The Crisis of External Sovereignty
December 2003, New School for Social Research.
Abstract: Sovereignty has since the Middle Ages been identified with the "right to go to war." This paper looks to examine the operative logic of sovereignty with regard to the development of nuclear weapons. My argument is that nuclear war, with its logic of "mutually assured destruction," both represents the culmination of this notion of sovereignty and puts it in a state of contradiction. Drawing on a distinction made by Jurgen Habermas between crises at the system level and at the social level, I argue that sovereignty has reached a stage of crisis that can only be managed by fundamentally changing the way we conduct international relations. |
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- Notes on Political Theory:
- On Charles Taylor's "Politics of Recognition"
- On Michel Foucault's "Transcendental Claim": A Reply to Jurgen Habermas
- Michael Doyle's Closet Constructivism
- Between Voluntarism and Universal Autonomy: Jacques Derrida's "Force of Law"
December 2003, New School for Social Research.
Abstract: This is a collection of four short papers done over the course of the Fall 2003 semester. Three of the pieces were done for a seminar on political theory, taught by Nancy Fraser. The paper on Doyle was written for an international relations course with David Plotke and Aristide Zolberg. Regarding Taylor, I argue that his agenda for a new liberalism based on a "politics of recognition" doesn't follow from his on premises about intersubjectivity. In the second piece, I attempt to refute Habermas's charge that Foucault's genealogy plays the "double role" of both empirical and transcendental analysis. On Doyle, I try to show that his claim of a "democratic peace" requires a social constructivist approach to international politics. Finally, I argue that many of Derrida's claims in "Force of Law" can be interpreted through the lens of a paradigm shift from voluntarism to autonomy as the basis of the concept of right. |
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Frontier and Oblivion: On the Idea of "Crimes against Humanity"
October 2003, Transregional Center for Democratic Studies.
Abstract: The idea of "humanity" has, over the past half-century, become a highly politicized concept, particularly since the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-6 and the founding of the United Nations soon after introduced such terms as "human rights" and "crimes against humanity" into our political discourse. This paper looks at the idea of "crimes against humanity" through two political ontologies whose clash in the mid-twentieth century gave prominence to the term. The first is political liberalism, which stems from the Enlightenment tradition dating back to Hobbes. The second is totalitarianism as it emerged in Germany as a staunchly anti-liberalist movement. My argument is that a "crime against humanity," properly understood, is no ordinary crime, but one which must be understood in the context of extreme ideologies. |
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Habermas and Kohlberg: An Exercise in Feminist Critique
May 2003, New School for Social Research.
Abstract: This paper may best be described as an exercise in the use of feminist theory as a resource for critical social theory. I am choosing to examine the normative theories of Habermas from the perspective of his (in my opinion unfortunate) extensive use of the ontogenetic moral psychology of Lawrence Kohlberg, who has himself drawn much criticism from feminist theorists. In part 1, I will provide an excursus on Habermas's use of Kohlberg in both his social and moral theories, particularly on the way he employs Kohlberg's stages of moral development to link up his own ideas on deontological morality with social evolution. Part 2 will attempt to explicate the critical debates surrounding Kohlberg's theory that began with the challenge of Carol Gilligan's idea of an "ethic of care," and then to show how Habermas opens himself up to similar lines of critique in his own ideas on morality. Finally, part 3 will focus on the possible "political" consequences of these lines of critique for Habermas's social theory. |
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Globalization and the Project of Modernity
February 2003, New School for Social Research.
Abstract: This paper is an attempt to critique Habermas's conception of "modernity" in light of globalization, which I understand here as the export of "modern" forms of life beyond the West. I address Habermas's philosophical conception of modernity vis-a-vis Foucault's alternative characterization, using their interpretations of Bauldelaire to illustrate their differences. I then use Habermas's own theory of system-lifeworld interaction to argue that the forms of life that emerged out of the modern West's attempt to "create its normativity out of itself" cannot be construed as such beyond the West, where modernization is more a project of "imitation" than "self-grounding." This apparent contradiction results from the way Habermas tries to ground his concept of modernity in the philosophy of universal history -- as an "epochal opposition" -- which is not tenable in a pluralistic world. I conclude by suggesting that Habermas's project could best be preserved by renegotiating it it with Foucault's, with a look back to some of his earlier work. |
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Critique and Vision in the Body Cosmopolitic
December 2002, New School for Social Research.
Abstract: More than two centuries later, Kant's idea of a "cosmopolitan right" continues to provide an inspiration for political theorists and philosophers anticipating a global political society. Yet as many have observed, the world has grown much larger, societies more complex, wars more devastating, and technologies more advanced, such that Kant's original ideas are in many ways no longer applicable without major revision. This essay looks to investigate a philosophical way of proceeding, while critically reflecting on recent attempts to reconcile Kant's thesis with the needs of the present day. In Part I, I would like to reconstruct Kant's line of reasoning that led him to develop the idea of a ius cosmopoliticum by demonstrating how it figures into his larger philosophical project. In Part II, I will weigh Kant's original concept of cosmopolitanism against James Bohman's attempt to envision a "cosmopolitan public sphere," and so try to extract the problems we must face in approaching a cosmopolitan constitution today. These exercises should allow me in Part III to propose some ideas as to how we could reconstruct Kant's ideas as a critical theory of international politics. |
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On "Postmodern Tyranny," or conversely: How to Be an Intelligent Globaphobiac
November 2002, Transregional Center for Democratic Studies.
Abstract: In the first part, I use the philosophy of Hannah Arendt to envision a "political realm" at the global level, and then show how processes of globalization have transformed this realm from one constituted by the sovereignties of states to one that is more multiply accessible. This new accessibility is largely due to the rise of a "mediated" global pubic sphere -- which, among other things, permits new manifestations of political agency (or old ones with new effects). I focus on the medium of television in the second part of the essay to contrast the "dramaturgical" effects of agency in two limit-cases: the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the September 11th attacks. I argue that the interpretation of these events lies at the nexus between the event itself and the political realm that it confronts. |
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The Crown Prince in Texas: A Study on Publicity and Contingency in International Relations
May 2002, New School for Social Research.
Abstract: This paper is intended as an inquiry into some of the factors that compose what we see from day-to-day as "international diplomacy." Of special interest to me is the relationship between politics, the media, and public perceptions, and how these converge upon international relations -- not in the sense of broad historical currents, but in the sense of its day-to-day twists and turns. The April 2002 meeting between President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia provides a good example of the dynamics that play into a diplomatic encounter, and therefore makes a good point-of-focus for entertaining diplomacy as interaction. I am looking to show how diplomacy entails innumerable micro-tactics of posturings, stagings, fumblings, and regroupings on the part of public figures who must pursue the interests of their state while remaining "answerable to the people" through the channels of mass-media. In the first section of this paper, I discuss how heads of state are foremostly constituted as "public figures," and how their performances as such are conveyed to the public by way of the media. In the second, I situate these public figures in the realm of international politics and entertain how this realm shapes the conduct of diplomatic meetings. In the third, I consider the role of the public sphere and its relation to the affairs of state, as well as the "lines of contingency" that seem to be drawn when two such polities come into diplomatic confrontation. Finally, I attempt to demonstrate how these elements play out in the case of the meeting at Crawford. |
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Beyond the King's Right: An Exegesis on World Political Ontology
May 2002, New School for Social Research.
Abstract: The relatively recent preeminence of human rights brings with it a new debate on the relationship between morality and politics, and their contested status is well exemplified in the recent controversy over the I.C.C. and the staunch objections raised against it by the United States. This controversy reflects a broader context of debates over "world political ontology," from a conception of the international order based on a concrete and realpolitik idea of sovereignty to one based on a more abstract and contested idea of humanity. This paper investigates what is implied by the idea of a politics of humanity and how it can be construed as a project in overcoming the politics of sovereignty. In parts one and two, I provide an overview of "sovereignty" as conceived by five thinkers -- Aquinas, Bodin, Grotius, Pufendorf, and Vattel -- and argue how its historical legacy has shaped the international system. In part three, I explicate Kant's idea of "cosmopolitan right" as derivative of a conception of the world as a "commercium." In part four, I compare and contrast how two contemporary theorists, Jurgen Habermas and Alexander Wendt, interpret Kant's ideas as a groundwork for rethinking international relations. |
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Moral Critique and Symbolic Interaction: Augmenting Tronto's "Ethic of Care"
May 2002, New School for Social Research.
Abstract: Joan C. Tronto's Moral Boundaries focuses on two arguments. The first argument is a critical argument aimed at demonstrating the inequitable effects of certain moral boundaries that have embedded moral theorizing since the eighteenth century. The second is a reconstructive argument that attempts to develop an ethic of care intended to correct or "redraw" these boundaries in a way conducive to a more balanced and equitable moral world view. While a full consideration of both arguments is necessary for a complete understanding of Tronto's position, the present analysis will focus mainly on the critical argument. Specifically, I would like first to reconstruct in summary her description of moral boundaries and their role in constituting our political, moral, and economic views of social life, then explicate how these boundaries affect how caring as a practice is integrated into our sociopolitical structure along lines of power and inequality. This will set the groundwork for the major part of my argument, in which I attempt to "augment" her analysis of moral boundaries, particularly the boundary between public and private, by employing the symbolic interactionist approach of Erving Goffman to lend additional understanding to the production and maintenance of what Tronto calls the "self-made man." |
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On Reading Discipline and Punish
December 2001, New School for Social Research.
Abstract: This attempt to explore how Foucault's book relates to issues in moral theory is divided into four parts. In Part I, I will try to establish the continuity between Foucault's project and Nietzsche's original Genealogy of Morals. Part II will be dedicated to reconstructing how Foucault uses genealogy to retrace the historical transformation leading up to the establishment of the modern prison. Part III is intended to show how the elements of the genealogy culminate into a critique of the modern penitentiary system. Finally, I will conclude in Part IV by reviewing the book's effectiveness as a critique of modern morality. |
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The Unfinished Project of Foucault
January 2001, unpublished.
Abstract: In this essay, I argue that attempts to come to terms with the differences between Foucault's and Habermas's respective paradigms of social research are usually framed in Habermassian terms, i.e., in terms of how much force can be accorded to the charges Habermas levels against Foucault in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. In response to this, I try to show that an an alternate approach to the "debate" can be reconstructed from Foucault's own work, particularly after examining Foucault's late essay "What Is Enlightenment?" as a commentary on Habermas's idea of "modernity" in general. |
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