Christopher Holman | Nanyang Technological University (original) (raw)
Monographs by Christopher Holman
University of Toronto Press, 2018
University of Toronto Press, 2013
Edited Book by Christopher Holman
University of Toronto Press, 2015
Journal Articles by Christopher Holman
Film-Philosophy, forthcoming
Theorists interested in the potential of film to express various conditions and possibilities of ... more Theorists interested in the potential of film to express various conditions and possibilities of political experience are often particularly drawn to the Western genre. Typically, the cinematic Western is interpreted as narratively representing the logic of classical contractarian political philosophy, through its depiction of the effort to impose legal order on what is seen as a previously unregulated and chaotic natural state. In this paper I provide a reading of Kelly Reichardt's 2010 revisionist Western Meek's Cutoff, in an effort to demonstrate not only how the Western may greatly exceed this political articulation, but also how close attention to a film's insights are capable of intervening in a philosophical tradition in such a way as to problematize the dominant interpretation of it. Reading the film in juxtaposition with Hobbes, I argue that its depiction of the limits of sovereign legitimacy, the conditions of democratic foundation, and the instability of the nature-politics binary reveal a dimension of meaning within Hobbes's civil science that has become obscured within the established political imaginary. Appreciation of this content that the cinematic work aids in uncovering ultimately facilitates a re-politicization of the Hobbesian paradigm.
Polity, forthcoming
In this paper I consider the political philosophy that is developed by Étienne de La Boétie in hi... more In this paper I consider the political philosophy that is developed by Étienne de La Boétie in his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude. La Boétie's contribution to political thinking unfolds along two axes. First, through his analysis of tyranny in terms of the imaginary construction of a figure of the One, which looks to homogenize the social field through an act of symbolic representation, he provides us with an early account of the psychic dynamics involved in State formation. Secondly, affirming the contingency of human desire and rejecting all principles of political necessity or determination, he attempts to think about the possibility of an alternative mode of social institutionalization, one that is capable of non-antagonistically mediating diverse persons through the establishment of relations of mutual recognition and friendship. Ultimately, by emphasizing the fact of social-historical alterity through these two contributions, he opens up a pathway to thinking about political possibility that transcends those limits placed upon the latter by the inherited tradition of political thought.
Critical Review, 2024
In the paper I attempt to close the gap between the tradition of contemporary radical democracy a... more In the paper I attempt to close the gap between the tradition of contemporary radical democracy and that of the ideology critique of Critical Theory which is opened by Larry Alan Busk in his Democracy in Spite of the Demos. I argue that, on the one hand, it is not necessarily the case that the affirmation of the two ontological hypotheses Busk identifies as essential to radical democracy-that of the autonomy of the political and that of the universality of doxaneed generate the ambiguities that his text critiques. On the other hand, I show how Adorno and Marcuse themselves remain committed to democracy, seeing socialization in the practice of the latter as fundamental to the development of criticalreflective consciousness. In the final instance, both radical democracy and Critical Theory can be seen to as committed to the same ideal of human autonomy, and equally useful resources for emancipatory thinking.
Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2023
This paper suggests that the philosophical contributions of the French democratic theorist Miguel... more This paper suggests that the philosophical contributions of the French democratic theorist Miguel Abensour offer a unique model for the practice of the history of political thought. Under the influence of the first generation of Frankfurt School critical theory, Abensour can be seen as applying a method of thinking in constellations to the study of historical texts, the critical rearrangement of conceptual elements drawn from the latter generating new dialectical images that reveal something previously obscured about the object of investigation. The history of political thought on this model is less about the recuperation of a definite textual intelligibility than the revelation of social and political alterity.
Theoria, 2023
Recent scholarship on the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli has demonstrated the extent to... more Recent scholarship on the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli has demonstrated the extent to which the latter's republicanism is of a populist type, and a potentially important resource for contemporary democratic theory. Although work has been produced on the constitutional form of the Machiavellian republic, less effort has been made to articulate the theoretical assumptions upon which the advocacy of such a republic is ethically grounded. Here, I attempt to locate the democratic ethical imperative in the affirmation of a fundamental human difference. Influenced by the Epicurean tradition, Machiavelli's natural philosophy considers material entities as absolute singularities lacking internal teleological direction, their movement the productive result of contingent encounters. One cannot assume a natural or pre-social identity of desire between persons. Democracy is the ethically preferred regime because it is the one that is capable of facilitating the expression of this human uniqueness.
The Review of Politics , 2021
Hobbes's preference for monarchical sovereign forms and his critique of democratic political orga... more Hobbes's preference for monarchical sovereign forms and his critique of democratic political organization are well-known. In this article I suggest that his opposition to democratic life, however, constitutes a central frame through which we must understand the most important theoretical mutations that occur throughout the various stages of his civil science. Key alterations in the Hobbesian political philosophy from The Elements of Law to Leviathan can be interpreted as efforts to retroactively foreclose the emergence of a substantive democratic normativity that the prior theoretical framework allowed for or suggested. Hobbes's opposition to democracy is ultimately so significant so as to fundamentally structure core elements of his political philosophy, the form of political obligation shifting in response to the perception of democratic potentiality.
European Journal of Political Theory , 2021
This paper examines the political anthropological work of Pierre Clastres in light of the emergen... more This paper examines the political anthropological work of Pierre Clastres in light of the emergence of the subfield of comparative political theory. In particular, it argues that Clastres’ reconstruction of the political philosophy of various Amazonian societies offers an alternative model for the engagement with texts and traditions external to the history of so-called Western societies. Rejecting all impulses towards totalization – as represented, for example, in the assertion of a dialogical potential for establishing modes of intercultural exchange aimed at achieving mutual understanding – Clastres calls attention to the radical social-historical alterity of forms of society. Appreciation of this alterity not only enlarges the scope of comparative political thought to engage inherited traditions that resist assimilation into Western conversations, but also reveals an indeterminate democratic potential grounded in political creativity.
Political Theory, 2020
In this paper I consider the potential of Machiavelli's Florentine Histories to contribute to the... more In this paper I consider the potential of Machiavelli's Florentine Histories to contribute to the enrichment of contemporary democratic theory. In opposition to both of the major groups of current interpreters of this text-those who see it as representative of a conservative turn in Machiavelli's thought grounded in a newfound scepticism regarding popular political competencies, and those who see it as merely a re-representation of the republican commitments of the Discourses on Livy-I argue that it reveals to us a unique political potentiality, but one that is essential for the construction of an internally consistent Machiavellian theory of democracy. Specifically, through disclosing the historicity and contingency of the humors of the parts of the city, the Histories suggests the possibility of concretely actualizing a condition of social equality, thus overcoming the main democratic deficit of the Discourses: the perpetuation of inequality, as represented in the preservation of the existence of a class with a desire to oppress.
History of Political Thought, 2019
This article reconsiders Thomas Hobbes's critique of the democratic sovereign form from the stand... more This article reconsiders Thomas Hobbes's critique of the democratic sovereign form from the standpoint of what it identifies as the latter's most important ontological conditions: the lack of a transcendent source of fundamental law, and a natural human equality that renders all individuals competent to participate in legislative modes. For Hobbes these two conditions combine to render democracy a tragic regime. Democracy is tragic to the extent that it must be a regime of self-limitation, there existing no ethical standard external to society that may intervene so as to guide our political self-activity, and yet the structure of deliberation in democratic assemblies tends to render such self-limitation impossible. Hence what Hobbes sees as the inherent tendency of democratic activity to descend into excess and madness. This risk is an intrinsic potentiality embedded within democracy's very conditions, a fact covered up by much post-Hobbesian liberal democratic theory that attempts to normatively ground the democratic form in various universal principles of natural law or right.
Utopian Studies , 2018
Against the backdrop of the recent critical turn in utopian studies, this article looks to interr... more Against the backdrop of the recent critical turn in utopian studies, this article looks to interrogate the form of the relationship between political theory and utopia through a consideration of the thought of Niccolò Machiavelli. I argue that Machiavelli can be read, against received opinion, as an exemplary theorist of utopia, who gives an expression to the antinomies internal to the tradition of the latter. In particular, I identify in Machiavelli’s thought two distinct models of utopia that exist in uneasy tension with one another: on the one hand, the thought of utopia as a critical expression of the inexhaustible human desire to be otherwise, and on the other hand, the thought of utopia as an object to be fabricated by an instrumentally rational subject. After demonstrating the nature of the tension between these two utopias – and how they generate two distinct conceptions of politics that differ in terms of their relation to democracy – I conclude by locating in Machiavelli’s thought a germinal mode for overcoming the utopian contradiction, one that potentially allows for the establishment of a more productive relation between political theory and the utopian tradition.
Italian Culture, 2017
Long considered a republican thinker concerned with the actualization of a historically contextua... more Long considered a republican thinker concerned with the actualization of a historically contextual common good, recent interpretations of the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli have attempted to locate in his work a specifically democratic content, a concern with the concrete participatory empowerment of all citizens. This paper will attempt to situate this concern in a specific philosophical anthropology, suggesting that Machiavelli develops a hierarchy of regime types that are differentiated by their ability to give a popular expression to what he characterizes as a vital, dynamic, and creative human desire. Machiavelli provides us with a means to think about a specifically political externalization of desire, the possibility of a political form of the psycho-social process of sublimation. What is more, Machiavelli’s recognition of the universality of the capacity for creative expression will serve as the ground for an ethical commitment to the generalization of the faculty of political creation via a project of radically democratic institutionalization.
The European Legacy, 2016
In this paper I seek to address what I take to be a tension in much contemporary scholarship on M... more In this paper I seek to address what I take to be a tension in much contemporary scholarship on Machiavelli’s thinking on human nature. While it is common for readers to identify Machiavelli’s rejection of any sort of foundational determining law that would organize the structure of the world, it is just as common for readers to abstract human nature from this world, positing a fixed and static structure of the human essence. Machiavelli is thus seen as an anti-essentialist when it comes to external nature, and an essentialist when it comes to internal nature. I will attempt to demonstrate, however, that both of these two moments of nature are for Machiavelli consistently integrated into an overall ontology of being that rejects all forms of essentialist thinking, including all positive models of human nature. Machiavelli will theorize both external and internal nature in terms of a radical indetermination unhinged from any absolute structural foundations that would transcendentally ground them, as well as any determinable logics of development that would orient their movement in a rational or causal manner.
Theory & Event, 2016
In this paper I reconsider the place of Machiavelli’s methodological deployment of ancient histor... more In this paper I reconsider the place of Machiavelli’s methodological deployment of ancient historical examples in his political theory. Although commentators have often pointed out the extent to which Machiavelli's affirmation of an active history oriented toward political creation is distinguished from a passive one in which historical events are treated merely as objects of contemplation, they have not gone far enough in describing how the precise form of Machiavelli's historiography is a necessary element of his valorization of political creation. I attempt to demonstrate how this is the case by arguing that Machiavelli's historical method can be thought of as a form of thinking in constellations, Machiavelli critically and selectively juxtaposing conceptual elements in specific figures of thought in order to reveal the potential to transcend the existing political organization of things. I argue that this method has important implications for how we think about both the means and ends of political theory.
TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 2015
This article is a critical investigation and application of the aesthetic theory of Cornelius Cas... more This article is a critical investigation and application of the aesthetic theory of Cornelius Castoriadis, one of the most important 20th-century theorists of radical democracy. We outline Castoriadis's thoughts on autonomy, the social-historical nature of Being, and creation-key elements that inform his model of democratic culture. We then develop a Castoriadian critique of culture produced by capitalist institutions. By also drawing on the political economic thought of Thorstein Veblen, Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, our critique focuses on one sector of contemporary culture: Hollywood film. We show how Hollywood, as a business enterprise, uses techniques of sabotage and capitalization to control and occult the social-historical nature of creation. Lastly, by way of conclusion, we gesture toward a mode of artistic production that is able to affirm the democratic values that organize Castoriadis's thought.
RÉSUMÉ Cet article s'attache à analyser de manière critique et à analyser la théorie esthé-tique de Cornelius Castoriadis, un des plus importants théoriciens du XXe siècle en matière de démocratie radicale. Nous présentons les réflexions de Castoriadis à propos de l'autonomie, de la nature sociohistorique de l'Être et de la création, des éléments cruciaux informant son modèle de culture démocratique. Nous propos-erons ensuite une critique castoriadienne de la culture telle que produite par les institutions capitalistes. En nous appuyant également sur la pensée économique de Thorstein Veblen, Jonathan Nitzan et Shimshon Bichler, notre critique prend pour objet un élément de la culture contemporaine : le cinéma hollywoodien. Nous mon-trons qu'Hollywood en tant qu'entreprise commerciale a recours aux techniques de sabotage et de capitalisation pour contrôler et dissimuler la nature sociohistorique de la création. Pour conclure, nous envisageons un nouveau mode de production artistique qui soit capable d'affirmer les valeurs démocratiques jalonnant la pensée castoriadienne.
Telos, 2014
This paper will undertake a critical analysis of the political ontology of Hannah Arendt in light... more This paper will undertake a critical analysis of the political ontology of Hannah Arendt in light of the philosophical anthropology of Karl Marx. In particular, it will argue that Arendt’s concept of political beginning is potentially capable of affirming the model of human essence that Marx most fully develops in the 1844 Manuscripts. To this degree, Arendt provides us with a means for overcoming what I identify as the central contradiction of the Marxian critical theory: that between this concept of essence and Marx’s too-often bureaucratic and instrumental understanding of politics. The critical juxtaposition of Arendt and Marx will be seen to allow for the emergence of a new and more comprehensive model of democratic being. The paper concludes by arguing that this model is relevant to the analysis of certain contemporary forms of political practice, looking in particular at how it can be applied to understanding the 2000 Water War in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Rethinking Marxism, 2014
The year 2011 finally saw the appearance, after a long wait, of an English translation of Miguel ... more The year 2011 finally saw the appearance, after a long wait, of an English translation of Miguel Abensour’s groundbreaking interpretation of Marxian political theory in Democracy Against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Moment. This short essay will provide a brief critical analysis of the main elements of Abensour’s contribution. Through reading Marx in light of a radical democratic interpretation of Machiavelli, Abensour locates in the former a model of insurgent democratic practice considered in terms of the non-synthetic struggle of the demos against the forces of the State, made for the sake of the multiplication of their liberty. Despite raising certain concerns regarding Abensour’s articulation of the relation between democracy and the State and between democracy and the institution, I argue that his work remains not only a genuinely innovative reinterpretation of the political thought of Marx, but an essential contribution to that contemporary radical democratic literature which seeks to affirm the creative, inventive, and non-exhaustible power of the demos
University of Toronto Press, 2018
University of Toronto Press, 2013
University of Toronto Press, 2015
Film-Philosophy, forthcoming
Theorists interested in the potential of film to express various conditions and possibilities of ... more Theorists interested in the potential of film to express various conditions and possibilities of political experience are often particularly drawn to the Western genre. Typically, the cinematic Western is interpreted as narratively representing the logic of classical contractarian political philosophy, through its depiction of the effort to impose legal order on what is seen as a previously unregulated and chaotic natural state. In this paper I provide a reading of Kelly Reichardt's 2010 revisionist Western Meek's Cutoff, in an effort to demonstrate not only how the Western may greatly exceed this political articulation, but also how close attention to a film's insights are capable of intervening in a philosophical tradition in such a way as to problematize the dominant interpretation of it. Reading the film in juxtaposition with Hobbes, I argue that its depiction of the limits of sovereign legitimacy, the conditions of democratic foundation, and the instability of the nature-politics binary reveal a dimension of meaning within Hobbes's civil science that has become obscured within the established political imaginary. Appreciation of this content that the cinematic work aids in uncovering ultimately facilitates a re-politicization of the Hobbesian paradigm.
Polity, forthcoming
In this paper I consider the political philosophy that is developed by Étienne de La Boétie in hi... more In this paper I consider the political philosophy that is developed by Étienne de La Boétie in his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude. La Boétie's contribution to political thinking unfolds along two axes. First, through his analysis of tyranny in terms of the imaginary construction of a figure of the One, which looks to homogenize the social field through an act of symbolic representation, he provides us with an early account of the psychic dynamics involved in State formation. Secondly, affirming the contingency of human desire and rejecting all principles of political necessity or determination, he attempts to think about the possibility of an alternative mode of social institutionalization, one that is capable of non-antagonistically mediating diverse persons through the establishment of relations of mutual recognition and friendship. Ultimately, by emphasizing the fact of social-historical alterity through these two contributions, he opens up a pathway to thinking about political possibility that transcends those limits placed upon the latter by the inherited tradition of political thought.
Critical Review, 2024
In the paper I attempt to close the gap between the tradition of contemporary radical democracy a... more In the paper I attempt to close the gap between the tradition of contemporary radical democracy and that of the ideology critique of Critical Theory which is opened by Larry Alan Busk in his Democracy in Spite of the Demos. I argue that, on the one hand, it is not necessarily the case that the affirmation of the two ontological hypotheses Busk identifies as essential to radical democracy-that of the autonomy of the political and that of the universality of doxaneed generate the ambiguities that his text critiques. On the other hand, I show how Adorno and Marcuse themselves remain committed to democracy, seeing socialization in the practice of the latter as fundamental to the development of criticalreflective consciousness. In the final instance, both radical democracy and Critical Theory can be seen to as committed to the same ideal of human autonomy, and equally useful resources for emancipatory thinking.
Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2023
This paper suggests that the philosophical contributions of the French democratic theorist Miguel... more This paper suggests that the philosophical contributions of the French democratic theorist Miguel Abensour offer a unique model for the practice of the history of political thought. Under the influence of the first generation of Frankfurt School critical theory, Abensour can be seen as applying a method of thinking in constellations to the study of historical texts, the critical rearrangement of conceptual elements drawn from the latter generating new dialectical images that reveal something previously obscured about the object of investigation. The history of political thought on this model is less about the recuperation of a definite textual intelligibility than the revelation of social and political alterity.
Theoria, 2023
Recent scholarship on the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli has demonstrated the extent to... more Recent scholarship on the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli has demonstrated the extent to which the latter's republicanism is of a populist type, and a potentially important resource for contemporary democratic theory. Although work has been produced on the constitutional form of the Machiavellian republic, less effort has been made to articulate the theoretical assumptions upon which the advocacy of such a republic is ethically grounded. Here, I attempt to locate the democratic ethical imperative in the affirmation of a fundamental human difference. Influenced by the Epicurean tradition, Machiavelli's natural philosophy considers material entities as absolute singularities lacking internal teleological direction, their movement the productive result of contingent encounters. One cannot assume a natural or pre-social identity of desire between persons. Democracy is the ethically preferred regime because it is the one that is capable of facilitating the expression of this human uniqueness.
The Review of Politics , 2021
Hobbes's preference for monarchical sovereign forms and his critique of democratic political orga... more Hobbes's preference for monarchical sovereign forms and his critique of democratic political organization are well-known. In this article I suggest that his opposition to democratic life, however, constitutes a central frame through which we must understand the most important theoretical mutations that occur throughout the various stages of his civil science. Key alterations in the Hobbesian political philosophy from The Elements of Law to Leviathan can be interpreted as efforts to retroactively foreclose the emergence of a substantive democratic normativity that the prior theoretical framework allowed for or suggested. Hobbes's opposition to democracy is ultimately so significant so as to fundamentally structure core elements of his political philosophy, the form of political obligation shifting in response to the perception of democratic potentiality.
European Journal of Political Theory , 2021
This paper examines the political anthropological work of Pierre Clastres in light of the emergen... more This paper examines the political anthropological work of Pierre Clastres in light of the emergence of the subfield of comparative political theory. In particular, it argues that Clastres’ reconstruction of the political philosophy of various Amazonian societies offers an alternative model for the engagement with texts and traditions external to the history of so-called Western societies. Rejecting all impulses towards totalization – as represented, for example, in the assertion of a dialogical potential for establishing modes of intercultural exchange aimed at achieving mutual understanding – Clastres calls attention to the radical social-historical alterity of forms of society. Appreciation of this alterity not only enlarges the scope of comparative political thought to engage inherited traditions that resist assimilation into Western conversations, but also reveals an indeterminate democratic potential grounded in political creativity.
Political Theory, 2020
In this paper I consider the potential of Machiavelli's Florentine Histories to contribute to the... more In this paper I consider the potential of Machiavelli's Florentine Histories to contribute to the enrichment of contemporary democratic theory. In opposition to both of the major groups of current interpreters of this text-those who see it as representative of a conservative turn in Machiavelli's thought grounded in a newfound scepticism regarding popular political competencies, and those who see it as merely a re-representation of the republican commitments of the Discourses on Livy-I argue that it reveals to us a unique political potentiality, but one that is essential for the construction of an internally consistent Machiavellian theory of democracy. Specifically, through disclosing the historicity and contingency of the humors of the parts of the city, the Histories suggests the possibility of concretely actualizing a condition of social equality, thus overcoming the main democratic deficit of the Discourses: the perpetuation of inequality, as represented in the preservation of the existence of a class with a desire to oppress.
History of Political Thought, 2019
This article reconsiders Thomas Hobbes's critique of the democratic sovereign form from the stand... more This article reconsiders Thomas Hobbes's critique of the democratic sovereign form from the standpoint of what it identifies as the latter's most important ontological conditions: the lack of a transcendent source of fundamental law, and a natural human equality that renders all individuals competent to participate in legislative modes. For Hobbes these two conditions combine to render democracy a tragic regime. Democracy is tragic to the extent that it must be a regime of self-limitation, there existing no ethical standard external to society that may intervene so as to guide our political self-activity, and yet the structure of deliberation in democratic assemblies tends to render such self-limitation impossible. Hence what Hobbes sees as the inherent tendency of democratic activity to descend into excess and madness. This risk is an intrinsic potentiality embedded within democracy's very conditions, a fact covered up by much post-Hobbesian liberal democratic theory that attempts to normatively ground the democratic form in various universal principles of natural law or right.
Utopian Studies , 2018
Against the backdrop of the recent critical turn in utopian studies, this article looks to interr... more Against the backdrop of the recent critical turn in utopian studies, this article looks to interrogate the form of the relationship between political theory and utopia through a consideration of the thought of Niccolò Machiavelli. I argue that Machiavelli can be read, against received opinion, as an exemplary theorist of utopia, who gives an expression to the antinomies internal to the tradition of the latter. In particular, I identify in Machiavelli’s thought two distinct models of utopia that exist in uneasy tension with one another: on the one hand, the thought of utopia as a critical expression of the inexhaustible human desire to be otherwise, and on the other hand, the thought of utopia as an object to be fabricated by an instrumentally rational subject. After demonstrating the nature of the tension between these two utopias – and how they generate two distinct conceptions of politics that differ in terms of their relation to democracy – I conclude by locating in Machiavelli’s thought a germinal mode for overcoming the utopian contradiction, one that potentially allows for the establishment of a more productive relation between political theory and the utopian tradition.
Italian Culture, 2017
Long considered a republican thinker concerned with the actualization of a historically contextua... more Long considered a republican thinker concerned with the actualization of a historically contextual common good, recent interpretations of the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli have attempted to locate in his work a specifically democratic content, a concern with the concrete participatory empowerment of all citizens. This paper will attempt to situate this concern in a specific philosophical anthropology, suggesting that Machiavelli develops a hierarchy of regime types that are differentiated by their ability to give a popular expression to what he characterizes as a vital, dynamic, and creative human desire. Machiavelli provides us with a means to think about a specifically political externalization of desire, the possibility of a political form of the psycho-social process of sublimation. What is more, Machiavelli’s recognition of the universality of the capacity for creative expression will serve as the ground for an ethical commitment to the generalization of the faculty of political creation via a project of radically democratic institutionalization.
The European Legacy, 2016
In this paper I seek to address what I take to be a tension in much contemporary scholarship on M... more In this paper I seek to address what I take to be a tension in much contemporary scholarship on Machiavelli’s thinking on human nature. While it is common for readers to identify Machiavelli’s rejection of any sort of foundational determining law that would organize the structure of the world, it is just as common for readers to abstract human nature from this world, positing a fixed and static structure of the human essence. Machiavelli is thus seen as an anti-essentialist when it comes to external nature, and an essentialist when it comes to internal nature. I will attempt to demonstrate, however, that both of these two moments of nature are for Machiavelli consistently integrated into an overall ontology of being that rejects all forms of essentialist thinking, including all positive models of human nature. Machiavelli will theorize both external and internal nature in terms of a radical indetermination unhinged from any absolute structural foundations that would transcendentally ground them, as well as any determinable logics of development that would orient their movement in a rational or causal manner.
Theory & Event, 2016
In this paper I reconsider the place of Machiavelli’s methodological deployment of ancient histor... more In this paper I reconsider the place of Machiavelli’s methodological deployment of ancient historical examples in his political theory. Although commentators have often pointed out the extent to which Machiavelli's affirmation of an active history oriented toward political creation is distinguished from a passive one in which historical events are treated merely as objects of contemplation, they have not gone far enough in describing how the precise form of Machiavelli's historiography is a necessary element of his valorization of political creation. I attempt to demonstrate how this is the case by arguing that Machiavelli's historical method can be thought of as a form of thinking in constellations, Machiavelli critically and selectively juxtaposing conceptual elements in specific figures of thought in order to reveal the potential to transcend the existing political organization of things. I argue that this method has important implications for how we think about both the means and ends of political theory.
TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 2015
This article is a critical investigation and application of the aesthetic theory of Cornelius Cas... more This article is a critical investigation and application of the aesthetic theory of Cornelius Castoriadis, one of the most important 20th-century theorists of radical democracy. We outline Castoriadis's thoughts on autonomy, the social-historical nature of Being, and creation-key elements that inform his model of democratic culture. We then develop a Castoriadian critique of culture produced by capitalist institutions. By also drawing on the political economic thought of Thorstein Veblen, Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, our critique focuses on one sector of contemporary culture: Hollywood film. We show how Hollywood, as a business enterprise, uses techniques of sabotage and capitalization to control and occult the social-historical nature of creation. Lastly, by way of conclusion, we gesture toward a mode of artistic production that is able to affirm the democratic values that organize Castoriadis's thought.
RÉSUMÉ Cet article s'attache à analyser de manière critique et à analyser la théorie esthé-tique de Cornelius Castoriadis, un des plus importants théoriciens du XXe siècle en matière de démocratie radicale. Nous présentons les réflexions de Castoriadis à propos de l'autonomie, de la nature sociohistorique de l'Être et de la création, des éléments cruciaux informant son modèle de culture démocratique. Nous propos-erons ensuite une critique castoriadienne de la culture telle que produite par les institutions capitalistes. En nous appuyant également sur la pensée économique de Thorstein Veblen, Jonathan Nitzan et Shimshon Bichler, notre critique prend pour objet un élément de la culture contemporaine : le cinéma hollywoodien. Nous mon-trons qu'Hollywood en tant qu'entreprise commerciale a recours aux techniques de sabotage et de capitalisation pour contrôler et dissimuler la nature sociohistorique de la création. Pour conclure, nous envisageons un nouveau mode de production artistique qui soit capable d'affirmer les valeurs démocratiques jalonnant la pensée castoriadienne.
Telos, 2014
This paper will undertake a critical analysis of the political ontology of Hannah Arendt in light... more This paper will undertake a critical analysis of the political ontology of Hannah Arendt in light of the philosophical anthropology of Karl Marx. In particular, it will argue that Arendt’s concept of political beginning is potentially capable of affirming the model of human essence that Marx most fully develops in the 1844 Manuscripts. To this degree, Arendt provides us with a means for overcoming what I identify as the central contradiction of the Marxian critical theory: that between this concept of essence and Marx’s too-often bureaucratic and instrumental understanding of politics. The critical juxtaposition of Arendt and Marx will be seen to allow for the emergence of a new and more comprehensive model of democratic being. The paper concludes by arguing that this model is relevant to the analysis of certain contemporary forms of political practice, looking in particular at how it can be applied to understanding the 2000 Water War in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Rethinking Marxism, 2014
The year 2011 finally saw the appearance, after a long wait, of an English translation of Miguel ... more The year 2011 finally saw the appearance, after a long wait, of an English translation of Miguel Abensour’s groundbreaking interpretation of Marxian political theory in Democracy Against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Moment. This short essay will provide a brief critical analysis of the main elements of Abensour’s contribution. Through reading Marx in light of a radical democratic interpretation of Machiavelli, Abensour locates in the former a model of insurgent democratic practice considered in terms of the non-synthetic struggle of the demos against the forces of the State, made for the sake of the multiplication of their liberty. Despite raising certain concerns regarding Abensour’s articulation of the relation between democracy and the State and between democracy and the institution, I argue that his work remains not only a genuinely innovative reinterpretation of the political thought of Marx, but an essential contribution to that contemporary radical democratic literature which seeks to affirm the creative, inventive, and non-exhaustible power of the demos
Radical Philosophy Review, 2013
This paper will reconsider the contemporary relevance of the long-ignored political thought of He... more This paper will reconsider the contemporary relevance of the long-ignored political thought of Herbert Marcuse, implicitly in light of certain contemporary trends in radical democratic theory which affirm the productive and generative capacities of social division and difference. Rejecting those readings of Marcuse which interpret the latter as a prophet of identity, desiring the actualization of a terminal historical state which permanently reconciles human conflict, it will nevertheless be suggested that Marcuse's politics are often inadequate when considered from the standpoint of his theory of socialism, the latter being understood as the realization of the negative human capacity for radical creation in all of those spheres within which the human being is active. Specifically, Marcuse far too often posits a model of politics marked by instrumentalism and managerialism. Although it is this political model which most often reveals itself in Marcuse's work, this paper will argue that there nevertheless remains a certain counter-tendency in his philosophy, a counter-tendency demonstrating the extent to which he can be seen as affirming a negative and non-identitarian politics of overcoming which looks always towards creation, towards the transcendence of never conclusive social actualities.
New Political Science, 2013
The British Columbia and Ontario Citizens’ Assemblies on Electoral Reform have justifiably genera... more The British Columbia and Ontario Citizens’ Assemblies on Electoral Reform have justifiably generated much discussion on the part of political theorists, who see in these phenomena the actualization of certain deliberative democratic principles that have traditionally not been able to be affirmed within increasingly corporatized political orders. These phenomena, it is argued, give a form to a relatively new model of representation which emphasizes not the reproduction of an already existent popular will, but rather the critical construction of a potential political will under institutional conditions allowing for adequate knowledge acquisition. I will argue, however, that such readings are in the final instance limited from a democratic standpoint to the degree that politics is still primarily considered in terms of political competency and rationality. Rather than interpret Citizens’ Assemblies (CAs) as manifestations of a new mode of representation, I will attempt to read them through the radical democratic prism articulated by Cornelius Castoriadis, emphasizing the CAs’ possible deployment in a germinal project of autonomy which gives an expression to the non-determinate drives of social-historical individuals and communities. The possibility of the CAs contributing to a rejuvenation of the democratic experience is to be located in their shifting of the terms of democracy away from issues of representation and rationality, and towards those of creativity and imagination.
New German Critique, 2012
This article reexamines the thought of Herbert Marcuse in the context of contemporary trends in t... more This article reexamines the thought of Herbert Marcuse in the context of contemporary trends in the reception of other leading figures in Frankfurt critical theory, particularly Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer. It demonstrates that Marcuse's affirmative theoretical project not only is informed by such figures as G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud but crucially draws on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as well. Marcuse undertakes an immanent critique and reformulation of the philosophical concept of essence, conceiving “essence” as an inexhaustible process of self-overcoming realized through creative material practice. In Eros and Civilization this practice is labeled nonrepressive sublimation. Here, to overcome the repressive features integral to Freud's concept of sublimation, Marcuse turns to Nietzsche, conceptualizing a form of sublimation as activity that escapes the Logos of domination to become part of the Logos of gratification. What both Nietzsche and Marcuse affirm is a mode of being-as-becoming that is oriented toward joy and fulfillment, understood as the development of potentialities and the constant overcoming of existing subjective and objective realities
Critical Horizons, 2011
The work of Herbert Marcuse, unlike that of certain of his colleagues at the Institut für Sozialf... more The work of Herbert Marcuse, unlike that of certain of his colleagues at the Institut für Sozialforschung, is most often maligned as being excessively positive and identitarian. His work on Freud, for example, is criticized for being grounded in a crude biological determinism which points towards an ultimate reconciliation of both psychic and social conflict. This essay will attempt to counter such readings by critically juxtaposing Marcuse’s concept of non-repressive sublimation with Cornelius Castoriadis’s understanding of psychic socialization. It will be suggested that the affinities between Marcuse and Castoriadis’s appropriations of Freudian metapsychology reveals the degree to which the former can be read as a radical democratic thinker affirming the values of autonomy and creativity. This reading demonstrates that Marcuse has much to contribute to contemporary debates on the role of the aesthetic and the sensuous in democratic theory.
This chapter reassesses Cornelius Castoriadis’ engagement with the worker council phenomenon in o... more This chapter reassesses Cornelius Castoriadis’ engagement with the worker council phenomenon in order to articulate an underappreciated ontological content embedded within council democracy. Castoriadis’ early theorization of council organisation, initially undertaken within the context of his critique of bureaucratic management in the Soviet Union and the advanced capitalist countries, takes on an additional significance in light of his later philosophical turn, and in particular his effort to elaborate the ontology of the social-historical and locate the potential for democratic autonomy in the chaotic flux of the human psyche. I argue that the democratic council as an institutional form can ultimately be interpreted as a concrete medium for the expression of that non-determinate creative desire that is the foundation of Castoriadis’ philosophical anthropology. Contrary to all forms of representative and liberal government, the councils are an institutional order that have the potential to collectively affirm human autonomy and creativity through sublimating psychic desire. In the final instance this analysis will construct a new ethical defense for both radical democratic organization, and the councils as an institutional form for such organization.