Political Subjects Research Articles

Revisiting Badiou's Theory of the Political Subject

Abstract This article argues that Alain Badiou's theory of the subject offers conceptual resources that help make sense of ordinary life-experiences of ‘evental moments’ and enable the critique of hypertrophic forms of political or corporate agency. The article identifies a set of ideas through which Badiou's philosophy contributes to much-needed emancipatory thinking today. As it investigates the notions of horlieu and the event, the article stresses that true political change requires the emancipation of the ‘quasi-totality’, something that ‘reactive’ political or corporate subjects would not be able to deliver. The piece emphasises that, for Badiou, universalist equality is the indispensable game-changer of politics, and that every single person can contribute to genuinely egalitarian projects. In Badiou's view, there are no meta-subjects and meta-events. Everyone can experience truth in their lives.

CLIMATE SUBJECTIVITY: YOUTH, INNOCENCE AND WILLFULNESS IN THE SWEDISH CLIMATE MOVEMENT

This article explores the changing notions of political subjectivity in the climate movement in the Global North. Previously, activists have embraced climate justice ideals, assigning responsibility to the Global North and emphasizing solidarity with the Global South. However, a new parallel subject position is gaining prominence within the movement: "the child." Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the article analyzes interpretations of the child within the movement, examining the association of this subject position with innocence and the right to protection. Youth activists, addressed as children, grapple with this identity, navigating between embracing and feeling constrained by it. This child identity leads to an alternative subjectivity that resonates with the notion of "the willful child." This article reflects on the potential and limitations of these child subjectivities, shedding light on the dynamics of political subject formation in the face of the climate crisis and in social movements in general. It highlights how adopting the child identity can empower and restrict youth activists in their efforts to advocate for climate action.

Excluding through inclusion: managerial practices in the era of multistakeholder governance

Managerial practices underpin most global policy agendas. Existing research shows how these practices have reshaped the public sector, facilitated the marketization of problems, and altered organizational structures. This article highlights that managerial practices are also a central driver of political marginalization. When incorporated into multistakeholder processes, managerial practices engender two exclusionary processes: the accommodation of dissent and the uniformization of political subjects. They do so by making consensus an organizational goal and by treating politics as a marketplace. Through an examination of the United Nations Food Systems Summit, the article shows how, within multistakeholder models, managerialism sidelines critical voices by invoking ideals of openness, spontaneity, and the absence of rule, rather than traditional principles of ‘command and control’. Additionally, it unpacks the novel roles assumed by private consultancy firms, which are nowadays not only tasked with implementing weighty bureaucratic reforms but are also increasingly involved in ‘optimizing’ political struggles and shaping debates on how societies ought to be governed.

Pedagogías de la memoria para usos educativos del pasado en Iberoamérica: Estado de la cuestión

The following text presents a state of the art of the field known in Ibero-America as “pedagogies of memory”, with the aim of highlighting some of the pedagogical and educational features involved in the work on social memory, drawing attention to the risks of abuse of the past and questioning the idea that memory is in itself liberating. The article is based on an analysis of academic publications produced in Ibero-American countries that have suffered violent and traumatic events in their recent past, such as Spain, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Brazil, among others. The results reveal interesting contributions in relation to the pedagogical perspectives and educational aims of the pedagogies of memory in the context analysed. Regarding pedagogical perspectives, critical pedagogy, social constructivism and an approach to the philosophy of education known as anamnetic narrative stand out. The educational aims include the teaching of recent history as a condition for learning about events that must not be repeated, citizenship training in human rights, and the formation of political subjectivities based on the principle of alterity. It is concluded that, despite the wealth of experiences in the works analysed, the field of pedagogies of memory is still developing and there are many precautions that we need to take in order to make use of the past for educational and emancipatory purposes.

Efter det kritiske subjekt

The article revisits the question of the critical subject through a reading of Jacques Rancière and Fred Moten. It starts out by giving an account of a longer historical trajectory where the notions of critique and revolution have run into the ground. David Scott’s nuanced analysis of the shift from an anticolonial romantic revolutionary perspective to a tragic postcolonial stance is both affirmed and challenged. Affirmed in so far as Scott’s analysis is embedded in a broader historical context, challenged by the presentation of two attempts to think the notion of a critical subject after the disappearance of a previous notion of an antisystemic subject. The second half of the article is a discussion of Rancière’s notion of a political subjectivation that is not based on pre-existing identities but is a break with the logic of a functionalist society. Followed by a discussion of Moten’s concept of Blackness that follows the Afro-Pessimist reading of the radical dispossession of Blacks but turn it into a possibility for a different kind of community.

Fascism in the public sphere of post-fascist Italy

ABSTRACT Over the entire post-war period up to the present day, the endurance of fascism has remained a significant subject of Italian politics. The neo-fascist party, Movimento Sociale Italiano (M.S.I.), was born immediately after the Second World War. Furthermore, the transition to the Republic coexisted with structural continuity with the dictatorship: many elements of the fascist state, such as the administrative institutions, the central bureaucracy and the economic ruling class, were maintained. Alongside concrete (both political and institutional) continuities, we can also observe diverse continuities that marked cultures, languages, and political discourses. The shadow of fascism has often invaded the public sphere in ways that condition the political debate and cultural imaginary. Firstly, for all the democratic and progressive parties and movements Mussolini’s dictatorship has been a constant negative reference point from which they openly distance themselves. Secondly, the spectre of fascism has always been evoked in the political debate with respect to the present and to warn against the return of authoritarianism in new forms. Thirdly, many periodicals, novels, films, comics, and television programmes have trivialized the historical experience of Italian fascism, representing it, through recurrent narrative clichés, as a sort of phenomenon only partially corresponding to historical reality.

Effects of intellectual humility in the context of affective polarization: Approaching and avoiding others in controversial political discussions.

Affective polarization, the extent to which political actors treat each other as disliked outgroups, is challenging political exchange and deliberation, for example, via mistrust of the "political enemy" and unwillingness to discuss political topics with them. The present experiments address this problem and study what makes people approach, and not avoid, potential discussion partners in the context of polarized political topics in Germany. We hypothesized that intellectual humility, the recognition of one's intellectual limitations, would predict both less affective polarization and higher approach and lower avoidance tendencies toward contrary-minded others. Across four preregistered online-survey experiments (N = 1,668), we manipulated how intellectually humble a target person was perceived and measured participants' self-reported (topic-specific) intellectual humility. Results revealed that participants' intellectual humility was consistently negatively correlated with affective polarization. Additionally, intellectual humility of both the target person and the participants was beneficial, and sometimes even necessary, to make participants approach, and not avoid, the target person. Intellectual humility was more important than moral conviction, opinion, and opinion strength. Furthermore, the effects on approach and avoidance were mediated by more positive expectations regarding the debate, and the effects on future willingness for contact by higher target liking. Our findings suggest that intellectual humility is an important characteristic to enable political exchange as it leads to seeing political outgroups more positively and to a higher willingness to engage in intergroup contact. Implications for intergroup contact of political groups as well as ideas for future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Revisiting ‘ethnographic monitoring’ as a force for democratisation and social impact in adult literacy and language learning

ABSTRACT We document and reflect on the use of ‘ethnographic monitoring’ (Hymes, Dell. 1980a. “Ethnographic Monitoring.” In Language in Education: Ethnolinguistic Essays, edited by Dell Hymes. Washington, DC: Centre for Applied Linguistics) and its deployment for democratisation and social impact within our project Unlock. In Unlock we study the literacy and language learning trajectories of adult Dutch-as-L2 learners in and outside school. The ‘monitoring’ is a collaborative process of researching, co-creating and implementing learning practices together with practitioners and learners. We describe how we situated these practices within an ‘empowering academic collaborative centre’ as a platform for sharing experiences and emerging knowledges amongst academic and non-academic experts. Furthermore, we engage with more recent calls to substantiate participatory research on language in social life in terms of citizen science/sociolinguistics (i.a. Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee. 2016. “Beyond Empowerment: Accompaniment and Sociolinguistic Justice in a Youth Research Program.” In Sociolinguistic Research: Application and Impact, edited by Robert Lawson, and Dave Sayers. London: Routledge; Rymes, Betsy. 2020. How we Talk About Language: Exploring Citizen Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Svendsen, Bente Ailin. 2018. “The Dynamics of Citizen sociolinguistics.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 22: 137–160. doi:10.1111/josl.12276), linguistic citizenship (i.a. Rampton, Ben, Mel Cooke, and Sam Holmes. 2018. “Sociolinguistic Citizenship.” Journal of Social Science Education 17: 68–83; Williams, Quentin E., and Christopher Stroud. 2015. “Language & Citizenship.” Journal of Language and Politics 14: 406–430. doi:10.1075/jlp.14.3.05wil), and ‘pedagogic subjectivation’ (i.a. Simons, M. and Masschelein, J. (2010). “Governmental, Political and Pedagogic Subjectivation: Foucault with Rancière.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 42(5–6): 588–605) to question the possibilities and limitations of our approach. Based on our experience with different collaborative platforms, we argue ethnographic engagement with learners and practitioners has democratic potential. Combined with curated moments of reflection and deliberation, it enables co-analysing insights and negotiating the research process. Arguably, this trajectory can be an avenue towards treating the citizen as a scientist and hold potential for the citizen-scientist to be treated as political subject.

„The Black Box" by George Stocking

Three years before his death on July 13, 2013, George William Stocking, widely regarded as the discipline's "greatest historian of anthropology," wrote an autobiography and memoir entitled Glimpses into My Own Black Box: An Exercise in Self-Deconstruction(2010). The book was published as part of the famous History of Anthropology (HOA) edition, which Stocking started at The University of Wisconsin Press (1983) and edited for two decades. This paper is based on the understanding of the American theoretician of autobiography, William Howarth, who posited that autobiography in literary (and scientific) writing is akin to what self-portrait is in painting. In the introductory chapter of the work, biographical data are presented that bring the character and work of George William Stocking closer to the domestic, Serbian readership (his second marriage to the sociologist Carol Bowman; their stays in Yugoslavia). This is followed by a description of the two main phases in Stocking's life and work: the formative period in his intellectual development and the mature age, known as the "Chicago years", spent in the Departments of History and Anthropology. Bearing in mind the main elements of the autobiographical strategy – character/self-portrait, technique (rhetoric and writing style), and the theme presented by the author's work-text – Stocking's book thematizes the life story, professional and scientific history (history of anthropology) from the position of both a witness and the one of the creators of written histories of the discipline and biographies of its practitioners and theorists. His writing technique is characterized by self-reflection and scientifically argued discussions on anthropological, historical and political topics and problems. Despite the significant influence his writing and edition of the HOA has had in anthropology, social sciences and humanities, the autobiographer problematizes his relationship to the two disciplines that shaped him as a scientist, highlighting his ambivalent position within them. In spite of the objective indicators of professional success, such as prestigious recognitions, awards, a secure position at the University and the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a comfortable civic life filled with trips, conferences and guest appearances at important American and British scientific research institutions, the subjective experience of "double non-belonging" or rather, liminality, is the leitmotif that colors his self-portrait and the meaning of the text as a whole. The main features of the work, such as its discursive style of narration and description, striving for objectivity and honesty (self-disclosure and „self-deconstruction“), anxiety regarding one's own place, role and importance in science, as well as, at times, a resigned or elegiac tone, especially at the end of the book, i.e. towards the end of his life, provide the basis to include Stocking's strategy in a hybrid type with elements of those two categories that Howarth calls "rhetorical" and "poetic" confession.

From postmigrant articulations to political subjectification

ABSTRACT This article deals with the articulations of generations whose parents and/or grandparents immigrated to Austria and Germany and who have been termed postmigrants. After setting out the theoretical background, it explores three concepts: firstly, the interpretations of migration, integration, Islam and Muslims in German-speaking countries and the role these discourses play in current debates; secondly, the postmigrant perspective, which is central to the present research question; and thirdly, Rancière’s reflections on politics and whether the articulations of postmigrants constitute dissent or counter-hegemony. Next, it presents and analyses specific articulations by postmigrants against the background of the theory. As the results of the study show, members of the postmuslim generation face discrimination, racism and socially produced non-belonging in various areas of society. However, they do not, I contend, allow themselves to be forced into a victim role, instead taking varied and proactive approaches to their experiences, and taking a stand.

Exploring political topics that connect to antisemitism on Twitter: U.S. midterm Pennsylvania gubernatorial race 2022

Online antisemitism rears its head during times of political instability, especially during contentious elections. This paper uses the 2022 Pennsylvania Gubernational governor race as a case study to examine what political topics spur antisemitic expression on Twitter. Both rich political and antisemitism discourses are offered by this election that featured a Jewish Democrat candidate Josh Shapiro and far-right Republican candidate Doug Mastriano. Over 800 tweets were qualitatively analyzed through critical discourse analysis to understand both Shapiro’s political tweets and the antisemitic reply tweets. This study addresses the gap of what online political contexts leads to instances of antisemitism on Twitter during political elections. Grounded in antisemitism and political propaganda literature, this study shows that particularly controversial topics of abortion rights and extremism in politics led to the highest amount of antisemitic expression. Dominantly, Jewish political control conspiracies were used as simple explanations for particularly turbulent political topics.

Queer theory, sex work and the European Union: on the constitutive exclusion of sex work from the European Union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual policies

Queer theory, sex work and the European Union: on the constitutive exclusion of sex work from the European Union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual policies

Tacitus for the instruction of ambassadors: Vera’s Enbaxador (1620)

ABSTRACT Juan de Vera’s El Enbaxador (1620) was one of the main treatises on the role of the ambassador in Early Modern Europe and the first one published in Spanish. At the time, Spain was no exception to the influence of Tacitus as a significant ancient author to inspire the political practice of the age. Juan de Vera, a nobleman and writer, soon an ambassador and entitled count, incorporated his own reading of Tacitus into El Enbaxador. Justus Lipsius, the outstanding editor of Tacitus’ works, was also a main source for this book which was defined by John Elliott as a ‘quintessentially Lipsian handbook for diplomats’. The focus of this article is on Tacitus’ citations in El Enbaxador and their contexts within the book. My aim is to identify the specific themes for which Tacitus served as an exemplary source of guidance according to this particular text. Notably, some of such themes pertain to ambassadorial affairs, while others are common political topics in Early Modern Europe. Vera's reading of Tacitus in El Enbaxador gained wider dissemination beyond Spain as the work was subsequently translated into French and Italian.

Multi-layered encounters between Reclaim the City and the Cape Town municipality

ABSTRACT Processes of gentrification challenge the right to adequate housing in Cape Town. Citizens cannot afford the rising cost of living, and once again the most vulnerable groups in society are affected by evictions. The social movement Reclaim the City (RTC) emerged in 2017 to demand social and affordable housing in the inner circle of Cape Town. RTC is supported by the non-governmental organization Ndifuna Ukwazi. Using an actor-centred approach, the article analyses interactions between RTC and the municipality. By focusing on multi-layered encounters, it unpacks the complexity and ambivalence of these relations between resistance and cooperation. While approaches from social movement studies are used to show the complexity of the relationship between a movement and the state, the article highlights the role of learning processes and political subjectivation among RTC activists in creating encounters to interact with the municipality.

Engendering migrant counterpublics: fun, care, solidarity, and resistance among Ethiopian domestic workers in Lebanon

ABSTRACT Research documenting the re-configurations of ‘public–private’ boundaries encountered by migrant domestic workers has observed how they often create a sense of ‘home’ in public spaces in destination countries. Migrant workers’ occupation of, and interactions in, public spaces such as parks, malls, restaurants, and churches in effect create ‘private spheres’ where they can relax and be themselves with friends and sometimes partners. Yet migrant women also often face a double exclusion from the public sphere as political subjects, first as women and second as migrants. Their physical presence in the public sphere may be highly regulated by gender norms, and their participation in the public sphere is limited due to their exclusion from citizenship or even labour entitlements. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s concept of subaltern counterpublics, this paper argues that migrant domestic workers’ experiences of re-configuring public and private spaces within Lebanon contribute to the creation of ‘migrant counterpublics’ that challenges the methodological-nationalist limitations of conceptualisations of citizenship and participation in the public sphere. I make these reflections through an auto-ethnographic account of my experiences while researching the working lives and conditions of Ethiopian migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. Central to these reflections on our navigation of public spaces is the consideration of our embodied experiences as racialised women, which intersected with our differential class, sexuality, and migrant status positioning.

The Indonesian theater’s laku aktor: a counter discourse to the neoliberal depoliticization of the subject

ABSTRACT Neoliberalism is getting more intense in line with the increasing democratization of Indonesia’s post-Reformation political economy. The discourse of neoliberal freedom that positions individuals as a commodity and an object of administration leads to a process of depoliticization of the subject which is increasingly becoming a serious challenge for the Indonesian norm of collectivity. In moving toward an answer to this challenge, this experience-based article presents the spirit of Laku Aktor in the Indonesian theatrical acting system as a form of political subject category that can be positioned as a counter-discourse to the problem.

Reflections on Eurocommunism in the UK

Eurocommunism could not save the CPGB, but the concept of the broad democratic alliance still has importance The attraction of communism in the 1970s was its strong commitment to challenging the whole system rather than finding ways to manage capitalism. This was a decade in which there was a real struggle to hold on to, and even develop further, the achievements of the postwar settlement. At that point we sometimes thought we were winning, and joining an anti-capitalist party was a way of expressing this optimism. By the mid-1970s, Eurocommunism was making communism much more attractive to people of my generation. Eurocommunist parties were breaking away from their subordination to the Soviet party, and starting to base their strategies on the political realities of Western Europe; their belief in democracy had finally won out over their ingrained loyalty to the Soviet state. In the UK discussions were beginning on a new version of The British Road to Socialism (BRS), which, after many battles, adopted the notion of a broad democratic alliance for change. There was also the beginnings of an expanded sense of what constituted politics, one of many important ideas that had come from Gramsci. However, the embrace of Eurocommunism did not turn out to be the salvation of the CPGB, which voted to close itself down in 1991. The most important factor leading to its dissolution was the changing nature of the working class and the decline of the organised labour movement within the UK ‐ itself a symptom of the wider, victorious, neoliberal counter-offensive. The other European communist parties, Eurocommunist or not, are now for the most part in decline. But some of the ideas that Eurocommunists in the UK were trying to develop remain of relevance. These include its early attempts to recognise new political subjects within the public realm, and the importance of forming alliances across difference. Rock Against Racism, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, the GLC under Ken Livingstone’s leadership, and the creative ways in which community support for the NUM was mobilised in 1984-5, are examples of the kinds of politics we supported.

Critical, connected and caring: older adults’ agency during the COVID-19 pandemic

Considering (1) the current context of social and economic polarisation in Eastern Europe, which represents older people as experiencing ‘red nostalgia’ and presents them as passive citizens, and (2) the increased vulnerabilities of older people during the COVID-19 pandemic as a main target of restrictive policies, we explored the experiences of older people during the COVID-19 lockdown period in Romania in 2020. We carried out 12 semi-structured interviews with older people from rural and urban areas to understand how they experienced the lockdown period and made sense of the pandemic. We perceived the pandemic as a holistic experience that affected different aspects of social life. We learned that older people manifested their agency in multiple forms. First, they were critical of lockdown measures imposed on them while at the same time understanding the need to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus, signalling a more complex political subjectivity among this group than popular narratives suggest. Second, older people made heavy independent use of information and communications technology. Lastly, all interviewees shared a sense of care for people they considered to be more vulnerable than themselves, illustrating that older people are not only the target of care and empathy by others in society but also the source of care and empathy for others in society. These aspects situate older people as active citizens, critical of the state, engaged in the use of technology and caring for people other than those in their immediate circle – all signs that they are actively part of the flow of society.

The Song of Songs: Focalising Love and the PublicPersonal Poetics in Remi Raji’s Poetry

Much of the existing critical scholarship on Remi Raji’s poetry appraised the poet’s portrayal of his angst against oppression and the oppressors of the people. His poetry has often been read within the poetics of rage and social discountenance. Sule’s projection of Remi Raji as an angry poet has enjoyed the dominant estimation by which Raji’s poetic oeuvre is engaged. This study examines four of Raji’s collections of poetry— A Harvest of Laughters, Lovesong for my Wasteland, Sea of my Mind, Webs of Remembrance and Gather my blood Rivers of Song, exploring the poet’s loveworld, with a view to underscoring how a focus on the tropes of rage, discontentment and disillusionment in the collections mask the poet’s dominant presentations of lovesongs for the land, a mistress, nature, and others. While it is right to say that Raji’s poetry is overtly political, it is more accurate to relate that there is more to his poetry than the political theme. We see in Raji’s poetic oeuvre a fine balance between the poet’s preoccupation with the sociopolitical realities of the nation state and the representations of his loveworld, extolling that all-too-human other side of life. This study calls for a broadened conception of Remi Raji’s poetry, beyond the aesthetics of rage, angst and disillusionment to the poet’s depiction of the capacity of love to herald hope, and ultimately right the wrongs in the postcolony.

EUROPE’S CONTESTATION OF THE U.S. WITHDRAWAL FROM THE JCPOA: UNVEILING EUROPEAN SUBJECTIVITY

The article investigates the response of European nations to the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal, the implementation of a «maximum pressure» strategy, and the reinstatement of sanctions on Iran. European actions included open dissent towards American policies, active engagement in lobbying efforts, and the establishment of temporary political-diplomatic coalitions with like-minded partners. The examination is framed within the context of the theory of contestation, elucidating how European allies endeavored to contest the dominant partner despite disparities in resources, European business reliance on the American financial system, and potential risks to transatlantic relations. Through challenging U.S. decisions, European countries aimed to reaffirm their autonomy and sovereignty within the transatlantic partnership and broader global political landscape. This response was not solely influenced by divergent perspectives on international security and approaches to global challenges but also by Washington’s reduced influence on partners expectations regarding the repercussions of disloyalty. The U.S. exhibited a strong belief in its ability to address the issue independently, viewing European opposition as futile, thus showing little interest in substantive negotiating with partners or persuading them to align. Consequently, European allies, anticipating minimal negative effects on their relations with the U.S., felt emboldened to assertively defend their perspectives, thus bolstering their political subjectivity.