Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives Gavin Rae, Emma Ingala

259 Pages·2017·2.626 MB·English

by  Gavin Rae, Emma Ingala

Subjectivity and the Political
“This book offers an exciting new take on questions of the political and the subject,
and the intersection at which they reciprocally constitute each other. It goes beyond
the established post-structuralist and deconstructionist approaches that have domi-
nated past discussions, holding together an array of heterogeneous perspectives and
maintaining the contest among them. With contributions ranging across modern and
contemporary political theory, political theology, political psychology, and more, this
collection will speak to students from across humanities and social science disciplines
where the question of the subject-political relation remains central.”
—Nathan Widder, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Despite the structuralist, post-structuralist, and deconstructionist critiques of sub-
jectivity, master signifiers, and political foundations, contemporary philosophy has
been marked by a resurgence in interest in questions of subjectivity and the politi-
cal. Guided by the contention that different conceptions of the political are, at least
implicitly, committed to specific conceptions of subjectivity while different con-
ceptions of subjectivity have different political implications, this collection brings
together an international selection of scholars to explore these notions and their
connection. Rather than privilege one approach or conception of the subjectivity-
political relationship, this volume emphasizes the nature and status of the and in
the ‘subjectivity’ and ‘the political’ schema. By thinking from the place between
subjectivity and the political, it is able to explore this relationship from a multitude
of perspectives, directions, and thinkers to show the heterogeneity, openness, and
contested nature of it. Thinkers addressed include Adorno, Agamben, Arendt, But-
ler, Derrida, Gramsci, Hegel, Heidegger, Kristeva, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Mill,
while the subjectivity-political relation is engaged with through the mediation of
the law-political, ethics-politics, theological-political, inside-outside, subject-person,
and individual-institution relationships, as well as through concepts such as abjec-
tion, genius, redemption, and ugliness. These original essays will be of interest to
researchers in Philosophy, Politics, Political Theory, Critical Theory, Cultural Stud-
ies, History of Ideas, Psychology, and Sociology.
Gavin Rae is Conex Marie Skłodowska-Curie Experienced Research Fellow at the
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. He is the author of Realizing Freedom:
Hegel, Sartre, and the Alienation of Human Being (Palgrave Macmillan: 2011),
Ontology in Heidegger and Deleuze (Palgrave Macmillan: 2014), and The Problem
of Political Foundations in Carl Schmitt and Emmanuel Levinas (Palgrave Macmil-
lan: 2016).
Emma Ingala is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theoretical Philosophy and
Vice-Dean of Academic Organization in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Univer-
sidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. She specializes in post-structuralist thought,
political anthropology, and psychoanalysis.
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92 Using Words and Things
Language and Philosophy of Technology
Mark Coeckelbergh
93 Rethinking Punishment in the Era of Mass Incarceration
Edited by Chris W. Surprenant
94 Isn’t That Clever
A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy
Steven Gimbel
95 Trust in the World
A Philosophy of Film
Josef Früchtl
96 Taking the Measure of Autonomy
A Four-Dimensional Theory of Self-Governance
Suzy Killmister
97 The Legacy of Kant in Sellars and Meillassoux
Analytic and Continental Kantianism
Edited by Fabio Gironi
98 Subjectivity and the Political
Contemporary Perspectives
Edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
Subjectivity and the Political
Contemporary Perspectives
Edited by Gavin Rae
and Emma Ingala
First published 2018
by Routledge
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Editor’s Introduction: Between Subjectivity and the Political 1
GAVIN RAE AND EMMA INGALA
PART I
Political Subjectivities 11
1 The Limits of Nomos: Hannah Arendt on Law,
Politics, and the Polis 13
LIESBETH SCHOONHEIM
2 From Hannah Arendt to Judith Butler: The Conditions
of the Political 35
EMMA INGALA
3 Between Failure and Redemption: Emmanuel
Levinas on the Political 55
GAVIN RAE
4 The Significant Nothing: Agamben, Theology,
and Political Subjectivity 75
PIOTR SAWCZYŃSKI
5 Aporias of Foreignness: Transnational Encounters
Through Cinema 91
KATARZYNA MARCINIAK
vi Contents
PART II
Political Subjectivities 111
6 The Abject and the Ugly: Kristeva, Adorno, and the
Formation of the Subject 113
SURTI SINGH
7 Antonio Gramsci: Persons, Subjectivity, and the Political 135
ROBERT P. JACKSON
8 Embodied Consciousness and Political Subjectivity
In the Work of Merleau-Ponty 159
STEPHEN A. NOBLE
9 John Stuart Mill and the Liberal Genius 175
YOEL MITRANI
10 Hegel’s Ethical Life and Heidegger’s ‘They’: How Political
Is the Self? 197
ANTONIO GÓMEZ RAMOS
Notes on the Contributors 221
Bibliography 225
Index 247
Acknowledgements
The production of an edited volume is the result of extensive collaboration.
This obviously involves the authors included, but also extends to others. To
this end, the editors would like to thank all those who participated in the
international conference ‘Subjectivity and the Political 2016,’ held at the
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in March 2016, at which the majority
of the papers included here—albeit in earlier, much reduced form—were
first presented. At Routledge, we would like to thank our editor, Andrew
Weckenmann, and his assistant, Alexandra Simmons, for their support
and professionalism throughout the process, and the anonymous review-
ers for their helpful comments. Finally, we acknowledge that this volume
forms part of the activities for the following research projects: (1) the
Conex Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Project ‘Sovereignty and Law:
Between Ethics and Politics,’ co-funded by the Universidad Carlos III de
Madrid, the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program for Research,
Technological Development and Demonstration under Grant Agree-
ment 600371, The Spanish Ministry of the Economy and Competitivity
(COFUND2013–40258), The Spanish Ministry for Education, Culture,
and Sport (CEI-15–17), and Banco Santander. More information about
the research project can be found at: https://sovereigntyandlaw.wordpress.
com/; and (2) ‘Pensamiento y representación literaria y artística digital ante
la crisis de Europa y el Mediterráneo,’ reference number PR26/16–6B-3,
funded by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Banco Santander.

Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
Introduction
Editor’s Introduction
Between Subjectivity and the Political
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
The twentieth century witnessed a range of intellectual movements that chal-
lenged long-held theoretical assumptions, categories, and conclusions. For
the purposes of this volume, three trajectories stand out. Throughout the
1970s and 1980s, poststructuralists, such as Gilles Deleuze (and Felix Guat-
tari), Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida followed Martin Heidegger’s
rejection of the long dominant appeal to a fixed ontological substance or
essence as part of their wider refusal of any appeal to a transcendent signi-
fier or fixed foundation to ground thought.1 These were held to be incapable
of accounting for the immanent, differential, concrete becomings that truly
define things. Subjectivity was not then to be defined by a fixed essence
or ahistoric component, but understood as an effect of power relations,
norms, discourses, or differential processes. By emptying subjectivity of any
substance, these critiques affirmed becoming over being, heterogeneity over
homogeneity, and fluid, changing, and contestable identities over fixed, nat-
ural, and definitive ones.
The second important trajectory refers to the so-called ontological turn in
political theory that arose in late 1980s.2 There were, at least, three aspects
to this: first, a growing recognition that, prior to talking of actual politics,
it was necessary to determine what made something political rather than
economic, aesthetic, moral, and so on. Second, in a mirroring of Heidegger’s
affirmation of the ontological difference—the difference between the ontic
and ontological levels of being—thinkers developed and affirmed the differ-
ence between specific (ontic) conceptions of politics and the (ontological)
notion of the political subtending them.3 Only by understanding the latter
could we understand the former. Importantly, this could not be done by
appealing to a fixed, essential substance. Rather, and influenced by post-
structuralist thought, proponents tended to affirm the idea that ‘the political’
was defined by fluid, dynamic, non-substantial relations. In so doing, they,
third, returned to the thought of Carl Schmitt, who, through his insistence
that the political is defined by the friend-enemy distinction,4 was under-
stood to offer a model of the political grounded in relational contestation.
One of the critical intents behind this turn to the question of the political
was to show that, despite all appearances to the contrary, actual political