Suchergebnisse

Introduction: Policing protest and the post-democratic state -- Aesthetic government : neoliberal authoritarianism and the post-democratic right of expression -- New York's mega-event security legacy and the postlegitimation state -- Policing the uprising : Occupy Wall Street and order maintenance policing -- Violent appearances and neoliberalism's disintegrated political subjects -- Political antagonism : #BlackLivesMatter and the postlegitimation, postdemocratic state -- Conclusion: Policing protest and neoliberal authoritarianism.

No Escape proves that liberal government and nationalism can mutually reinforce each other, taking as its example a preeminent and seemingly universal liberal legal right, freedom of speech, and illustrating how it can function in a way that actually reproduces nationally exclusive conditions of power.

The state formation of neoliberal authoritarianism, and political subjects attached to this state, took shape in the wake of the 1968 presidential election in the United States. Now the state sought to manage inequality – if not enjoy it – rather than ameliorate it. Policing became more militarized, and police were encouraged to go beyond law enforcement to control the perception of disorder. Police were also encouraged to kick ass. The enjoyment of militarized policing of those poor and black, or the enjoyment of police kicking the asses of those poor and black with regard to minor violations, indicate the points of subjective affective attachment to neoliberal authoritarianism. The New York Police Department's and the Ferguson Police Department's disparate policing of those poor and black are institutional manifestations of these affective attachments. In the wake of the NYPD's killing of Eric Garner, and the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the protests of the people have forced us to heed the call of justice: We Can't Breathe!

The back cover of Clarissa Rile Hayward and Todd Swanstrom'sJustice and the American Metropolisconcisely lays out a central challenge of contemporary politics: "Today's American cities and suburbs are the sites of 'thick injustice'—unjust power relations that are deeply and densely concentrated as well as opaque and seemingly intractable. Thick injustice is hard to see, to assign responsibility for, and to change." The fact that the topic of "urban politics" is not a major theme of political science scholarship both reflects and exacerbates this challenge. And so we have decided to invite a diverse group of social scientists to discuss the book in light of the very big question that it poses: How do American cities look when assessed in terms of their "justice" (or "injustice"), and how might they look if they were assessed in these terms more seriously? In considering this question, discussants have also been asked to consider a related question: How does Americanpolitical sciencelook when assessed in terms of the extent to which it takes the question of urban justice and injustice seriously?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

This paper addresses what it means to "critique" liberalism today. Liberalism has been subjected to critique from the left, and has endured such concerted attacks from the right, that virtually no national politician in the United States calls him or herself a "liberal." This commentary, using John Locke's as an exemplar of liberalism, discusses a tradition of critiques of liberalism that use the resources within liberalism to deepen liberalism's democratic potential. I argue that liberalism, thus understood, enables us to address the most pressing forms of economic and political tyranny in the United States today. Some contend that our future politics should aspire to something more than liberalism. In the meantime, though, let us not be anything less than liberals.

I argue that Giorgio Agamben employs two, contradictory theories of the state in his works. Earlier works, such as The Coming Community and Means without End, suggest that the state today functions as an aspect of the society of the spectacle where spectacle is the logical extension of the commodity form under late capitalism. This part of Agamben's work attributes a determined character to the state and a determining power to the economic forces of capitalism that conditions particular forms of the state. Later work, such as Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life and State of Exception, are preoccupied with the logic of juridical sovereignty and the increased frequency of states of emergency. This part of Agamben's work attributes a determining strength to the state under current conditions. Although his earlier work provides a more coherent narrative of how it is possible to move from contemporary society to ideal community, it does not provide the theory of political action necessary to overcome the power of the state he describes when he theorizes the state in Homo Sacer and State of Exception. None of the three possibilities of political action present in his later works provides passage beyond state sovereignty without violating his philosophical commitments.