Agonism emerged three decades ago as an assault on the overemphasis in political theory on justice and consensus. It has now become the norm. But its character and relation to core values of democracy are not as unproblematic today as is often thought, an issue that becomes more pressing as contemporary politics increasingly seem locked into notions of unrelenting conflict between “friends” and “enemies.” This essay traces alternative ontological roots and ethical implications of agonism, distinguishing between “imperializing” and “tempered” modes. (...) The former, exemplified in the popular Schmitt-Mouffe formulation, is shown to be fundamentally flawed in its failure to conceive politics in a fashion that does not allow the dynamic of friend–enemy to imperially trump appeals to democratic norms. In a world of insurgent white nationalism in democratic polities, this is no small fault. “Tempered” agonists, such as William Connolly and Bonnie Honig, offer ontologies where democratic norms can gain traction. Despite the admirable qualities of these alternatives, their formulations are nevertheless not fully persuasive. The difficulty lies in their underarticulated accounts of equality. I suggest an alternative formulation of agonism that embraces a central role for the idea of the moral equality of voice, a value that resides in the seam between notions of difference, resistance, and conflict emphasized by agonists, on the one hand, and the idea of fairness emphasized by notions of democratic justice, on the other. (shrink)

Over the course of the twentieth century, nationalistic approaches to the obstacles of racism in the United States have increasingly come to be seen as the more revolutionary of the various forms of anti-racist struggle. This paper explores several historical instances of Black Nationalism and seeks to demonstrate that, despite the many points on which they might diverge, they share in common a tendency to naturalize and embrace the category of race as a basis for political struggle, and that (...) they therefore constitute an ideologically accommodating and hence essentially regressive approach to the questions of race and racism. It is suggested that a critique of the modern category of race and a political practice aimed at its denaturalization will be a necessary aspect of any attempt to overcome racial oppression and inequality. (shrink)

Over the past fifty years, a number of approaches to the recovery of the multiple pasts of Hinduism have held the field. These include that of the discipline of History of Religions as it is constituted in North America as well as those of the Hindu nationalists, the col and post-colonial historians, and the Subaltern Studies School. None of these approaches have proven satisfactory because, for methodological or ideological reasons, none have adequately addressed human agency or historical change in their (...) accounts of the pasts out of which modern-day Hinduism has emerged. The Hindu nationalist historians hark back to an extended Vedic golden age in which religious practice remained unchanged until the corruptions spawned by the Turkish invasions of the eleventh century. Many Western indologists and historians of religion specializing in Hinduism never leave the unalterable ideal worlds of the scriptures they interpret to investigate the changing real-world contexts out of which those texts emerged. The colonial and postcolonial historians focus on the past two hundred years as the period in which all of the categories through which India continues to interpret itself—including Hinduism—were imposed upon it from without. Adducing examples of Hindu practitioners and thinkers from the colonial period, subaltern theorists and others argue that historical thought is itself alien to the authentic Indian mind. This article suggests a number of interpretive strategies for retrieving the multiple Hinduisms of the past and of the medieval period in particular as that time out of which most modern-day practices of Hinduism emerged. These include an increased emphasis on non-scriptural sources and a focus on regional traditions. (shrink)

The paper argues that nationality and national sentiment have been, until recently, neglected concepts in liberal, as distinct from conservative, political and educational philosophy, It claims that, appropriately detachedfrom nationalistic ideas associated with the political right, the promotion of national sentiment as an educational aim is not incompatible with liberalism and, more strongly, may be desirablefor reasons of personal and cultural identity as well asfor redistributive reasons. The paper then explores issues to do with British nationality inparticular, arguingfor a remodelled (...) conception to replace the traditional one; and finally it looks at curricular implications, especially in the British context, of aiming at the cultivation of national sentiment within a liberalframework. (shrink)

Yael Tamir's book Liberal Nationalism seeks to show that liberalism and nationalism are not incompatible political philosophies. Nationalism need not take the closed, authoritarian form it has so often taken; and liberalism is premised on certain national ideas, including national self-determination. This critical discussion of her account is broadly sympathetic to the compatibility thesis, but takes issue both with her notion of nationalism, with her account of a nation as a self-conscious cultural community, and with the (...) sharp line she draws between civic and cultural concerns. Although her book does not deal with education, this paper concludes with remarks about what the role of nationality should be in education, in both a Tamirian and a non-Tamirian framework. The latter is applied to education in Britain. (shrink)

With the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, the discourse of an authoritarianism and the echoes of a fascist past have moved from the margins to the center of American politics. A culture of war buttressed by the forces of white supremacy and militarization has been unleashed in a series of policies designed to return the United States to a history in which the public sphere was largely white and Christian, and the economy (...) and the state were governed by a ruling corporate elite. Militarization and a war culture have become normalized in the United States and this article explores the ways in which a neo-fascism has emerged that furthers war not only abroad but also at home, especially with regards to the ongoing assaults waged by the state against Muslims, immigrants, women’s reproductive rights, and poor minorities of class and color. Against the rise of neo--fascism, this article advances the idea that education is central to any viable notion of politics, that progressives... (shrink)

I argue that popular understandings of white nationalist double speak strategies do not fully represent the practice of these strategies, and identify a linguistic tactic used by white nationalists that I call sugar-coating. Sugar-coating works by packing an otherwise unacceptable utterance together with some kind of reward, thereby promoting uptake. I contrast this with existing notions of double speak, such as figleaves (Saul 2017, 2021), dogwhistles (Haney-López 2014), and bullshit (Kenyon and Saul 2022). I argue that sugar-coating more (...) accurately reflects the practice of white nationalist recruitment rhetoric, as described in the Daily Stormer Style Guide. (shrink)

Despite their purported demographic and institutional decline, White evangelical voters were instrumental in the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and even more so in his 2020 loss. The story of Trump’s electoral successes among Christian voters in the last two elections is in large part the story of religious nationalism—and White Christian nationalism in particular—because Trump personifies the convergence of nationalism-infused forms of messianism and apocalypticism intrinsic to White evangelicalism, which culminate in QAnon (...) cultic ideology. However, these same ethnoreligious/nationalist patterns and logics extend much further back than Trump’s insurgent candidacy. This chapter traces the recurring, resurgent patterns of “zombie nationalism” among White evangelical Christians in the United States over the last half century that emerged in response to periods of significant societal change and certain recurring sociopolitical issues. In particular, alongside established elective affinities around ethnicity (whiteness) and religion (Christianity), this chapter makes the case for incorporating gender and sexual politics as key factors in the articulation and legitimation of religious nationalism in the United States. White Christian nationalism tends to reemerge as a salient political force during periods of rapid social change and diversification, driven by racialized religious grievances symptomatic of Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment, or the paradoxical internalization and reprojection of a person’s or group’s perceived endangerment, victimhood, and/or suffering, in order to gain power. Drawing on examples of marriage equality and reproductive rights, this chapter demonstrates how an understanding of sexual politics is key to both apprehending and breaking the cyclical reanimation of White Christian nationalism. Escaping the nihilistic impulses driving these cycles will require White evangelicals to develop new hermeneutical tools capable of transforming the exclusionary patterns of racism, ethnocentrism, heteronormativity, and patriarchy that fuel the engine of ressentiment animating zombie nationalism. (shrink)

There are two competing ways of understanding nefarious expressions of nationalism in countries like the U.S., either as xenophobia or racism. In this essay, I offer a way of capturing what is attractive in both accounts: a way of thinking about the xenophobia of U.S. nationalism that does not miss or minimize the role that race plays in condemning such expressions, but at the same time does not risk overextending the definition of racism. To do this, the essay (...) makes a case for decoupling and slightly revising the meaning of the terms “racialization” and “racial formation” while also proposing a third term, “racial disintegration.” In doing so, we find that the xenophobia directed at certain pan-racial groups, at least in places like the U.S., promotes a unique brand of White supremacy and does so in ways that maintain or reshape the nation's understanding of race and specifically its racial categories. (shrink)

This article offers a response to Michael J. Monahan's engagement with and criticism of Grant Silva's article “Racism as Self-Love.” So as to demonstrate how Monahan's idea of “ur-contempt” fits alongside the author's project and supplements his attempt to challenge the variety of forms of moral obfuscation employed by white nationalists and other racists today, this response begins with an overview of the central critique of moral responsibility for racism that Silva's work offers. At stake is the attempt, by (...) unabashed white supremacist and others, to bank on historical acts of racial oppression and reap the benefits of elevated social status while evading responsibility for that past. The goal in this project is thus to demonstrate the entanglement of interpersonal and structural forms of racism while also describing how racism unfolds in the present in order to challenge the types of moral evasion for racism that Monahan and Silva are concerned with. (shrink)

The rise in the public profile of “alt-right” and “white nationalist” groups in recent years is often described as a rise in “hate groups.” The presumption in this nomenclature is that these sorts of groups are defined essentially in terms of their shared hatred for some or all nonwhite individuals and groups. However, the rhetoric of such groups is couched not as hatred, but rather in terms of “self-love”—they do not hate other groups, they are just looking out for (...) themselves. The author's argument in this article is that, even if we assume the sincerity of white nationalists' claims to be only interested in sustaining and defending whites and whiteness, the kind of “self-love” this exhibits is morally and politically pernicious precisely because it is constitutively linked to a foundational contempt for nonwhites. (shrink)

This essay is a reply to commentaries by Elin Danielsen Huckerby, Yvonne Huetter‐Almerigi, and Paul Showler on Tracy Llanera's Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism (2020).

There is a growing body of feminist scholarship and literature exploring the ways in which Western patriarchal technologies of gender differentiation and sexual violence structure the racial categorisation and dehumanisation that define South Africa’s history of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. In this article, I consider the gendered history of white Afrikaner nationalism in the context of these insights. Using the decolonial feminist lens of María Lugones, I interpret the historical and contemporary patriarchal subjugation of the white Afrikaner (...) woman as a site of the production and maintenance of colonial racial categories and hierarchies. Gaining a better understanding of how gender operated as a colonial mode of organisation in the process of forging the ethno-racialised white identity of the Afrikaner in the early nineteenth century in opposition to the black indigenous majority population helps to explain how the continued patriarchal subjugation of white Afrikaner women by Afrikaner men in postcolonial/postapartheid South Africa works to reassert and maintain colonial racial categories and inequalities that continue to plague the country. (shrink)

This article argues that Hayden White's vision of historiography can be appropriated for the “public use of history” in many ethnic and nationalist conflicts today. That is, it can be used to provide the theoretical arguments that justify the instrumentalization of historical memory by nationalist elites in their sometimes genocidal struggles with their opponents. Historians so far have not adequately understood the implications or possible uses of White's historiography, and therefore to that extent his case remains unrefuted. In (...) the event, White has anticipated and held his ground against possible counter-arguments. The only way to answer him is to ask the question that he poses of historians: what is the purpose of history for “life”? The essay argues that Max Weber's advice to scholars to pose difficult questions and demand clarity about the implications and consequences of specific commitments is morally more responsible than White's in the current climate of ethnic and national conflict. The historical is not opposed to the ethical, as White maintains; the historical is the ethical. Historians should engage in “strong evaluations” in the construction of “bridging” narratives between historical communities, rather than redemptive narratives of liberation that often entail zero-sum claims to contested land. (shrink)

This article addresses recent strains of white nationalism rooted within anxieties over demographic replacement. More broadly, the article argues that the contemporary politics of white grievance cannot be reduced to an ahistorical desire for racial supremacy. Rather, these anxieties represent the political reflex to perceptions of loss on the part of historical white majorities—a loss that takes a distinctly melancholic form in both discourse and practice. To understand white nationalism as a melancholic politics is (...) to recognize the pathologies that stem from its underlying psychodynamics. At the affectual level, for instance, the subject of white grievance is constituted as the subject of politicized rage through its organizing narratives. And ultimately, the politics of melancholic whiteness raises significant challenges for a democratic polity. Most fundamentally, the melancholic fixation upon loss forecloses the futurity required by a democratic politics. Upon diagnosing these destructive pathologies, the article goes on to propose alternatives to approach civic change in less destructive, more democratically generative fashion. (shrink)

Attempts at formulating a dichotomous classification of nations and nationalisms have proliferated in the relevant literature over a long period of time. In this study some of the most influential instances of dual typologies of nationalisms are selected for interpretation and analysis. The examples include Renan's under?standing of differences between the "French" and the "German" concepts of nation; Kohn's distinction between "eastern" and "western" nationalisms; a revision of Kohn's dichotomy suggested by J. Plamenatz; and a more recent version of dual (...) typology propounded by L. Greenfield. By reconstructing the views of the selected theorists of nationalism, at the basis of all these typologies a dichotomous division into "civic" and "ethnic" nationalism is identified. Critical objections to this fundamental dual division are articulated at two levels. At the first, historical level, a socio-political contextualization of dual typologies points to their practical, political-ideological purposes. At the second, conceptual level, and drawing on the ideas of R. Brubaker, the author discusses analytical and normative weaknesses of the usual distinction between "civic" and "ethnic" nationalism. Literatura o nacijama i nacionalizmu svedoci o istorijski dugotrajnim pokusajima formulisanja dihotomne klasifikacije proucavanih fenomena. Stoga je autor u ovoj studiji interpretirao i analizirao neke od najuticajnijih primera dualnih tipologija nacionalizma. Predmet njegovog istrazivanja su Renanovo shvatanje razlika izmedju "francuskog" i "nemackog" pojma nacije, Konovo razlikovanje "istocnog" i "zapadnog" nacionalizma, Plamenceva revizija Konove dihotomije, kao i novija verzija dualnih tipologija Lie Grinfeld. Rekonstrukcijom stanovista izabranih teoreticara nacionalizma, autor u osnovi svih prikazanih tipologija identifikuje dihotomnu podelu na "gradjanski" i "etnicki nacionalizam". Kriticke primedbe ovoj osnovnoj dualnoj podeli formulisane su u dve razlicite ravni: istorijskoj i konceptualnoj. U prvoj, socijalno-politickom kontekstualizacijom dualnih tipologija naglasena je njihova prakticna, politicko-ideoloska funkcija. Oslanjajuci se na stavove R. Brubejkera, autor je u drugoj, teorijskoj ravni, istakao analiticke i normativne slabosti uobicajene podele na "gradjanski" i "etnicki nacionalizam". (shrink)

The Irish are largely invisible as an ethnic group in Britain but continue to be racialized as inferior and alien Others. Invisibility has been reinforced by academic treatment Most historians have assumed that a framework of assimilation is appropriate and this outcome is uncritically accepted as desirable. Sociologists on the other hand have excluded the Irish from consideration, providing tacit support for the ‘myth of homogeneity’ of white people in Britain against the supposedly new phenomenon of threatening (Black) ‘immigrants’. (...) Focus on the paradigm of ‘colour’ has limited the range of racist ideologies examined and led to denial of anti-Irish racism. But an analysis of nineteenth-century attitudes shows that the ‘Irish Catholic’ was a significant Other in the construction of the British nationalist myth. Despite contemporary forgetting, hostility towards the Irish continues, over and above immediate reactions to recent IRA campaigns. Verbal abuse and racial harassment are documented in London and elsewhere, but unacknowledged. The masculine imagery of ‘Paddy’ hides the existence of Irish women in Britain, although they have outnumbered men since the 1920s. In America, by contrast, there is a strong stereotype of ‘Bridget’ and her central contribution to Irish upward mobility is recognized. But invisibility does not protect Irish women in Britain from racism. Indeed, they are often more exposed since their productive and reproductive roles connect more firmly to British society. Moreover, women have played a key role in maintaining Catholic adherence, which continues to resonate closely with Irishness and difference. (shrink)

The belief that White people are targeted victims of dispossession, displacement, and genocide has spread with shocking intensity since Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral college victory. Although this Great Replacement myth may seem absurd and irrational, its destructive real-world consequences force the question: what explains its efficacy and appeal? Drawing on White nationalists Greg Johnson and Tucker Carlson, I argue that the Great Replacement myth functions as an explanation for the real socioeconomic decline that has culminated in deaths of (...) despair. I then explore this decline’s sociohistorical context to argue that deaths of despair are consequences of political-economic domination reinforced by White supremacy. Put otherwise, these deaths result from socioeconomic violence that White people have inflicted on each other. I conclude that the real problem “the White race” faces today is not a Great Replacement but a Slow White Suicide. (shrink)

Within the history of African American struggle against racist oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer powerful visions of ways of being that are built on radical concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of the possible. In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers (...) a groundbreaking examination of African American visions of social transformation and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian tradition continues to challenge American political thought and culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal Africa, the fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright. Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope for combating injustice. (shrink)

This article focuses on desires, fears and identities as entangled in the past. Emphasizing gendered aspects of mobility, the author takes as examples debates relating to Icelandic Muslims and discussions in regard to Iceland’s increased international involvements in global peacekeeping. She sees them sharing entanglements with the nationalistic ideologies of Europeans as carrier of justice and equality, as well as a collective forgetting of past histories that foreground and position people in relation to migrations and encounters in the present. In (...) these cases, gender is tightly interwoven with the tapestry of meaning, foregrounding, explaining and informing the relationships involved. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders liberal nationalism in light of the current autocratic nationalist threat. I argue that liberal nationalism cannot redress the social ailments which acclimatize people to the sorts of no-holds-barred political contestation favoured by autocratic nationalists – excessive polarization. I then argue that liberal nationalists do not recognize the degree to which ‘in-group’ racial solidarity motivates members of the racial/ethnic majority to preserve their status, and that the liberal nationalist approach to defending minorities’ rights therefore risks either (...) emboldening the majority to embrace autocracy or consolidating social hierarchies between the majority and minorities. On these bases, I show that democrats must seek to not only detach race/ethnicity from nationality but also redress those problematic racial/ethnic hierarchies. This suggests the need to develop liberal nationalism into multiculturalist nationalism. Multiculturalist nationalism, however, promises a sort of bounded solidarity that does not include all citizens: it makes use of targeted political antagonism against anti-democrats like White supremacists and Identitarians to help diffuse any social antagonism that might exist among minorities, inclusive members of the majority, and cultural conservatives. (shrink)

This study examines the appropriation of religious symbols by the Nordic Alt-Right over the last decade, focusing on their use for völkisch identity construction around whiteness. It locates this signification historically, both before and during the Third Reich, to reveal a complex genealogy complicated by racial ideals, nationalistic agendas and magical thinking. Analysis centres around a selection of symbols – ranging from various Norse runes to the Valknut, the Sonnenrad and the swastika – used both explicitly and in more private (...) contexts by members of the Nordic Alt-Right, with special attention focused on two groups that are active today, the Nordic Resistance Movement and the Soldiers of Odin. This opens a discussion on the semiotic range of appropriation itself, in order to expose how it is operative in different ways and on different levels, not only in terms of cultural borrowing or contestations of meaning but as an appropriation of ideological frames and systems of belief. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This paper reconsiders liberal nationalism in light of the current autocratic nationalist threat. I argue that liberal nationalism cannot redress the social ailments which acclimatize people to the sorts of no-holds-barred political contestation favoured by autocratic nationalists – excessive polarization. I then argue that liberal nationalists do not recognize the degree to which ‘in-group’ racial solidarity motivates members of the racial/ethnic majority to preserve their status, and that the liberal nationalist approach (...) to defending minorities’ rights therefore risks either emboldening the majority to embrace autocracy or consolidating social hierarchies between the majority and minorities. On these bases, I show that democrats must seek to not only detach race/ethnicity from nationality but also redress those problematic racial/ethnic hierarchies. This suggests the need to develop liberal nationalism into multiculturalist nationalism. Multiculturalist nationalism, however, promises a sort of bounded solidarity that does not include all citizens: it makes use of targeted political antagonism against anti-democrats like White supremacists and Identitarians to help diffuse any social antagonism that might exist among minorities, inclusive members of the majority, and cultural conservatives. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This paper reconsiders liberal nationalism in light of the current autocratic nationalist threat. I argue that liberal nationalism cannot redress the social ailments which acclimatize people to the sorts of no-holds-barred political contestation favoured by autocratic nationalists – excessive polarization. I then argue that liberal nationalists do not recognize the degree to which ‘in-group’ racial solidarity motivates members of the racial/ethnic majority to preserve their status, and that the liberal nationalist approach (...) to defending minorities’ rights therefore risks either emboldening the majority to embrace autocracy or consolidating social hierarchies between the majority and minorities. On these bases, I show that democrats must seek to not only detach race/ethnicity from nationality but also redress those problematic racial/ethnic hierarchies. This suggests the need to develop liberal nationalism into multiculturalist nationalism. Multiculturalist nationalism, however, promises a sort of bounded solidarity that does not include all citizens: it makes use of targeted political antagonism against anti-democrats like White supremacists and Identitarians to help diffuse any social antagonism that might exist among minorities, inclusive members of the majority, and cultural conservatives. (shrink)

The present article is an attempt at a closer reading of Ivan Ilyin’s relationship to fascism. This is explored primarily through a selection of articles in which Ilyin wrote in positive terms of Italian fascism, and in one case also of German National Socialism. The author of this article first presents a summary of relevant historical and biographical information, revealing that although Ilyin praised fascism in his articles, his personal experience of German Nazism was negative. This is followed by an (...) examination of Ilyin’s own concept of fascism, concluding that it in fact derived from his understanding of the Russian White Movement. The examination focuses on three selected aspects, key notions for both fascism and Ilyin’s philosophy: the principle of the leader, the idea of the elite and the notion of chivalry, and nationalism and anti-Semitism. This analysis demonstrates that Ilyin drew upon idealized versions of these concepts, as integral parts of his projected utopian vision of a future Russia. (shrink)

Just as the nation is imagined and produced through everyday rhetoric and maps and flags, it is also constructed on the skin, and through bodies, by different types of corporeal `flagging'. In this article, I use two examples of contemporary surgical procedures to explore these dynamics. Aesthetic surgeries on `white' subjects are not often interrogated for their racializing effects, but I use the concept of `flagging' to explore how these surgeries work in the UK to align `white' bodies (...) with a white nation. US media coverage of Iraq invasion veterans with prosthetic limbs circulates narratives of heroism and patriotism, and I explore how the apparent `visibility' of these limbs works to re-embed notions of the US as a transcendent Christian nation. In these two examples of corporeal modification, the nation is `flagged' on the skin, reiterating relationships of belonging that echo practical and conceptual links with property. Propertied belonging — possessive and constitutive — unfolds through bodies, producing whiteness not only as property itself, but also as unmarked, habitual terrain. (shrink)

This paper offers a genealogy of anti-polygamy sentiment in North America, elucidating certain racist and nationalist formations that are implicit in the historical valorization and enforcement of heterosexual monogamy. It tracks the white supremacist and heteronormative logic that conditions the widespread disdain toward polygamy, and that renders it fundamentally different from familial configurations that are associated with national identity. Relating political and philosophical doctrines to the archival documentation and insights of contemporary legal and cultural historians of anti-polygamy sentiment, it (...) elucidates the racial Anglo-Saxonism of Hegel's ruminations on marriage and on the state, and highlights its reverberation within the political philosophy that justified the criminalization of polygamy and its supporting institutions in the nineteenth century and in contemporary immigration policy and same-sex marriage advocacy in Canada and the United States. (shrink)

I argue that its appearing to you that P does not provide justification for believing that P unless you have independent justification for the denial of skeptical alternatives – hypotheses incompatible with P but such that if they were true, it would still appear to you that P. Thus I challenge the popular view of ‘dogmatism,’ according to which for some contents P, you need only lack reason to suspect that skeptical alternatives are true, in order for an experience as (...) of P to justify belief that P. I pursue three lines of objection to dogmatism, having to do with probabilistic reasoning, considerations of future or hypothetically available justification, and epistemic circularity. I briefly sketch a fall-back position which avoids the problems raised. (shrink)

The Nation of Islam (NOI) has intrigued American society since its inception in 1930. Historically, the religio-nationalist organization has been the object of admiration for its uncanny ability to reform the lives of downtrodden blacks. At the same time, the NOI has garnered condemnation for the controversial, racialized and divisive doctrine that it espouses. This condemnation has led to a dismissal of the NOI’s doctrine as reactionary, bigoted, and fanciful myth-making. In recent decades however, scholars have begun interrogating the doctrine (...) of the NOI. Rather than dismissing it, scholars in various fields have recognized the critical and phenomenological nature of its doctrine as it goes about the “mental, physical, and spiritual resurrection” of black Americans. In this article, I interrogate three of the most controversial claims of the NOI: The White man is the devil, the Black man is God, and its endorsement of the separation of Blacks into their own territory. Viewed through the lens of phenomenology, I submit that the NOI’s doctrine and actions should be viewed as the establishment of an emancipative and recuperative “Phenomenology of Blackness” that counters a lifeworld built upon the disembodiment and dehumanization of Black bodies. Reframing the NOI’s doctrine in this way positions it as a linguistic, religiously stylized, praxis-oriented critical hermeneutic phenomenology. (shrink)

I believe that Tom is the proud father of a baby boy. Why do I think his child is a boy? A natural answer might be that I remember that his name is ‘Owen’ which is usually a boy’s name. Here I’ve given information that might be part of a causal explanation of my believing that Tom’s baby is a boy. I do have such a memory and it is largely what sustains my conviction. But I haven’t given you just (...) any causally relevant information, I’ve given my grounds for my belief. I’ve given reasons that might justify me in supposing that Tom’s baby is a boy. Less naturally, the question might be taken as a request for a broader causal explanation of my holding this belief. Appropriate answers might cite all manner of facts concerning the evolution of the human race, why I chose to pursue philosophy and hence came to know Tom, the mechanisms of email transmission, the firing of various neurons, the circumstances of concept formation as a result of which I’m able to grasp the thought that Tom’s baby is a boy, and so on. It is an interesting question what distinguishes the narrower set of answers that I first suggested. I won’t pursue that here. I assume you have a good enough sense of the distinction I’m drawing. We might call the narrower set of answers justifying reasons, the kind of reasons I might cite in justifying my belief. Answers of the first sort are clearly relevant to epistemological evaluation. In assessing whether you know p or are rational in believing it to the degree you do, I will naturally want to consider what reasons you have for your belief. In deliberating myself about whether to believe p, in seeking an answer to the question of whether p, I will naturally consider what reasons or grounds I have to suppose that p. But what I want to focus on here is how explanations of the broader sort bear on such questions as whether to believe p. From a third-person perspective we can ask, ‘In assessing the epistemic status of S’s belief that p, what is the relevance of causal information that lies outside of the realm of justifying reasons?’ From the first-person standpoint we can ask ‘In seeking to answer whether p, how should such causal information affect my deliberations?’ At first it might seem that such broader causal information could have little relevance if any. Like any belief my belief that p can be traced back to innumerable causes from far and wide.. (shrink)

This article explores how Britain’s Black Power movement challenged the political outlook of the anti-fascist left in the 1960s–70s. While the established left interpreted the National Front (NF) as an aberrant threat to Britain’s social democracy, Black political groups foregrounded the systemic racial violence of the British state. By addressing intensifying racial oppression during a critical early phase in the transition to neoliberalism, they prefigured Stuart Hall’s analysis of ‘authoritarian populism’. The British Black Power movement especially criticised the high-profile Anti-Nazi (...) League (ANL) for its singular focus on the NF, which was framed as a revived Hitlerite peril. For British Black radicals, the larger strategic problem was the populist racism, inflected by imperial nostalgia, which propelled Thatcher’s New Right to power. Instead of narrow Nazi analogies, they related the re-emergence of white nationalism to British social democracy’s racist treatment of Black immigrants, as well as its neocolonial role abroad. (shrink)

For critical legal scholars, the ongoing far-right assault upon the liberal status quo poses a distinct dilemma. On the one hand, the desire to condemn the far-right is overwhelming. On the other hand, such condemnations are susceptible to being appropriated as a validation of the very liberalism that critical theorists have long questioned. In seeking to transcend this dilemma, my focus is on the discourse of ‘white genocide’ — a commonplace belief amongst the far-right/white nationalists that ‘whites’, as (...) a discrete group, are facing demographic destruction as a result of deliberate policy choices. Such a belief has motivated acts of extreme violence. While libel to dismissal by experts on mainstream understandings of genocide, namely international criminal lawyers, I argue that this ‘white genocide’ discourse deserves careful scrutiny as a jurisprudential and socio-legal phenomenon that reveals key weaknesses in present modalities of liberal justification. Drawing upon an array of recent critical theories, I show how a liberalism unable to face its own decline enables the very far-right assertions it purports to oppose. Thus, given liberalism’s failure to act as a neutral arbiter, an alternative approach for those opposing the far-right is to develop a vision of politics and society that confront believers in ‘white genocide’ on a more substantive level. This, I argue, forces the far-right’s opponents to disavow liberal scepticism towards utopian transformation as well as the juridical understandings and institutions that allow this scepticism to durably persist. (shrink)

A nationalist theory of the modern state holds that territorial states should be constituted as nations composed of people who in some sense belong with each other as members of their country. Liberal philosophers have defended this view on the grounds that nationality creates the solidarity necessary for social justice. Their argument is troubled by the case of the United States, where nationality is strong but solidarity weak. According to the best empirical studies, the fundamental reason for the American exception (...) is not libertarian political culture, but white anti-black racism. This essay makes the case that an open border policy with Mexico and other Latina/o states is likely to weaken the national identity now widely held in the United States, but increase the political prospects for racial justice. It follows that a liberal nationalist justification for excluding undocumented Latina/o immigrants from membership in U.S. society should be rejected. (shrink)

Introduction -- The mathematical roots of the concept of analogy -- Aristotle : the uses of analogy -- Aristotle : analogy and language -- Thomas Aquinas -- Immanuel Kant -- Karl Barth -- Final reflections.

A fluent and accurate new translation of the dialogue that, all of Plato's works, has seemed to speak most directly to the interests of contemporary analytical philosophers. White's extensive introduction explores the dialogue's center themes, its connection with related discussions in other dialogues, and its implication for the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics.

Wittgenstein famously remarks that ‘the meaning of a word is its use’ (PI §43). Whether or not one views this as gesturing at a ‘theory’ of meaning, or instead as aiming primarily at dissuading us from certain misconceptions of language that are a source of puzzlement, it is clear that Wittgenstein held that for certain purposes the meaning of an expression could profitably be characterised as its use. Throughout his later writings, however, Wittgenstein’s appeal to the notion of use pulls (...) in two directions. In several places, Wittgenstein seems to connect the notion of an expression’s meaning with that of use in the sense of usage or practice. More specifically, he suggests that for an expression to possess meaning is for there to be a practice of employing it according to certain rules. ‘That’, he tells us, ‘is why there exists a correspondence between the concepts “rule” and “meaning”’ (OC §62; cf. PG 68; PO 51; RFM VI §28; VW 103). Indeed, Wittgenstein goes so far as to say, ‘The rule-governed nature of our languages permeates our life’ (RC §303). Call the view that the meaning of an expression is determined by a general principle governing its use, rulism. (shrink)

The new edition of Manning Marable’sBeyond Black and Whiteseeks to explain the course of black politics in the United States over the last thirty years. Marable argues that this history shows the failure of liberal and nationalist politics to address the problems facing black Americans. Though Marable attempts to chart a course beyond these ideologies, his alternative of ‘transformative politics’, shorn of the revolutionary Marxism that defined his earlier writings, is no more capable of confronting racial inequality than the strategies (...) it seeks to replace. (shrink)

The new edition of Manning Marable’sBeyond Black and Whiteseeks to explain the course of black politics in the United States over the last thirty years. Marable argues that this history shows the failure of liberal and nationalist politics to address the problems facing black Americans. Though Marable attempts to chart a course beyond these ideologies, his alternative of ‘transformative politics’, shorn of the revolutionary Marxism that defined his earlier writings, is no more capable of confronting racial inequality than the strategies (...) it seeks to replace. (shrink)

South Africa's transition to democracy coincided and interlinked with massive global shifts, including the fall of communism and the rise of western capitalist triumphalism. Late capitalism operates through paradoxical global-local dynamics, both universalising identities and expanding local particularities. The erstwhile hegemonic identity of apartheid, 'the Afrikaner', was a product of Afrikaner nationalism. Like other identities, it was spatially organised, with Afrikaner nationalism projecting its imagined community onto a national territory. The study traces the neo-nationalist spatial permutations of 'the (...) Afrikaner', following Massey's understanding of space as political, produced through interrelations ranging from the global to micro intimacies, potentially a sphere for heterogeneous co-existence, and continuously created. Research is presented that shows a neo-nationalist revival of ethnic privileges in a defensive version of Hall's 'return to the local'. Although Afrikaner nationalism's territorial claims to a nation state were defeated, neo-nationalist remnants reclaim a purchase on white Afrikaans identities, albeit in shrunken territories. This phenomenon is, here, called Afrikaner enclave nationalism. Drawing on a global revamping of race as a category of social subjugation, a strategy is deployed that is here called 'inward migration'. These dynamics produce a privatised micro-apartheid in sites ranging from homes, to commercial and religious enterprises, to suburbs. Virtual white spaces in the form of Afrikaans media products serve as extensions of these whitened locales. The lynchpin holding it all together is the heteronormative, middle-class family, with consumption the primary mode of the generation of its white comfort zones. (shrink)

Although republican political theory has undergone something of a revival in recent years, some question its contemporary relevance on the grounds that republicanism has little to say about central questions of modern economic organization. In response, this paper offers an account of core republican values and then considers how capitalism stands in relation to these values. It identifies three areas of republican concern related to: the impact of unequal wealth distribution on personal liberty; the impact of the private control of (...) investment on popular sovereignty and pursuit of the common good; and the impact of capitalism on the level and quality of political participation. In view of these concerns, we can see some of the likely requirements of a distinctively republican, but contemporary political economy. (shrink)