Lars Tønder

Political Theory and the Sensorium

Political theory has for the past ten years or so witnessed a growing interest in the relationship between the sensorium and politics.1 Spurred by a variety of reasons, including insights from other fields such as neuroscience and new media studies, the interest expands on a number of previous developments in political theory. As a first approximation, one could thus say that the “sensorial turn” represents a continuation of feminist and phenomenological approaches, which criticized liberalism and other classical paradigms of politics for disavowing the role of embodied experience in political life. Like the feminist-phenomenological approaches on which it builds, the sensorial turn sees such a disavowal as inhibiting, in particular when it comes to pressing issues regarding justice, ideology, and power. Unlike its predecessors, however, the sensorial turn does not replace the disavowal with an emphasis on either social discourse or bodily integrity, but instead seeks to highlight the netherworld of affect and perception that both underpin and undermine the appearance of all sentient existence. The result is a new set of questions for the study of political life. No longer are we asked to determine which entities are most likely to secure and manage the desire for sovereignty; instead, we are encouraged to consider the processes of becoming that both precede and exceed this desire. How do sensorial forces change over time? What kinds of practices make political agents more perceptible to such change? Are some modes of the sensorium more conducive to democratic politics than others? The aim of this special issue is to track how the sensorial turn’s engagement with these and other questions has emerged over the course of the more than forty years that Political Theory has been published. Showcasing five

What is important in theorizing tolerance today

if one wants to grasp tolerance politically, that is, as a problem of power and as organizing relations among citizens, subjects, peoples or states, then it must be understood, inter alia, as being enacted through contingent, historically specific discourses - linguistically organized norms operating as common sense. [...]any political discourse of tolerance - from that developed for handling Protestant sectarianism in seventeenth-century England to that used by the G.W. Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11 to distinguish the West from the rest, to that used by the Israeli state for describing (only) its policies toward homosexuals - is embedded within other discourses articulating the qualities and meanings of the religious, cultural, social or political order that the discourse of tolerance purports to pacify. [...]tolerance, correctly understood, is a virtue of the public use of reason.

Spinoza and the Theory of Active Tolerance

This paper considers the politics of tolerance through the lens of Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence. The contention is that Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence provides us with a better conceptualization of the relationship between tolerance and power, and that it in so doing reinvigorates a theory of active tolerance that, for the most part, has been lost in contemporary democratic theory. Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence does so because it animates a sensorial orientation to politics, one that heightens our attention to the affective components of political life, enabling us to better theorize how all modes of existence, including the so-called passive ones, harbor a degree of power that can be mobilized for purposes that go beyond the “non-practice” highlighted by advocates and critics of tolerance in contemporary democratic theory. The paper develops this argument with ongoing reference to Marcuse’s critique of tolerance.

Humility, Arrogance and the Limitations of Kantian Autonomy: A Response to Rostbøll

In “Autonomy, Respect, and Arrogance in the Danish Cartoon Controversy,” Christian Rostbøll takes up the twelve cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, to answer a fundamental question in liberal democratic theory: How to respect religious diversity without violating the right to free expression? In Rostbøll’s view, the answer is for majorities living with vulnerable minorities to show humility and to avoid excessively harmful speech. Rostbøll bases this argument on a Kantian conception of autonomy that foregrounds people’s ability to choose their own ends as well as the obligation to treat others (and oneself) as ends and not means. Both aspects imply a humility that prevents one or more constituencies from believing that they have “a moral standing that other human beings do not have” (p. 633). Such humility, Rostbøll concludes, dissolves the contradiction between free expression and respect for religious diversity. Contrary to the Jyllands-Posten editors, self-censorship can be a moral duty, one that applies in cases where the absence of special care makes it likely that some groups will “be treated worse than others” (p. 641). Given the violence and conflict that followed Jyllands-Posten’s publication of the twelve cartoons, it is hard for any liberal or democratic pluralist to disagree with this argument. In the following, I nonetheless question whether a Kantian conception of autonomy can generate the conditions needed for a desirable combination of care and sensitivity. If our reaction to the twelve cartoons is prompted by the need to respect and enhance pluralism, then why expect all citizens to define their political self-understanding with reference

What is important in theorizing tolerance today|[quest]|

if one wants to grasp tolerance politically, that is, as a problem of power and as organizing relations among citizens, subjects, peoples or states, then it must be understood, inter alia, as being enacted through contingent, historically specific discourses - linguistically organized norms operating as common sense. [...]any political discourse of tolerance - from that developed for handling Protestant sectarianism in seventeenth-century England to that used by the G.W. Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11 to distinguish the West from the rest, to that used by the Israeli state for describing (only) its policies toward homosexuals - is embedded within other discourses articulating the qualities and meanings of the religious, cultural, social or political order that the discourse of tolerance purports to pacify. [...]tolerance, correctly understood, is a virtue of the public use of reason.

Tolerance as such does not exist

if one wants to grasp tolerance politically, that is, as a problem of power and as organizing relations among citizens, subjects, peoples or states, then it must be understood, inter alia, as being enacted through contingent, historically specific discourses - linguistically organized norms operating as common sense. [...]any political discourse of tolerance - from that developed for handling Protestant sectarianism in seventeenth-century England to that used by the G.W. Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11 to distinguish the West from the rest, to that used by the Israeli state for describing (only) its policies toward homosexuals - is embedded within other discourses articulating the qualities and meanings of the religious, cultural, social or political order that the discourse of tolerance purports to pacify. [...]tolerance, correctly understood, is a virtue of the public use of reason.