Search results

This article offers an analysis of seven articles from the Review of Radical Political Economics' series "What 'Radical' Means in the 21st Century." Without reference to feminism, the authors' definitions of "radical" hinge critically on insight from feminist radical political economy. Instead of feminist radical political economy fitting under a broader body of political economy that coheres around radicalism, it is in feminist insight that radical political economy finds roots: according to the series' authors, it is what makes radical political economy radical. Yet although the Union for Radical Political Economics hosted the development of the building blocks of feminist theory in economics between 1968 and 1991, feminist contributions remain largely unacknowledged. I offer strategies for repositioning feminism not as a side project but as a critical source of insight for radical political economy. JEL Classification: B54, B51, B24

In this paper, I introduce the idea of 'radical relativity' to elucidate an undervalued justificatory context for Wittgenstein's affirmation of radical pluralism. I accept D.Z. Phillips's definition of radical pluralism as the view that certain radical differences between people's ordinary practices prevent the latter from being reduced to a necessary set of common interests, meanings, or truths. I argue that radical relativity provides this form of pluralism with the logical justification it requires in that it accounts for how pluralism became radical. More specifically, I argue that the contingent, non-causal, and yet non-arbitrary relation between ordinary concepts and the pluralistic world through which they emerge explains the reality of radical pluralism. Radical relativity is suggested in Wittgenstein's three notions of 'concept formation', 'agreement in reaction', and 'world pictures', I argue, without endorsing traditional forms of relativism. Finally, I show that although D.Z. Phillips and Hilary Putnam promote notions of pluralism indebted to Wittgenstein, neither philosopher utilizes the radical relativity suggested in his work to justify his respective version of pluralism or Wittgenstein's version of radical pluralism.

In the article I present a reflection around the radical democratic project proposed by Chantal Mouffe & Ernesto Laclau. Specifically, I examine the application of the project in the context of the 'new social movements' & especially, of feminist movement. I state the need of drawing attention to universalism & essentialism as the main obstacles to generate a collective proposal without margins. Nevertheless, doubts remind about the possibility of building up a feminism tailored by the radical democratic project, in a stage in which the political action of such a movement is characterized by categories that are closed & crystallized.