Negotiating Space(s): Reframing Political Conflict in Walzer and Lyotard

Abstract

Contemporary theoretical conceptions of political justice, because politics involves the interaction of self-interested human beings on the level of stuff and power, equate justice with the distribution of “goods.” The assumption that there are goods to be distributed “justly,” brings a corollary assumption about the environment in which those goods are distributed. Postmodern, postcolonial, feminist, and other critiques, however, suggest that taking the contents of the political environment for granted, works against our grasping the complexities of establishing and maintaining a just social order. There is, in other words, a need for a careful consideration of the space(s) in which this distribution occurs.KeywordsPolitical PowerLanguage GameSocial MeaningSocial GoodPrimary GoodThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.