Politics & Pitcairn

Peter Barden

From the Southern Pacific power struggle on the Bounty that produced one of the most famous of all mutinies, to the return of the primal Hobbesian ‘war-of-all-against-all’ that founded the state of Pitcairn Island; and from the paternalism of John Adams and his bible as a puritanical mode of governance as a means to return to Eden, to the trial of the Pitcairn men and the subsequent appeal for sovereignty, it seems that no generation since the HMAV Bounty mutiny has not been fascinated with the politics of this tiny microstate.  This paper will investigate the dual function of Pitcairn as a functional microstate and as a fantasy space for the Western imagination and seek to determine what this subaltern island and the recent enforced import of Western governmentality reflects back on the global politics of the past decade.

Associational Rights

Ryan Bellevue

Australian National University

Philosophers, following Max Weber, often differentiate between three different categories of groups; aggregates, communities, and associations.  Aggregates are collections of statistically similar individuals. Communities are groups that we have little to no choice in joining and have no set goals.  Associations are groups that are voluntarily joined and have specific goals.  This paper focuses upon associational rights.

The liberal tradition, and Western society, is often portrayed as focused upon the individual.  However, it is overwhelmingly accepted that certain groups have rights over and above the rights possessed by the individual members of the group. We can see these in effect today when considering various associations claims to property rights, privacy, free speech, civil liberties (such as the right to support and contribute to political campaigns), or any number of rights.  The fundamental issue here is the way associations are treated as persons in legal and moral theory.

I will argue that granting rights to associations is counter to the most influential justifications for rights, I will give particular attention to the accounts given by Joseph Raz and Ronald Dworkin.  In order to show this, I will examine property rights, the right to secrecy, as well as the role associational rights play when assigning responsibility.  In each of these cases I hope to show how an approach based upon individual rights is both superior to and differs from the current state of affairs.  I will show that granting associational rights is misguided for both moral and pragmatic reasons.

The Outside Of Human Rights: Biopolitics and Bodily Contact In The Case Of

Nguyen Tuong Van

Genevieve Berrick

The ‘Van Nguyen’ case, an international incident in which Australian national Nguyen Tuong Van was convicted and hanged in Singapore for drug trafficking, was the focus of heightened legal-judicial, diplomatic and media debate between and within Australia and Singapore. Academic discussion of this mediatised conflict, and the issues brought up by it, has been typically focused upon examinations of the ethics of drug trafficking, the relative applications of the principles of democracy and human rights in relation to capital punishment, and various merits and means of intervention or protest. This presentation, however, seeks to open up the outside of these traditional analyses, to question what may be left out when discussion is limited to these topic – focusing on the ‘bodies’ of the case as a point of remedy.  Engaging first with a range of critical social theory around and connecting body and state, and focusing on the points at which ‘body’ is taken up and strategically used, it will outline the undertaking of a detailed textual analysis, intended to study how individual and collective ‘bodies’ are taken up in the newsprint reporting of the case across the two countries. For this, it will focus in on how the conjunction of the body as metaphor for collective bodies in the ‘body politic’ meets the disciplinary function of biopower, to produce the ‘outside’ of the limits of a human rights-based response. Here, the very matter of living and dying is regulated and organised, and individual and collective bodies become mutually constitutive. This presentation in particular outlines an attempt to make Van’s body matter through the investigation of this case as precedent and possibly paradigm, hoping to open up a space to re-imagine the playing out of future such cases.

From ‘Big Brother’ to ‘little brother’ and ‘big mother’: Foucauldian accounts of the diffusion of order and control in liberal democracy

Robin Cameron

Australian National University

This paper seeks to reframe the contemporary and popular parlance on order and control in Foucauldian terms.  My paper draws its impetus from my work on processes of order and control that are instantiated by a country’s foreign policy.  In my studies of contemporary counterterrorism policy are are re-occurring tensions between civil liberties versus the encroaching power of the state, which I refer to here as the security/liberty debate.  There is an overriding tendency with most reportage, commentary and opinion to frame notions of order and control in terms of the direct application of sovereign state power and surveillance upon the individual, i.e. the paradigm of ‘big brother’.

Indeed, it is largely within critical political philosophy that more subtle accounts of order and control and the constitution of the individual emerge. Foucauldian-inspired studies of discipline, biopolitics and governmentality are able to inform a more sophisticated account of order and control.  Here I reframe such accounts in terms of the explicitly stretched metaphor of ‘big brother’. The processes through which populations and spaces are regulated would be better understood in terms of ‘little brother’ and ‘big mother.’ In such accounts the sovereign, first, is not a single watchful authority, but is rather dispersed and fluid and, second, is less concerned with the right to kill as it is with the power to ‘make live’ and ‘let die’.

From The Ubiquitous To The Sublime (Via The Chimerical): Staging The Networked Things Of Contemporary Sovereignty Through Three Utopian Devices

Peter Chambers

The University of Melbourne

This paper will explore three representational modes of political power through the utopian device that paradigmatically stages each one.  This will begin with Hobbes’ translation of the dramatic devices of the Roman Catholic Church and Shakespearean theatre onto the political stage of mid-17th century England, generating a politics capable (without absurdity) of treading the boards, playing the king, representing the multitude, and crossing the threshold of modernity via the impersonal, omnipotent, spectacular theatre of the leviathan.  This will then be contrasted with the functional, ubiquitous, operating theatre of Bentham, the inspector, and the panopticon.  After bringing us to a stage of political representation no doubt familiar to many, this paper will then offer a speculative fictioning of the sublime screening of networked mess achieved through the pocketable unity of ubiquitous “one black box” convergence devices such as the Blackberry and the iPhone.  Through the interactive example of the iPhone and political representations of boat arrivals on Christmas Island by the Australian media in 2009, I will explore the means by which networked citizens manage mobility through a process of screening that covers things by restoring the hermetic separation of subject and object; the active suspension of our disbelief that forces the complexity of networked relations to rebound back to a re-projection of the theatre of control (and its chimeras).

Untitled

Anna Cowdell

LaTrobe University

The practice of female genital mutilation is widely condemned; some argue, however, that FGM should be allowed if an agent chooses it autonomously.  This contention becomes worrisome, though, when we consider that many accounts of autonomy fail to satisfactorily deal with oppressive socialization, manipulation, and coercion - problems that are very much in play when it comes to FGM.  Female genital mutilation, which often functions as a prerequisite for marriage, is often considered to be at odds with an conception of autonomy, as a result of its standing, in many cases, in the role of a cultural imperative.

This paper aims to provide an understanding of the relationship between female genital mutilation and autonomy, and to highlight ways in which this cultural practice limits agents’ autonomy. Using this knowledge, a more thorough understanding of autonomy, and how it may be able to overcome such dilemmas, will hopefully be achieved.

This paper engages in the autonomy debate, focusing in particular on views presented by theorists such as Marilyn Friedman and Harriet Baber, who discuss the role of coercion and manipulation in undermining the autonomy of women. Through linking this examination to the practice of female genital mutilation, it is found that often an agent’s autonomy is undermined as a result of coercive social factors; their autonomy is constrained due to their inability to reasonably choose otherwise.  It is concluded that the role of choice and the availability of options plays a crucial role in our understanding of autonomy.

Governance For Whom? Uses and Abuses Of The Concept Of Governance

Deborah Cummins

The University of New South Wales

Governance theory can be broadly divided into two distinct areas: (i) normative theories of ‘good’ governance and (ii) theories of governance as an organising framework to map the distribution of power through a society.  However, within international development and politics the literature on good governance is a much larger body of work and has had much greater policy ‘traction’ than that of governance as an analytical framework. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Timor-Leste in 2008, this paper will consider the benefits of using the less-examined concept of governance as an organising framework to understand why some institutional reforms ‘stick’ and others do not.  This paper argues that by ignoring the importance of local culture, politics and power dynamics, the current emphasis on good governance misses an important opportunity to understand the real impacts of institutional reform.

The Institution of International Law and the Right to Rule

Jovanna Davidovic

University of Minnesota

Before asking: under which conditions does international law have legitimate authority, we must ask what does this authority amount to? In the first half of this paper, I argue that to say that international law has authority is not to say that it gives peremptory or overriding reasons for action, but instead that it, generally, gives us some, non-trivial, but not peremptory reasons for compliance with its commands.  From this general account of authority, I exclude jus cogens norms (in spite of the possible downfalls of a two-pronged account of international law), which do in fact provide overriding reasons for action. Given this understanding of international law’s right to rule, I offer a preliminary list of conditions that the institution needs to meet in order to have the authority it purports to have. This list includes accountability, efficacy, and most prominently consent. Consent, nowadays, seems to be universally rejected as a source of legitimacy of authority in general, and international law in particular. I argue that consent is necessary for social legitimacy of international law and that it (the social legitimacy) is in turn necessary for normative legitimacy. Finally, I reject the claim that Joseph Raz’s Normal Justification Thesis can give satisfactory answers to our central question. Aside from, what feels like,

its self-sealing character, I argue that it cannot answer the question of authority of international law because different types or sectors of international law purport to and have different levels of legitimacy and thus have different legitimacy conditions.

Born Liberal; Born Conservative: Evolution and Political Psychology

Tim Dean

The University of New South Wales

In this paper I make a relatively straightforward argument that: an individual’s personality is influenced by their genes, and their political ideology is influenced by their personality, therefore an individual’s political ideology is influenced by their genes. I then go on to explore some of the far less straightforward implications of this argument and talk about why it might actually be true.  First I draw on political psychology to outline some of the key differences in the psychology between liberals and conservatives, showing that conservatives are less open to new experiences but more conscientious than liberals; they have a greater need for closure; have lower integrative complexity; are more conventional, intolerant, dogmatic and hierarchical; and perceive the world as more hostile but also as more of a meritocracy. 

I then explore some of the challenges that humans faced in our evolutionary past - namely the problems of cooperation - and show how the liberal and conservative approaches represent two different strategies for dealing with these challenges. I suggest that conservatism is an effective strategy for surviving in a hostile and highly competitive environment while liberalism is an effective strategy for flourishing in a non-hostile and highly cooperative environment.  Finally, I suggest that evolution has primed us with a number of psychological mechanisms that predispose some individuals towards a liberal psychology, and some towards a conservative psychology, in order to provide us with a dynamic range of responses to changing environmental conditions.

Dear Comrade!: The Reception of Alain Badiou In Post-Soviet Russia

Christopher Dite

Monash University

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union there was an influx of Western political philosophies into Russia. From the Tocquevillian dreams of Western NGOs to the shock therapy neo-liberalism of ambitious corporations, the successes, failures, slight improvements and devastating consequences of these imported philosophies has been well-documented. The reception of radical Western philosophy in a post-Soviet context, however, has been less examined, perhaps due to the assumption that Russians were largely finished with Marxist theory. This paper examines the engagement of radical Leftist groups in contemporary Russia with the work of philosopher Alain Badiou. It will question whether Badiou’s Marxism, as articulated in Theory of the Subject, has been (or can be) adopted by the radical Russian Left in any meaningful way, given their simultaneous reengagement with Soviet Marxist philosophers like Mikhail Lifshitz. It will also ask whether groups like the Chto Delat collective, whose members explore wildly diverse philosophical avenues, can be anything other than dilettantish in their approach to Badiou. In addition to radical collectives’ responses to Badiou’s militant proclamations, this paper will attempt to untangle the recent attempts of the Putin administration to entice Badiou to Moscow, and the subsequent reaction and alliances on the part of anti-Putin Marxist groups.

Humanity against Crimes

Alejandra Mancilla Drpic

CAPPE, Charles Sturt University

Within the traditional distinction between justice and beneficence, the duty of humanity –which I will hereafter understand as the duty to relieve serious pain or suffering, or to prevent it from happening, when one has the means to do so– has usually been subsumed under the latter, or taken to be a synonym of it. That is, it has been broadly construed as being a special instance of the promotion of the good.

Against this view, in this paper I want to suggest that, because of its peculiar normative features, humanity should be given an independent space between justice and beneficence. For this purpose, I will examine two different formulations of this duty, which are far in time, but not in content. First, Francis Hutcheson’s view that for an action to be evil “it is enough that it flows from self-love, with a plain neglect of the good of others, or an insensibility of their misery, which we either actually foresee, or have a probable presumption of.” (Hutcheson 2004, p. 131) And secondly, Peter Singer’s motto that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought morally to do it.” (Singer 1972, p. 231)

To conclude, I want to pose the question of why it is important to make this distinction today, especially in the context of the global justice debate.

References

Hutcheson, F. (2004). An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Indianapolis, Liberty Fund.

Singer, P. (1972). "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." Philosophy and Public Affairs 1(3): 229-243.

Totalitarianism and Fantasy

Arash Falasiri

The University of Sydney

All totalitarian regimes share the promise of a ‘utopia’ for their people which they spread through propaganda. As long as this fantasy works, totalitarian states won’t face problems; the beginning of the regimes’ collapse occurs when their fantasy of utopia faces a crisis. In Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the characteristics of totalitarianism, she declares that totalitarian regimes impose ideology and terror on people with one hand, and nurture the fantasy of ‘a paradise on earth’ with the other. Also, as Lacan and Zizek argue, totalitarianism provides a perfect illustration of the dual structure within fantasy. This is why totalitarian regimes inevitably feel the need to define the presence of a constant enemy. The logic that calls for the elimination of an enemy to the regime may ultimately arrive at a point where it is people themselves who are considered the enemies of the state.

In this respect, it is arguable that the crisis happens when people feel that the regime’s fantasy has no place or meaning in their lives anymore. This paper suggests that a legitimacy crisis happens in totalitarian regimes when their fantasy faces crisis. In order to discuss these issues, this paper will consider theories of Arendt’s totalitarianism, Habermas’s notion of public sphere, as well as Zizek and Lacan’s ideas of fantasy.

Politics of Internet: Case Study of Iranian Blogosphere and Recent Election

Nazanin Ghanavizi

The University of Sydney

Persian, the official language of Iran, is ranked as the third most widely used language of blogging. As there are only roughly about 80 million Iranians in the world and roughly about 18 million of them access Internet, this is highly significant. The number of blogs increases every day and at the moment, it is estimated that there are more than one million active blogs in Persian. Iranians face many obstacles to accessing the democratic modes of journalism and political activity associated with the Habermasian public sphere. Freedom of speech and the free press have been challenging issues for Iranians for many decades. Despite the fact that there are various restrictions on Internet use in Iran, there are still a huge number of people who blog and respond to other blogs even at the high price of serious punishment. This paper considers their motivation and the effects of their actions by comparing it to the relation presumed between the press and the public sphere. I will examine the ways that the use of small media paved the way for the expression of ideas by Iranians which helped the emergence of Islamic Revolution in 1979. Further, the politics of Internet use in Iran and the current Persian blogosphere will be considered in relation to the ways in which modern small media were used by Iranians before the Islamic revolution. The main questions this paper raises centre on the ways in which cyberspace, and blogosphere in particular, provide Iranians with a space to express their needs and interests and criticise the strategies of the state. In doing so, my paper benefits from public sphere theory and arguments around deliberative democracy.

David Miller and Duties of Global Justice

Cavit Hacihamdioglu

Australian National University

David Miller draws a distinction between duties of justice at the national and global level. According to Miller affluent nations could be implicated with duties of justice when/if they violate the basic human rights of poor nations. In such a case, the former would have remedial responsibilities to the latter, unconditionally and universally. The remedial responsibilities render duties of global justice compensatory. If the poverty results from the poor nation’s wrong policy choices, which is a matter of national responsibility, then the duties become only humanitarian in nature, making them conditional and less stringent. This distinction between the weight of duties under the two conditions of responsibility expresses what we might call Miller’s global inegalitarianism, i.e. justice cannot demand us to pursue egalitarianism at a global scale.

After presenting Miller’s views on duties of global justice, I critically evaluate them. Even if we accept that Miller’s global inegalitarianism is preferable against a highly demanding egalitarianism such as the one presented by P. Singer, we can still aspire to some form of global luck egalitarianism. Poor nations should be assisted to provide equal opportunities to their own citizens, so that they could make better policy choices and act nationally more responsibly. My second criticism of Miller is that, even if we grant that national responsibility plays a role in determining the demandingness of duties of global justice, the rich nations can still give more resources through devising more equitable and fair rules that govern international institutions.

On the Northern Territory Emergency Response: A Rortyean Critique of the Foucauldian Left

Luke Sebastian Hennessy

Australian National University

The announcement of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) in June 2007 immediately and dramatically polarised the Australian community. One prominent Aboriginal activist has described the Intervention as akin to genocide, while others, including many indigenous Australians, have offered their full or qualified support for the Intervention. Alongside these relatively banal commentaries and criticisms, a number of leftist political theorists have recently weighed in on the debate over the NTER, offering a radical theoretical critique of the very idea of a government intervention into indigenous

communities. Many of these more radical-theoretical critiques borrow, either directly or indirectly, from the philosophical lexicon of Michel Foucault, particularly his now-ubiquitous concepts of ‘discipline’ and ‘biopolitics’.

Using this Foucauldian or quasi-Foucauldian analysis of the NTER as a case study, I offer a broadly Rortyean critique of the Foucauldian left. In a similar vein to Richard Rorty, I argue that the Foucauldian left’s general stance on matters such as political action, liberalism, law and the State promotes an attitude of radical cynicism and political detachment; an attitude which stems from what Rorty has called ‘the overphilosophication of politics’ and which values knowledge over hope, theoretical sophistication over pragmatic action, and moral purity over reformist initiative. Furthermore, I suggest that although the Foucauldian left may be useful in helping us become aware of subtle forms of institutional violence, which is to say, violent action, it nevertheless makes it difficult to avoid the problem of violent inaction.

Meta-Normative Political Justice & The Coordination Problem Of Normative Political Philosophy

Benjamin Herscovitch

The University Of Sydney

One of the most pressing questions of normative political philosophy concerns the appropriate response to diversity. Solutions that demand the imposition of the means of organising society recommended by a specific comprehensive conception of justice are prima facie morally problematic. Moreover, if the imposition of the means of organising society recommended by a specific comprehensive conception of justice was a possibility we would not be in the position of being confronted with a genuine coordination problem. At the same time, a thoroughly laissez-faire approach to diversity seems equally unpalatable. In this paper I will argue that the coordination problem of normative political philosophy is best solved by means of a meta-normative account of political justice that equates political justice with whatever happens to embody the substance of the overlapping consensus of normative commitments of the relevant subjects. The claim that something approximating equilibrium between competing interests and conceptions of the good can be reached by means of this meta-normative account of political justice will be made on the basis of an appropriation and extension of the meta-normative thesis that I will argue undergirds John Rawls' post-1980 work. In particular, I will argue that underlying Rawls' political justification of the liberal principles of justice is the meta-normative thesis that, beyond the minimal requirement that institutions and individuals behave in accordance with the substance of the overlapping consensus of normative commitments of the relevant subjects, there is nothing that can be legitimately demanded of them. In making use of Rawls’ argument for political liberalism in this way I will advance an unorthodox (and some would say manifestly incorrect) conventionalist reading of Rawls, which has him concerned exclusively with existing practices.

Kojève and Schmitt On The Struggle For The New Nomos

Rory Jeffs

Deakin University

Alexandre Kojève and Carl Schmitt engaged in a brief but significant correspondence between 1955 and 1957. Over the course of several letters each thinker posed a number of questions and issues that each considered modern Western political philosophy faced as a result of the end of Second World War. What they shared in common was the foresight of the inevitable advance of a new world order. In his post-war works Land and Sea and The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt provided a whole historical account of how different political orders were based on legal distributions of land over localised spaces that culminated in the jus publicum Europaeum. But since the World War I and the growing role of US foreign policy, the European nomos had dissolved into a ‘spaceless

universalism’, neutralised and abstracted into the international (law) zones of the sea and air (Großraum). Kojève had already explicated on a similar notion of a new world order in his lectures on Hegel in the 1930s where he prophesised the coming of a ‘Universal and Homogeneous State’ as the telos of all historical and political development. Apart from speculating on the possibility of any new and ‘re-territorialised’ nomos, what arises from this correspondence is a discussion of a potential re-politicisation of Europe that would contest American global hegemony, a concern that was shared by post-Marxists and has remained on the horizon of current philosophical thought. For Kojève, what remains is a Latin Empire that would be based in Europe and provide a sphere of influence in the realm of culture and ‘giving’.

Humanizing Politics: Arendt’s Human Condition and Political Legitimacy

Nick Malpas

The University of Sydney

Any account of criteria for judging whether political arrangements and actions are legitimate must invoke some conception of human beings. Hannah Arendt denied the possibility of defining a ‘human nature’ from which ideal political principles could be deduced. Instead she provided an account of the conditions of human existence which are necessary for any form of politics - ‘the human condition’. According to Arendt, human beings are not essentially political nor does their humanity necessitate any particular form of politics. Politicality is a potentiality rather than an innate feature of human beings. Yet politicality is not simply an option that human beings may pursue, rather it is of central importance in the constitution of what we usually take to be the features that distinguish human beings and make human life meaningful – such as language, autonomy, interpersonal relationships, selfhood. This implies a conceptualization of the political as founded upon reciprocality: leading a properly political existence involves recognizing that all human beings are entitled to lead a political existence. Political arrangements and actions can then be judged as legitimate to the extent that they affirm the human condition and enable people to lead a political existence. Questions remain however about the exact status of Arendt’s conception of the human condition and how it is substantiated. We must resist the temptation to see the human condition as an absolute standard which can be applied to political phenomena or a first principle from which political imperatives can be deduced. Rather I suggest that Arendt’s concept of the human condition should be seen as a critical concept which is embedded in a network of other concepts and informed by political phenomena.

Redemption From The Phantom Of 'Original Sin': Civil Society and Citizenship In African Politics

Kudzai Matereke

The University of New South Wales

Western political theorists have hotly debated the issues surrounding the nature, origins and significance of the notion of civil society. As these debates spill over to the African arena, they open a vast array of questions that compel scholars to rethink contemporary politics in Africa. In his analysis of the history of civil society in Africa, Mamdani identifies racism as civil society’s original sin. First, this observation casts a dark spell on the efficacy of civil society in African politics. Second, it raises methodological questions for researchers on African politics. In the context of calls for strengthening civil society as the basis for Africa’s democratisation, Mamdani’s observation raises the question whether African civil society can ever extricate itself from its original sin to reclaim its lost emancipatory prospects and achieve legitimacy. With the continued rise of despotic and arbitrary states in Africa, the notion of citizenship is undergoing new tests. Mamdani’s observation also suggests that there have to be new trajectories to understand the African state as sui generis. This not only places the African state beyond the reach of liberal political theory but also further shrouds it in mystery. When this happens, African leaders are lent a veil that protects them from being accountable to their citizens. This paper will explore the significance of Mamdani’s thesis in the light of its implications for the contemporary practice of citizenship in postcolonial Africa.

A New Ancient Horizon: A Western Encounter with Buddhist Politico-Ethical Theory and Praxis

Toby Mendelson

The University of Melbourne

Political philosophy is almost always undertaken with a genealogical gesture to the classical Greeks. A historical trajectory from such an origin invariably charts its path through the greats of the western canon. The various traditions, be they Platonic, Hobbesian, Marxist, Liberal, or Post-Structuralist, all have something very obvious in common: they are all western.Yet when one considers the dizzying heights of particular epochs in Indian and Chinese history, it follows that there must have been some great political ideas behind them. However, although in the western academic tradition it is considered elementary to encounter and engage with Aristotle or Hobbes (and their contemporary relevance is never in question), encounters with non-western classical thinkers such as Confucius, Gautama (the Buddha) and Nagarjuna are usually entirely overlooked, or seen as a naive footnote to the real political theory. Therefore, I will suggest that a new horizon need not be a new chapter in the western political narrative, but in fact, a new of way of approaching the task of political philosophy: a way which takes seriously and critically the political and ethical ideas of ‘the east.’ Specifically, India and China. In this paper, I will examine the Mahayana ideas of shunyata (emptiness) and karuna (compassion) as a political principal and embodied practice of social inter-relationality. In so doing, I will draw out three critical implications, which have obvious political currency in this contemporary epoch.

1. 1)Shunyata as a critique of neo-liberal assumptions about the subject as independent and pre-social.
   

2. 2)Shunyata as a positive and constructive ontology of social, economic and ecological interdependence.
   

3. 3)Karuna as an embodied and affective ethic of continual becoming.
   

The Lost Treasure of Arendt’s Council System

James Muldoon

The University of Melbourne

Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution offers a critique of modern representative democracy combined with a manifesto-like treatise on council systems as they have arisen over the course of revolutions and uprisings. However, Arendt’s contribution to democratic theory has been obscured by her commentators who argue that her reflections on democracy are either an aberration in her work or easily reconcilable within a liberal democratic framework. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive outline of Arendt’s writing on the council system and a clarification of her work outside the milieu of the post-cold war return to Arendt. Her reflections force us to consider a political system that guarantees civil and political rights while allowing all willing citizens direct participation in government. Although one may conclude that her institutional suggestions are far from flawless, her political principles allow a conceptualisation of democracy in more significant ways than current liberal political philosophy. The present crisis in democratic participation and legitimacy can be directly linked to the inability of current academics to think outside of modern theories of representation. Habermasian deliberative democrats and post-structuralist radical democrats both suffer from a tendency to uncritically accept traditional arguments relating to the role of representation in modern nation-states. Revisiting Arendt’s work in light of recent literature on globalization and democracy enables us to reject nostalgic calls for a return to Ancient Greek direct democracy while remaining critical of and suggesting alternatives to current depoliticised forms of modern political representation.

Political Legitimacy in the Wake of Indigenous Governance Claims

Kyla Reid

The University of Sydney

This paper is part of a larger work that challenges the state-bias of the categorical accounts of political legitimacy and attempts to demonstrate that none these accounts can provide normative justification of the political authority that contemporary settler states exert over indigenous populations. This paper will begin by highlighting two conclusions from the conclusion that the dominant accounts are unable to account for the legitimacy of the settler state: (1) the settler state is, in fact, a legitimate authority over indigenous peoples.  The failure of the the categorical discourses of political legitimacy merely points to the continued need to generate an adequate account of political legitimacy (call this the statist conclusion) (2) the settler state’s failure to meet any of the standards of legitimacy presented by the categorical accounts points to the illegitimacy of the settler state and perhaps the impossibility of categorical accounts of political legitimacy (call this the anarchist conclusion). I will then argue that we must reject the statist conclusion in favour of the anarchist conclusion.

Following from this, It is also necessary to reject philosophical anarchism as a necessary condition of accepting the anarchist conclusion; philosophical anarchists remain committed to the need for categorical account and in situations of normative plurality (like that between settler states and indigenous peoples), political legitimacy of a categorical kind is immensely difficult, if not impossible, to determine.  Without categorical accounts and to avoid seeing legitimacy as a result of political coercion or an impossibility, it is necessary to generate a non-categorical account of political legitimacy.  I then consider the merits of a dialogical approach to political legitimacy, differentiating between consensus dialogical legitimacy and agonistic dialogical legitimacy. I will conclude in favour the agonistic approach for cases of normative plurality.

On Being Political Not Metaphysical

Timothy Smartt

The University of Sydney

In 1985 John Rawls stated his theory of justice was ‘political not metaphysical.’ In this paper, I claim that Rawls’s phrase has left a lasting impact on Anglophone approaches to practical philosophical questions. By tracking this theme through the writings of Richard Rorty, Bernard Williams and Charles Larmore, I aim to both (1) elucidate exactly what it could mean for a practical philosopher to conceive of their inquiry as ‘political not metaphysical’, and (2) propose a way to think about the legacy and impact of John Rawls on political philosophy. By examining the criticisms of Rawls from Rorty, Williams and Larmore, and by also noting what they hold in common, I will argue that Rawls’s enduring contribution has been the providing of a methodological framework, rather than a specific substantive theory. I suggest that Rawls provides us with a way of approaching the questions of political philosophy which is of value and is not dependant on subscribing to his substantive theory of justice.

The Open and its Discontents

Nathaniel Tkacz

The University of Melbourne

It was Karl Popper who, roughly fifty years ago, first paid serious attention to openness as a category of political thought in his writings on The Open Society. Popper contrasted his ideas of openness with those of "closed" thinkers – including Marx, Hegel, and Aristotle - who remained under “the spell of Plato”. This paper explores the re-emergence of openness as a political concept, which both resonates with and differs from Popper’s. The genealogy of this second coming commences with the hacker-geek computer cultures of the late 70s and 80s where it manifests specifically as Open Source software, through to the numerous Open Projects (Open Access Publishing, Open Education, Open Hardware etc.) associated with online network cultures and eventual general deployment in institutional politics. While the paper acknowledges the real force of this concept as a rallying tool, it eventually argues via a reconsideration of Popper as well as the projects mentioned above, that the open suffers a constitutional poverty: it tells us nothing about the relations of force that emerge under its name.