In his Autobiography, John Stuart Mill tells us that though his conviction regarding the equality of the sexes was a result of his earliest engagements with political subjects, it remained an abstract idea before his relationship with Harriet Taylor began. Crediting her as the author of “all that was best” in his writings, Mill's praise of his wife has not been well received by many of his readers, and scholars have long questioned her capacities as an intellectual and as a (...) political thinker. I argue that such doubts reflect a narrow standard for adjudicating Taylor Mill's intellectual worth, and what counts as intellectual labor more broadly. Examining Taylor Mill's own writings in fact illuminates and challenges the gendering practices that have sustained scholarly interrogations of Taylor Mill and of her relationship to JS Mill. I make this case first by drawing attention to her “experiential politics” as a credible source of intellectual scholarship, and second by raising questions about the gendered aspects of how intellectual labor has been defined and evaluated in studies of the canon. (shrink)

The increased use of anonymous digital platforms raises substantive concerns about accountability in digital spaces. However, contemporary evaluations of anonymity focus too narrowly on its protective function: its ability to protect a diversity of speakers and ideas. Drawing on two examples of anonymous political engagements – Publius’s writing of the Federalist Papers and college students’ use of the social media platform Yik Yak – we develop an account of anonymity’s associational function: the processes by which people generate and negotiate collective (...) identities, discussions, and actions in wider publics. As we argue, anonymity’s associational function can generate conditions under which individuals develop collective interests and identities to foster collective action, and enable novel interactions between these individuals and communities and the larger publics of which they are part. We conclude with a discussion of how attention to associational anonymity can contribute to a more nuanced account of democracy in practice. (shrink)

Described as the ‘exemplary liberal’, John Stuart Mill is employed to support a dizzying array of different, even competing visions of liberalism. That he has been so widely appropriated is certainly a result of the plural perspectives and tensions embedded in Mill’s political writings. Yet, while Mill scholars have generally been attuned to these tensions, contemporary critics of liberalism have been less careful in their uses of his work. Mill is used as an archetype of liberalism, and is often depicted (...) as a less complex thinker than is justified. He is now a popular target in debates concerning the dilemmas of liberal individualism, and the inadequacies of liberal approaches to culture, harm, and to progress in the context of empire. Such studies present Mill as a thinker driven by ideological certainty, whereas he is more appropriately regarded as someone moved by political uncertainty. Drawing on his Autobiography, I recover Mill’s appreciation for the uncertainties of political thought and action to... (shrink)

The Liberalism Trap identifies a methodological problem in contemporary political theory: focus on liberalism has become an interpretive custom directing engagements with politics. Though scholars have long analysed the meaning, merits, successes or failings of liberalism, little attention is paid to how such preoccupations shape the way we study political questions and texts. Evaluating the effects of these preoccupations is what motivate the book. To interrogate those effects, Philips turns to John Stuart Mill-the so-called father of modern liberalism. As she (...) argues, Mill's canonical status as a liberal is habitually substituted for his political arguments such that the now standard association of Mill with liberalism conditions how and why he is read. Offering a comparative reading of Mill's proposals concerning gender, class, and empire, Philips instead recovers a thinker motivated not by ideological certainties, but by a politics of uncertainty. In so doing, she draws into view the complex strategies that Mill employs across his work on domestic and imperial questions, strategies obscured by his liberal mantle. Her recovery of Mill's uncertain politics sets into relief the interpretive costs of reading through liberalism. That even the paradigmatic liberal is unduly constrained by this label ought to give us pause. Taking a break from liberalism, Philips shows that we gain a more nuanced account of Mill's politics, and critical and evaluative distance from our own customs of interpretation. With these interventions, The Liberalism Trap integrates an innovative reading of a canonical thinker with a methodological critique of interpretive practices in contemporary political theory. (shrink)