Mathias Thaler | University of Edinburgh (original) (raw)

Books by Mathias Thaler

Cambridge University Press, Jul 2022

Visions of utopia – some hopeful, others fearful – have become increasingly prevalent in recent t... more Visions of utopia – some hopeful, others fearful – have become increasingly prevalent in recent times. This groundbreaking, timely book examines expressions of the utopian imagination with a focus on the pressing challenge of how to inhabit a climate-changed world. Forms of social dreaming are tracked across two domains: political theory and speculative fiction. The analysis aims to both uncover the key utopian and dystopian tendencies in contemporary debates around the Anthropocene; as well as to develop a political theory of radical transformation that avoids not only debilitating fatalism but also wishful thinking. This book juxtaposes theoretical interventions, from Bruno Latour to the members of the Dark Mountain collective, with fantasy and science fiction texts by N. K. Jemisin, Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood, debating viable futures for a world that will look and feel very different from the one we live in right now.

Using a variety of theoretical reflections and empirically grounded case studies, this book exami... more Using a variety of theoretical reflections and empirically grounded case studies, this book examines how certain kinds of imagination – political, artistic, historical, philosophical – help us tackle the challenge of comprehending and responding to various forms of political violence.

Understanding political violence is a complex task, which involves a variety of operations, from examining the social macro-structures within which actors engage in violence, to investigating the motives and drives of individual perpetrators. This book focuses on the faculty of imagination and its role in facilitating our normative and critical engagement with political violence. It interrogates how the imagination can help us deal with past as well as ongoing instances of political violence. Several questions, which have thus far received too little attention from political theorists, motivate this project: Can certain forms of imagination – artistic, historical, philosophical – help us tackle the challenge of comprehending and responding to unprecedented forms of violence? What is the ethical and political value of artworks depicting human rights violations in the aftermath of conflicts? What about the use of thought experiments in justifying policy measures with regard to violence? What forms of political imagination can foster solidarity and catalyse political action?

This book opens up a forum for an inclusive and reflexive debate on the role that the imagination can play in unpacking complex issues of political violence.

Columbia University Press, 2018

SUMMARY This book demonstrates why the imagination matters for political theory. It explores how ... more SUMMARY
This book demonstrates why the imagination matters for political theory. It explores how narrative art, thought experiments and history can challenge and enlarge our existing ways of thinking about different types of violence: genocide, torture and terrorism. The book advances three broad claims about political theory, violence and the imagination. Firstly, it charts a middle course between the two most prominent approaches in contemporary political theory, namely moralism and realism. Secondly, the book adopts the framework of dynamic nominalism to make sense of the ways in which practices of conceptualizing violence interact with the reality of violence. Thirdly, I argue that political theory ought to contribute to societal and academic debates about violence by offering imaginative judgments as to which conceptualizations best serve the purpose of understanding and responding to violence.

Through its focus on the power of the imagination, the book adds a novel perspective to the current discussion around genocide, torture and terrorism. It concentrates on three ways in which the imagination can become engaged: storytelling, hypotheticals and genealogy. Storytelling can trigger what Ludwig Wittgenstein called “aspect-seeing”, which is crucial for comprehending when definitions of violence need to be expanded. I substantiate this claim through an analysis of two films that can help us see wartime rape as well as climate change as genocidal. Hypotheticals perform a different function: they are estrangement devices that shed new light on prevalent norms. By scrutinizing various strategies for constructing imaginary cases about torture, the book develops a framework for determining the merits of thought experiments. Finally, genealogy uncovers the history of ostensibly self-evident beliefs in order to reveal their contingency. Specifically, the book proposes that a feminist history of the concept of “innocence” has important implications for “object-focused” definitions of terrorism that emphasize the targets of violent attacks.

SHORT DESCRIPTION OF EACH CHAPTER
Chapter 1 prepares the ground for the ensuing discussion by introducing the book’s main themes and by outlining its methodology. It explains the basic features of the “politics of naming”, and proposes that a dynamic-nominalist framework can best account for the interactive relationship between defining types of violence and the reality of violence. The chapter then argues for an ameliorative approach to definitions of violence, suggesting that political theory ought to critically assess existing conceptualizations, legal or otherwise, and explore ways to improve them in light of changing real-world circumstances. Finally, the chapter sketches the conception of political theory behind the subsequent argument: democratic and dialogical, rather than hierarchical and self-referential.

Chapter 2 engages with the phenomenon of genocide, and how we may come to terms with it. I argue that it is enlightening to speak of “genocide blindness” when the members of the public sphere are simply incapable of seeing an instance of violence as genocidal. To establish this claim, the chapter introduces Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections on “aspect-seeing” to elucidate the importance of changing how political violence is perceived and interpreted. In a second step, the chapter turns to María Pía Lara’s theory of storytelling as a concrete mechanism for triggering this kind of change. Storytelling, and its effect on the viewers’ and readers’ imagination, can help us to grapple with the fluid nature of political violence. Two case studies are discussed to illustrate this claim: Jasmila Žbanić’s film Grbavica (2006) and the documentary Climate Refugees (2010) by Michael Nash.

Chapter 3 deals with the recent torture debates and examines how hypotheticals involving torture can be subjected to critical scrutiny. It develops a framework for normatively assessing these thought experiments. For imaginary cases within the realm of practical – as opposed to theoretical – philosophy to gain any “imaginative grip” at all, they must be action-guiding. This means hypotheticals ought to assist their addressees in making judgments about real-world dilemmas, even if they depict a possible scenario that is remote from reality. The chapter argues that we should distinguish between productive this-worldly hypotheticals and deleterious otherworldly hypotheticals. This distinction is made according to a criterion of modality: although far-fetched, the former construct imaginary cases that are possible for us, here and now, while the latter depict imaginary cases that are barely conceivable at all.

Chapter 4 asks whether attempts to define terrorism according to the targets of violent attacks – innocent non-combatants, in the parlance of Just War theory – are viable. Following in the footsteps of two recent interventions in this debate, by Christopher Findlay and Verena Erlenbusch, the chapter suggests that a genealogical approach is needed for making sense of so-called “object-focused” definitions of terrorism. Genealogy is critical in that it aims to disclose the ways in which our repertoire of norms and principles is constructed through and through. “Innocence”, as feminist scholars have taught us, offers a prime example for this constructedness. Reading “innocence” through this genealogical lens requires that we acknowledge the contingent and potentially problematic character of the values underpinning our theoretical projects.

Chapter 5 draws together the key insights developed in this book. The conclusion reflects on how a more systematic account of the imagination might look like. It points to both the limitations and the potential of the three registers of the imagination discussed in the preceding chapters, and explores the relationship between realist political theory and the imagination.

Recent decades have witnessed a sharp rise in the number of state apologies for historical and mo... more Recent decades have witnessed a sharp rise in the number of state apologies for historical and more recent injustices, ranging from enslavement to displacement and from violations of treaties to war crimes, all providing the backdrop to displays of official regret. Featuring a host of leading authors in the field, this book seeks to contribute to the growing literature on official apologies by effectively combining philosophical reflection and empirical analysis. It achieves two interrelated goals: it enriches the theoretical debates on the nature and functions of apologies while bringing forth new insights from hitherto unexamined normative horizons. It further addresses often overlooked aspects of political apologies, such as their non-verbal dimension as well as religious overtones, while testing theoretical reflections through encounters with real practices of state apologies. Finally, the book explores the obstacles to, and the limitations of, political apologies. The result is an excellent interdisciplinary volume that affords the reader a better understanding of conditions for a legitimate and successful state apology.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction; Mihaela Mihai & Mathias Thaler
PART I: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS
2. Beyond the Ideal Political Apology; Alice MacLachlan
3. Political Apologies and Categorical Apologies; Nick Smith
PART II: RITES AND RITUALS OF REGRET
4. From Mea Culpa to Nostra Culpa: A Reparative Apology from the Catholic Church?; Danielle Celermajer
5. The Power of Ritual Ceremonies in State Apologies: An Empirical Analysis of the Bilateral Polish-Russian Commemoration Ceremony in Katyn in 2010; Michel-André Horelt
6. Confessing the Holocaust: The Evolution of German Guilt; Stefan Engert
PART III: CHALLENGING CASES
7. Revisiting the 'Membership Theory of Apologies': Apology Politics in Australia and Canada; Melissa Nobles
8. The Canadian Apology To Indigenous Residential School Survivors: A Case Study of Re-Negotiation of Social Relations; Neil Funk-Unrau
9. What Makes a State Apology Authoritative? Lessons from Post-Authoritarian Brazil; Nina Schneider
PART IV: OBSTACLES AND LIMITATIONS
10. The Apology in Democracies: Reflections on the Challenges of Competing Goods, Citizenship, Nationalism and Pluralist Politics; Michael Cunningham
11. An Apology for Public Apologies; Juan Espindola
12. Reasoning Like a State: Integration and the Limits of Official Regret; Cindy Holder

Campus, 2008

Humanitäre Interventionen und Fragen des Menschenrechtsschutzes werden immer wieder heftig diskut... more Humanitäre Interventionen und Fragen des Menschenrechtsschutzes werden immer wieder heftig diskutiert. Während die einen eindringlich vor einer schleichenden Moralisierung der Politik warnen, pochen andere darauf, dass die Politik in Fragen des transnationalen Engagements einen moralischen Standpunkt einnehmen müsse. Mathias Thaler stellt die verschiedenen Ansätze dieser Debatte dar und liefert damit eine aktuelle Bestandsaufnahme der unterschiedlichen Theorien zum Verhältnis von Moral und Politik.

Papers by Mathias Thaler

WIREs Climate Change, 2021

In 2019, the climate emergency entered mainstream debates. The normative frame of climate justice... more In 2019, the climate emergency entered mainstream debates. The normative frame of climate justice as conceived in academia, policy arenas, and grassroots action, although imperative and growing in popularity across climate movements, is no longer adequate to address this emergency. This is for two reasons: first, as a framing for the problem, current notions of climate justice are insufficient to overcome the persistent silencing of voices belonging to multiple “others”; and second, they do not question, and thus implicitly condone, human exceptionalism and the violence it enacts, historically and in this era of the Anthropocene. Therefore, we advocate for the concept of multispecies justice to enrich climate justice in order to more effectively confront the climate crisis. The advantage of reconceptualizing climate justice in this way is that it becomes more inclusive; it acknowledges the differential histories and practices of social, environmental, and ecological harm, while opening just pathways into uncertain futures. A multispecies justice lens expands climate justice by decentering the human and by recognizing the everyday interactions that bind individuals and societies to networks of close and distant others, including other people and more-than-human beings. Such a relational lens provides a vital scientific, practical, material, and ethical road map for navigating the complex responsibilities and politics in the climate crisis. Most importantly, it delineates what genuine flourishing could mean, what systemic transformations may involve (and with whom), how to live with inevitable and possibly intolerable losses, and how to prefigure and enact alternative and just futures.

New Political Science, 2023

A common charge against utopianism is that any attempt to create blueprints for a better future d... more A common charge against utopianism is that any attempt to create blueprints for a better future disregards a basic fact: humans' proclivity for failure. In response, defenders of social dreaming have argued that failure can become generative, once we abandon the perfectionism that ostensibly inheres in utopian visions. Building on this revaluation, the paper applies a crucial lesson from engineering and design studies-that often artificial failure modes are required to enhance the safety of tools and machines. To flesh out this point, I turn to utopian fiction and discuss Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital-trilogy, which rejects techno-optimism about our climate-changed world, yet hails the transformative potential of an anti-capitalist scientific community. Ultimately, the paper claims that, if we cannot have success in addressing the climate emergency without committing serious mistakes, then one (but clearly not the only) path forward is to imaginatively prefigure the faultlines along which ecomodernist dreams for a "good Anthropocene" might rupture.

American Political Science Review, 2024

Eco-miserabilism—the thought that it is already too late to avert the collapse of human civilizat... more Eco-miserabilism—the thought that it is already too late to avert the collapse of human civilization—is gaining traction in contemporary environmentalism. This paper offers a “reparative” reading of this post-apocalyptic approach by defending it against those who associate it with defeatism and fatalism. My argument is that authors like Roy Scranton and the members of the Dark Mountain collective, while rejecting mainstream activism, remain invested in a specific kind of (radical) hope. Eco-miserabilists, hence, promote an affective politics for our climate-changed world that is both negative and iconoclastic. Without offering blueprints for a desirable future, they critically interrogate reality and disenchant the “cruel optimism” (Lauren Berlant) behind reformist plans for a “good Anthropocene.” The ultimate target of the eco-miserabilist position is the illusion that groundbreaking innovations, either in the realm of science and technology or of ordinary representative politics, could redeem us on an environmentally ravaged planet.

Memory Studies, 2024

Addressing the political implications of the ever-accumulating destruction of ecosystems and more... more Addressing the political implications of the ever-accumulating destruction of ecosystems and more-than-human life, this paper asks whether and in what ways environmental losses should be publicly commemorated. Our answer is two-pronged. First, we hold that a politics of environmental commemoration would enfranchise those who are already grieving, by lending legitimacy to their experiences. Moreover, commemorative practices might prompt much-needed norm change by nurturing a recognition of our species’ entanglement with the more-than-human world. Second, we programmatically introduce five principles that should guide environmental commemoration, ethically and pragmatically: multispecies justice, responsibility, pluralism, dynamism, and anticlosure. A critical examination of two real-world examples – the memorialization of the passenger pigeon’s extinction and the annual ritual of the Remembrance Day for Lost Species – substantiates our theoretical argument. Finally, the paper engages with several potential criticisms.

Utopian Studies, 2022

This paper contributes to a better understanding of dystopia's practical aims by offering a criti... more This paper contributes to a better understanding of dystopia's practical aims by offering a critical defence of what Gregory Claeys calls the "Atwood Principle". The Atwood Principle, derived from the writings of the Canadian author, establishes a yardstick for separating speculative fiction from science fiction. I argue that, rather than elevating it to the status of a genre definer, the Atwood Principle should be vindicated in terms of a heuristic device for contextually identifying the central mechanism underpinning dystopias: warning through extrapolation. The real challenge, then, is how to make sense of the complex functioning of extrapolation.

Environmental Politics, 2022

One way of understanding calls for “multispecies justice” is to interpret them as utopian demands... more One way of understanding calls for “multispecies justice” is to interpret them as utopian demands for a desirable future in which the structural anthropocentrism of conventional forms of morality, including environmental ethics, has been thoroughly abolished. I hope to clarify what kind of utopia multispecies justice might specifically entail. Mobilizing a conceptual framework developed by the science fiction author Octavia Butler, three potential plotlines for the utopia of multispecies justice are identified: the What-If, the If-Only and the If-This-Goes-On. Each of these engages the various tasks of utopianism in interestingly different ways. The key argument is that multispecies justice primarily raises a challenging What-If question: as a critical interrogation of how we should process and experience the world (and our place within it), its power derives from the “educated hope” to disrupt and reassemble outdated frameworks for making sense of the nature/culture divide.

Environmental Politics, 2020

This essay seeks to open a conversation about multispecies justice in environmental politics. It ... more This essay seeks to open a conversation about multispecies justice in environmental politics. It sets out some of the theoretical approaches, key areas of exploration, and obvious challenges that come with rethinking a core plank of liberal theory and politics. First, we discuss some of the diverse scholarly fields that have influenced the emergence of multispecies justice. We then discuss core concerns at the centre of this reconfiguration of justice – including broadening conceptions of the subject of justice and the means and processes of recognition (and misrecognition). The importance of deconstructing and decolonising the hegemony of liberal political discourse is crucial, and is part of a larger project for multispecies justice to rework a politics of knowledge and practice of political communication. Finally, we begin to explore what a commitment to multispecies justice might demand of politics and policy.

Humanity Journal, 2019

"This symposium brings together five scholars to discuss Jessica Whyte’s important essay “The ‘Da... more "This symposium brings together five scholars to discuss Jessica Whyte’s important essay “The ‘Dangerous Concept of the Just War’: Decolonization, Wars of National Liberation, and the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions,” originally published in the Winter 2018 issue of Humanity. It also includes a response to commentary by Whyte. Whyte’s essay argues that during the International Committee of the Red Cross’s “Diplomatic Conference on the Laws of War” (1974-77) it was the Third World and Soviet states that used the language of the “just war” to distinguish wars of national liberation from wars of “imperialist aggression”—particularly the US War in Vietnam. In stark contrast, the Western states, including the United States, attacked the language of just war as a medieval licence to cruelty." http://humanityjournal.org/symposium-just-war/

Perspectives on Politics , 2019

A common complaint about pacifism says that it is utopian, in a pejorative sense. The worry can t... more A common complaint about pacifism says that it is utopian, in a pejorative sense. The worry can take various forms and directions, but when it is couched in terms of Just War theory it usually includes accusations of pacifism’s immorality, inconsistency and impracticality. Contemporary defenders of pacifism have responded to this complaint by delineating a highly sophisticated, empirically informed account of pacifism that foregrounds its real-world effectiveness. This paper takes a different route towards vindicating pacifism: via a more nuanced picture of what is specifically utopian about it. I propose that peace, in at least some of its guises, can be described as a minor, grounded utopia; a desire for an alternative future without war and violence, whose pursuit blurs the boundaries between thought and action. Reconstructing both prefiguration and testimony as practical modes of this kind of pacifism, the paper maintains that minor, grounded utopias are sites rife with conflict and contestation.

Constellations, 2019

What kind of stories are most effective for envisioning a hopeful future when alternatives to the... more What kind of stories are most effective for envisioning a hopeful future when alternatives to the status quo are sorely needed? Few would turn to dystopian fiction for this specific purpose. Despite their current resurgence across different media, dystopias are often suspected of undermining progressive action, due to their militant pessimism and their all-too frequent succumbing to despair. In this paper, I respond to this charge by focusing on a type of dystopia that productively negotiates the tension between hope and despair: critical dystopias. Originating as a genre in the 1980s, critical dystopias leave space for the cultivation of utopian desires – so long as the hope for a better future is tempered by the memory of past and present suffering. To flesh out the implications of this nuanced view, I embark on a reading of Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad, whose alternative history of emancipation from slavery epitomizes the power of critical utopias to stir the imagination. To put it metaphorically, critical dystopias contain bleak dreams of violence, but they differ from nightmares. Upon imaginatively visiting a critical dystopia, the reader is summoned to feel empowered, rather than deflated, by the dark visions enclosed in these stories.

British Journal of Political Science, 2018

This article develops a framework for assessing thought experiments in normative political theory... more This article develops a framework for assessing thought experiments in normative political theory. It argues that we should distinguish between relevant and irrelevant hypotheticals according to a criterion of modality. Relevant hypotheticals, while far-fetched, construct imaginary cases that are possible for us, here and now. Irrelevant hypotheticals conjure up imaginary cases that are barely conceivable at all. To establish this claim, the article interrogates, via a discussion of Susan Sontag and Judith Butler’s accounts of representations of violence, the frames through which hypotheticals construct possible worlds, and concludes that some frames are better than others at sustaining a link with the world as we know it. Frames that disrupt this link can be charged with failing to offer action-guidance.

Review of Politics , 2018

In this paper, I explore the ways in which reconciliation can be furthered through estrangement. ... more In this paper, I explore the ways in which reconciliation can be furthered through estrangement. While it is often assumed that reconciliation culminates in the comprehensive resolution of conflict between deeply alienated parties, the paper argues that reconciliation can in fact only be envisaged through complex processes of estrangement that reveal alternative vistas for collective renewal. To establish this claim, I start with a conception of reconciliation, inspired by Andrew Schaap’s seminal work, that rejects the image of recovering a moral community and insists on the agonistic character of political reconciliation. In the moment of enunciating and enacting a radically new beginning, former enemies need to learn to see each other in a different light, without forsaking their own identity. Art can perform an important role in this process, especially through the employment of estrangement devices. The paper theorizes estrangement as both an artistic and a political technique that can have world-disclosing, rather than alienating effects on its audience. I then try to tease out the implications of this insight by examining the South African theatre piece Ubu or the Truth Commission. The play demonstrates how estrangement for, rather than from, the world can concretely contribute to political reconciliation: by subverting audience identification, yet triggering emotional contagion, Ubu or the Truth Commission imaginatively opens up the possibility of a common world in which agonistic relations are productively negotiated, rather than fully suppressed.

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy , 2019

Cambridge University Press, Jul 2022

This book opens up a forum for an inclusive and reflexive debate on the role that the imagination can play in unpacking complex issues of political violence.

Columbia University Press, 2018

Campus, 2008

WIREs Climate Change, 2021

New Political Science, 2023

American Political Science Review, 2024

Memory Studies, 2024

Utopian Studies, 2022

Environmental Politics, 2022

Environmental Politics, 2020

Humanity Journal, 2019

Perspectives on Politics , 2019

Constellations, 2019

British Journal of Political Science, 2018

Review of Politics , 2018

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy , 2019

Political Theory, 2018

This essay reconstructs the place of utopia in realist political theory, by examining the ways in... more This essay reconstructs the place of utopia in realist political theory, by examining the ways in which the literary genre of critical utopias can productively unsettle ongoing discussions about “how to do political theory.” I start by analyzing two prominent accounts of the relationship between realism and utopia: “real utopia” (Erik Olin Wright et al.) and “dystopic liberalism” (Judith Shklar et al.). Elaborating on Raymond Geuss’s recent reflections, the essay then claims that an engagement with literature can shift the focus of these accounts. Utopian fiction, I maintain, is useful for comprehending what is (thus enhancing our understanding of the world) and for contemplating what might be (thus nurturing the hope for a better future). Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed deploys this double function in an exemplary fashion: through her dynamic and open-ended portrayal of an Anarchist community, Le Guin succeeds in imagining a utopia that negates the status quo, without striving to construct a perfect society. The book’s radical, yet ambiguous, narrative hence reveals a strategy for locating utopia within realist political theory that moves beyond the positions dominating the current debate. Reading The Dispossessed ultimately demonstrates that realism without utopia is status quo–affirming, while utopia without realism is wishful thinking.

Contemporary Political Theory, 2017

once remarked that 'political philosophy forces us to enter the terrain of ontology'. At a time w... more once remarked that 'political philosophy forces us to enter the terrain of ontology'. At a time when democracy's very future seems to be at stake, this statement assumes a renewed urgency. For, if the democratic project is once more under existential threat, rethinking the foundations of political thought and action is perhaps no longer the exclusive preoccupation of radical political thinkers but becomes the central task of contemporary democratic theory more broadly. Political ontologists have persuasively argued that our fundamental assumptions about the meaning and nature of our being in the world, about politics as a collective activity, and about the purpose of political philosophy are deeply interwoven; thinking and acting politically, as Arendt taught us, are inseparable. Philosophy is not simply an external discourse of knowledge that produces a scientific or 'objective' account of political life, separate from the actual practices, habits and affective commitments of individual or collective agents; nor can political life simply be 1 This Critical Exchange is the result of two workshops held at the University of Edinburgh and the University of St. Andrews in November 2016. We thank the commentators at these events -Nathan Coombs, Patrick Hayden, Tony Lang and Nick Rengger -for their helpful feedback on the presentations. For institutional support, we owe gratitude to our home universities and Edinburgh University Press. Finally, we are grateful to Andrew Schaap for inviting us to edit the papers for this journal.

Political Studies, 2016

This article seeks to contribute to the growing literature on pragmatism in political theory by r... more This article seeks to contribute to the growing literature on pragmatism in political theory by revisiting the role of moral absolutes in politics. More specifically, it proposes the idea that pragmatism can support a particular defence of the ban on torture. In contradistinction with deontological accounts, it will be argued that the principles underlying the ban on torture should not be construed as transcendental values that impose external constraints on political action, but as constitutive rules that emerge from, and are sustained by, a web of intersecting social practices. While pragmatists vehemently reject the introduction of absolutes in politics, their anti-foundationalist conception of reasoning crucially hinges on the sustainability of adjustable banisters along which judgements are formed. The article suggests that the torture prohibition ought to be reinterpreted as one such banister.

Polity, 2014

This paper examines the role of time in Just War theory. It maintains that contemporary Just War ... more This paper examines the role of time in Just War theory. It maintains that contemporary Just War theory’s legalist focus on rules and principles, rather than judgment and interpretation, makes a serious engagement with timing appear quite irrelevant. To deal with this shortcoming, the paper clarifies the dual nature of political time as both chronos and kairos. It is argued that a cogent account of the justice of warfare needs to incorporate the two faces of political time. I show that a casuistic re-orientation of Just War theory would also have the beneficial effect of putting critique back on the agenda. The moral core of my argument is that judgment and interpretation ought to be guided by the spirit of “pragmatic fallibilism”, thereby combining the willingness to assertively uphold one’s values with a disposition to revise, through reflection and deliberation, one’s commitments.

Perspectives on Politics, 2023

Perspectives on Politics, 2020

Contemporary Political Theory, 2020

Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 2010

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2022

• By Mathias aler DESPITE EFFORTS BY Greta unberg and the "Fridays for Future" movement, an incre... more • By Mathias aler DESPITE EFFORTS BY Greta unberg and the "Fridays for Future" movement, an increasing number of young adults are terri ed of a future under existential threat from ecological collapse, according to recent studies on the subject. For many, the game seems already lost, a sentiment fueled in part by the extreme pessimism of people like Roy Scranton, who tell us to "learn how to die in the Anthropocene." eir call to give up hope may, paradoxically, be tethered to a residual form of hope, but the fact is that it encourages fatalism, and thus passivity.

Das Tagebuch, 2022

Kim Stanley Robinsons »Ministerium der Zukunft« machte letztes Jahr als dringlicher wie realistis... more Kim Stanley Robinsons »Ministerium der Zukunft« machte letztes Jahr als dringlicher wie realistischer Blick auf die Klimakrise Furore. In seinem Werk verbindet der Autor Science-Fiction, Klimawandel und Kapitalismuskritik.

In June 2015 the University of Edinburgh will offer an interdisciplinary Summer School on Politic... more In June 2015 the University of Edinburgh will offer an interdisciplinary Summer School on Political Violence. This three-day event will give participants the opportunity to benefit from the knowledge of an unrivalled panel of international experts in the field of war and political violence and to receive critical feedback on their own projects. The programme combines people and perspectives from History, Law and Political Science and will involve intensive scholarly discussions and social activities that allow participants to network with each other in a friendly environment in the scenic, culturally vibrant setting of the city of Edinburgh. Participants will include a diverse mix of academics, MA and PhD students from the Social Sciences and Humanities, and practitioners working in NGOs and legal institutions.

If you would like to give a paper at this workshop, please include an abstract on the application... more If you would like to give a paper at this workshop, please include an abstract on the application form (maximum 500 words):
https://forms.office.com/e/m4At9U5Niw
The deadline for applications is December 5, 2023.

In this workshop we seek to explore, positively and critically, the take-up and potential of utop... more In this workshop we seek to explore, positively and critically, the take-up and potential of utopian experiments to counter wider societal failings and experiences of failure. Our discussion will address how utopian fiction, design initiatives, community spaces, and the mobilisation of utopian desires and hopes, across different temporalities, get created and inhabited in response to wider oppressive social practices, including the competitive practices of mainstream societies, with their success/failure dyads. Utopia can seem to counter failure in several distinct ways. One turn to utopia is as shelter, escape, and comfort from the failings and failures that wider societies produce. Another takes up utopia within mainstream life as a radical ambition and ethos, rejecting notions of withdrawal and boundedness that escaping to utopia sometimes suggests. A third approach rejects the divisions between these two moves and foregrounds, instead, their interconnections. By exploring these and other relationships between failure and utopia, where utopia is framed as an antidote to failure, the workshop will explore several questions. These include: How do utopian projects respond to experiences of failure outside or beyond utopia? What counter-practices and ethoi do utopias offer (for instance, the emphasis on collaboration and cooperation rather than competition)? Can utopias’ alternatives be imagined and enacted in ways that undo wider cultures of failure? What can storytelling, both historical and contemporary, tell us about the desire to escape from social and interpersonal failure? These and related questions will guide the discussion during our first event.

Understanding political violence involves many different theoretical and practical operations: fr... more Understanding political violence involves many different theoretical and practical operations: from examining the social macro-structures that both enable and constrain actors engaging in violence, to investigating the motives and drives of individual perpetrators. A myriad of disciplinary approaches, both in the social sciences and the humanities, contribute to the study of political violence. One aspect, however, has received relatively little attention, even though it is central to a holistic approach to political violence: the faculty of imagination. We broadly conceptualize imagination as the ability to make present what is absent. As such, imagination is different from, and yet related to, both reason and emotion.
This workshop will interrogate the role that the faculty of imagination can play in understanding past, as well as on-going, instances of political violence. Several questions motivate this workshop: Can certain uses of the imagination help us tackle the challenge of responding to unprecedented forms of violence? More concretely, in the aftermath of conflicts, what is the political value of literature and cinema recounting human rights violations? What about the use of counterfactuals in philosophical justifications of policy measures with regards to violence? Can media representations of distant suffering facilitate processes of understanding, build solidarity and catalyse action? Or are they inexorably entangled in ideological manoeuvres?
Political theorists, IR scholars as well as comparativists have recently begun to raise these questions by looking into the politics of representation and narrative in the context of violence. What unites these approaches is an interest in how images and stories relate to the real world of politics. Scholars have been investigating whether, as products of the imagination, representations can have a cathartic effect on democratic societies emerging from a past of violence, give voice to victims and witnesses, trigger processes of reconciliation and forgiveness or become part of the wider societal conversation about ongoing conflicts. This workshop situates itself at the productive confluence of these fields of inquiry.
No ECPR Joint Session workshop in recent times has grappled with the politics of representation and narrative. We will fill this gap by creating a forum for discussion among four constituencies within the profession: (1) political theorists working on the faculty of imagination and how it relates to other human capacities essential to political action; (2) students of transitional justice who examine the role of art in promoting reconciliation and democratic values in the wake of conflict; (3) IR scholars working at the intersection between politics and aesthetics; and (4) comparativists who investigate the institutional and informal mechanisms of tackling violence contextually. The interdisciplinary nature of the workshop will facilitate an inclusive and reflexive debate on the role that imagination as a faculty – and its artistic, philosophical and methodological expressions – can play in unpacking complex issues of political violence.

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Applications must be made through the ECPR website, where you may also find more information about the workshop format and eligibility criteria: http://ecpr.eu/Events/EventDetails.aspx?EventID=101

The deadline for paper proposals is 1 December 2015.

If you have any questions about this event, please contact us at mathias.thaler@ed.ac.uk and mihaela.mihai@ed.ac.uk.

Ideology Theory Practice, 2021