James Martel - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by James Martel

Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism, 2020

In this article, I look at the question of how the law continually refounds itself in relationshi... more In this article, I look at the question of how the law continually refounds itself in relationship to the material world by borrowing from that materiality a sense of its own tangibility (which it otherwise does not have) even as it in turn draws material orbits into its object lending them a certain sense of power and nobility (which they otherwise do not have either). This exchange suggests an unexpected vulnerability for the law insofar as it needs the material world to exist at all while the material world does not require an association with the law per se (and arguably is worse off in terms of the exchange it engages with the law insofar as it becomes complicit, at least by association, with law and it various forms of violence). To demonstrate a bit of that vulnerability I look at a US supreme course case 62 Cases of Jam v. United States in order to show how, when pressed to specify what an object is--in this case the question is of what constitutes jam vs. "imitation ja...

Law and the Utopian Imagination, 2014

Contexto Internacional, Mar 31, 2023

published his influential essay 'Critique of Violence'/'Zur Kritik der Gewalt' in 1921, and the w... more published his influential essay 'Critique of Violence'/'Zur Kritik der Gewalt' in 1921, and the work has troubled and provoked thinkers across disciplines for over a century now. This Forum gathers a group of scholars in philosophy, political science, international relations and legal studies to reflect on the actuality of Benjamin's essay for contemporary critical theory. In this opening to the Forum, the guest editors Gabriela Azevedo and Ludmila Franca-Lipke introduce the Forum as a whole. Then in the following piece, James Martel argues that Benjamin helps us to better understand our current moment than almost any other thinker. Benjamin explains the nature of authoritarianism, the link between liberalism (and neoliberalism) and fascism and how such forces can be resisted. In his essay, Martel updates the concept of mythic violence to take into account the resilience of the liberal/fascist connection (even as it ap pears to be a node of struggle and mutual incompatibility). He shows that 'Critique of Violence' doesn't just diagnose our time but it also shows a way out of the abyss that we are in. Martel lists seven key points from Benjamin's essay and adds one other point from José Carlos Mariátegui to think concretely about how to apply their lessons from 100 years ago to our own time.

<p>This chapter examines the most recurrent, extensive, and disturbing form of vulnerabilit... more <p>This chapter examines the most recurrent, extensive, and disturbing form of vulnerability in the world: famine. While Europe imposes production quotas to boost agricultural prices, others, beyond Europe's borders, die of hunger on a massive scale. Famine epitomizes the axiom according to which the world is without meaning if people make exceptions to the assistance they bring to the vulnerable and mortal other. In other words, because there is no more extreme form of abandonment than consigning others to ineluctable death, famine divests globalization of any possible meaning—other than consent to mass murder. The chapter then looks at the depiction of famine in the works of Vasily Grossman and Emmanuel Levinas. Famine reduces freedom to powerlessness in two ways. First, famine is an element in the arsenal of weapons that tyrants count on to subdue freedom. It cultivates fear and in the end suffocates all resistance. Moreover, famine turns most of those whom it spares into spectators, passive witnesses, and even accomplices in the abandonment that it reveals. What is each and everyone's freedom worth if it proves incapable of assisting the hungry—if freedom proclaims that it is powerless, that famine is not its concern or responsibility, but instead the fault of a climate, of governments, of globalization?</p>

In this essay I would like to focus on "The Beast and the Sovereign"-and especially the Second Vo... more In this essay I would like to focus on "The Beast and the Sovereign"-and especially the Second Volume-as being something of an exception to Derrida's usual hesitations about sovereignty. In other works, such as "Rogues", Derrida displays a deep ambivalence about sovereignty insofar as for all of his condemnation of sovereign authority, he fears that what might replace it could be even worse (and, to be fair, he also sees positive aspects of sovereignty as well). In "The Beast and the Sovereign," we find evidence of this ambivalence as well but here, Derrida comes a bit closer to the kind of position advocated by Walter Benjamin wherein sovereignty is an idolatrous practice of politics one which must not be eliminated so much as subverted. In particular, I focus on Derrida's reading in Volume II of "Robinson Crusoe" as a text that both founds the sovereign subject and subverts it (by revealing its vulnerability, its fictional nature). In looking at how the book disappoints as much as it answers sovereign phantasms of authority and unity, I argue that Derrida transfers his own ambivalence about sovereignty to sovereignty itself, subverting and rupturing its central tenets in the process.

1 1. Introduction: "How Not to Be Governed" 2 2. Anarchist Methods and Political Theory... more 1 1. Introduction: "How Not to Be Governed" 2 2. Anarchist Methods and Political Theory 3 3. An Anarchism That Is Not Anarchism: Notes toward a Critique of Anarchist Imperialism 4 4. Beside the State: Anarchist Strains in Cuban Revolutionary Thought 5 5. Kant via Ranciere: From Ethics to Anarchism 6 6. Nietzsche, Aristocratism and Non-domination 7 7. Max Stirner, Postanarchy avant la lettre 8 8. The late Foucault's premodernity 9 9. The ambivalent anarchism of Hannah Arendt 10 10. Emma Goldman and the Power of Revolutionary Love 11 11. "This is what Democracy looks like"

Theory & Event, 2015

In “Breaking the Waves,” Bess McNeill talks to God, using her own voice. In this essay, I discuss... more In “Breaking the Waves,” Bess McNeill talks to God, using her own voice. In this essay, I discuss how Bess’ God produces two contradictory tendencies. First, God produces a sense of fate for Bess, an uncontrollable destiny to which she must submit. Second, God is a means by which she upends that same sense of fate. The metaphor of breaking, in the film’s title, suggests Bess is at once broken by God (she is subject to what she sees as God’s unavoidable power) but that sense of fatedness is itself broken by the way that Bess channels—or invents--God’s voice, offering a radical political alternative.

The Meanings of Violence, 2018

Reading Texts on Sovereignty, 2021

PART ONE Introduction: Sovereignty and temporality The trap of sovereignty Benjamin's dissipa... more PART ONE Introduction: Sovereignty and temporality The trap of sovereignty Benjamin's dissipated eschatology PART TWO Waiting for Justice Forgiveness and judgment Sovereignty de-centered: The Hebrew Republic Conclusion: Politics without mythology.

Political Theory, 2016

Michael Rogin was a brilliant and truly original scholar. His work didn’t fit into any of the est... more Michael Rogin was a brilliant and truly original scholar. His work didn’t fit into any of the established categories; it was controversial, sometimes even idiosyncratic. But when Michael took up a topic, he left the terms of scholarly debate on that topic fundamentally altered. Basically, he was a historian and a radical cultural critic, and of course, an Americanist. He analyzed literature, art, film, along with documents and letters—manifestations of both high and low culture—using the categories of Freudian psychoanalysis to expose, in detail and with precision, the violence, racism, and exclusion hidden beneath America’s self-image as a liberal, egalitarian, constitutional republic. Yet his writing was not self-righteous or even polemical, and his claims were always supported by empirical and textual evidence. But because he was an Americanist and I am not, it would be unseemly for me to assess his scholarship further. Nor would it be relevant to this symposium, which concerns the scholarship of his students. Michael and I were good friends for close to forty years, but that doesn’t belong in this symposium

In this paper I argue that when we pay attention to Hobbes' instructions for reading and app... more In this paper I argue that when we pay attention to Hobbes' instructions for reading and apply those instructions to our actual reading of Leviathan our interpretation of that text changes from one in which sovereign authority is a necessary bastion against chaos to one in which sovereignty ...