Latin America as political science’s other

ABSTRACT

This article develops a decolonising critique of contemporary Latin American focused Political Science (LAPS) demonstrating the complicity of its politics of knowledge in the reproduction of the logic and rationalities of coloniality. These logics and rationalities are premised upon the dehumanisation of the raced and gendered other who is denied rationality, agency and political subjectivity. I demonstrate the monological and dehumanising epistemological consequences of this through deconstruction of the foundational myths and disciplinary boundaries of the discipline; the legitimate subject of the political; and the knowing-subject of political analysis that foreground contemporary LAPS. I end with a question and a challenge: how might we learn to create a political science otherwise?     

Black-boxing political intersectionality: on ‘othering’ that deprives individuals of their citizenship

The case of the Aegean Macedonian refugees, survivors from the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), is particularly powerful in ‘demonstrating’ that one must address the ways in which the categories of difference on the one hand and identity and inclusion on the other hand, condition the very mode of ‘othering’ specific to certain histories of subjugation that are consubstantial with the hierarchical and differential value social identities have within our contemporary European society. Through the case-narrative of L, I analyze the practice of ‘othering’ as deployed by Greek laws within the parameters of ethnicity and the social ontology of collectivity. The analysis shows that citizenship, as one element of the nationalist project, intersects with ethnicity and forced migration bringing about ‘by genus’ repatriation.     

Ethnic identity and the nation state: The political sociology of multi‐cultural societies

Abstract

The question of ethnic and national identity is one which is addressed in two separate theoretical discourses. One is that of contemporary general sociological theory where it seems to be central to debates about Late Modernism, Post‐Modernism and Globalization. The other is in a much more empirically orientated branch of political sociology which is concerned with forms of solidarity and division in the nation state. This paper will be primarily located within the second type of discourse, but its aim is to suggest that its formulation of concepts is highly relevant to the clarification of issues in general sociological theory.     

The influence of the elites’ discourse in political attitudes: evidence from the Basque Country

Do parties’ position shifts matter for public opinion? In this paper, we would like to compare the discourses of the Basque elites with the Basque public opinion regarding the reinforcement of the Autonomy. So, combining content analysis methodology and survey data we aim to test if a mainstream political party (specifically, the Basque Nationalist Party [Partido Nacionalista Vasco]) cause the public view to shift on one of the most important policy issues in the Basque Country, that is, the territorial dimension. This study validates the top-down model and concludes that elite political discourses actually affect popular opinion.     

‘A brutal blow against the democratic normality’: unlearning the epistemology of the political

ABSTRACT

The objective of this paper is to rethink our understanding of ‘the political’ through an examination of two novels by José Saramago, Blindness and Seeing. Both novels tackle directly a central, if not the central, signature metaphor of Western political thought, namely that of ‘seeing the light’. This metaphor takes many forms and recurs throughout the tradition of Western political philosophy as a source, legitimiser, and validator of knowing, and perhaps even a guarantor of knowledge. In particular, this metaphor has served to make knowable whatever it is that is signified by ‘the political’. By extension, it also means that whatever might be outside of this epistemological frame is rendered unknowable, if not unthinkable. Both of Saramago’s novels provide a fruitful means to recalibrate how we might know ‘the political’. The novels call into question the epistemic signatures that frame our commonly accepted understandings of ‘the political’ and in so doing provoke us further to question how we might move towards unlearning the epistemology of the political.     

Living with racism in education and society: Derrick Bell’s ethical idealism and political pragmatism

Derrick Bell’s pronouncement and challenge that racism is likely permanent has captured the imagination of Critical Race Theorists in education. Equally important are his ideas about living with the concrete conditions of racism. This article focuses on a tension within Bell’s work. On the one hand, his writings are characterized by a certain ‘racial realism.’ In this perspective, Bell encourages race scholars and activists to abandon notions of one day ending racism. On the other hand, Bell also retains a certain idealism, most evident in his appeal to the ethical dimensions of critical race work. He invites intellectuals to join him in fighting racism even if the prospects for change are sometimes bleak. In his life as well as his work, Bell willingly sacrificed prestige and financial security for his ideals, and seemed puzzled when his friends and colleagues were reluctant to do the same. Bell’s racial realism and ethical idealism comprise two – sometimes warring – moments that permeate his work.     

How political migrants' networks differ from those of economic migrants: ‘strategic anonymity’ among Iraqi refugees in Jordan

The study of migrant networks has led scholars to believe that political migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, utilise social networks in similar ways to economic migrants. This assumption is based on empirical investigations of South–North migration in which the Western receiving context is held constant. I argue that the utility of social networks is influenced by the reason for displacement and regional geopolitical frameworks. Like economic migrants, political migrants believe that they would benefit from networks; however, some political migrants must exercise caution in the face of potentially harmful new relationships in receiving countries. These political migrants practise strategic anonymity to navigate social networks. This refers to proactive acts of withholding personal information to maintain security for oneself and one's family. I rely on 30 interviews conducted between 2009 and 2010 with Iraqi refugees in Jordan displaced after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.     

Citizenship, ‘rubbished’ dissidents and local restoration of the dead – the execution of Luri political activists in south-western Iran

The paper's focus is a critical moment in the trajectory of the Islamic state in Iran, the trace of which was still discernible in the presidential election of 2009. It draws on ethnographic research among the Lurs of south-western Iran between 1979–1982 to examine the impact of the abolition of politics as contested representations at the centre on a ‘remote’ periphery. The end of a short-lived political activity, as a distinct form of power, in Iran in 1981 was earmarked by mass executions of which only 1600 had been officially counted for the period of 20 June to September 1981 (Amnesty International). The executed were guilty of expressing dissent against divine rule of which the Islamic state was an embodiment. Although the Lurs paid a less heavy penalty for this ‘crime’ than elsewhere in the country the survivors' response to the loss of a young relative in the hands of Islamic executioners was noticeably muted. The response is looked at as the restoration of the status of the dead to the executed relative whose body had been ‘rubbished’ – wrapped in an American flag and abandoned unburied in a desolate place by the Muslim executioners. The paper argues ‘rubbishing’ signified the annihilation of citizenship under the Islamic rule in which the body of the citizen is seen as harbouring ‘the most corrupt’ subject, the sinner who could not even be ‘rectified’ through a less destructive use of force – flogging and mutilation. It, therefore, had to be disposed of – ‘rubbished’. The survivors, on the other hand, by confining themselves to the symbolic return of the executed relative to the community left unacknowledged his quest for equality and liberty. By their reluctance to remember and recount the executed's words and deeds the survivors refused to grant him the ‘immortality’ of a citizen whose death outlived his destruction. The brutal suppression of political agency at the centre and its muted recognition in the periphery are explained as a negation of political power. The power entails postponing the use of force to the last resort thus allowing plurality as a human condition to be realised. Consequent on this realisation is the publicly contested opinions by many who would inevitably challenge the truths guarded by few both at the centre and periphery. It was this challenge that led the ruling mullahs to invoke the Koranic Truths to annihilate the disseminators of opinions. The unspoken citizenship of the annihilated dissidents in the periphery served in turn to reassert the Lurs' historically cherished otherness geared to the use of force. The citizenship called for a discursive inclusion of Lurs, through the use of ‘the pen’, in a wider world, by postponing the use of force. In contrast, the traditional Luri rebels relied heavily on an immediate use of force, through the celebrated ‘rifle’, to perpetuate their perceived inaccessibility. Resistance leads to emancipation, the paper argues, when the particularised subjectivity of local actors is superseded in the universal – objectified – political space in which the agent, i.e. the citizen, overrides the boundaries within which localness is reproduced.     

Diversity,rights or privileges? Denunciation of multiculturalism, ‘political correctness’ and anti-racism of the ex-Commander of Scotland Yard Ali Dizaei

The widely disseminated court verdict on the former Scotland Yard commander, Ali Dizaei, as a violent bully and a liar at the end of his first trial in February 2010, brought about a noted denunciation of multiculturalism as ‘political correctness’. The jury's decision on the abuse of power by the Iranian-born officer was used by the denunciators to condemn the politics of rights that aligned multiple ethnic and racial identities as equal. The denunciation is looked at as a contingent mobilisation of the apolitical subject that is loitering on the boundary of politics calling for the ‘end of politics’ marked by the exclusion of the Other. At the same time the trial revealed that by advocating a policy designed to subsume particular ethnic and cultural belongings within a universal exercise of rights Dizaei had been able to resume his cultural differences as a source of privileges among his compatriots. Drawing on the incident as a result of which Dizaei had to stand trial and later a re-trial, using various sources, the paper examines the tension between the exercise of rights and privileges built into multiculturalism. The pertinence of the sources used to highlight the tension remains largely unaffected by the questioned reliability of the main witness of the prosecutor and the Appeal Court judges’ decision to order Dizaei's re-trial. The paper argues that multiculturalism sets in motion the incompatible agencies of the citizen, the member of a political community, and Man whose role is inscribed within civil society. Thus, the exercise of equal rights calls for dis-identification of the subject as a social and cultural agent. Such dis-identification, however, is displaced when the subject asserts his identity as Man, the bearer of unequal relations based on class, gender and race. In making provision both for the exercise of rights as well as the assertion of identity multiculturalism becomes instrumental in the subsumption of cultural differences within rights and the resumption of these differences in the articulation of privileges. The mediation of multiculturalism in the realization of rights and privileges accounts for the Iranian-born officer's oscillation between subsuming his cultural differences within British citizenship and resuming these differences in asserting his identity as an Iranian among the diasporic community. Using the notion of cultural diversity Dizaei was able to keep at arm's length the two spheres of rights and identity that allowed him to claim ‘not to be one of them’ thus oscillating between claiming the rights of a British citizen and the privileges of an Iranian magnate. The noted disruption in his power game that brought Dizaei to sit in the dock was the result of a failed attempt by the Iranian-born officer to contain the growing tension in his advocated multiculturalism arising from his simultaneous resort to rights and privilege.