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Politics, Groups, and Identities

New Political Science, 2022

Debates about policing and gun violence often break down to conversations about the violence of e... more Debates about policing and gun violence often break down to conversations about the violence of either "private" white men engaged in vigilantism or "public" police misconduct. I argue, however, that this split misses the way that patriarchal power structures the American state across public and private spheres by uniting the police with white citizens. I make this argument through a novel juxtaposition of John Locke's liberal theorizing of patriarchy and self-defense with Black feminist Ida B. Wells's critiques of how American liberalism disavows Black people's own right to defend themselves. Reading these theorists together, I diagnose how American liberalism justifies the patriarchal basis of white democracy, even as Black people refused to accept their status as objects of patriarchal power with no right to resist. By centering patriarchal power, I also argue then that the abolition of white democracy best directly responds to the contemporary crises of both policing and white masculinity.

Social Science Quarterly, 2021

This article argues that a better understanding of the history and reception of W. E. B. Du Bois'... more This article argues that a better understanding of the history and reception of W. E. B. Du Bois's abolition democracy helps elucidate contemporary debates by abolitionists about how to engage with the state. Methods: Through a close reading of Du Bois's Black Reconstruction I show how contemporary focus on abolition as abolishing the carceral state and building alternatives elides viewing abolition democracy as an engagement with and challenge to state power. Results: Viewing abolition democracy from this longer history allows scholars today to view debates among abolitionists themselves as a conflict between transforming how the state work and carving out autonomous spaces of freedom away from the state. Conclusion: By recognizing the confliced history between Du Bois's use of abolition democracy and its invocation by contemporary activists, I show how abolition itself is a fundamentally contested concept deployed for multiple political discourses and struggles.

Catalyst, 2021

While recent literature on Asiatic racial form has drawn attention to the ways that techno-orient... more While recent literature on Asiatic racial form has drawn attention to the ways that techno-orientalism represents Asian life as mechanically non-human, the COVID-19 pandemic and other developments under the Anthropocene draw renewed attention to the construction of Asian peoples as a source of biological and contagious threat to the West. In this article I argue that a unique discourse of bio-orientalism contributes to the depiction of Asians as a "Yellow Life" that is an existential threat to Western forms of life. Western life posits that this Yellow Life must be resisted and ultimately eliminated for the flourishing of all non-Asian life. Through an attention to biological depictions of Asian life in Yellow Peril literature, I chart how bio-orientalism imagines Yellow Life as ontologically different from Western life forms and as innately animate through both its macroscopic growth and microscopic threat of contagion. Rather than embracing an Asian Americanist response that would also seek to disavow Yellow Life, in a reading of Bryan Thao Worra's poetry I speculate upon embracing Yellow Life as another mode in which Asian American studies imagines otherwise forms of life that challenge and move beyond contemporary Western-centric and humanist responses to anti-Asian racism.

Law, Culture and the Humanities, 2022

Qui Parle, 2017

In the year since the November 2016 election of Donald Trump a central question among many, inclu... more In the year since the November 2016 election of Donald Trump a central question among many, including academics, has been: how did this happen? While some academics–cum–public intellectuals produced nuanced takes on Trump’s connection to long histories of white supremacist institutions, race-based campaigning, and contemporary problems of inequality and democratic deficits, many inside and outside academe soon found a culprit in the figure of the “White Working Class.”1 The perennial bugaboo of liberal politics since the Reagan Revolution, the collected resentments and cultural pathologies of the white working class—what Barack Obama famously called the way they cling to their “religion and guns”— seemed to answer the question.2 Yet the category of “white working

Five: The Claremont Colleges Journal of Undergraduate Academic Writing, 2012

Teaching Documents by Quinn Lester

This course introduces students to the wide-ranging history of thinking about politics within the... more This course introduces students to the wide-ranging history of thinking about politics within the United States. Chronologically, this course covers from the colonial period and the revolutionary founding of the U.S. to current urgent questions about the possible futures of American democracy. In between, students will learn about the growth of a mass democratic culture, the impact of slavery on American definitions of freedom and good government, the impact of industrialization and the U.S. becoming a global power, and the relationship between social movements for progress and reaction during the Cold War. Taking account of these historical legacies, students by the end of the course will be fully equipped to address the possible futures of American democracy as a multiracial state with full equality for all peoples.

This course introduces students to a specific way of thinking about the criminal justice system a... more This course introduces students to a specific way of thinking about the criminal justice system as a key function of the American state. Rather than investigating police, prisons, and the use of coercive power from the perspective of the law and judiciary, this course highlights the criminal justice system as a longstanding feature of American state power that has developed in unique ways both in response to the diffuse nature of the American state and to facilitate state expansion both geographically and within the body politic. Tracing the development of the criminal justice system over time also highlights the crucial factors that white supremacy, anti-Black racism, and patriarchy have always played in its own development and the people targeted as criminals and objects of enforcement. At stake in this history is the question today of can criminal justice institutions built up to support state power be reformed to include democratic control from the people they target, or if the abolition of state coercive power itself is the core issue of American politics today.

What is democracy? What distinguishes democracy from other types of government? Is the United Sta... more What is democracy? What distinguishes democracy from other types of government? Is the United States a democracy? Should it be? In this course, we will address these questions by studying the origins and design of American institutions, debates about the meaning of democracy with regard to race and sex, and the emergence of progressive and conservative interpretations of the American political tradition.

Cops and Criminals, G-men and gangsters, detectives and serial killers. Throughout the history of... more Cops and Criminals, G-men and gangsters, detectives and serial killers. Throughout the history of film, there has been a fascination with the police officer, his duties, and his adventures in the criminal underworld. Through TV shows like Cops, Law & Order, and CSI, police have also

This course introduces students to the different but overlapping legacies of racism and ethnic op... more This course introduces students to the different but overlapping legacies of racism and ethnic oppression in American politics, understanding how these legacies impacted and continue to shape U.S. government policies and practices today. The American state was founded in violence, developing through the combined elimination of Native Americans and enslavement of Africans. Over time, race and ethnic difference has been used as a specific means to organize, control, and exclude different groups of people from the benefits and privileges of American citizenship. These historical practices also contributed to the development of whiteness as an identity that signals both full inclusion to American democracy and the power to use the state to preserve the interests of white constituencies. Taking account of these historical legacies, students by the end of the course will be fully equipped to address the possible futures of American democracy as a multiracial state with full equality for all peoples.

This course introduces students to topics and theorists within the field of Political Theory thro... more This course introduces students to topics and theorists within the field of Political Theory through an investigation of democratic theory. Across time and space, political theorists and activists have debated such questions as what is a democracy? How does it work? Who does it serve? Is it the best form of government possible? This course does not seek to answer these questions once and for all, but instead shows students the wide range of thought on democracy. This includes such topics as contrasting ancient direct democracy with modern representative democracy, democracy as a form of government with democracy in everyday life, ethnocentric and exclusionist democracy with visions of more expansively egalitarian democracy, and what is or is not democratic about the American government today. Through this focus, students will also be exposed to other critical debates within political life, highlighting what is government and where it comes from, how politics relate to other aspects of human life, and what is the relationship between politics and violence.

This course introduces students to topics and theorists within the field of Political Theory thro... more This course introduces students to topics and theorists within the field of Political Theory through an investigation of democratic theory. Across time and space, political theorists and activists have debated such questions as what is a democracy? How does it work? Who does it serve? Is it the best form of government possible? This course does not seek to answer these questions once and for all, but instead shows students the wide range of thought on democracy. This includes such topics as contrasting ancient direct democracy with modern representative democracy, democracy as a form of government with democracy in everyday life, ethnocentric and exclusionist democracy with visions of more expansively egalitarian democracy, and what is or is not democratic about contemporary American government. Through this focus, students will also be exposed to other critical debates within political life, highlighting what is government and where it comes from, how politics relate to other aspects of human life, and what is the relationship between politics and violence.

Course syllabus for a course on introducing students to expository and analytic writing

Reading list for American Politics Minor Comp

Politics, Groups, and Identities

New Political Science, 2022

Social Science Quarterly, 2021

Catalyst, 2021

Law, Culture and the Humanities, 2022

Qui Parle, 2017

Five: The Claremont Colleges Journal of Undergraduate Academic Writing, 2012

This course introduces students to topics and theorists within the field of Political Theory thro... more This course introduces students to topics and theorists within the field of Political Theory through an investigation of democratic theory. Across time and space, political theorists and activists have debated such questions as what is a democracy? How does it work? Who does it serve? Is it the best form of government possible? This course does not seek to answer these questions once and for all, but instead shows students the wide range of thought on democracy. This includes such topics as contrasting ancient direct democracy with modern representative democracy, democracy as a form of government with democracy in everyday life, ethnocentric and exclusionist democracy with visions of more expansively egalitarian democracy, and what is or is not democratic about contemporary American government. Through this focus, students will also be exposed to other critical debates within political life, highlighting what is government and where it comes from, how politics relate to other aspects of human life, and what is the relationship between politics and violence.

Course syllabus for a course on introducing students to expository and analytic writing

Reading list for American Politics Minor Comp

Syllabus prepared for Intersession 2016. Lu Xun is hailed as the father of Modern Chinese Literat... more Syllabus prepared for Intersession 2016. Lu Xun is hailed as the father of Modern Chinese Literature, an iconoclast, a loner, and by Mao Zedong as a preeminent revolutionary. In a life and writing career that spanned the last days of the Qing dynasty, the 1911 revolution and the rise of Communism, he depicted and critiqued China's quest to be "modern" in all its ambiguity and violence. This course looks as Lu Xun's writing to address the politics of modernity, revolution, and violence that were relevant in 20th century China and still relevant globally today.

List for a major exam in political theory, including required books and recommended secondary lit... more List for a major exam in political theory, including required books and recommended secondary literature

In recent years there has been a notably increased interest in nihilism, pessimism, and negativit... more In recent years there has been a notably increased interest in nihilism, pessimism, and negativity more broadly. This includes such varied authors as Eugene Thacker, Reza Negarestani, Ben Woodard, Thomas Ligotti, and others pursuing research in what Steven Shaviro calls dark vitalism. This trend also includes the mass popularity of the HBO drama True Detective, with its mainstream portrayal of nihilism, and the renewed cultural attention on black metal and the horror writing of H. P. Lovecraft. Most of these authors and works, however, draw upon a limited archive of Western sources and therefore ignore political violence as a major source of horror for dispossessed populations across the world. This paper seeks to intervene in this ongoing discourse in two ways: first by highlighting the potential points of interest for political theory in this "dark turn" and , two, by beginning to broaden the archive of works under discussion. I do this by tracing the motif of horror in Frantz Fanon's "Concerning Violence" and a shorty story by the Chinese modern writer Lu Xun called "Diary of a Madman." In Fanon I show how he deploys certain images traditionally associated with horror in order to analyze colonization as a unique kind of horrific and extreme violence. In Lu Xun there is a similar embrace of the horror genre, particularly the theme of cannibalism, for a critique of anti-modernist Confucianism. Through both thinkers I want to develop horror as a mode of thought that names the collapse of political violence, such as the dispossession of colonialism, into ontological violence as a depiction of a world-against-us. What results then is an understanding of horror that can also motivate radical political action to change death worlds into ones more suitable for life's flourishing.

What does it mean to be a part of the New Earth, automatically assuming somehow that we are no lo... more What does it mean to be a part of the New Earth, automatically assuming somehow that we are no longer part of that bad, "old" Earth? Was it worse though or actually better, in that as humans we did not need to question our self-evident place on it? We even had dreams of actually escaping the planet into the wide-open frontiers of space. Those dreams have turned into nightmares, however, and look more like an emergency exit than trekking through the stars.

These thoughts are the beginnings of a critique of comparative political theory and its absence s... more These thoughts are the beginnings of a critique of comparative political theory and its absence so far to explicitly engage with decolonization as an epistemological and political project. To do that I first survey where comparative political theory stands now and where there is room for further progress. I then discuss some ways other fields have begun to engage with decolonial thought, specifically looking at comparative philosophy and critical Asian studies.

In the normal understanding of the course of 20th-century French philosophy it is understood that... more In the normal understanding of the course of 20th-century French philosophy it is understood that there was a period following World War II that was dominated by structuralism, a philosophy that argued that are ahistorical and eternal structures--whether linguistic, economic, or familial--that pre-exist and determine our actions. This was supposedly followed by a period of post-structuralism that argued against this idea of structures and emphasized historical change, immanence, and contingency. Of the period of structuralism an exemplar is Louis Althusser , who developed an influential system called structural Marxism that emphasized Marxism as a scientific enterprise with the economic structure of the modes of production as its object. Of the later an exemplar is Gilles Deleuze who created an influential philosophy of becoming that emphasized the constant transformation of reality and the failure of any structure to fully enclose itself and prevent "lines of flight" out of it. By these definitions Althusser and Deleuze are often placed as polar opposites of contemporary French thought.

Written over a hundred years ago now, Ida B. Wells work documenting American lynchings and campai... more Written over a hundred years ago now, Ida B. Wells work documenting American lynchings and campaigns against them show clearly the difficulties of charting a course between "realism" as a sociological representation of violence and a form of writing that would truly document the horrors of lynchings, a process that ironically means Wells ends up deploying the tropes of horror in the name of a sociological account of violence. In her two aptly named antilynching pamphlets Southern Horrors and A Red Record Wells set out to chart not only the ubiquity of lynching through statistics and wellsourced anecdotes but also to reveal the set of lies and myths around which lynching was popularly justified. This was not a simple task however. A Red Record opens by noting how the "student of American sociology" (Wells 1997: 75) will note in 1894 the growing awareness of lynching as a phenomenon so common that "scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon the humane sentiments" of Americans. Immediately the problem is highlighted, of how to raise outrage against events that are so common as to become a new normal. Lynching becomes a moment where reality and horror, the ordinary and the spectacular, collide, in where reality itself is so horrifying that it cannot be conveyed and yet it must be. While Wells never seems to lose faith in her writing, her pamphlets are filled with this tension between describing a horror so as not to enure her audience to it but still to affect some change within them. Her first pamphlet Southern Horrors captures this dilemma well. Wells calls the pamphlet an "array of facts" (Wells 1997: 50) that will

Constellations, Jan 18, 2024