Tag: politics

“Let’s Make America Great Again”: Trump’s Paranoid-Schizoid Politics

The cry that Donald Trump repeats at every rally — “Let’s Make American Great Again” — taps into a dual wager: (1) that those who imagine themselves as the dominant and quintessential “American” people need not mourn the loss of their presumed dominance at home and abroad and (2) that those who are undermining the… Continue reading “Let’s Make America Great Again”: Trump’s Paranoid-Schizoid Politics

Politics & the Work of Mourning

Here’s something I’m working on…. There are many languages of reason, but perhaps the most powerful and insidious one is the unconscious logic that emerges during political, ethnic, and religious conflict. What may at first seem madness, is, if looked at with the right lens, a very cool calculus of justice aimed at righting past… Continue reading Politics & the Work of Mourning

Political Cultures and the Culture of Poverty

“‘Culture of Poverty,’ Once an Academic Slur, Makes a Comeback” reports the New York Times this morning, referring to the debate that started with Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report that described “the urban black family as caught in an inescapable ‘tangle of pathology’ of unmarried mothers and welfare dependency.” According to the story, written by… Continue reading Political Cultures and the Culture of Poverty

Civil Society, or the Public Sphere?

I am ready to come clean with my worry about these two terms, “civil society” and “the public sphere.”  My political theorists friends (trained in political science departments) act and talk as if the difference between the two is patently obvious.  I just nod, a bit hesitant to admit that I don’t quite get it.… Continue reading Civil Society, or the Public Sphere?

A Phenomenology of Democratic Politics

This academic year I’ve been working on a new book project. Roughly, it’s a phenomenology of democratic politics — democratic in the deep and strong sense, not the thin sense of liberal, representative democracy.  I’ve written several chapters, that have been published as papers here and there. It’s time to start ordering this all in… Continue reading A Phenomenology of Democratic Politics

It’s about context not content

The Havas Media Lab just put out a paper on user-generated context — a significant tweak of the new media mantra about user-generated content (meaning all those videos, blogs, and podcasts that the people formally known as the audience are now making for themselves). The authors argue that most of this new content is really… Continue reading It’s about context not content

Philosophy and the City

My friend and colleague in philosophy, Sharon Meagher, is starting up a really great project on philosophy and the city. The premise is that philosophy is at its best bound up with the public affairs of a particular place. Meagher argues that the philosophical pretense to adopt a “view from nowhere” ignores the ways in… Continue reading Philosophy and the City