Biopower,Life and Left Politics

Abstract: The terms biopower and biopolitics have been deployed in widely varying ways in recent critical political analyses. This essay seeks to rescue from the welter of its deployments a general understanding of biopower potentially useful to left political projects. First, recent iterations of the concept of biopower are surveyed. In the main body of the paper, a series of interventions in recent critical debates are used to trace out a critical re‐mapping of the concept of “life” that names the ends of biopower. Biopolitically relevant life is reconsidered in terms of its proper geographical scope, its gender, racial and ethnic specificities, its distinguishing vital qualities, and its relation to temporality (particularly the future). Through this exercise the notion of biopower is redefined so as to provide potential “docking points” for Marxist, feminist and green discourses, and conceptual resources for left struggles against global injustice.     

Gerald Ford,the Mayaguez Incident,and the Post-Imperial Presidency

In 1975 Gerald Ford became the first President bound by the War Powers Resolution. Enacted in 1973, members of Congress, still fuming over the revelations crystallized by the Pentagon Papers that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a sham, sought to prevent future Presidents from starting future Vietnam Wars. Though Ford voted against the measure twice as a Congressman, as President he respected the law and Congress enforcing it. This article explores Ford's efforts and actions as he complied with the law. Ford's attitude and acquiescence reflected his efforts he heal the nation.     

Religion and Politics in the Howard Decade

The interaction between religion and politics is varied, complex and often heated. It involves constitutional issues, voting behaviour, party composition and electoral competition, faith-based public administration, advocacy and lobbying by churches, mutual criticism by churches and the state, and the public presentation of religious values. This article is a comprehensive mapping and discussion of a range of the major religion and politics issues in Australia since the election of the Howard government in 1996. This has been a decade in which religion has had a higher political profile than at any time since the 1950s Labor Split. One feature has been the rise to prominence of Catholics in the Coalition parties, whereas they featured heavily on the other side during the Labor Split. It is a more intellectually interesting decade than the 1950s because the influence of religion has crossed denominational and faith boundaries from the mainstream Christian churches to the newer Evangelical Christian churches and to non-Christian religions such as Islam. The overall impact of religious intervention appears to have favoured the Coalition parties, but many unanswered questions remain about the motivation and impact of these developments, and there are numerous opportunities for further research.     

William Howard Taft,the 1908 Election,and the Future of the American Presidency

Although the first presidential election where both major party candidates (William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan) hit the campaign trail, the election of 1908 is a neglected election. When scholars do address it, they typically focus on retiring incumbent president Theodore Roosevelt and his role therein. This article turns the focus away from Roosevelt, and also Bryan, and places it firmly on Taft, a reluctant candidate. Taft's role in 1908 is important because his very reluctance to embrace the changing expectations of the presidency helps to highlight the tensions between the old and new ways of campaigning and, more broadly, the traditional and modern presidencies.

The article first addresses Taft's decision to abandon his “front-porch” campaign. Taft's initial inclination toward a front-porch campaign reveals well his more traditional approach to the election and to the presidency in general, just as his decision to abandon this plan and “stump” for votes reflects his submission to developing trends and expectations. Second, the article examines the changing role of technology, this election being the first to feature phonograph recordings of the candidates, which would then be sold—and played—across the country. Third, the tours and speeches of Taft in the 1908 general election take center stage. The spectacle of these tours offers further evidence of the changing contours of American politics and presidential leadership, especially in elevating the personalities of the candidates. Finally, the 1908 election is examined from the standpoint of American political development and presidential history.     

Left, right and centre: the MRP and the post-war moment

This article takes a fresh look at the Mouvement RépublicainPopulaire (MRP), the new party founded by social-Catholic leadersof the Resistance at the end of 1944. Melding the progressivespirit of the Resistance prevalent in post-Liberation Francewith long-held social-Catholic values and admiration for deGaulle, the MRP achieved striking electoral triumphs in 1945–1946and anchored successive tripartite governments. As against plausibleinterpretations that regard the MRP as a bourgeois party ofthe Centre, I emphasize the MRP's commitment to the social-democraticagenda of the Conseil National de la Résistance CommonProgramme of 1944. With its precocious success in party building,this progressive party in a new key assured that in its post-warmoment France did not simply relapse into the electoral andparliamentary ways of the interwar years or that the field mightbe left clear for the Communists. Yet, despite its initiallyapt image as the parti de fidélité to de Gaulle,MRP leaders resisted the appeal of a saviour figure standingabove the republicanism they embraced.     

On the Relevance of Literature to Life: The Significance of the Act of Reading

What can literary education contribute to moral education? In this article the inherent practical, moral or political, relevance of literature and literary education is defended, which is opposed to a moralist approach to (children's) literature. A much debated danger in literature and the arts, viz. that it gives rise to a flight into a "promised land" instead of having relevance for real life and the real world, can be overcome by bringing to the fore the active part the reader plays in realizing the "world of the work." The classical idea of mimesis (i.e. of art mirroring reality) then makes room for a historicity of reading with an ongoing interplay of the (real) worlds of readers and the (fictive) world of the text. This idea is elaborated on from the point of view of Ricoeur's hermeneutics and from that of Iser's reception aesthetics, respectively. In realizing the world of the work the world of the reader is transcended and opened up towards the possible. In this reconfiguration lies the practical relevance of literature. Books, therefore, do not have to mirror the actual world in order to be morally or politically relevant. It is in the act of reading that the lasting significance of so-called classics is renewed time and time again.