The Productivity of Power: Hannah Arendt's Renewal of the Classical Concept of Politics (original) (raw)
Related papers
2006
For partisans of a contemporary wave of interest in the rediscovery of ‘the political’, the thought of Hannah Arendt offers a seemingly ineluctable intellectual resource. Inasmuch as the problem of totalitarianism is at the core of Arendt’s thought, her sympathy towards this attempt to enlist her in the service of this cause must be imagined to bear heavily upon the place of ‘the political’ in her treatment of totalitarianism itself. This note on Arendt’s thinking on the political thereby proceeds from the claim that there are, at heart, two divergent conceptions of totalitarianism in the cumulative literature on the subject. The first of these, I want to argue, is presently the dominant conception of totalitarianism. It is the dominant conception in social science, among historians and (to a lesser extent) among political theorists. Moreover, it has a special kind of import, in the light of at least two things. At one level, it is informed by the attempt to fashion plausible accoun...
Political Science Today: Higher Studies on Hannah Arendt's Concept of Violence and Power
This paper investigates the concept of violence and power through Hannah Arendt analysis of these phenomena. First, we show how Hannah Arendt present the hardest distinction among them and after, we present some Brazilian interpretation about this Arendtian way of thinking. At the end, we bring Hannah Arendt contribution to higher studies towards political science today.
Jurnal Ledalero
This article aims to map out Hannah Arendt's proposal on democratic political action as a solution to the problem of totalitarianism. For this purpose, the article will consist of three parts. The first part will deal with the problem of totalitarianism as reflected in The Origins of Totalitarianism. The second part will deal with Arendt's philosophical proposal of democracy as political action against totalitarianism as its enemy. It argues that freedom and constitution are the basis of people's political action in public space for the sake of nation and community. The third part will deal with the problem of human rights and Arendt's proposal of political natality. According to the principle of natality, people as subjects of politics are capable to find their own ways to preserve their own life. Human transcendence is actualized in time frame. As conclusion, the paper will discuss the contribution of Arendt's thoughts of people's transcendence and its implications in facing the mob-rule.
The public realm and revolution: Hannah Arendt between theory and praxis
Estudos Ibero-Americanos
The main goal of our paper is to analyze Arendt's idea of the influence of revolutions on the public real by examining its theoretical and practical scope. In the course of our analysis, we will also answer the question whether Arendt's understanding of revolution could be used in the modern context. After a critical investigation of Arendt's idea of revolution and of her thesis about the impact of revolution on the public realm, we will briefly investigate several examples of modern revolutions from an 'Arendtian' standpoint in order to draw a conclusion about the current applicability of Arendt's key arguments concerning violence, power, social issues, collective political action and communication.
Political Theory, 2022
This article focuses on the contemporary relevance of Hannah Arendt’s work insofar as it relates to US racism, imperialism, and migration. While Arendt denied that US migration policy and racism were linked or even similar to exercises of racialized sovereignty, totalitarian tactics, and mass displacement in Europe, I suggest that her analyses help us to understand important racialized dialectics between prison and camp, citizen and stateless, and external displacement and internal displacement. In effect, this article suggests that many of Arendt’s analyses of racism, migration, and camps are more relevant to US history and contemporary US reality than she did or would have admitted. Arendt’s work importantly suggested that the stateless were so rightless that they lacked even criminal rights. In many respects, the criminal-stateless binary accurately illustrates the rightlessness of refugees in contrast to the rights of US citizen-criminals. However, she partly fails to recognize how the dialectical opposition between foreigner and citizen-criminal could lead to less visible forms of overlap and convergence. Arendt’s binary also indicates an adherence to crypto-normativity, despite her professed anti-foundational approach to political issues. Together, her theoretical strengths and certain failures illuminate our own (mis)understandings of a set of complex circumstances experienced today.