Seeking Illumination in Dark Times

On the power of art, race and racism, and the limitations of science and politics

Reading our series on the arts, provides some hope in our dark times, on this cloudy and humid Friday afternoon in New York. I have long believed that the key to liberation is illumination, that we have to see the ways things are, and see how things might possibly change, ...
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Seeking Illumination in Dark Times

Envisaging the EU’s future with Hannah Arendt: Taking plurality seriously!

Arendt’s concept of humans as relational selves can transform the EU into a promising political object in a globalized era

A recent critical metaphor analysis of EU strategic policy documents of the period ranging from 1985 to 2014 has brought to light an oddity in how the European Commission speaks of businesses  -- which are functional entities -- as if they were sensitive beings, but of people -- which are sensitive ...
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Envisaging the EU’s future with Hannah Arendt: Taking plurality seriously!

Reflections on the Development of a Post-truth Regime

Donald Trump and the politically correct

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas; i.e., the class which is the ruling material force in society is at the same time the ruling intellectual force.” Marx and Engels, The German Ideology We sociologists know that each idea, each creative expression, each truth claim appears ...
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Reflections on the Development of a Post-truth Regime

On Opposing Fascism with a Reality TV Face

“Politics as a vocation,” the social condition and Donald Trump

I am waiting, ever more impatiently, for my fellow citizens to wake up, to confront that it is happening here and now, that fascism with a reality TV face is upon us. Even though the situation appears ridiculous and often comic, it’s ominous. I am not ready to declare that “The ...
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On Opposing Fascism with a Reality TV Face

The Banality of Evil and the Death of the Author

Thoughts on social interaction, and questions of individual recognition and responsibility

I hope we can agree: we are not alone, and even when we are alone, we are not alone. We humans are what we are as we interact with each other: no interaction, no person; no interaction, no politics; no interaction, no art, science and love; no sex and no ...
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The Banality of Evil and the Death of the Author

Illuminating Global Feminism

The teachings of Shireen Hassim

Shireen Hassim is a professor of political studies who has published many works that aim to theorize and articulate the observed relationship between women, feminism, and political parties within Africa. Focusing primarily in South Africa, Hassim has done exceptional work attempting to increase the quality of education for South African ...
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Illuminating Global Feminism

Between Past and Future

Thinking about life and death

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington I attended an interesting talk yesterday. Being a young scholar, the speaker was (of course) using PowerPoint. At one moment in the talk he referenced a “recent argument” that he would engage. As he did ...
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Between Past and Future

Populism Through Uprooted Truths

The resiliency of Erdogan and the AKP, Part II

In part one of this paper, I elaborated the conditions for Erdoğan’s and the Justice and Development Party (AKP)’s successes in Turkey. I adopted Arendt’s discussion of the degradation of factual truth into opinion in modern societies and defined post-truth politics as based on a floating political space where the ...
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Populism Through Uprooted Truths

Populism Through Uprooted Truths

The resiliency of Erdogan and the AKP

This is an attempt to tell and explain the “success” story of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its founder Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current President of the Republic of Turkey. They came to power in 2002, following economic and political crises in the previous decade. The party and ...
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Populism Through Uprooted Truths

Philosophers on Fake News

Arendt and Foucault on power and truth in media politics

Despite their irrefutable and continued presence in the world today, for some time the practices of banning and censorship have struck me as antiquated, almost quaint, like a desperate but not wholly effective grasp for control by a declining State. My admission of this admittedly unsubstantiated and impressionistic outlook—although not ...
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Philosophers on Fake News

Democracy Dies in Darkness

A keynote address from the Dramaturgies of Resistance conference

I have been fascinated by a dimension of political life that occurred in the latter part of the twentieth century in both non-democratic and democratic contexts. I think of this dimension -- something I experienced myself -- as closely related to the politics of hope, and I call it performative. Just ...
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