Political Orthodoxy Research Articles

Answering populist attacks on psychosocial ideas: why Fromm matters more than Marcuse

The reactionary American intellectual Christopher Rufo has made German critical theorist Herbert Marcuse the centre of his campaign to purge the American academy of radical ideas and movements. Marcuse’s ideas have significant influence in contemporary psychosocial scholarship, so attacks on his work may have negative consequences for psychosocial scholars. Rufo’s critique of the influence of Marcuse’s ideas is mostly exaggerated but it contains elements of truth. This article will outline ways in which some of Marcuse’s ideas are echoed in elements of the contemporary left/liberal intellectual and political orthodoxy. We revisit the Fromm/Marcuse debate from the 1950s, and offer an analysis of why Rufo might have picked Marcuse for attack when Fromm might well have been a viable target, as Fromm was in the 1980s when he was famously scapegoated by Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind (1987). I then offer an analysis of how Erich Fromm’s alternative psychosocial radicalism can help better defend the psychosocial perspective in mass politics than Marcuse’s framework. Fromm’s framework also offer a theoretical foundation for radical psychosocial studies that can help our field defend itself against the new McCarthyism of Rufo and his allies on the global right who are likely to attack radical psychosocial perspectives in the near future.

“We can't be too saintly”: Why members of parliament in the United Kingdom are reluctant to lead by example with low-carbon behaviour

Low-carbon behaviour change from individuals is both essential for meeting climate change targets and highly politically contentious. Shifting away from activities such as flying, driving and meat eating can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, yet political leaders have avoided introducing policies to stimulate this for fear of alienating voters and confronting political orthodoxies. This article examines low-carbon behaviour change through the novel lens of individual leadership and leading by example. Applying threories of credibility enhancing displays (CREDs) and embodied leadership, we present evidence from 19 interviews with UK members of parliament (MPs), exploring how they think leading by example may affect their credibility as democratic representatives. We find that MPs believe leading by example is important as a general principle but is problematic when it comes to low-carbon behaviour. While some MPs do deliberately model sustainable behaviours to maintain credibility as climate advocates, they tend to do this quietly for fear of negative reactions from the media, political rivals, and constituents. MPs say modelling low-carbon behaviour may be perceived as a threat to individual freedoms, such as flying for holidays, and risks disapproval from local business interests related to high-carbon activities, such as car manufacturers or the airline industry. Even pro-climate MPs tend to frame low-carbon behaviour as “extreme”, and position themselves in contrast to this extreme, thus perpetuating social and moral norms of high-carbon behaviour. We discuss how individual politicians form part of a systemic resistance to low-carbon behaviour change.

Book Censorship in Public Schools: Examining Florida HB 1467 (2022)

Several pieces of legislation have sprung up in recent years in Florida aiming to restrict public school library books and curricular materials. Notably, this coincides with other state legislative moves to restrict what students read and learn in school with partisan purposes. Library associations have reported that nationally, removed books disproportionately contain LGBTQ and racial minority themes. One law at the heart of these restrictions, Florida HB 1467 (2022), empowers community members to challenge and remove public school books and adds bureaucratic obstacles to the access of previously allowable materials. The vague and broad language of the Florida law leads to erratic application by school districts across the state, resulting in the suppression of protected speech. This article examines a key constitutional tension: Under what circumstances does the students’ right to receive information under the First Amendment outweigh school officials’ authority, and, by extension, parental authority over local education under the Tenth Amendment? The U.S. Supreme Court in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982) offers one answer, holding that political orthodoxy is an unacceptable rationale for removal, but pervasive vulgarity and educational unsuitability are acceptable. These three standards are useful, yet entangle in ways Pico is not fully suited to address. This article argues HB 1467 (2022) is unconstitutional under the political orthodoxy Pico standard, strict scrutiny analysis of content-based regulations, and the vagueness and overbreadth doctrines of the 1st Amendment.

Isaac Breuer's Antiliberal Neo-Kantianism and the Politicization of Jewish Ultra-Orthodoxy

This article centers on the early writings of Isaac Breuer (1910–17), arguing that Breuer's radicalization of neo-Kantianism anchors his revolutionary call to politicize Jewish Orthodoxy. Moreover, it contends that neo-Kantianism, which is normally associated with liberal or social-democratic politics, was given a thoroughly antiliberal reading by Breuer that led to an antiliberal Orthodox politics. While the rise of non-Zionist political Orthodoxy is often regarded as an obsolete traditionalism unattuned to the nature of mass politics, Breuer's politicization of Orthodoxy reveals a coherent antiliberal political theory that addresses the aporias of the democratic age. Breuer uses neo-Kantianism to develop an anti-Weberian “science of politics” which attempts to overcome the modern plurality of values by positing Judaism as coercive public morality. Reading Breuer's Jewish writings through the lens of his quarrels with Weber, Stammler, and Cohen, this article explores Breuer's attempt to overcome the association of Kantian morality with liberalism, by legitimizing coercion politically, philosophically, and theologically. This enabled Breuer to criticize apolitical forms of Jewish Orthodoxy, Zionist programs to politicize Judaism, and democratic politics more generally.

Crafting Utopias for Spiritual Nationhood: Digested India in Contemporary Self-cultivation Practices in China

ABSTRACT This study examines how India – both as a modern nation-state and a symbolic geography – is digested by Chinese self-cultivators to negotiate their belonging in China’s spiritual nationhood, defined as the landscape of belief that corresponds to the geo-body of the nation-state. It follows the practitioners of Oneness (Heyi), one of the most popular Indian new religious movements in China today, for whom such negotiations are riddled with tensions. While Oneness practitioners align themselves with political orthodoxy disseminated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), emphasizing China’s special role as a spiritual leader for humanity, they engage in quasi-religious heterodox practices, risking being labeled an “evil cult” (xie jiao). These frictions occur at the junction of two contrasting notions of spiritual nationhood, one derived from lingxing (spirituality) and the other from jingshen, a secularized notion of spirit that situates the CCP as the sacred center of the polity.

The Andrews government and the rise of Rentier capitalism in Victoria

ABSTRACT On 26 November 2022 the Andrews Labor Government was re-elected for a third term in the State of Victoria. The starting point for this paper is its decision during the pandemic to seemingly break with neoliberal political orthodoxy, by boldly and deliberately leveraging the state’s balance sheet to avoid recession, using debt-funded record levels of spending, particularly on infrastructure, as a means of doing so. The paper argues that in decisively embracing a neo-Keynesian budget strategy, the Andrews government did not actually break with the recent neoliberal past. It turbo charged it, with the dramatical increase in debt-funded spending being used to finance a massive expansion of an intricate network of private monopoly contractors operating everything from ports, tollways and public transport, to policy advice, jails and road maintenance. The paper concludes that over the last four decades of policy reform, Victoria has been transformed into a ‘Rentier State’.

Marxist Realism: Kobayashi Takiji and the Politics of Representation

This paper explores the cross-cultural dynamics and contradictions that surface when attempting to apply the universal claims of Marxist literary aesthetics to the particular case of a non-Western national tradition. More specifically, the key work of 1930s proletarian writer, Kobayashi Takiji (“The Factory Ship”) and his mentoring relationship to Marxist critic, Kurahara Korehito, will be analyzed by examining the tensions in trying to remain faithful to the universal, international claims of global Marxism, while also respecting Japanese historical and cultural particulars and conditions. Broadly speaking, the issues that surface in the Kobayashi/Kurahara relationship reflect inherent difficulties in maintaining metanarrative dimension of orthodox Marxism that belies its Western framework regarding world historical movements. The tension between the universal and particular poles of Marxism’s global vs Japanese context also frames parallel tension between the literary/aesthetic realm of art and its political content; remaining true to the former may bracket the assumed-to-be applicable state of the latter. In short, the question of the viability of a particular work of fiction’s realism (namely, its literariness) vs its fidelity to political orthodoxy, often articulated in terms of its form versus content. Finally, this tension between the universal global and particular national culture setting of Marxist literature and Marxist politics also may indicate a tension inherent within the revolutionary ambitions of idealist philosophy, namely Hegelianism. Stated differently, is Marxist philosophy itself a work of art/fiction – the utopic impulse of the classless society and worldwide revolution – at odds with the realities of specific historical and cultural conditions ‘on the ground’?

Messianic Failure: Angolan Literature, Magical Realism, and the Form of Critique

This article reads the turn toward the fantastic and the supernatural in postindependence Angolan literature as a critical registration of the trajectory of neoliberal politics in the country. After positing a homology between the corruption of "ideal-type" realism in 1960s Latin America and similar experiments in post-independence Angola, I argue that the fiction of Ndalu de Almeida (Ondjaki) should be understood as a continuation of the social commitment of earlier Angolan writers, as it deploys a set of non-realist aesthetic devices in order to challenge the entrenchment of political orthodoxies in the post-socialist Angolan state. To this end, I offer a reading of Ondjaki's 2012 novel Os Transparentes, which marks a rupture in the author's own intellectual development while also dovetailing with the recent wave of anti-governmental protests in Angola. Although the central fantastical motif of the novel—a man who is in the process of becoming transparent—has been read by critics as a critique of social inequality and kleptocratic governance, I suggest that it should rather be understood as an ambivalent registration of the encroaching feelings of disillusionment precipitated by the onset of Angola's neoliberal era. With reference to Jacques Lacan's concept of "the act," I read this ambivalence as a specifically ethical dilemma and draw attention to problems of communication and narrative in radical political movements.

Gaming Protest

This article mobilises critical theory concerning the “gaming” of political systems and investigates how that theory corresponds to the contemporary moment when, supported by the ease of communication and organisation that social media offers, protest has become a ubiquitous part of the debate and performance of political systems - at least, in countries where protest is not violently quashed or outlawed. By proposing that right wing economic elites and political outliers have begun to mobilise protest to disrupt the stability and authority of de jure power while simultaneously consolidating their de facto power, this article makes the case that a “gaming” of protest is increasingly in effect within populist political orthodoxies. Drawing on the Trump administration’s ‘Save America’ rally, which immediately preceded the US Capitol riot of 6 January 2021, this example of gamed protest highlights how the symbolic power of protest can be activated to exacerbate perceived threats to entrenched national narratives such as “the American Dream”, while further elevating the sense that the economic elites who encouraged this protest are somehow disenfranchised. Although operating within siloed spheres and echo chambers, such acts still pose dangerous real world consequences as well as increase disillusionment within political economies.

Women of the Left, Patriotism, and National Identity, 1914-28.

The literature on the role of women in the First World War, and the war's effect on gender roles, considers conservative and socialist feminism, the expansion of the franchise in 1918 and 1928, and state welfare policies. However, there has been less work on the women of the Left who participated in the war effort, and who used nationalism to push for socialist and feminist objectives. These women have been understudied for various reasons: as women, they were often disregarded by military and political historians, and as enablers a conflict they have usually been overlooked by historians of gender and of the Left. This article is concerned with these women, and examines the extent, nature and significance of their participation within the war effort and their use of nationalism to advance socialist and feminist objectives. It analyses how their actions during the conflict affected the gender, class and political frameworks of the time, both in the lead-up to the Representation of the People Act 1918, and in the first years of female enfranchisement. Based on extensive use of the files of the War, Emergency: Workers' National Committee and on the publications of the labour and co-operative movements, it argues that a substantial section of the female labour movement articulated a sense of British nationalism in the years during and after the First World War, utilized this to advance their political, economic, and feminist objectives, and in doing so challenged political orthodoxy and prevailing gender roles.

The Challenge of Religious Governance in the Modern Nation-State

Abstract This article explores the tensions of Islamic governance in contemporary Iran by examining the convergence of Islamic law with modern practices of governance. One key contention with contemporary statehood this political project is trying to reconcile is how to re-embed religious norms in the secularized political sphere. I assert that the political and legal practices for re-embedding these norms indicate an epistemic shift in the modes of legitimation within Muslim political and legal tradition possibly leading to the formation of a new Islamic political orthodoxy. This exploration is based on information from ethnographic interviews conducted with the former President of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1989–1997), the late Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and former Minister of Radio and Television (1981–1994) and the current member of the Expediency Council, Muhammad Rafsanjani. The article bases its argument by analyzing two variant forms of political practice. First, scrutinizing the fatwas of Ayatollah Khomeini that played a crucial role in influencing policy in the first decade of the Islamic Republic. Second, examining the adjudications of a conciliar governmental body (Majma-e Tashkhis-e Maslahat) formed a decade after the revolution to resolve the tensions associated with the implementation of Islamic law in this modern nation-state.

Silent Accord: Qi 契 as a Metaphor for Enlightenment and Transmission in Chan Buddhist Discourse

In this paper, we explore the historical background and the semantic underpinnings of a central, if marginally treated, metaphor of enlightenment and transmission in Chan discourse, “silent accord” 默契. It features centrally in Essentials of the Transmission of Mind 傳心法要, a text that gathers the teachings of Chan master Huangbo Xiyun (d. ca. 850), a major Tang dynasty figure. “Silent accord” is related to the concept of mind-to-mind transmission, which lies at the very core of Chan Buddhist self-understanding. However, Chan historiography has shown that this self-understanding was partially a product of the Song dynasty lineage records, historically retroactive syncretic constructs produced by monks and literati as efforts towards doctrinal and political recognition and orthodoxy. There are thus lacunae in the history of Chan thought opened up by the retrospective fictions of Song dynasty, and a lack of reliable, dateable documents from the preceding Tang dynasty era, possibly fraught with later additions. We situate the metaphor “silent accord” in the history of Chan thought by searching for its origins, mapping its functions in Chan literature, arguing for its influence and thereby its role in helping to bridge the ninth century gap.

Max Scheler on Fyodor Dostoevsky's Political Orthodoxy and Russian Love for Suffering

The article is an introduction to the first Russian translation of Max Scheler's essay “On Eastern and Western Christianity”, which was published in the collection of articles “War and Reconstruction” (1916) and thus forms part of Scheler's war philosophy. The article presents the polemical context of this essay and establishes a connection with Scheler's axiology and phenomenology as well. Particular attention is paid to the reception of F.M. Dostoevsky among German intellectuals of the early 20th century and the influence of this reception on Scheler's understanding of the ideas of salvation and suffering in the Eastern Church.

Византийская политическая и религиозная ортодоксия в цивилизационной теории Исаака Ньютона

Византийская политическая и религиозная ортодоксия в цивилизационной теории Исаака Ньютона

Warning signs: Postcolonial writing and the apprehension of Brexit

ABSTRACT This article considers how postcolonial fiction anticipated, apprehended, and critically explored the political and cultural milieu which facilitated the outcome of the 2016 European Union (EU) referendum. In suggesting that “Brexit Literature” existed before Brexit was formally pursued, it understands Brexit as driving an English nationalism that unnervingly appropriates the history of the British Empire and World War II. It uncovers the representation of these manoeuvres in a number of key texts. Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore both logs and challenges the malevolent imagining of newcomers that has deep roots in notions of war and empire. Zadie Smith’s NW represents post-crash austerity as proleptically exposing the complex politics of race and class which fuelled the pro-Brexit populism that lies latent in the novel. Ultimately, the article calls for a post-Brexit postcolonialism that harnesses the power of critical thought to continue the long-standing contestation of the prevailing political orthodoxy.

Women's Education and the Rise of Political Orthodoxy

Women's Education and the Rise of Political Orthodoxy

Women's Education and the Rise of Political Orthodoxy

Women's Education and the Rise of Political Orthodoxy

Political Orthodoxies: The Unorthodoxies of the Church Coerced by Cyril Hovorun

Political Orthodoxies: The Unorthodoxies of the Church Coerced by Cyril Hovorun

Qualche osservazione in merito al “disinteresse” di Abū Ḥāmid al-Ġazālī (1058-1111) per il “piccolo ǧihād”

Abstract This paper tries to single out the reasons of al-Ġazālī’s lack of interest in the “lesser ǧihād”, military action. In Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn he maintains – according to the Sunna of the Prophet – the superiority of the “greater ǧihād”, the effort upon oneself for moral and religious improvement. By asserting the “golden mean” even on this occasion, he does not consider military action to be condemned, not even after having embraced the mystic path, but he postulates a hierarchy of values based on an esoteric reading of Q 4:95. Al-Ġazālī’s Sufi option is put in context: he writes Iḥyāʾ during the sultanate of Barkyārūq. Though he has “left the world”, he does not cease to consider himself as a muǧaddid and a ‘ālim ḫāṣṣ who should safeguard and promote political and social orthodoxy first and theological orthodoxy later. However, his šafiʿi commitment to this regard allows some exceptions linked to his position as a “courtier” in Iranian area and to the idea of power developed in the Eastern regions. Against al-Māwardī, he claims the ǧihād to be the sultan’s task, not the caliph’s. By refraining from sanctioning the Seljuk military action, al-Ġazālī hopes to preserve, though merely in a symbolical way, the caliph institution, without questioning the fragmentation of the real power. The safety of the umma appears to be secured only until the Eastern regions do not collapse.

The Slow Reception of Marcel Gauchet

The work of Marcel Gauchet remains little known in the academic world outside France. This delay can be seen as an illustration of the power of “French theory” over the reception of new works in the academic world. In the existing discussion, Gauchet’s thought has been framed as a new expression of political liberalism, and hence as a return to political orthodoxy, after the radicalism of the thought of the 1960s. This characterization is likely to have had a discouraging effect on readers marked by “the thought of 68”. In fact, Gauchet’s work is an analysis of the genesis and operative conditions of liberal society, rather than an advocacy of liberal ideology. The key claim is that contemporary liberal democracy can only be understood if it is seen in the long term historical perspective, as an alternative to the religious structuration that has historically shaped collective existence. The opposition of religious and modern society is based on a reflection on the constitution of what Gauchet calls “l’etre-ensemble” (being-together, collective-being). A more intensive reception and discussion of his work will need to engage with the problem of the translation of this and a set of related terms (le champ humain-social, l’espace social etc.) signalling the same problematic. The translation of these terms is key to an engagement with Gauchet’s historical projection since they carry the underlying philosophical reflection on the conditions of collective existence which allows the recasting of the question of modernity in primarily social and political terms.