A Countercriticism Rephrased

Kevin, you’ll remember that I asked you a while back about Charles Mills. You didn’t really answer the question I was trying to ask , but looking back, it’s entirely my fault for not phrasing it the way I wanted to (although your answer was informative in other ways.) So, here’s another attempt.

And yes, I’m procrastinating on an assignment that isn’t even difficult. Or long.

Basically, what I’m trying to get at is that classical liberalism, contra your criticism, is capable of considering all people (at least, I don’t see many instances where it can’t.) You said here (regarding a different, though highly related topic,) that “that’s a sweeping metaphysical statement, because the “subject” of your theory is male, but you purport it to universalizable. For example, try saying that statement with various family formations as part of your subject, instead of just one lone male. You’ll notice that it doesn’t work very well.”

I’m assuming you’re saying the same thing about classical liberalism, and I disagree. It’s entirely true that classical liberalism (and I) don’t see the need to look closely at each individual person/group and start over with ethical theory. However, I think that it/I doesn’t have to do so, because the personhood that it uses as the basis of its philosophy is almost always so significant and so foundational that other aspects of each person can’t (or can only rarely) override the results that come from beginning with personhood only. (I hope I’m making myself clear. If not, say so.)

Put another way, liberalism doesn’t “abstract away” from various contingencies of subjects (to use Mills’s phrasing); it merely recognizes that such things are rarely important enough to affect the analysis. In this way, it’s not like Rawls, who requires that imaginary beings be stripped of all non-personhood-y traits, or like Kant, who requires you to ignore them as a basis for action. You said (somewhere) that liberalism’s subject “doesn’t exist.” It does; it’s pretty much every subject who exists.

So, basically, I think classical liberalism can be formulated “ideally.”* It’s not a problem, because taking various contingencies into account wouldn’t change the outcome (also, isn’t reinventing the wheel every time you do political philosophy sort of…time-wasting, if not impossible?) It doesn’t assume “what kind of subjects you’ll be dealing with” (paraphrased); it just acknowledges that they are subjects.

Take the example you provided: a mother with a family. I don’t think basing treatment of children on rights and personhood is appropriate, or that liberalism applies to them (I was planning on doing a post on this soon.) So, let’s just take a couple of parents supporting more mature children (say, just below the age of maturity.) Let’s add a couple of contingencies that the Left likes: they’re poor and black(say, can afford rent, food, all that, with a bit left over, but not much. Oh, and their ancestors were Southern slaves.) My question for you is, how do these contingencies invalidate, or even affect, classical liberalism? I hope I’ve made it clear what problems I have with yours and Mills’s argument.

*I came up with this mediocre-to-all-right pun: since you oppose ideal theory and the Enlightenment, I praise your ideas as “far from ideal, and ruthlessly unenlightened.” I’ve never actually gotten a chance to use it in conversation and probably never will, so here it is. Enjoy.

Filed under: Jake Anderson , Charles Mills, classical liberalism, gender, libertarianism, race

There Is No Such Thing As Bare Life (Contra Agamben)

There Is No Such Thing As Bare Life (Contra Agamben)

I want to emphasize the ethical impulse that undergirds feminist politics of bringing to the public previously silenced voices, and how such an emphasis shows us the deep ethical structure of resistance in identity politics.

Put differently, getting away from an overly epistemic understanding of identity politics might let us see that there is always a relationship to alterity that can serve as the beginning of political resistance—the failure to create a community with a stable, coherent epistemic status is not a prerequisite for a struggle for justice; our starting point is ethical and not epistemological.  A solidarity which traverses the distinction between life and language that can foster a community of those who have nothing in common.  This notion is inspired by Alphonso Lingis’s notion of a “community of those who have nothing in common.”

We had an interesting discussion in my postcolonial theory class today, which neatly summed up and drew together the underlying concern of all of my classes for the past two years:  where does the Left go now?  It seems that all we’ve been doing (or at least those who had been part of the New Left and the new social movements of the last few decades of the last century and witnessed its breakup and the crisis of socialist/radical democratic politics which has led in Britain to the slow, agitated death of British Marxism and to dying spasms in the US in the form of a largely paralyzed feminist and racial politics, and finally in Europe with the dissolution of the new social movements which were largely initiated by the return of colonial intellectuals to the global metropoles…) is eulogizing the Left–or, at least, the Left as many of my professors knew it, and the Left of which my generation of theorists have inherited.  This isn’t to say that whatever we call “The Left” doesn’t still occasionally show its traces, but global, radical challenges to late capitalist social formations are becoming more difficult to articulate politically, analyses of ideology (in the Frankfurt school sense) and the decline of structuralism (and the double-decline of post-structuralism) are all leaving an enormous intellectual and political vacuum for those who are (I think hopelessly) trying to resuscitate whatever remained after the demise of the New Left in the 70s.

It’s only recently that I’ve realized how much my own theses have been a reflection of a frustration with trying to articulate a vision of a politics for what might come after “the Left” which simultaneously is attentive to the deep and rich history of its politics since the mid 19th century but is also willing to recognize that the Left as my teachers once knew it (and my classmates from Germany) is a project that we need to move past (again, both intellectually and politically).  I now wonder to what extent my turn to Levinas and third-world feminist politics is an attempt to recast the traditional emphasis on the Left on the Gramscian notion of “hegemony” and towards something like a global resistance movement rooted in an ethics of alterity.

At the least, I’m finally beginning to notice the little things that my professors at Chicago (and upon reflection, at Vanderbilt) are saying that betray a kind of exhaustion (or an internalized frustration) with where we are now.

Filed under: Kevin Duong , Socialist Politics, The Left, theory

Conceptual Breakthrough for Thesis

I had a breakthrough for my thesis about an hour ago.  I have been on an intellectual high since then.  I’ve been writing my thoughts in small chunks for the past hour to try to capture in whatever fragmented way what it is that I want to say in the theory part of my thesis.

I’d like to post them as they are, as I’ve written them on post-it notes as small, short, theoretical vignettes.  Feel free to comment on them; they’re a great way for me to organize the small, multiple moving parts of my project and try to gleam the underlying narrative that I want to offer.  Pedagogically, I think this is an excellent way to work through the nuances of a large argument.  Expect lots of frequent and short posts on Elles Disent in the coming days as I work at building the argumentative narrative.

What is Ethics? Ethics is the diachronic and eschatological (perhaps, if we wanted to use the word, messianic) pressing of disorder on our epistemic rules and categories for Justice.  Its origin (or it’s incitement?) is the presence of another person—the Face of the Other.

Take two.

Ethical Metaphysics that Isn’t A Metaphysics: Instead of asserting the lack of foundations for feminist politics, reading Levinas into a feminist project reminds us how important it is that we enact the contingency of identity—that is, that a radically anti-essentialist politics both is in the name of difference and for the sake of difference, and that for this to have the kind of purchase we need in our relationships to others, we need to grasp the importance of contingency in that it always makes reference to the Face of the Other—the origin of the World.

Take Three.

Identity Before Identity Politics: Race and Sex Genealogy: I want to approach the problem of understanding justice from the entry point of contemporary identity politics and notions of democratic representation.  I will argue that the logic of identity that dominates identity politics now is a logic that determines “identity” as an epistemological formation (Ladelle McWhorter, Linda Nicholson, Anne Fausto-Sterling).  As a result, in identity politics, claims of justice in identity politics take on an epistemic quality whereby a claim of justice counts as a claim of justice depending on the epistemic stability of the identity (based on notions of commonality) which authorizes the claim.

Filed under: Kevin Duong , Academia, feminism, identity, justice, levinas, pedagogy, Political Theory

Ideas Jake Toys With, II: Ethics as Aesthetics

Aesthetics is generally considered separate (and almost always less important) than ethics. What I (and many other before me) have started to notice is that there’s often an important aesthetic element in ethical formulations, doctrines, and valuations. Take, for example, Aristotle. In his <i>Nicomachean Ethics</i> (one of my favorite works of philosophy, incidentally) he uses the word “kalon,” which most English editions translate as “noble” or “fine”, to describe what the virtuous man should aim for. However, the word also translates as “beautiful”, and is used by him and others to describe art, people, etc, in ways in which this translation is obviously the correct one (one of several places I’ve read this can be found here under the “Noble” section.)

Similarly, you get the same sense when reading Nietzsche. His appeals against slave morality (which is kind of a reduction, but I’m trying to keep this brief) and especially his bit against the morality of the “Last Man” are at least as aesthetic as they are pragmatic or logical (IMO, much more aesthetic.) So, it seems like at least for some, the appeal of different ethics is based on the pleasing aesthetics of the images they conjure up. Even in more altruistic, Christian based morality, you see the same thing (notice that it’s the “Lamb of God”, not the equally docile and friendly “Cow of God”.) Anyway, it’s interesting to consider this element of morality, and how it shapes moral discourse.

Filed under: Jake Anderson , aesthetics, ideas Jake toys with, morality

Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission

Jake Anderson thank you scott brown, and thank you, supreme court

Sarah Brand
Where’s the “dislike” button?
44 minutes ago

Jake Anderson
Funny, I was thinking the same thing when I read your status. I suppose I just don’t share your passion for suppressing free speech.
41 minutes ago

Sarah Brand
Corporations don’t have vocal cords, last I checked.
39 minutes ago ·

Jake Anderson
…neither do political parties. Let’s ban their speech too!
38 minutes ago

Sarah Brand
If individual members of any given corporation wish to donate to political campaigns, they are free to do so. I don’t see how reversing the Supreme Court’s decision would “suppress” anything.
36 minutes ago

Sarah Brand
You know, even after you delete comments, I still get them in my e-mail. Let’s take this to Elles Disent, shall we?
7 minutes ago ·

Jake Anderson
Seriously? It would suppress the ability of a company’s execs, acting for the company’s interest, to use that company’s resources for political advocacy.

“If individual members of any given [political party] wish to donate to political campaigns, they are free to do so. [But they can't use the political party's money!]“
See the stupidity of that argument – and, by extension, yours?
I realize you won’t believe anything until Arianna Huffington and Markos Moulitsas tell you to, but people don’t give up their rights to free speech once they incorporate, or work for a corporation.
7 minutes ago

Jake Anderson
Yeah, I was actually correcting a grammar mistake, and adding a brief bit at the end.
6 minutes ago

Sarah Brand
One thing before I make a post on the blog:

“I realize you won’t believe anything until Arianna Huffington and Markos Moulitsas tell you to”

Believe it or not, I don’t even read either of them. I support or oppose political developments based on what I believe the consequences will be. If the consequences include a loss of freedom (which I don’t believe they do in this case), I take that into account, and–again, believe it or not–that carries a lot of weight with me.

Okay, *now* over to Elles Disent.

Filed under: Jake Anderson, Sarah Brand , elections, freedom, Sarah and Jake will never stop arguing ever

Thesis, part one

Last time I appended “part one” to a post title, there wasn’t a part two, but given that this project will hopefully span the next year and a half, I think I’ll take a risk.

This semester, I am creating a proposal for my honors thesis, which I intend to write next year.  Needless to say, all of the following is incredibly tentative and preliminary… consider this a very rough idea of something I might theoretically write about, maybe.

The economy of Botswana is considered one of the great success stories of African development: a stable government, good institutions more generally, and a fantastic growth rate, averaging 10% per year between 1975 and 2000 and 5-6% in the past ten years.  Also, despite the fact that about 40% of this growth has been driven by Botswana’s natural resources (particularly diamonds), they have managed to avoid the infamous resource curse.

However, all is not well.  Unemployment is close to 40%, and about 1 in 6 people are HIV-positive.  In addition, because the recent global crisis precipitated a collapse in the price of diamonds, the country is currently experiencing a recession.  And even assuming prices will return to their former levels, Botswana’s diamond supply will be exhausted by about 2030, which means that the economy needs to start diversifying right about now.  This last thing is what I want to focus on in my thesis.

According to a currently popular school of thought whose most famous proponent is Daron Acemoglu of MIT, the quality of a country’s institutions–which almost always include property rights frameworks, presence and quality of markets, and the form of government, but sometimes are defined more expansively–determines the level of long-run economic growth.  (If you’re interested, the seminal paper by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson is here.)  In other words, if markets are up and running, and functioning courts and property rights frameworks are in place, a country should be able to grow without significant endogenous problems.

So, in theory, Botswana’s economy should diversify through the magic of the marketplace.  I’m only just beginning my investigation, so I don’t yet know why this hasn’t happened, but it seems that there are two possibilities.  Either there is some kind of institutional failure taking away incentives for diversification, or institutions are working properly but are insufficient to encourage diversification.  If the latter is the case, it’s possible that some form of government intervention might be appropriate.  (See, for example, this paper by Dani Rodrik.)

A slight digression: when we were discussing this last point, my adviser asked me what my instincts were regarding the desirability of government intervention in the economy.  I thought for a moment and finally said, “I’m in favor of government intervention, provided that it works.”  This might seem like the obvious position even for a progressive–who on earth would admit to favoring ineffective government expenditures?–but I think that too often, we don’t rigorously investigate whether a particular policy actually solves or even mitigates the problem it sets out to address.

That’s basically the main point of William Easterly’s (fascinating) paper “Can the West Save Africa?”, in which he makes a compelling case that foreign aid geared toward large-scale “transformational” projects has no provable effect whatsoever.  Easterly suggests that economists study countries that successfully developed without much outside intervention, one of which is (to return to the topic at hand) Botswana.

Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson did just that with their paper “An African Success Story: Botswana.” Unsurprisingly, they argue that Botswana’s institutions have been crucial to its successful development to date.  I want to examine whether Botswana’s good institutions will be enough to carry it into the future, even after the diamonds have run out.

Filed under: Sarah Brand , Botswana, thesis

Thesis Proposal

Sorry for the delay on this.  I had some difficulty producing the proposal, and I’ve been spending the last week workshopping it.  I’ve now attached a link to my provisional draft of the MA thesis proposal.  You guys will see strong resonances between my BA thesis and this project, but in actuality it’s pretty different.  It starts from the same set of questions, though.

In short, it’s about the role of the moral skeptic in politics.  I’m arguing that the belief that the moral skeptic is a problem for politics (because we might be reduced to a severe relativism) is tied to an idea of politics that construes claims of justice as claims of knowledge.  (The political becomes the epistemological.)  So, I’ll begin with a brief history of the rise of the New Left (primarily through postcolonialism and British Cultural Studies), and then its consequent withering and its replacement with identity politics.  Then, I’ll show how this transition preserved a view of politics that is “scientific,” in the sense that politics becomes the realm of making claims and rational justifications (the rise of the “social sciences,” and the prominence of economic rationalism as the privileged model of the human sciences–i.e. Richard Posner and friends).  Then, I explain the way that feminist theory was produced in the midst of this view of politics, why it is problematic, and how Levinas offers us conceptual categories that lets us see what constitutes “the Political” as already embedded in an ethical register.

It’s ambitious, and there are going to be major difficulties since I have to translate the vocabulary of Levinas into a political theory idiom.  Still, this is something I’m deeply passionate about, so I think it’s worth the risk to take on this project.

Link here for proposal.

Also, For Your Enjoyment:  my current book list for the quarter:

• de Vitoria’s Lectures on De Indis
• Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws
• Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew
• Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture
• Robert Gooding-Williams’s In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America
• Rousseau’s Confessions and Emile

Filed under: Kevin Duong , Academia, Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory

On 1.5 pages of Kierkegaard

So, I actually was able to get into the two classes I wanted (Evolution and Society, and Abnormal Psychology.) These past few days have been great for a number of other reasons – two that I’ll name are watching Archer with the roomie and my awesome new sweater. Anyway, I had to drop both Existentialism and History of Western Art to make room. While I’ll be able to take the latter this summer or next fall, I probably won’t be able to do the former. And it looked really good.

So, in tribute, I’m going to comment on the very small part of Kierkegaard that I read before I got into the preferred classes. That would be section A.a of the first part of The Sickness Unto Death. I think I’m going to try to finish it eventually, because what I read was pretty interesting (if a bit difficult to understand – I still don’t know if I’m reading it correctly.) Anyway, he starts by defining the self. A human being is a synthesis: one one hand, you have the physical and temporal; on the other, the “psychical” and infinite. These two, combined, make a third entity, a human. When a human relates to itself as both a psychical and physical being, this relation is the self.

What’s important for Kierkegaard seems to be that this relation has been established by another being (I haven’t gotten to that part yet, but $10 says it’s God.) If it weren’t so, the only kind of existential despair humans could have would be to desire not to be themselves. However, because of our creation by another, there is a second kind of despair: trying to be ourselves without relating to God.

First of all, Kevin: is this reading correct? if so, how does he expand on it in the rest of the book, and in others?

Highly interesting thought. However, a couple of things. First, and most importantly, is the question of God’s existence, much less his creation of humanity. Not going to even bother getting in that argument (which might be my least favorite in philosophy), but even if you grant his existence, you would then have to believe that his existence is a continual requirement (a cause in esse) rather than simply a necessary preceding event (a cause a fortoriori.) Atheists, agnostics, and deists can disagree (as I do.) So…no firm basis. (Also – how the hell are parents not the ones who established one’s self? Maybe because that cause is a fortoriori?)

Second thing, the whole synthesis doesn’t work in that the psychical is not antithetical to the physical. I think modern neuroscience has pretty safely concluded that all psychical processes are a kind of subjective effect resulting from physical action in the brain.  So, I’m not sure how Kierkegaard would approach that (or if he would believe it, were he alive and aware of the evidence.)

Anyway, it was a great read. Perhaps I’ll finish it this summer?

Filed under: Jake Anderson , life, Soren Kierkegaard

Ideas I’ve Been Toying With, I: Similarity as a key basis for altruism

To be a bit more specific: the idea that others’ similarity to a subject is a key proponent of his altruistic feelings toward them. As to the extent that those feelings actually correspond to or invoke moral requirements in that subject…different question.

Basically, the idea is something like recognizing “another self” in other beings (as Aristotle said about friendship; Nicomachean Ethics, book X, I think.) It would explain why we generally value those more closely related to us (kin selection) more highly than others (though there’s an obvious evolutionary basis to this too – in fact, the two may go hand in hand); it explains why we value humans over other animals (even when they’re less physically or mentally capable), and why we respect animals that are more similar to us (cf. “pesco-pollo vegetarians”, who won’t eat mammals but will eat seafood and poultry.) It could explain in-group preferential treatment (based on race, esp., but other things too.)

As the phrase “toying with” should suggest, this idea (and others – note the Roman numeral) are far from established convictions, just some ideas I’ve been pondering.

So…thoughts?

Filed under: Jake Anderson , ideas Jake toys with, morality

Spring Quarter 2010

Now that I know I am taking next year off, I can relax a bit on my thesis preparations; if I want, I can take the summer to finish it (which will delay graduation until August).  I’d still prefer to finish in June, but we’ll see.

I have finished an outline of my thesis proposal.  I am going to flesh it out into a paper tonight, in preparation for next week’s presentation to my advisor.  January is also the month where I will be “meeting and greeting” various faculty and “shop” for a supervisor, assuming that they agree to take me as a student as well.  Lots of big kid things to do in the coming weeks.

I will attach as a .pdf my thesis proposal (it might help you guys craft your own as well) when I finish tonight (hopefully).  I wanted to go ahead and post, though, since I’ve been MIA due to schoolwork and mono.

Also, a picture that seriously cracked me up for several minutes when I saw it.  I laughed out loud.

Filed under: Kevin Duong , Academia