Believing in the USA: Derrida,Melville and the Great American Charlatan

ABSTRACT

This essay considers the relationship between the prophet and the charlatan, particularly as they figure in the contemporary American political landscape. It argues that at moments of democratic political crisis these figures arise and reveal the vacancy of sovereignty within the democratic model. The essay treats Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man along with Jacques Derrida’s writings on democracy and the apocalyptic tone as resources in this endeavor. It considers as well why recent worries over the status of facts in the era of “fake news” have led to critiques of deconstruction.     

Democratisation and the British Empire

ABSTRACT

This article responds to the statistically established finding in democratisation studies that British rule seems to have been good for the survival of democracy in its former empire, and that the longer a nation spent under British rule, the likelier it is to have sustained democracy since independence. This is a finding which puzzles political scientists because they think of democracy and empire as opposites. The article considers the uses made of democratic innovation by the British and the responses anti-colonial nationalists made to the offer to ‘lead them to democracy’. It places democracy and empire in a different, more complex relationship. It also considers the contribution of anti-colonial protest to the working of democracy.     

Karl Loewenstein,Max Lerner,and militant democracy: an appeal to ‘strong democracy’

ABSTRACT

In the 1930s Loewenstein responded to the ease with which the Nazi Party rose to power within parliamentary democracy. In America Lerner echoed Loewenstein’s call for a ‘militant democracy’, but identified a different ‘enemy within’ – rogue capitalist interests. Loewenstein’s response to populism was an ‘authoritarian democracy’, whereas Lerner wished to embrace the people in a public engagement. This paper seeks a middle path towards a conception of democracy that avoids the vicissitudes of transient majorities without yielding the ground to either transient or entrenched minorities. In its modern guise of ‘neoliberalism’, corporate capitalism has made inroads into the sensibilities of democrats, and needs to be confronted by a notion of ‘strong democracy’ expressed through the engagement of whole populations.     

‘That Gleaming Sword of Satire’1: Power,Passion and Parliament in the Mid-Victorian City

Political print satire, construed as an articulation of sedition and dissent, is most commonly associated in Britain with its 18th-century ‘Golden Age’. Beyond Victorian fiction, the go-to 19th-century source tends to be the hegemonic, London-centric Punch. It is not widely known that, as Punch mellowed and popularised in the 1860s and 1870s, England's booming urban centres gave rise to a distinct form of citizen journalism which used boisterous satire as an effective vehicle for sociopolitical comment, evidence-based analysis and civic activism. Not only did the provincial satirical periodical filter parliamentary affairs through a critical provincial lens but at a time when politics were largely local, it engaged with the extra-parliamentary power vested in civic and municipal governance. It aspired to much more than diversion through witty posturing. Morally and ideologically inspired, fuelled by righteous indignation, it successfully used the protest of the pen to agitate in the cause of social and political reform, demonstrating the ‘everyday’ resistance and common sense essential to liberal governmentality. Referencing some of the most enduring and respected examples of the genre – the Porcupine in Liverpool, the Town Crier in Birmingham and the Free Lance in Manchester – this article casts light upon this poorly understood journalism of conviction. A cause and effect of both emotional and intellectual release, it serves as an excellent example of citizenship as performed political passion, in an age of public conformity and restraint.