Philosophical pacifism is an inquiry and research agenda that begins from the presumption that war is wrong and which seeks to imagine a more peaceful and less violent future. This article proposes five key questions that serve to elucidate the complexity of philosophical pacifism, helping to distinguish it from a simplistic and dogmatic opposition to war. The key questions are: Who has an obligation to be peaceful or nonviolent? To whom is pacifism addressed? When (or in what circumstances) is nonviolence (...) required? What kinds of nonviolence should be employed? And in what manner and to what degree is the commitment to nonviolence supposed to be manifest? These kinds of questions are implicit in the philosophical literature on pacifism; they can be summarized in the question: “Whose pacifism, which nonviolence?” Guided by such questions, and enriched by analogies with feminist theory, philosophical pacifism offers a more useful critical social and political theory than the just war tradition, especially in our endeavor to achieve what Kant called “a perpetual peace.”. (shrink)

Against the background of widespread use and justification of violence in Christian history, this paper reviews the text of the Christian Gospels to see if the words or deeds of Jesus or his followers indicate whether Jesus taught absolute pacifism. I argue that while the evidence does not totally refute the claims of the just war tradition, the weight of the evidence corroborates the conclusion that Jesus was indeed a pacifist and that his pacifism is grounded in a particularly demanding (...) ethical vision that has some parallels with that of the philosopher Immanuel Kant but is even more demanding. I also note that Gandhi incorporated Gospel teachings into his definitions of ahimsa and satyagraha; and that pacifist Christian groups such as Cathars, Anabaptists, and Quakers deserve credit for holding views closer to Jesus’ teachings than those of even the most well-intentioned mainstream Christian churches. (shrink)

In response to widespread anxiety, disappointment, and frustration in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election in the US, this article reviews four interrelated aspects of Gandhian thought that may serve as worthy preparations for mindful responses: (1) his conception of political power, (2) the priority he gives to moral standing, (3) his conception of self-rule (swaraj), and (4) the disavowal of consequences to his overall understanding of right action. The final part of the article focuses on Gandhi’s remarkably positive (...) understanding of human nature, which encourages us to see prevailing winds of truth and love despite history’s interruptions. (shrink)

Judith Butler’s 2021 essay “Bodies That Still Matter” offers a compressed rehearsal of themes and moves that are developed in more detail in their 2020 book, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. In both projects, Butler spotlights the term feminicidio as an instructive indicator of brutality and violence against feminized individuals, including trans women. Feminicidio exemplifies the violence of “unequal grievability” that Butler’s recent work seeks to overcome; therefore, in particular relation to their recent work on nonviolence, Butler insists (...) that the horror of feminicidio should be closely linked to analysis that mobilizes against the full social force of the crimes. Following the work of Montserrat Sagot, Butler calls for analysis that links the brutality of the killings with a structure of social domination and terror. Additionally, Butler introduces questions for further exploration about representation, social organization, and the relation of sexual terror to domination, extermination, or a general theory of sexuality and violence. In this article, I make a start on the set of questions that come along with the term feminicidio in the work of some of its key theorists such as Diana Russell, Marcela Lagarde, Monserrat Sagot, and Alicia Schmidt Camacho. Here, in support of Butler’s claim that feminicidio should be analyzed in ways that mobilize comprehensive resistance, this article (1) defends Lagarde’s definition of feminicidio as an institutionalized crime, especially against Russell’s objection; (2) develops Sagot’s analysis of femicide in relation to Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, (3) considers Schmidt Camacho’s critique of the term in the context of maquiladora labor in Mexico, and (4) excavates the salience of Foucault’s concept of biopower as an important model for Butler’s analysis. Finally, this article (5) argues that Butler’s work challenges nonviolence researchers to expand their interest and understanding of grieving as a form of resistance. (shrink)

On the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Ursula Le Guin’s novella The Word for World is Forest, the Anarres Project for Alternative Futures posed a question: what can this text offer to activists engaged in environmental and social movements today? In this response I propose we can learn from this book by noticing the ecofeminist perspective underlying its morality. In The Word for World is Forest, Le Guin demonstrates clear links between behaviours that discriminate against women and “others,” including (...) indigenous people, and the degradation of the environment. But by tracing this ecofeminist ethic out from the content of the text to its form, I show that, despite the ecofeminist ideas within the text, the novella is still structured according to the masculinist patterns of thought it seeks to challenge. I consider this text in the context of Le Guin’s own critical engagement with the genres of science fiction and utopia through her essays and later fiction. Just as Le Guin deconstructed then remade these genres in order that her writing might better present her ideas without contradiction, I invite activists to explore how their practice might change if they consciously rescind the logic of man’s mastery over nature and others that has shaped the Western worldview for centuries. I speculate that if in our work we use our “mother tongue” and speak from outside of the masculinist paradigm that Le Guin critiques in The Word for World is Forest, it may set a course to enacting real change. (shrink)

In Ursula Le Guin’s novella The Word for World Is Forest (1972), the indigenous inhabitants of the planet Athshe use the act of dreaming as a fundamental part of their anti-colonial praxis. Le Guin emphasizes the skill and responsibility involved in the process of translating dreams into language, and then into political action. In Le Guin’s near-future novel The Lathe of Heaven (1971), a man discovers the power of “effective dreaming,” and is able to change the course of world events (...) by narrativizing thoughts in the form of dreams. Approaching these two novels as self-reflexive texts about Le Guin’s process of writing socially engaged fiction, I explore the ways in which Le Guin treats dreams, imagination, and speculative fiction writing as interconnected political actions. I discuss the relationship between speculative fiction and activism, genealogies of narrative imagination, conflicting liberatory and nationalist deployments of speculative fiction, and the tension between individual and collective action. Further, I situate myself in this discussion as a leftist fiction writer, and consider the implications of Le Guin’s self-reflexive novels for my own writing practice. Ultimately, I read Le Guin’s two texts as models for the potential of speculative fiction writing to function as a form of activism. (shrink)

In The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler argues that Walter Benjamin’s concept of divine violence can be related to a technique of nonviolent civil government. To make the argument, Butler relies on Benjamin’s philosophy of translation. This article reviews Benjamin’s concept of divine violence as presented in “Toward the Critique of Violence” in order to show that divine violence is violence. While some forms of nonviolence identified by Butler share common traits with Benjamin’s divine violence in the fact that they (...) may have real force and be “pure means,” nevertheless, the means of Benjamin’s divine violence are violent ones. This article argues that conceiving divine violence as violence is necessary to a rigorous understanding of violence and nonviolence, especially in their revolutionary forms. Appeal is made to recent works by Avram Alpert, Idris Robinson, and Billie Murray who argue against suppressing the study of violence in liberation movements. (shrink)