University of Chicago Press

Current theories of international justice and conflict resolution seem to rest on the assumption that discord among humans can, in principle, be settled by means of a fair allocation of a limited set of available goods. The assumption, in turn, is grounded in the idea (supported by John Rawls) that peoples of genuinely democratic and liberal societies “have nothing to go to war about,” once their basic needs are satisfied and their fundamental interests made fully compatible with those of other democratic peoples. The article builds on René Girard's theory of “mimetic desire” to show that the notion of “peace by satisfaction” is problematic: people's needs and desires, which are mimetic in nature, are hardly extinguishable. Classical approaches to conflict resolution fail to address this mimetic dynamic and wrongly assume that there is an objective measure of desire to be filled to satisfy the contenders. The solution to the dilemma involves the reflective ability of the people engaged in a dispute to address the (mimetic) sources of their animosity.

This article explores competing interpretations of American federalism and immigration authority during the 18th century. I argue that the 1787 Constitution did not clearly place the authority to manage migration with the national government. In fact, the Constitution did not discuss entry and exit policy, including the power of deportation. The debates over the Alien and Sedition Acts illustrate the diversity of opinions about the proper balance of authority between the national and subnational governments with regard to migration policy. Debates over the potential expansion of national power were particularly heated in the antebellum period because migration policy and slave policy were inextricably linked. In the end, whatever guidance the Constitution provided on migration policy was tainted by the document’s endorsement of slavery.

Political theorists and pundits often attribute the malaise that they argue hangs over U.S. politics to the omnipresence of political spectacle, where participants are reduced to spectator-voters rather than engaged as active citizens in the political process. The result, many conclude, is widespread cynicism that stymies collective action. We argue, however, that “spectacle” is not necessarily opposed to political participation, and indeed that the “actor–audience” dichotomy so often employed by political theorists is much too simplistic to describe political activism. In fact, groups such as the Billionaires for Bush use spectacle to advance their message(s) and to inspire political change. These groups have much in common with what media scholars call “culture jammers,” activists who deliberately subvert spectacular images in order to reclaim them. In this paper, we explore how groups we label political culture jammers combat cynicism by replacing the dominant images of politics with provocative counter-images. Through their use of ironic self-presentation and humor, political culture jammers offer an appealing alternative means of invigorating political praxis by complicating the citizen/spectator binary that so many critics invoke.

This essay examines contemporary Western thinking on humility. Compared to other virtues, little has been written about humility in the past century. This has led scholars to dub it a forgotten virtue. Recently, a renewed interest in humility can be found among scholars working in various academic disciplines. These scholars disagree, however, about the meaning and implications of humility for contemporary life. I seek to intervene in this disagreement through a comparative approach and bring the ancient Eastern tradition of Confucianism to bear on the current Western resurgence of interest in humility as a civic value. I argue that humility is a crucial political virtue that fortifies us and helps us resist disillusionment. Humility, therefore, should neither be reduced to a vestige of traditional Christianity nor viewed as a watered down notion of modesty.

Habermas charges that by equating a deformed instrumental reason with reason itself in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno err twice. Not only do they fail to lead us to the path holding the greatest promise for understanding reason in modernity, they destroy all rational grounds for normative justification. Leaving themselves without a claim to reason, they suffer the embarrassment of becoming implicated in an aporia undermining their critique of enlightenment. I contest Habermas's argument, first by showing that they identify a differentiated form of aesthetic reason, and then by fleshing it out conceptually and developing its significance. With the concept of aesthetic reason Horkheimer and Adorno justify their critique and establish the basis for an alternative idea of enlightenment. By so doing, they illuminate the theoretical path allowing us to consider how the rational content of modernity can be recovered, and they preserve Habermas's theme of modernity as an unfinished project.

This paper problematizes empathy-centered approaches to deliberation, challenging the feasibility of such approaches as well as the suitability of empathy as a central goal or ideal in models of democratic deliberation. With the deliberative turn in democratic theory came a new emphasis on empathy. Empathy on the part of citizens – the ability to engage in perspective taking and to feel empathic concern for others – is often cited as crucial for the success and improvement of democratic discourse. I first identify several limits to achieving empathy in practice. I then show that even when achieved, empathy does not sustain deliberative practices. In place of empathy, I propose a “difference approach” to improving democratic deliberation. I argue that differences rather than commonalities are a more democratic resource for helping citizens cultivate greater openness and better listening practices. The difference approach better reflects the ideals of the deliberative model of democracy.

This article contributes to the study of racial-group politics by examining how Black and White Americans create authentic racial identities through the regulation of ideological adherence to color-consciousness and color-blindness, respectively. The article first theorizes about the relationship between racial ideology and racial authenticity. We then illustrate our hypotheses through an analysis of responses of Black and White racial group members to Black conservatives and White racial justice activists, whose viewpoints and agendas are read as contradictory to the broad goals of the majority of their racial counterparts. We explore, through an examination of empirical instances of chastisement, exclusion, and public de-authentication of individuals who deviate from the dominant ideology of their racial group, some of the ways Black and White Americans attempt to control in-group political behavior and to enforce indigenous standards for group-based public representation.