Bruno LatourRecollections of a Traveling CompanionStengers, Isabelle
2023 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754x-10862493
This memorial to Latour is not an appraisal of his fifty-year research career but the report of a traveling companion with a story to share about the apparent lack of continuity, the sudden, unapologetic, unprincipled changes of position, with which he surprised or scandalized his colleagues and readers. In the first place, was he a sociologist, an anthropologist, a philosopher? Though he did not make lasting commitments of that kind, he did make deeper ones that did not change—above all, never to explain anything in terms of something more general and, thus, never to accept the position of judge. To follow Latour's problematic changes—sometimes referred to as his “versatility”—demands that we follow the changes of the very terms of the problems that his basic commitment bound him to confront. From the 1980s, when his work dealt with technoscientific progress, to the years of his growing concern with political ecology, and finally to his recognition of the oncoming climate chaos, dizzying leaps were entailed by his resistance to the temptation of judging. Involved in, but never the cause of, various of his leaps, Stengers describes her friend as responding, perforce, to changing times, rather than as behaving like a theorist thinking mainly of his image, reputation, and career.
Introduction: Antipolitics or Antinomianism?Perl, Jeffrey M.
2023 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754x-10862521
In this introduction to part 3 of the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics,” the journal's editor argues that, apart from sortition, the best guarantees of safety in a democracy are, first, to augment judicial oversight of all political processes and, second, to exclude politicians from the process of selecting judges. “There can never be too much judicial interference,” he writes, “in what politicians regard as their domain.” The author reached this conclusion during attempts by the newly elected Israeli government, in the spring of 2023, to make itself absolute by eliminating checks on its conduct that the Supreme Court had been developing and applying since the 1950s. Traditional Jewry and Judaism being notoriously hypernomian, the resistance to legality on the part of the ruling coalition has conveyed an aura of antinomian heresy. The choice in Israel appears to be between antipolitics and antinomianism, rather than between Left and Right politically—and the antipolitical model in Israel of a superintendent judiciary and an autonomous attorney general is arguably superior to the American prototype, even from the perspective (“all men are created equal . . . , endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”) that we have come to regard as quintessentially American.
Can Classical Athens Offer Lessons for a Large, Pluralistic Society?Roberts, Jennifer T.
2023 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754x-10862535
Recoiling from the power that Athenian democracy placed in the hands of the poor, the founding fathers of the United States took Athens as primarily an anti-model, whereas nineteenth-century defenders of slavery found Athens a very congenial model indeed, seeming as it did to lend a mantle of legitimacy to an unspeakable practice. After a “honeymoon period” in which democracy was idealized as the only legitimate form of government, now at the outset of the twenty-first century the alliance of democracy with a capitalism that often proves heartless to the less fortunate has raised some troubling questions about democracy itself. Despite its small size, classical Athens offers valuable guidance for tempering current difficulties in both the United States and elsewhere by adopting and adapting the selection of some officials by sortition, direct election by popular vote of elected officials, a rigorous system of accountability, and the fostering of civic and community values.
Against AntiformalismJohn Lilburne, the Levellers, and Legal AgencyBraddick, Michael
2023 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754x-10862549
This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics” explores the place of legal agency in the political thought and activities of John Lilburne, one of the leading English Levellers of the seventeenth century. Protection of his rights as a freeborn Englishman was central to his political campaigns and political thought and was an important element of his published Leveller tracts. Much commentary on the Levellers has emphasized their demand for annual parliaments elected on a broad franchise and equal distribution of seats. But these constitutional arrangements were not an endorsement of ideals of universal suffrage, representative democracy, and majoritarianism but instead—along with legal agency—mechanisms for the protection of the people from tyranny. This overlooked feature of Leveller political thought may have something to teach us about the essential purposes of democracy in the face of majoritarian populism.
Antipolitics and the Administrative StateCoglianese, Cary; Walters, Daniel E.
2023 Common Knowledge
doi: 10.1215/0961754x-10862563
This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics” A considers what it might mean for the administrative state to be antipolitical. Two conceptions of an antipolitical administrative state are identified. The first of these—antipolitics as in opposition to administrative discretion—holds that, in a democracy, value judgments should be made only by elected officials and that all administrators should do is carry out technical tasks calling for expertise. Administrators, however, inevitably make policy decisions that call for value judgments, making this first conception unattainable. On the other hand, a second conception or standard—one of antipolitics as in opposition to favoritism—is both realistic and desirable to expect of those who occupy positions of administrative power. It holds that administrators should avoid making decisions for self-interested reasons. Many doctrines of administrative law follow from aversion to favoritism, as the law aspires to free the administrative state from decision-making that is based on the interests of administrators and their partisan overseers or friends. Today, as the state comes under increasing threat from populist and authoritarian attempts to capture its power, distinguishing between these two conceptions of antipolitics—one unrealistic, the other imperative—can help to channel antipolitical impulses where they are most needed.