1. PRÉCIS IMAGES OF HISTORY: KANT,BENJAMIN, FREEDOM,AND THE HUMAN SUBJECT

My fundamental motivation in writing Images of History was to avoid some forms of hubris and despair that trouble contemporary philosophy and to develop instead a picture of human life in historical time. According to this picture, we live amid institutional and practical inheritances we can address but can never fully stabilize and perfect. In different ways, Kant and Benjamin each accept this thought, and they each develop a picture of philosophy as historically situated, open criticism of existing practices and institutions. Each emphasizes the priority of the practical over any fixed metaphysical‐theoretical stance. I survey each of their general theories of critical historical understanding, and I pay special attention to the texts in which they each provide detailed, specific accounts of Western social‐historical development or circumstances: Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Benjamin's One‐Way Street. Where Kant's philosophical criticism is reformist, liberal, and casually dismissive of non‐Christian religion, Benjamin's is modernist, erotic, and improvisatory. Their respective images of history according to which we achieve orientation are both complementary and fundamentally opposed—not readily combinable into a consistent whole. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Lear, I end with a picture of maturity and practical self‐unity as centrally a matter of developing the skill of modulated alternation between these two orientation‐affording images.     

The Positivism Dispute in German Sociology, 1954–1970

This article offers a re-contextualization of the Positivism Dispute between the Frankfurt School and advocates of empirical sociology in the German sociological profession between 1954 and 1970. Investigating the reasons why the German Sociological Association convened in Tübingen in October 1961, it assigns a more peripheral role to Karl Popper and this now famous seminar. Focusing instead on the debate among German sociologists from the mid-1950s which prompted the convention of the seminar and the invitation for Popper to speak, the article maintains that philosophy of history was the central concern of the Positivism Dispute. In this debate, members of the Frankfurt School emphasized contingency in history and society, while sociologists such as René König, Helmut Schelsky, Ralf Dahrendorf, and Arnold Gehlen advocated sociology as the empirical study of ‘given’ social facts. By doing so the article questions the narrative of the Positivism Dispute advanced by Karl Popper and some of his followers, as well as interpretations which have focused on debates during the aftermath of the Tübingen seminar in the 1960s.     

Exceptionalising democratic dissent: a study of the JNU event and its representations

This article analyses the politics around the infamous Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) ‘sedition’ case of February 2016, focusing particularly on its media representations. It shows how the case was, from its outset, embroiled in the politics of representation, with questions of truth and lies receding into the background to give way to clashes of opinion – however unfounded they may have been in information, fact or truth – broadly reflecting the nature of the public sphere in these ‘post-truth’ times. Further, it analyses how the protests at JNU following the event sought to project an image of the university countering right-wing representations, while also enriching debates on nationalism, democracy, dissent and freedom of speech. It concludes by showing how the hostile representations of JNU fitted well with overall politics, combining the hyper-nationalism and neoliberalism, promoted by the current regime led by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the right-wing Hindu nationalist and supremacist paramilitary volunteer organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.     

Is Man a “Sabbatical Animal”? Agamben,Rosenzweig, Heschel,Arendt

Giorgio Agamben lists the Jewish Sabbath as an example of “inoperatvity.” This essay explores both how Sabbath fits into and puts pressure on Agamben’s account, by working through readings of the Sabbath given by Agamben, A.J. Heschel, and Rosenzweig, who associate Sabbath, respectively, with Inoperativity, Eternity, and Creation. To these, I add another, called the Sabbath of Equality, building on connections among the weekly Sabbath, the septannual land Sabbatical and the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the Jubilee. The reading of Rosenzweig, in particular, opens the way to a queering of Sabbath, also explored here. The essay concludes with the suggestion that Hannah Arendt’s political thought is “sabbatarian” and asks whether this is an effective way to respond to earlier critiques of her work for promoting an “aestheticized” politics not adequately oriented to use. Is Agamben vulnerable to the same critique now?     

Safe spaces of refuge,shelter and contact: introduction

State and societal responses to a diverse range of abuses, injustices and exclusions often take the form of providing designated spaces of temporary shelter from the hostility. This introduction to the themed section on Safe Spaces of refuge, shelter and contact outlines the five contributions on such gendered spaces in Australia, Cambodia, England, India and USA. Across the varying rationales and regimes of refuge, shelter and contact, three key themes emerge: the boundary work necessary to carve out safe spaces in a hostile world, the practices within designated safe spaces, and what is achieved in terms of safety and autonomy from gender-based violence.     

世界社会的民俗协商:民俗学理论与方法的新生命

民俗学是随着现代性的全球扩张而发展起来的一门高度国际性的关于民族文化传统的学科,它在方法上采取集体主义,在理论上假设民族在民俗上的同质性。在现代性走向巅峰的时候,同质性人群和民俗传统的快速消逝带来民俗学的危机。面对危机,从日常生活来界定民俗的思潮兴起,却并不能解除危机。在人口流动、文化杂糅的世界社会,个人与小群体必须与他人协商安排日常生活的细节,这种世界社会的民俗协商正在成为广泛的事实。能够应对这种趋势的民俗学将会获得发展的生命力,这有赖于从业者带来理论与方法的创新。     

Economics and freedom of navigation in East Asia

Public calls for a more aggressive regional response to China’s pressing of its territorial claims in the South China Sea are typically couched in terms of the threat posed to freedom of navigation. Yet this invites an obvious question: If freedom of navigation, a vital interest for nearly every country in the region, is at risk, why has the regional response to China’s actions to date been so limited? This article argues that one compelling explanation lies in the economics of freedom of navigation in East Asia. Put simply, the risks of freedom of navigation being impeded are frequently overstated, and a more sober assessment of these risks can reduce the incentive that countries have to take more dramatic action.     

Going It Alone: Belarus as the Non-European European State

In the second paper of a symposium devoted to the contemporary status of Belarus, a noted American specialist on the electoral geography of the states of the former Soviet Union challenges assertions in the preceding article (Ioffe and Yarashevich, 2011) that only Russia and Ukraine are valid comparators against which to gauge the success of the Lukashenka model. Expanding the scope of comparison to include the three other countries neighboring Belarus (Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland), he demonstrates that a broader range of policy changes can be considered by its leadership in efforts to limit damage from the economic crisis in Belarus and position the country for renewed growth within a global economic frame-work. Examination of a wide range of social and economic indicators and government policies reveals, however, that in many ways an unreformed Belarus is poorly positioned for competition in an increasingly interconnected world, in which the elements for successful development are quite different from those providing economic stability in the past. A closing section of the paper revisits the debate on whether most Belarusian citizens actually aspire to a more "European" way of life or instead prefer the "Eastern" alignment and reliance on a Russian benefactor whose own economic future looks increasingly uncertain.     

拉斯基的美国政治体制变革观

拉斯基的美国政治体制变革观,对于整个资本主义制度从私人垄断阶段过渡到国家垄断阶段的变革具有深刻的启迪意义,也从一个重要的侧面和较为适合的角度,反映出了处于思想成熟时期的拉斯基主张和一贯倡导的民主社会主义理论的丰富内涵。     

Revolution,uprising, civil war: the conceptual dilemmas of 1956

There were from the very beginning two ways of conceptualising the events of 1956 in Hungary, labelling it as a revolution or a national uprising. There also emerged a third way of conceptual definition when what occurred in 1956 was named an anti-totalitarian movement. From the theoretical perspective of Begriffsgeschichte the Hungarian events of 1956 cannot simply be assumed under the notion of ‘revolution’, the term first applied to what took place in France in 1789, since it was not the kind of a forceful collective effort leading to an unknown future. The notion of ‘revolutio’ works better to describe the analytical meaning of the Hungarian anti-Soviet and anti-Communist disturbance. The reason has been that the main thrust of the Hungarian situation in 1956 was similar to the seventeenth-century English and the eighteenth-century American ‘revolutions’, to return definitively to a point of departure by regaining some of the formerly lost social and political liberties.