Silks,skills and opportunities in Byzantium: some reflexions

Abstract

Silks gave visible form to Byzantium's political culture and, being light to carry, could circulate widely. Many of the garments issued to recipients of offices and titles were made of silk and the Book of the Eparch takes for granted the close connection between imperial prerogatives, silken vestments of various shades of purple and restrictions on foreigners' access to them. Through whetting appetites for silks and maintaining a monopoly over the finest quality products, the emperor could hope to arouse in his own subjects and foreigners alike the desire to gain them through some form of ‘service’. These products simultaneously expressed his wealth, superior knowledge and — by the symbols on them — the antiquity and unsurpassable legitimacy of his rule.     

Towards an NPT‐restrained world that makes economic sense

Because most of the world's proliferators have used the Nuclear Non‐proliferation Treaty's (NPT) call on nations to ‘share the benefits of the applications of peaceful nuclear energy’ to help justify their nuclear activities, it is unclear just how much any proliferator ultimately has been restrained by these rules. This needs to change but is unlikely, unless the NPT's qualifications on the right to ‘peaceful’ nuclear energy are read in a much more restrictive fashion to only authorize nuclear projects that are clearly beneficial economically and that truly can be safeguarded against diversion to make bombs. In this regard, our best hope is that, as nations consider how to prevent global warming, they might adopt clear economic guidelines that would compel all energy projects—both nuclear and non‐nuclear—to compete economically against one another on a much more level playing field. This would make dangerous, uneconomical nuclear projects far less likely to be pursued, and a centering of the world's security on a proper reading of the NPT much more likely and sustainable. Indeed, unless economic discipline of this sort is attempted internationally, it is quite likely that the continued implementation of the current egregious view of the NPT will only serve to accelerate nuclear proliferation more rapidly than if there was no NPT at all.     

Young Mr. Lincoln in Ford's Theater

In Young Mr. Lincoln, director John Ford and screenwriter Lamar Trotti engage an issue that is central to Ford's films and to Lincoln's political thought. That issue is the tension between individual greatness and the rule of law, a tension heightened in a democracy by the demos's passion for equality. In the film's portrayal of Lincoln, Ford and Trotti suggest a solution to this tension that is fundamentally consistent with the one Lincoln suggested in the Lyceum Address. To remain within the political community, the great man must hold a sincere reverence for the law and be willing to exhibit humility in declaiming his own superiority. In the context of these characteristics, greatness can be a force that preserves the law and protects the community from harm. The film depicts Lincoln as the paradigmatic combination of these characteristics and alludes to his mature leadership based on these commitments in his later career.     

Carl Schmitt in the Kremlin: the Ukraine crisis and the return of geopolitics

The protracted crisis in Ukraine has exposed fundamental political differences between leaders in western Europe and their counterparts in Russia. The very existence of the European Union was meant to have refuted geopolitics as a useful theoretical lens through which to view power relations in Europe. After all, the European project is based on the idea that boundaries no longer matter and that national sovereignty is obsolete. And yet, geopolitics remains critically important—certainly for Europe's potential enemies, but also for Europe itself. It is poignant that to advance our understanding of this new constellation we are well served to turn to the insights of a classic, if hugely controversial, German political thinker: Carl Schmitt. Schmitt's political philosophy is relevant in three aspects. First, as a source of inspiration—even if only indirectly—for the contemporary Russian political establishment. Second, the behaviour of Putin's Russia, particularly since 2008, can be best understood through some of the key concepts that preoccupied Schmitt: sovereignty, the political and geopolitics. Third, Schmitt's philosophy can serve as a point of departure for reflecting on the possibility of a more robust response by Europe to the Russian intervention in Ukraine. What Europe needs is a more hard‐nosed realist approach, which recognizes that Russia's expansionist ambitions can only be constrained by its own readiness and willingness to deploy power both politically and, if necessary, even militarily.     

The "Trial" of Lee Benson: Communism, White Chauvinism, and The Foundations of the "New Political History" in the United States

Lee Benson was one of the first American political historians to suggest a “systematic” revision of traditional political history with its emphasis on narrow economic class analysis, narrative arguments, and over‐reliance on qualitative research methodologies. This essay presents Benson's contributions to the “new political history”—an attempt to apply social‐science methods, concepts, and theories to American political history—as a social, cultural, and political narrative of Cold War‐era American history. Benson belonged to a generation of ex‐Communist American historians and political scientists whose scholarship and intellectual projects flowed—in part—out of Marxist social and political debates, agendas, and paradigmatic frameworks, even as they rejected and revised them. The main focus of the essay is the genesis of Benson's pioneering study of nineteenth‐century New York state political culture, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, with its emphasis on intra‐class versus inter‐class conflict, sensitivity to ethnocultural determinants of political and social behavior, and reliance on explicit social‐science theory and methodology. In what follows, I argue that The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy has its roots in Benson's Popular Front Marxist beliefs, and his decade‐long engagement and subsequent disenchantment with American left‐wing politics. Benson's growing alienation from Progressive historical paradigms and traditional Marxist analysis, and his attempts to formulate a neo‐Marxism attentive to unique American class and political realities, are linked to his involvement with 1940s radical factional politics and his disturbing encounter with internal Communist party racial and ideological tensions in the late 1940s at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.     

Living in anachronistic space: Temporalities of displacement in Moscow's Soviet-era standardised housing

In 2017, the Moscow municipality announced the demolition of several thousand remaining Soviet-era, standardised apartments (khrushchevki). Known as the Renovation, the renewal project promises to replace the khrushchevki with new residential districts. Based on fieldwork in Northern Izmailovo, a district targeted for demolition, this article analyses encroaching displacement by foregrounding the temporal experiences of affected residents. Building on literature that explores the political underpinnings of discourse and aesthetics in urban renewal projects, with particular attention to Rancière's temporal politics, the article contends that the Renovation depends on the discursive construction of its targets as spatial anachronisms. This renders the Soviet-era housing blocks, and those who live within them, vulnerable to a spectrum of modernising aestheticising interventions—from minor ornamentation to wholesale demolition. Based on ethnographic data, the article shows how the initial stages of redevelopment have altered a local network of benches. For a group of long-standing, elderly residents, these disruptions have instigated more profound reckonings with their own sense of time in/and space, leading to an understanding that they, too, are seen as anachronistic features of the city. Paying attention to urban materiality on a granular scale, particularly in standardised housing estates, reveals the multifaceted temporalities that inform residents' engagements with the spaces of their home districts. The article argues that doing so counters the exclusionary temporal logic of the discourse of anachronism by denying its ubiquity. In turn, it speaks to growing geographic interest in amplifying alternative temporalities in the face of destructive, terminal change.     

Lake Pedder's Loss and Failed Restoration: Ecological Politics Meets Liberal Democracy in Tasmania

The flooding of Lake Pedder in South West Tasmania for hydro-electricity in the early 1970s is recognised as one of the world's great ecological tragedies. The hope for its restoration, long held by some, has been given impetus by the activities of Pedder 2000, a nation-wide restoration lobby group founded in 1994. The legitimacy, feasibility and desirability of Pedder's restoration has been acknowledged, if not endorsed, by a recent federal inquiry. Restoration proponents see Pedder's recovery not only as a means of making amends for past follies, but as a new millennium project that offers hope to future generations. This paper reviews Pedder's inundation and the efforts towards its recovery, and finds little support for restoration in the absence of compelling economic and political benefit. This is cause to reflect, it is argued, upon the difficulties that ecological politics has encountered within Tasmania that saw Lake Pedder dammed in the first place.     

Defending the West in All Its Amplitude: The Liberal Conservative Vision of Roger Scruton

This article explores the mixture of conservatism and liberalism that informs Roger Scruton's political and philosophical reflection. It highlights his response to the “culture of repudiation,” his resistance to totalitarianism, his defense of national loyalty (as opposed to ideological nationalism), his conservative-minded environmentalism, and his defense of order—and government—against libertarian and leftist assaults on legitimate authority. In particular, it explores a fruitful tension in Scruton's thought between a robust acknowledgment of the Christian features of Western civilization (a civilization that is unthinkable without a Christian emphasis on confession and forgiveness) and Scruton's forthright defense of the secular state against Islamist fanaticism. The article also explores affinities and differences between Scruton's understanding of the West's conjugation of Christianity and secularism and Pierre Manent's critique of radical secularism. The article concludes with reflections on Scruton's judicious melding of truth and liberty, and philosophy and Christianity.     

Learning through Upheaval: Strategies for Analyzing and Construing Emerging Sociopolitical Transformations in the Middle East

The irreducible complexity and singular unpredictability of the upheavals that have roiled the Middle East since December 2010 challenge analysts—from university students to policymakers—to grapple with irresolvable questions; this, rather than analysts' superimposing their own visions of what might constitute the upheavals' driving forces, and what will, or should be the outcomes of the regional turmoil. Drawing on strategies gleaned from teaching about the Arab uprisings, this article asserts that the uprisings may be collectively read as comprising a text that contains signs of indeterminacy pointing to many possible meanings and sources of meanings. Focus is placed on those signs that embody the differing discourses through which the Middle East upheavals are, have been, or can be represented and assessed; and the fluid, multidimensional forms of political identity that have contributed to the upheavals, and are being further reshaped, in their wake. By reading these signs with intellectual openness and humility, interpreters can achieve greater insight into the profoundly contingent and unforeseeable dynamics at work across the region.     

Milestones and Stumbling Blocks,Continued

This commentary is based on a banquet address I presented at the 1989 Pioneer America Society conference. It looks back over the 15 years since hearing an address by Fred Kniffen at the 1974 Pioneer America Society conference, which was published as "Milestones and Stumbling Blocks." Kniffen's work in folk architecture and the work of his friend, Henry Glassie, have greatly influenced my own work in vernacular architecture and material culture. I offer an opinion on our progress in answering Kniffen's call for new efforts to comprehend daily life and the American landscape–our "search for landmarks"–contemplate new trends. My remarks are based on the study of local architecture in Missouri. While I hope for increased activity in field recording of cultural heritage, I wish to emphasize the rather new arena of cultural conservation as we aspire to apply our knowledge in the documentation and encouragement of traditional cultural expression in our nation.     

God and the illegal alien: United States immigration law and a theology of politics

This essay considers the marks of authentic Christian prophecy in Fra Anton Montesino's 1511 sermon in Hispaniola, in its political and cultural context, arguing that these marks are witness, courage, discernment and a concrete, contextual focus. It then reflects on the ways in which these marks of authentic prophecy might be displayed in our own very different context, drawing a characterization of that context from Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. It concludes with reflections on the foundation of prophecy in prayer and hope, and with critical discussion of Luke Bretherton's use of the motif of “exile in Babylon” (Jeremiah 29) as a Biblical image for Christian prophetic presence in liberal, secular societies.     

“Love,Peace and Nato”: Imperial Subject‐Making in Central Europe

Abstract: This paper uses NATO enlargement to examine the processes through which political subjects are made. Starting from the observation that the world's most powerful military alliance is increasingly framed not in terms of military defence, but in terms of democracy, freedom, and “European values”, the paper analyzes how this process works, and with what effects. It shows how NATO is, on the one hand, being made so common‐sense as to be boring—below political debate—while, on the other, being made existential and essential—above debate. The effect is a kind of banal militarism: an unremarkable assumption that the military apparatus is ethically grounded and capable for achieving peace. By showing how this assumption is produced and maintained, the paper highlights a key mechanism in the militarization of political life.     

Civil Power and the Deconstruction of Scholasticism in the Thought of Marc'antonio de Dominis

Summary

Marc'antonio de Dominis is well known to historians as a figure in the political and religious culture of early modern Britain and Europe. This article contends that he was also a major theorist of civil power: his critique of Catholic scholastic political thought is compelling and his account of divine right kingship sheds light on conceptual problems that troubled a range of early modern thinkers. De Dominis dismantled the scholastic theory of political power on its own terms, insisting that Almain, Bellarmine, Suárez and others could not distinguish, as they sought to, between the potestas politica in general and the rule of particular princes. By this insight de Dominis could vindicate royal authority against the deposing pretensions of the Pope, the main objective of James I's supporters during the Allegiance Controversy, but his own positive account of how to think about power ran into theoretical trouble which he evidently perceived himself. If the potestas politica cannot be abstracted from a specific regime, and if the prince's absolute sovereignty depends on this fact, can politics be understood only at the level of the particular and contingent? The article closes by setting Thomas Hobbes—well versed in Jacobean polemic—in the context of this question.     

Revolution,Reaction, Restoration: The Meanings and Uses of Seventeenth-Century English History in the Political Thinking of Benjamin Constant,c.1797–1830

Comparisons, juxtapositions or analogies between France's recent Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary history and England's experiences of Revolution, Civil War and Restoration between the 1640s and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 were a common but controversial feature of political discourse dealing with France's contemporary situation in the decades following the Revolution of 1789. The present article probes this dimension of post-Revolutionary political debate, by tracking the shifting meanings and uses of seventeenth-century English history in the published and unpublished political writings of the leading liberal thinker and politician Benjamin Constant, from the 1790s through to his death in 1830. Such an analysis reveals the sometimes striking reversals and inconsistencies to which Constant was driven in his effort to adjust his historical readings to France's rapidly changing political conditions, but it also reveals underlying continuities in his historical and political thinking. The exemplarity of England's case lay, for Constant, less in the provision of a constitutional model that France might hope to appropriate than in the historical spectacle of a nation's struggle for liberty, and the value of this spectacle lay as much in its cautionary messages—focused on the sterile brutality of the Stuart Restoration—as in its eventually progressive outcomes.     

Universal,acid: Houellebecq’s clones and the evolution of humanity

ABSTRACT

This article examines Houellebecq’s two genomics novels, Les Particules élémentaires and La Possibilité d’une île and elaborates their relationship with Neo-Darwinian evolutionary naturalism and neoliberal capitalism. In these works, the mutual interdependence of these two regimes of thought both necessitates and makes possible the technology of human cloning, which promises humanity an escape from the misery of its own biological, political predicament. Houellebecq’s work, I show, problematises this dialectic, and in doing so offers an incisive critique of utopian posthumanism, providing instead only an aporetic—but rigorously materialist—form of hope.     

SEAGULLS! ON MARTIN HÄGGLUND'S THIS LIFE: SECULAR FAITH AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

In this review essay, I examine Martin Hägglund's This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, a book that argues on behalf of democratic socialism on the basis of an atheistic confrontation with the fact of our mortality. Hägglund's book includes readings of Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Karl Marx, and Martin Luther King Jr. and is best assessed as a literary and philosophical, rather than historical, study of the relation between mortality and social action. Simply put, Hägglund believes that, from the standpoint of an atheistic confrontation with our mortality, our time itself should be our ultimate measure of value. He furthermore believes that democratic socialism is the political and economic form that most naturally follows from this, allowing us to honor, defend, and enhance one another's mortal time and freedom to make choices—and that, by comparison with atheism, religion offers only the false coin of otherworldly salvation. Although sympathizing with Hägglund's existential and political orientations, I criticize his account of religion, which I find to be historically weak. But I also criticize his approach to the problem of valuation, or the issue of how we make choices in relation to our limited time. Whereas Hägglund believes that mortal creatures like ourselves must make choices in a spirit of commitment—the “secular faith” of his subtitle—I observe that, despite our mortality, we humans make our choices in a variety of psychological states, and that asking us to occupy only one such state—one of zealous resolve—actually undermines our “spiritual freedom,” another one of Hägglund's key terms.     

A Review of “The Dilemma of Progressivism: How Roosevelt,Taft, and Wilson Reshaped the American Regime of Self-Government”

ABSTRACT

As Aristotle and Augustine both noted, virtue constitutes a particularly difficult subject for political analysis. Limited to hearsay evidence of the state of the consciences of our fellows, we are severely limited in our capacity to use real-world experience as a gauge on the interaction between humility and politics. I have circumnavigated this obstacle by taking a literary perspective, asking what authors, in their privileged status as creators of their characters, can tell us about the relationship between humility and politics. In King Lear and The Lord of the Rings the authors offer similar solutions to the difficulty of identifying humility in politics: to see the humility of others, one must possess it oneself. The ability to perceive humility in political action, as Tolkien and Shakespeare further suggest, opens the door for the formation of critical political alliances.     

The (Jean) Nouvel Other: Primitivism and the Musée du Quai Branly

The Musée du Quai Branly, located beside the Eiffel Tower in Paris, opened in June 2006. Constructed to house France's important collection of non-western art, the museum has been promoted as ‘decidedly post-colonial’ and a place of ‘reconciliation and sharing’. Historians have situated the creation of the museum within political debates over the restructuring of several of France's museums and, more broadly, the country's position in a post-colonial world, while focusing little critical attention on the building itself. The author argues that Jean Nouvel's architectural program for the Musée du Quai Branly—a ‘primitive shelter’ surrounded by a ‘sacred wood’—gives physical form to a primitivist aesthetic. The unproblematised binaries of self versus other and culture versus nature evident in Nouvel's design reveal a surprisingly unsophisticated theoretical standpoint. As a frame in which to view and understand the objects on display, the Musée du Quai Branly invites a primitivist—and colonial—reading of its collection.     

TO WRITE THE HISTORY OF EQUALITY

This article discusses the history of equality and recent efforts to write that history in the context of a detailed discussion of Siep Stuurman's The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History. It begins by pointing out the surprising paucity of writing on the history of equality, particularly its conceptual and intellectual history, despite that notion's centrality in modern political and philosophical discussion. It proceeds to examine recent efforts to make amends for that lack. What Pierre Rosanvallon has described as the contemporary “crisis of equality” gives urgency to these efforts, while also, it is suggested, providing an opportunity to more fully explore the contingencies and complexities of this beguiling notion. Stuurman's examination of the invention and deployment of “cross‐cultural equality”—the basic equality of all people living in the world, regardless of gender, religion, ethnicity, or race—is an important step in this exploration. But as Samuel Moyn has emphasized in his own recent intervention on the history of social rights in an unequal world, it is not, on its own, enough. Future efforts to write the history of equality must integrate the social and economic dimensions of the idea more fully in an effort to better understand our contemporary dilemma.     

An Informational Right to the City? Code,Content, Control,and the Urbanization of Information

Henri Lefebvre talked of the “right to the city” alongside a right to information. As the urban environment becomes increasingly layered by abstract digital representation, Lefebvre's broader theory warrants application to the digital age. Through considering what is entailed by the urbanization of information, this paper examines the problems and implications of any “informational right to the city”. In directing Tony Benn's five questions of power towards Google, arguably the world's most powerful mediator of information, this paper exposes processes that occur when geographic information is mediated by powerful digital monopolies. We argue that Google currently occupies a dominant share of any informational right to the city. In the spirit of Benn's final question—“How do we get rid of you?”—the paper seeks to apply post‐political theory in exploring a path to the possibility of more just information geographies.