Introducing the work of three French feminists - Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Michele L Doeuff - "Sexual Subversions" provides access to the work of these writers. In doing so this book raises some key issues of relevance to feminist research, addressing debates around the nature of feminist theory; the relationship between feminist thinking theory; the relationship between feminist thinking and male-dominated areas of knowledge; the strategies appropriate for developing non-patriarchal or woman-centered knowledges. No book on French feminists would be (...) complete without including the contributions of Kristeva and Irigaray. The inclusion of Le Doeuff's work, which brings a different perspective to bear on the question of sexual difference, provides a counterbalance to literary appropriations of French feminism by Anglo-American readerships. Kristeva, Irigaray and Le Doeuff are the focal points of this study, precisely because each highlights the differences of the others, revealing the frameworks to which the others are committed. Nevertheless, while these writers do not present a common political or theoretical position or form a school, each does address the question of women's autonomy from male definition, affirms the sexual specificity of women, seeks out a femininity women can use to question the patriarchal norms and ideals of femininity and rejects the preordained positions patriarchy allots to woman. This book is intended for students and researchers in women's studies, philosophy and feminism. (shrink)

In his later years, Leo Tolstoy wrote numerous books, essays and pamphlets expounding his newly-articulated denunciations of all political violence, whether by dissidents or ostensibly legitimate states. If these writings have inspired many later pacifists and anarchists, it is partly thanks to his masterful deployment of the literary technique of ‘defamiliarisation’ – or looking at the familiar as if new – to shake readers into recognising the absurdity of common justifications of violence, admitting their implicit complicity in it, and noticing (...) the process which numbed them into accepting such complicity. This paper discusses Tolstoy’s use of the imagination to defamiliarise and denounce violence, first by citing several typical examples, then by reflecting on four of its subversive characteristics: its disruption of automated perception, its implicit concession of some recognition, its corrosion of conventional respect for traditional hierarchies, and its encouragement of empathy. (shrink)

This new edition of Soft Subversions expands, reorganizes, and develops the original 1996 publication, offering a carefully organized arrangement of essays, interviews, and short texts that present a fuller scope to Guattari's thinking from 1977 to 1985. This period encompasses what Guattari himself called the "Winter Years" of the early 1980s--the ascent of the Right, the spread of environmental catastrophe, the rise of a disillusioned youth with diminished prospects for career and future, and the establishment of a postmodernist ideology that (...) offered solutions toward adaptation rather than change--a period with discernible echoes twenty years later. Following Semiotext's release last season of the new, expanded edition of Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972--1977, this book makes Guattari's central ideas and concepts fully available in the format that had been best suited to Guattari's temperament: the guerrilla-styled intervention of the short essay and interactive dialogue. This edition includes such previously unpublished, substantive texts as "Institutional Intervention" and "About Schools," along with new translations of "War, Crisis, or Life" and "The Nuclear State," interviews and essays on a range of topics including adolescence and Italy, dream analysis and schizo-analysis, Marcel Proust and Jimmy Carter, as well as invaluable autobiographical documents such as "I Am an Idea-Thief" and "So What.". (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish liberal education and social education. The latter emphasizes obedience, conformity, efficiency and loss of critical examination of societal norms. Liberal education is defended not as supplanting social education but as a very important and often neglected aspect of education. Liberal education is and should be subversive in respect to the goals encouraged by social education.

In Subversive Spinoza , Antonio Negri spells out the philosophical credo that inspired his radical renewal of Marxism and his compelling analysis of the modern state and the global economy by means of an inspiring reading of the challenging metaphysics of the seventeenth-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher Spinoza. For Negri, Spinoza's philosophy has never been more relevant than it is today to debates over individuality and community, democracy and resistance, modernity and postmodernity.

Dans cette leçon inaugurale, l'auteur se penche sur l'Évangile, compris au sens large de «promesse», comme objet et comme source de subversion. Deux textes bibliques illustrent chacun de ces deux aspects : le livre de Job et la parabole matthéenne des ouvriers de la onzième heure (Mt 20, 1-16). Une troisième et dernière partie porte sur la relation entre révélation et mystère. Le style oral a été en partie conservé. In this inaugural lecture, delivered on September 24, 2012 at (...) the Faculty of Theology of the University of Geneva, the author develops the theme of the Gospel — understood broadly as «promise» — as both the object and subject of subversion. Two biblical texts are taken as illustrations of these two aspects: the book of Job and Matthew's parable of the vineyard workers of the eleventh hour (Mt 20:1-16). A third and final part focuses on the relation between revelation and mystery. The original style of the lecture has been partly maintained. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationships between forms of humor that conjure up possible worlds and real-world social critiques. The first part of the article will argue that subversive humor, which is from or on behalf of historically and continually marginalized communities, constitutes a kind of aesthetic experience that can elicit enjoyment even in adversarial audiences. The second part will be a connecting piece, arguing that subversive humor can be constructed as brief narrative thought experiments that employ the use of fictionalized (...) scenarios to facilitate an open, playful attitude, encouraging a space for collaborative interpretation. This interaction between humorist and audience is an aesthetic experience that is enjoyable in and of itself, as the feelings of mirth are intrinsically valuable. But connected to the “Ha-ha!” experience of these sorts of humorous creations is an “Aha!” or potentially revelatory experience that is a mixture of cognitive comprehension and motivated (emotional) response. The third part of the article will attempt to go beyond the consciousness-raising element with an account of how such possible worlds created in the realm of imagination through subversive humor can bleed into the real world of flesh and blood people. Finally, an example of subversive humor will be analyzed. (shrink)

Feminist therapy is more than a prescription of technique; it is a unique philosophy of psychotherapy. While much has been written on feminism and therapy, this bold book breaks new ground by making explicit and coherent the theoretical underpinnings of feminist therapy.Building on the revolutionary work of feminist scholars who have described how women employ strategies of knowing the world in a manner distinct from men, Laura S. Brown, noted for her pioneering work in the field of ethics and boundaries, (...) shows how these insights should reshape the very nature of the therapeutic encounter. With meticulous care, the author examines key features of the therapeutic encounter with a feminist lens: the power of the therapist; assessment and diagnosis; the nature of change; the ethics of practice; and differences in race, class, and sexual identity. She constructs a vision of therapy that helps the client develop a sense of entitlement to satisfying and equal relationships outside the therapist's office. This powerful vision of feminist therapy is grounded throughout with case examples that illustrate how a dialogue between therapist and client can be healing, subversive, and transformative all at once. (shrink)

This paper argues, against technological and economic determinism, that the dominant model of industrial society is politically contingent. The idea that technical decisions are significantly constrained by ?rationality? ? either technical or economic ? is shown to be groundless. Constructivist and hermeneutic approaches to technology show that modern societies are inherently available for a different type of development in a different cultural framework. It is possible that, in the future, those who today are subordinated to technology's rhythms and demands will (...) be able to control it and to determine its evolution. I call the process of creating such a society ?subversive rationalization? because it requires technological advances that can only be made in opposition to the dominant hegemony. (shrink)

An in-depth account of how critique and subversion have been integral parts of the history and development of Chinese philosophy from the classical period to the present.

ABSTRACTThis article makes the hypothesis that it is the relation to work, and not work itself, that holds subversive, or even liberating, potential for women. We begin by showing the theoretical convergence between this hypothesis and feminist epistemology. In order to test the hypothesis empirically, we then look at the paradoxical ways in which many women relate to paid work. In order to understand this paradox, we argue that it is necessary to go back to a feminist definition of work (...) by calling into question the separation between professional and domestic work. Finally, we attempt to make suggestions to transform this subversive potential into collective emancipatory practices. We insist on the necessity for the feminist movement to put domestic work back at the center of its reflection on work and on the emancipation of women. (shrink)

A new, expanded, and reorganized edition of a collection of texts that present a fuller scope to Guattari's thinking from 1977 to 1985. This new edition of Soft Subversions expands, reorganizes, and develops the original 1996 publication, offering a carefully organized arrangement of essays, interviews, and short texts that present a fuller scope to Guattari's thinking from 1977 to 1985. This period encompasses what Guattari himself called the “Winter Years” of the early 1980s—the ascent of the Right, the spread of (...) environmental catastrophe, the rise of a disillusioned youth with diminished prospects for career and future, and the establishment of a postmodernist ideology that offered solutions toward adaptation rather than change—a period with discernible echoes twenty years later. Following Semiotext's release last season of the new, expanded edition of Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972–1977, this book makes Guattari's central ideas and concepts fully available in the format that had been best suited to Guattari's temperament: the guerrilla-styled intervention of the short essay and interactive dialogue. This edition includes such previously unpublished, substantive texts as “Institutional Intervention” and “About Schools,” along with new translations of “War, Crisis, or Life” and “The Nuclear State,” interviews and essays on a range of topics including adolescence and Italy, dream analysis and schizo-analysis, Marcel Proust and Jimmy Carter, as well as invaluable autobiographical documents such as “I Am an Idea-Thief” and “So What.”. (shrink)

Oppression is easily recognized. That is, at least, when oppression results from overt, consciously professed racism, for example, in which violence, explicit exclusion from economic opportunities, denial of adequate legal access, and open discrimination perpetuate the subjugation of a group of people. There are relatively clear legal remedies to such oppression. But this is not the case with covert oppression where the psychological harms and resulting legal and economic exclusion are every bit as real, but caused by concealed mechanisms subtly (...) and systematically employed. In many cases, those with power and privilege use cultural stereotypes in order to sustain an unjust status quo. This is so even if the biases are implicit, automatic, and contrary to the consciously professed beliefs of the stereotyper. Furthermore, since many of these biases are not consciously reasoned into one's system of beliefs, and since they are notoriously difficult to bring to consciousness and dislodge via direct, logical confrontation, some other creative means of resistance is needed. I argue that an indirect and imaginative route through subversive humor offers a means to raise consciousness about covert oppression and the mechanisms underlying it, reveal the errors of those with power who complacently sustain systematic oppression, and even open those people up to changing their minds. Subversive humor confronts serious matters, but in a playful manner that fosters creative and critical thinking, and cultivates a desire and skill for recognizing incongruities between our professed ideals and a reality that does not meet those standards. Successful subversive wits create fictional scenarios that highlight such moral incongruities, but, like philosophical thought experiments, they reveal a moral truth that also holds in the real world. Such humor offers opportunities for "border crossing" where the audience is encouraged to see from the perspectives of marginalized people who, because they inhabit ambiguous spaces in between the dominant and subordinate spheres, are in an epistemically privileged position with respect to matters of oppression. Subversive humorists open their audiences to the lived experiences of others, uncover the absurdities of otherwise covert oppression, and appeal to our desire to be truthful and just. (shrink)

Within the context of neoliberal healthcare, nurses and other health professionals face working conditions that leave them perpetually feeling inadequate, as though they are not enough. They are consistently expected to achieve more with less resources. In such an environment, mere professionalism proves wholly insufficient, enforcing norms of altruism and kindness. Professionals must transcend this disciplinary tool and embody a ‘more‐than‐professional’ approach. This study, informed by critical posthumanism, employs three mythical archetypes—the Medusa, the Witch and the Siren—to illuminate potential avenues (...) for resistance against prevailing trends in healthcare. Drawing on the perspectives of Hélène Cixous, Silvia Federici and Jacques Rancière, we introduce a process of resistance for healthcare professionals pushing back against the challenges of crumbling healthcare systems. Cixous' feminist reimagining of Medusa symbolizes intensified embodied sensory experiences, emphasizing the power of irony, laughter and writing in highlighting the daily struggles faced by healthcare workers. Federici's depiction of the Witch exposes clandestine alliances among healthcare workers and patients, akin to a pact with the devil, countering the individualistic, alienating approach to care provision and resisting neoliberal pressures. The Witch archetype embodies resistance grounded in creativity against the commodification of public healthcare. Finally, Rancière's ‘politics of the Siren' offers a strategy for disrupting entrenched hierarchies from the underworld. Like Sirens, healthcare workers and patients can subversively transform their silence into songs of resistance, simultaneously operating from beneath the surface of accountability measures. Our intention is to showcase the emergence of posthuman ‘professionals’ who adapt by forging new modes of social relations in response to neoliberal constraints, straying from conventional, apolitical notions of ‘professionalism’. Drawing lessons from mythical figures of resistance offers a fresh understanding of subversion as a catalyst for social and political transformation within the healthcare sector. (shrink)

Speedrunning is a kind of ‘metagame’ involving video games. Though it does not yet have the kind of profile of multiplayer e-sports, speedrunning is fast approaching e-sports in popularity. Aside from audience numbers, however, from the perspective of the philosophy of sport and games, speedrunning is particularly interesting. To the casual player or viewer, speedrunning appears to be a highly irreverent, even pointless, way of playing games, particularly due to the incorporation of “glitches”. For many outside the speedrunning community, the (...) use of glitches appears to be cheating. For speedrunners, however, glitches are entirely within the bounds of acceptability. Because of this, however, speedrunning frequently involves sidestepping what are typically taken to be the core challenges of the game. By examining the distinction between the use of glitches and cheating in speedrunning, we can gain a greater understanding of the unique ethos of this activity; that is, we can make sense of what fundamentally constitutes speedrunning as a metagame. I argue that by understanding the code of the game not as rules but as physics, and by examining what actions are deemed impermissible by the speedrunning community – such as hardware modification and hacking – we can see that the ethos of speedrunning has three components: constitutive skills (including dexterity, memorisation and mental fortitude); a collective, fine-grained knowledge of the game and the desire to subvert the intentions of the programmers. Each of these components limits and structures the earlier ones: collective knowledge takes priority over constitutive skills, and subversion takes priority over both. These three components form the ethos that structures speedrunning as a metagame, expressing what speedrunners take to be its central aim. (shrink)

This research aspires to represent the subversion of pre-defined gender roles in the novels; The Shadow of the Crescent Moon by Fatima Bhutto, Butterfly Season by Natasha Ahmed, and Stained by Abda Khan. The researchers aim to depict the destabilization of gender-based stereotyped identity from the Pakistani perspective. The selected method of study is Feminist Analysis by Tyson, which examines literature as a medium to represent feminist issues, whereas; the theoretical angle of “Matrix of Domination” from Collins’ Feminist/Gender theory (...) is used as a principle to analyze and depict the subversion of pre-defined gender roles in the selected novels. This study aims to establish the notion of gender as a social construct that could be subverted through literary discourses that have the potential to challenge the power-based gender roles within a patriarchal society. In this regard, different critical works of prominent theorists and writers have been discussed briefly in the literature review to project the significance of the works by contemporary Pakistani women writers as a medium to subvert identities formed by their society. Gender is also a means of power through which the dominant seeks to control the subordinate. The objective of this research is to suggest that gender is socially constructed, therefore, it can be deconstructed through literature. The selected novels exemplify the current gender inclinations of today’s Pakistan with the pen of female writers. Stereotyped gender identity is a socially constructed vice that divides humans into segments, hence it is required of the contemporary discourses to decenter such power discourses that perpetuate hegemonic boundaries and restrict the women into social shackles of imposed identities. (shrink)

In a survey spanning over half a century of his own work, Hirschman, among the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century on political economy, celebrates the ability to undermine one’s own claims and theories. Whereas skepticism toward other people’s work is not noteworthy, Hirschman argues, self-critque is crucial in relation “to one’s own generalizations or constructs.” But self-criticism and interpretive changes do “not in the end cancel out or refute the earlier findings”; rather, they help to define domains of (...) the social world where originally postulated relations do not hold. Exercises in “self-subversion,” while often experienced at first as traumatic, are eventually, as Hirschman’s own career attests, “rewarding and enriching.”. (shrink)

Scientific reports about clinical research appear objective and straightforward. They describe a study's findings, methods, subject population, number of subjects, and contribution to existing knowledge. The overall picture is pristine: the research team establishes the requirements of study participation and subjects conform to these requirements. Readers are left with the impression that everything was done correctly, by the book.In other places, however, one finds a different and messier picture of clinical research. In this picture, research subjects deviate from the prescribed (...) plan. One author contrasted the “tidy graphics” and “crisp prose” of the New England Journal of Medicine's HIV/AIDS trial publications with reports that subjects shared medications and broke other trial rules. Awareness of this behavior, he wrote, could lead insiders to “conclude that knowledge was resting on something rather less solid than bedrock.”. (shrink)

En littérature comme en peinture, le brouillage des hiérarchies est aussi constant que leur formulation, tant l'acte créateur se confond avec leur transgression et leur déplacement. L'importance théorique des genres paraît disproportionnée au regard de leur influence réelle sur la création littéraire et artistique. En revanche, leur impact se fait bien plus ressentir sur la réception des oeuvres, car ils fournissent des critères de jugement et permettent d'instaurer dans le système des beaux-arts une manière d'ordre politique. La transgression des hiérarchies (...) est bien souvent involontaire, et quand elle est volontaire, elle apparaît comme un geste iconoclaste, mais ce geste lui-même n'est pas loin de devenir institutionnel. S'il est aujourd'hui banal d'étudier la transgression des frontières génériques, le présent volume interroge la fascination que les hiérarchies ont toujours exercée, envers et contre toute réalité, et la séduction paradoxale des genres mineurs"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Subversion und Substruktion" verfügbar.

The first part of the paper is dedicated to a theoretical discussion of the Western individual, the Althusserian subject and its more active counterpart, the agent. The agent is endowed with a logic that is not fully predictable and can be creative, in which case it may become subversive. The second part of the article is devoted to an application of the theoretical framework to a case in Israeli culture. The organization da'at emet attempts to address the native logic of (...) the ultra-orthodox yeshiva student, and to foster in him a curious agent who will put his logic to work in processing the new data provided to him by the pamphlets of the organization. The student is expected to become a subversive agent who will embrace secular logic and practices. It is claimed that theories of the individual or the subject alone cannot capture the scenario described. The agent, with his creative logic, is needed to fully account for it. (shrink)

El amanecer del año 1994 nos sorprendió con la aparición pública del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. Más de dos décadas después empezamos a percibir la fuerza, dimensión e importancia que han tenido las mujeres -su voz, su lucha- no sólo en la organización del movimiento armado y civil que desde entonces sigue sin cesar; sino también en la articulación del pensamiento y la teoria en que sustentan y que sostiene su actuar. La política que se articula en las comunidades (...) zapatistas, en este sentido, ha reafirmado y cuestionado las luchas feministas del mundo y de América Latina. En particular, ha hecho visible lo prescindible que es la idea de las oposiciones, de las disyuntivas excluyentes. En vez de ello, ellas proponen pensar en dos nociones básicas: “todo está en par” y “el mundo parejo”. Como haré ver en este texto, estas dos cosas están a la base de su creación de una vida colectiva, de una política de lo común. Si esto es así y si pensamos que lo común es “la posibilidad de una política en femenino” entonces veremos que la zapatista es una subversión en femenino.The uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional surprised us all in the dawn of 1994. More than two decades later, we are starting to fully appreciate the force, dimension, and importance that women —their voices, their struggle—has had not only in the organization of the social and armed movement that is still very vigorous in Chiapas, but also in the theoretical and practical articulation of their thinking and acting. The politics that are currently in play in the Zapatista communities has reinforced and questioned the feminist struggles all over the world and in Latin America. In particular, it has made visible how thinking in terms of oppositions or exclusive dilemmas is and should be dispensable. We should rather start thinking in terms of “everything being in pair” and “an even world”. I will contend that these two notions support their construction of a collective life, of a politics of what is common. If this is true and if we think that what is common opens the possibility of politics in feminine, then it makes sense to think of the Zapatistassubversion as feminine. (shrink)

Subversive Pedagogies draws attention to creative and critical pedagogies as a resource for engaging pressing problems in global politics. The collection explores the radical potential of pedagogy to transform students, scholars, citizens and institutions. It brings together scholars and students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including international relations, political science, indigenous studies, feminist theory and theatre studies, as well as practitioners in theatre and the arts. These diverse voices explore innovative pedagogical practices that extend our understanding of where pedagogy (...) happens, invite critical assessment of the ways the neoliberal university shapes and restricts pedagogical engagement, and offer both theoretical and practical tools to explore more creative and broader understandings of what pedagogy can and should do. (shrink)

Will we, by 2050, be able to feed a rapidly growing population with healthy and sustainably grown food in a world threatened by systemic environmental crises? There are too many uncertainties for us to predict the long-term evolution of the global agri-food system, but we can explore a wide range of futures to inform policymaking and public debate on the future of food. This is typically done by creating scenarios and quantifying them with computer simulation models to get numerical estimates (...) of how different aspects of the global agri-food system might evolve under different hypotheses. Among the many scenarios produced over the last twenty years, one would expect to see the future advocated by the food sovereignty movement, which claims to represent roughly two hundred million self-described “peasants” worldwide. This movement defends a vision of the future based on relocalized, sustainable, and just agri-food systems, self-governed through direct and participatory democratic processes. Yet, food sovereignty is conspicuously absent from quantified scenarios of global food futures. As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” this essay identifies seven obstacles that undermine the creation of food sovereignty scenarios by examining two attempts at crafting such scenarios. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza “Malena, una vida hervida” de Almudena Grandes como relato paradigmático de las propuestas posfeministas que la autora española presenta en su obra narrativa, la cual recurrentemente se distancia y critica los modelos patriarcales de mujer tradicional, al mismo tiempo que cuestiona varios presupuestos feministas. “Malena, una vida hervida”, integrante de la colección Modelos de mujer, critica los parámetros estéticos que establece la sociedad, y replantea el erotismo y su vinculación con la comida. Para ello, Grandes (...) propone una versión, subversión y parodia tanto de modelos masculinos como femeninos a la vez que exhibe la incapacidad de escapar al modelo femenino impuesto por el patriarcado. Palabras clave: Almudena Grandes, posfeminismo, modelos patriarcales, erotismo, comida. (shrink)

I present some objections to traditional literary interpretation and consider subversive interpretation as a solution to these problems. Subversive interpretation may seem more scientific and more democratic than traditional interpretation, but it is open to doubt that it is more democratic.

This interdisciplinary volume of contributed essays focuses on issues of gender in the British novel of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly Hardy and Trollope. Approaching the topic from a variety of backgrounds the contributors reinvigorate the law-and-literature movement by displaying a range of ways in which literature and law can illuminate one another, and in which the conversation between them can illuminate deeper human issues with which both disciplines are concerned.

In her study Anarchism and Education, Judith Suissa argues that anarchist learning entails a constant interplay of tensions arising from emergent desires to transform society and the challenges society poises for realizing them. This is inescapable because a critical attitude is integral to an anarchist process of learning, infusing it with creative license premised on the conviction that we need not accept things as they are, that learning is not only a space for understanding, but also enactment. My purpose is (...) to explore this dynamic in the work of graphic artist Kevin Pyle, an American-born artist with a substantive body of illustrated books and comics addressing a myriad of issues. I am interested... (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 551-552, July 2012.

Radical Intellectuals and the Subversion of Progressive Politics is a challenge to contemporary radical politics and political thought. This collection of essays critiques the dominant trends and figures on the left that have distorted the legacy of progressive politics, arguing that they have moved politics away from issues of class and economic power toward a preoccupation with culture and identity. The contributors discuss this new radicalism from the perspective of a more rational form of leftism capable of reviving interest (...) in a more politically relevant form of politics. (shrink)

How contemporary Chinese art is creating “a philosophy of life, a philosophy of politics, and a natural philosophy,” as artist Qiu Zhijie says it must, is explored in this collection of essays by philosophers and art historians from America and China.

Deconstructive and poststructuralist theories are commonly accused of rejecting all principles of justice and therefore “collaborating with evil.” A canonical example is Martha Nussbaum’s “The Professor of Parody” on the work of Judith Butler. The merits of Nussbaum’s argument and of the “common critique” turn on choosing between two alternative interpretations of Butler’s corpus and of poststructuralism in general. First, assumed in Nussbaum’s critique, is “universal poststructuralism.” Second is “contextual poststructuralism,” which is not susceptible to the common critique. According to (...) the latter and better reading of Butler, subversion and deconstruction take place within a background comprising relatively stable sets of norms, structures of meaning, practices and values. A background that is a necessary enabling condition of deconstructing and performing subversion or parody, and which may include moral norms and principles. Moreover, Nussbaum’s critique may be incommensurable with Butler’s project. Finally, ascribing Butler’s theory the general proposition of rejecting all norms and moral principles ignores the temporal and particularistic nature of Butler’s deconstructive agenda. (shrink)

The weaponizing of scientific expertise to oppose regulation has been extensively studied. However, the relevant studies, belonging to the emerging discipline of agnotology, remain focused on the analysis of empirical corruption: of misinformation, doubt mongering, and other practices that cynically deploy expertise to render audiences ignorant of empirical facts. This paper explores the wrongful deployment of expertise beyond empirical corruption. To do so, I develop a broader framework of morally subversive expertise, building on recent work in political philosophy (Howard, 2016). (...) Expertise is subversive if it sets up its audience to fail morally, either intentionally or negligently. I distinguish three modes of subversive expertise: empirical subversion (the focus of agnotology), normative subversion and motivational subversion. Drawing on these distinctions, I offer a revisionary account of the Trump Administration’s regulatory science as a case study. I show that the Trump Administration’s use of expertise to dismantle climate regulation, contra the standard charge, cannot be explained using the resources of agnotology alone: the Administration produced highly reliable climate assessments, detailing the risks of climate change, candidly admitting the harms of its proposed policies, and still successfully deployed these findings to justify massive climate deregulation. The lesson of the analysis is that dismissing the expertise that underpins climate deregulation as empirically corrupt ‘anti-science’ both obscures its actual role in the politics of climate change and understates its wrongfulness: it misses the breadth of the assault on moral agency that sustains climate injustice. (shrink)

This book theorizes subversive action, a neglected mechanism in the new institutionalism literature. Subversive action is political in nature, secretly undermining some institutions to open up alternative ideas or to secure existing institutions by secretly undermining adversaries. An example is a politician who promises change in public, but does something else behind the scenes to preserve the status quo. The book addresses the nature and meaning of subversive action and the contexts that give rise to it, as well as how (...) it can work as an important mechanism behind institutional change and continuity. The book will interest students and scholars of public policy, public administration and political science. (shrink)