politics and the way he conceptualised the gender category ‘woman’ through the concept ‘love’. Another line of inquiry is the way the figure of Antigone was used to conceptualise the differentiated spheres of action for men and women, and the part ‘love’ played in Hegel’s description of Antigone’s motives. Thirdly, Hegel’s analogy of the family and the state and the way ‘love’ functions in an attempt to promote understanding of the relation between citizens and the state are examined. The third and final part of the study, "Love as absolute spirit", focuses on ‘love’ within Hegel’s systemic thought and the way he continued to characterise Geist through the language of Liebe up until and including his very last works. It is shown how Liebe functions in his hierarchical organisation of the domains of art, religion and philosophy, and how both art and religion end up in similar structural positions with regard to philosophy. One recurrent theme in the third part is Hegel’s complex relation to Romantic thought. Another line of investigation is how he reconstructed Christianity as a religion of love in his mature work. In striking contrast to his early thought, in his last works Hegel introduced a new concept of love that incorporated negativity, and that could also function as the root of political action.

Book Review: "Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert, Being Digital Citizens. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015"

The concept of digital citizenship has become increasingly important to our understanding of the relationship between media and political action, and the possibilities for democratization, decentralization, and diversification of power offered by the Internet. In the era of the digitalization of just about everything, citizenship and its related concepts are in processes of technology-driven transformation, with important implications for the global future of democratic culture. Isin and Ruppert’s book is a timely engagement with these questions, and with the emerging notion of the “digital subject.”