The Power of the Future: Prophetic Politics Between Political Crises and Civil Rights

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the political life of Malcolm X in the context of the Black Prophetic Tradition. By exploring historical, literary, and theological considerations of political violence and divine warnings, “Catch on Fire” evaluates Malcolm X’s legacy as one of the iconic figures within more contemporary prophetic politics.     

Humphrey and Civil Rights: The Politics of Racial Progress

Abstract

This article explores and defends Leo Strauss's interpretation of Edmund Burke's thought. Strauss argues that Burke's conservatism is rooted in the modern empiricist school of John Locke and others. Following Strauss, this article sets out to consider the suitability of these foundational principles to conservative politics. Burke wants to temper or ennoble Lockean politics by inspiring sublime attachment to the political community and its traditions, but he shies away from stating universal standards according to which the traditions of political communities ought to be judged. This respect for reason in history without moorings in transcendent standards of reason or revelation leaves his conservatism on precarious ground.     

The Politics of Communist Biography: Alfred Kantorowicz and the Spanish Civil War

After the German communist author Alfred Kantorowicz's breakwith Communism in 1957, he was lionized by his supporters asan icon of humanism and antifascism, and vilified by his formerallies as a turncoat and traitor. In his autobiographical writings,Kantorowicz portrayed himself as a victim of Stalinism, whohad always been opposed to the authoritarian and repressiveaspects of Communism. Again and again he returned to his timein the International Brigades as a way of illustrating bothhis commitment to antifascism and the betrayal of grassrootsCommunism by the party leadership. But contemporary recordsreveal a more ambiguous picture: not only was Kantorowicz along-time functionary, he was also more involved in the repressiveaspects of Communism than he later cared to admit. This articleargues that, like many ex-Communist biographies of the ColdWar, Kantorowicz's memoirs are shot through with retrospectiveself-justification. Given his post-1957 loathing for Communism,he needed to explain why he had joined the party in the firstplace, and then remained an active member for twenty-five years.By organizing his life around the dichotomies of footsoldiersand functionaries, antifascism and Stalinism, and censorshipand truth, Kantorowicz was able to avoid discussing his ownculpability as a Communist functionary.     

The Whereabouts of Power: Politics, Government and Space

Abstract In a world where it has become almost commonplace to talk about power as centralised or distributed, concentrated or diffuse, deterritorialized or dispersed even, it is all too easy to miss the diverse geographies of power that put us in place. The binary talk that forces us to choose between a centred or a decentred view of power, or to shuffle between them in an effort to blur clearly demarcated scales, leaves little room to move beyond defined distances and settled proximities in relation to the exercise of power. In this paper, a more spatially‐curious dialogue of power is opened up which foregrounds associational as well as instrumental forms of power which can make a difference to how we act politically.     

NGOs,Civil Society,and the State in Bangladesh: The Politics of Representing the Poor

The established rhetoric of opposition between state and NGOs as development agents has shifted to one of complementarity and common interest. Along with this, the ‘comparative advantage’ claimed for NGOs has expanded from economic and welfare benefits to encompass also the political goods of civil society and popular participation. This paper reviews these developments in the context of Bangladesh. It argues that they need to be assessed critically in ways which are both theoretically informed and locally contextualized. While recognizing that there are, indeed, areas of common experience and interest between the state and NGOs in Bangladesh, it questions whether these necessarily coincide with the interests of those they all invoke: the poor.