James R. Martel

Can There Be Politics Without Sovereignty? Arendt, Derrida and the Question of Sovereign Inevitability

In this essay I look at Arendt and Derrida and the way that they seem forced to compromise with sovereignty despite their ardent opposition to it. In both cases, the sense of the inevitability of sovereignty comes from a particular understanding of time, that is to say, it comes from an eschatological perspective that sees the unity and continuity of sovereignty as the only possible form of politics. I show how both thinkers seek to bypass the sense of temporality. Arendt, by looking to a pre-sovereign, classical past and Derrida, by looking at a democracy “to come.’’ I read these temporal maneuverings as a kind of subversion of these authors’ own sense of being trapped in time. By providing alternative “pasts’’ and “futures’’ both Arendt and Derrida — perhaps especially when read together — are not so much seeking to escape the present as they are recognizing the way the present is infused with these other temporalities and possibilities. Such moves are thus oriented neither to past nor future but to the present itself.

The Political Theory of Michael Rogin

Michael Rogin was a brilliant and truly original scholar. His work didn’t fit into any of the established categories; it was controversial, sometimes even idiosyncratic. But when Michael took up a topic, he left the terms of scholarly debate on that topic fundamentally altered. Basically, he was a historian and a radical cultural critic, and of course, an Americanist. He analyzed literature, art, film, along with documents and letters—manifestations of both high and low culture—using the categories of Freudian psychoanalysis to expose, in detail and with precision, the violence, racism, and exclusion hidden beneath America’s self-image as a liberal, egalitarian, constitutional republic. Yet his writing was not self-righteous or even polemical, and his claims were always supported by empirical and textual evidence. But because he was an Americanist and I am not, it would be unseemly for me to assess his scholarship further. Nor would it be relevant to this symposium, which concerns the scholarship of his students. Michael and I were good friends for close to forty years, but that doesn’t belong in this symposium

Against Thinning and Teleology Politics and Objects in the Face of Catastrophe in Lear and Von Trier

In this essay, I write a companion piece to Bonnie Honig’s commentary on “Public Things.” In looking at Honig’s comments on Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope and Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia, I focus on the question of stealth teleologies, particularly in Lear’s case. I argue that what Lear calls “radical hope” is not particularly radical. Instead, it disguises a teleology whereby, passing through some catastrophe, redemption follows. Against this kind of automatism, I argue that in Honig’s own reading, we find the grounds for a turn away from teleology and toward radical contingency, a way of connecting with and via objects that allows us access to an agonal and anti-teleological form of politics (something that I also see as being offered in von Trier’s film).

Can We Do Away with Sacrifice

814 The idea of sacrifice remains a central component of gations into violence and the foundations of political auth may have less to do with its explanatory usefulness and ability to insinuate itself into the work of even those who o is evident in two recent books that treat the subject, Je The Headless Republic and Andrew Norris’s edited Metaphysics, and Death. The Headless Republic is a thorough and engaging logic of sacrifice in French political thought, addressing de Maistre, Georges Sorel, and Georges Bataille. Goldh paradox whereby these thinkers continually struggle with against the mechanisms of sacrifice in ways that are ulti ful. In each case, there is a return to the very arbitrarine ness that the logic of sacrifice is supposed to resolve. A logic of sacrifice” is the notion of the scapegoat, a victi contain an otherwise potentially limitless violence. The a distinction between inside and outside, profane and sac political community in its wake. In considering sacr Goldhammer evinces a tendency, which is quite widesp Christian model more or less at the expense of other mo Roman/classical one). Goldhammer points out that wh produced by the Christian model are meant to establish foundation, they remain arbitrary and, indeed, founda Goldhammer, although sacrifice is purported to be the so lem of violence and chaos in society, it is itself an inheren despite the best efforts of these thinkers. 10.1177/0090591706292838

The Spectacle of the Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes, Guy Debord and Walter Benjamin on Representation and its Misuses

In this paper, I compare Thomas Hobbes’ notion of demonology with contemporary notions of “the spectacle”, an idea articulated by Guy Debord and embellished (albeit in a somewhat different way and with a different name) by Walter Benjamin. I note that despite the three centuries that separate these authors (and despite Hobbes’ apparent enthusiasm for the spectacle itself as displayed in the frontispiece to Leviathan), Hobbes’ notion of demonology very much echoes these later thinkers–understandings. For Hobbes’ demonology is the practice of taking things that are not for things that are, a confusion between representations and reality. The spectacle functions in much the same way, although in the hands of Debord and Benjamin it takes its particular form as a production of capitalism. In this paper, I argue that Hobbes offers these later thinkers a useful distinction between his notions of idolatry and worship, a distinction that helps (particularly in Debords case) avoid a choice between a lost and true “reality” and the miasma of the spectacle itself. For Hobbes, idolatry occurs when a graven image is taken to actually be God. This is a sin because it replaces God with a representation. In worship, the worshipper knows that the idol is just that, a representation with no truth of its own. This insight, I argue, arms Hobbes against the demonologists that he attacks in his own lifetime. With worship, Hobbes does not need to know “the truth” but can accept representation for what it is. At the same time, he is armed by this realization against the lies of the demonologists because he has the ability to recognize and expose representation as such. This is an insight that I argue helps explain, buttress and flesh out the ideas of Debord and Benjamin, insofar as both of these authors wish to “fight the spectacle on its own terms”, that is to say to use image against image and figure against figure.

The Role of Emotion in Political Life

As citizens of a democracy, must we fear our passions? Two recent books by George Marcus and Susan Mendus argue that we need a better appreciation of the relationship between emotion, reason, and politics. Romantic reactions aside, these authors argue that emotion has often been seen as opposed and even dangerous to reason, which is itself held up as the model for politics and citizenship. Both books would like to revisit this understanding by arguing that emotion is necessary for reason, with important implications, both for moral philosophy and for notions of citizenship and democracy. In The Sentimental Citizen, George Marcus argues that reason and the conscious mind are only one part of the overall structure of human motivation. Turning to neuroscience for his evidence, Marcus distinguishes between the mind (our consciousness) and the brain (the larger system that structures our responses to the world). Marcus tells us that we have several “emotional” systems that, unbidden—and often unwanted—serve as the grounds upon which our conscious minds operate, the most important being the disposition and surveillance systems. The disposition system simplifies and routinizes complicated tasks. Were it not for this system, Marcus argues, the simplest acts—such as catching a marble rolling down a slope—would become hellishly difficult. Our conscious mind, which can handle only a relatively small amount of data, would be overwhelmed without the disposition system’s attendance to the basic details of life, leaving the conscious mind to do what it does best: focus on a particular question. When we go along with our dispositions or habits, we

Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly, by Judith Butler: (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015) 256 pp., US

One of the pleasures of reading Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly is seeing Judith Butler in conversation (or perhaps constellation) with herself. Many issues that Butler has written ...

15.75, ISBN-10: 067498398X

In this commentary, I explore the question of how the way we think about time affects the conclusions that we draw about specific political questions. To demonstrate this, I consider two questions, the relationship between liberalism and neoliberalism and the relationship between neoliberalism and fascism. I look at these issues first from within the normal teleological notions of time that are prevalent and then from a more ‘dissociated’ form of temporality in keeping with the theorization of Walter Benjamin in his essay “On the Concept of History.” My claim is that Benjamin’s concept of time is anarchist and that thinking about time, history and politics in this way offers new insights into what may otherwise seem like hopelessly fated predicaments.

Are We Out of Time? Thinking about Neoliberalism and Fascism in an Age of Radical Transition

Many theorists promote a decentralized politics but very few of them practice this decentralization textually. In this essay, I engage with three techniques Benjamin employs to decenter his authority in the text: allegory, montage and the production of text as “pure means.” Taken together, these practices amount to what I am calling Benjamin’s use of a “black flashlight.” Rather than illuminate his text with his own knowledge, seeking to win the reader over by persuasion and textual authority, Benjamin seeks to obscure and complicate any meaning. He attempts to have his text fail to deliver a final verdict to the reader. The obscure, pitch black light Benjamin sheds on his own and other texts leaves us as readers to our own devices, deprived as we are of the usual guidance of the author. In this way, Benjamin not only encourages but requires the reader’s own intervention, a model for the anarchist politics he also describes in the text.

Walter Benjamin’s Black Flashlight Promoting Misreading over Persuasion to Decenter Textual and Political Authority

To get a sense of the darkened political mood of our time, one only need look at the recent literature on democracy. Two such books, Alan Keenan’s Democracy in Question and Jeffrey C. Isaac’s The Poverty of Progressivism, offer us in the words of both authors a “chastened” understanding of democratic possibilities. Both argue that politics is a far messier and more protracted business than theorists tend to realize. Furthermore, both argue that our own time is not a good one for grand, sweeping solutions. What they offer instead is a sadder, more incremental approach to politics and democratic aspirations. Keenan’s book is the more theoretically oriented of the two and also less pessimistic. He argues that those who wish to solve democracy’s ills often disregard this paradox: the radical openness and freedom democracy promises can be “delivered” only by a commensurate dose of exclusion, closure, and undemocratic decision, undermining the very ideals democracy promotes. In an exemplary reading, Keenan traces this paradox to Rousseau, who says that the moment individuals come together to form “a people,” contradiction and paradox ensue. Unable to know what they want in advance of their act of self-creation, the people must call themselves into being as if they already had one common (general) will. As Keenan puts it, “[the people] must call themselves into being before they exist” (p. 53). This temporal paradox is “resolved” by Rousseau through the figure of the legislator who decides what “the people” want. But this solves nothing, says Keenan: if the source of a community’s “own” will is external to it, “one can never be certain of their identity or of whether one has successfully ‘achieved’ it” (p. 53). For Keenan, the figure of the legislator is not meant to resolve the paradox of democracy but rather to serve as an allegory for the impurity and the con-