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This paper reads Sophocles' Antigone contextually, as an exploration of the politics of lamentation and larger conflicts these stand for. Antigone defies Creon's sovereign decree that her brother Polynices, who attacked the city with a foreign army and died in battle, be dishonoured - left unburied. But the play is not about Polynices' treason. It explores the clash in 5th century Athens between Homeric/ elite and democratic mourning practices. The former (represented by Antigone) memorialize the unique individuality of the dead, focus on the family's loss and bereavement and call for vengeance. The latter (represented by Creon) memorialize the dead's contribution to the immortal polis and emphasize (as in the Funeral Oration) the replaceability of those lost. Each economy of mourning sees the other as excessive and politically unstable. The remainders of both, managed by way of exception institutions such as tragedy and the Dionysian Festival, continue to haunt us now.

A review essay on books by (1) Janet Afary & Kevin B. Anderson, Foccault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) & (2) Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs (New York: Vintage International, 1992). References.

Seyla Benhabib stellt im vorliegenden Band die These auf, dass sich kosmopolitische Normen nur voll entfalten können, wenn sie Teil der nationalen Gesetzgebung eines Staates werden. Das Argument zielt darauf, die Spannung zwischen universalistischer Ethik und dem bloßen Zwang staatlichen Handelns, wie er sich im positiven Recht verkörpert, zu mindern. Benhabibs Bezug auf staatliches Recht wird in ihrer Entgegnung auf Bonnie Honig noch deutlicher. Die Autorin plädiert demgegenüber in ihrem Beitrag mit Nachdruck dafür, die Entwicklung kosmopolitischer Normen, Gesetze und Institutionen "schonungslos politisch und äußerst kritisch zu beurteilen". Die Spannung von Universalismus und Partikularismus erachtet sie als grundlegend, insofern internationale Institutionen, deren Anspruch es ist, Menschenrechte und kosmopolitische Normen durchzusetzen, "nicht die Notwendigkeit von Zugehörigkeit überflüssig machen; sie verändern lediglich den Ort von Zugehörigkeit". Die Verfasserin legt den Schluss nahe, dass diese Institutionen nicht exemplarisch für eine außerhalb des Politischen stehende universalistische Ethik sind, sondern Anforderungen anderen Zuschnitts mit anderer Agenda an den Universalismus stellen. Sie widerspricht damit Benhabib und fordert am Beispiel der EU eine Politik der "doppelten Geste, mit der die Versprechungen und Risiken einer jeden partikularen und bedingten Ordnung von Hospitalität (und Universalismus oder Kosmopolitismus) benannt werden und ihnen zugleich gegenübergetreten wird". (ICA2)

Deliberative democratic theorists (in this essay, Seyla Benhabib and Jurgen Habermas) seek to resolve, manage, or transcend paradoxes of democratic legitimation or constitutional democracy. Other democratic theorists, such as Chantal Mouffe, embrace such paradoxes and affirm their irreducibility. Deliberativists call that position "decisionism." This essay examines the promise and limits of these various efforts by way of a third paradox: Rousseau's paradox of politics, whose many workings are traced through Book II, Chapter 7 of theSocial Contract. This last paradox cannot be resolved, transcended, managed, or even affirmed as an irreducible binary conflict. The paradox of politics names not a clash between two logics or norms but a vicious circle of chicken-and-egg (which comes first—good people or good law?). It has the happy effect of reorienting democratic theory: toward the material conditions of political practice, the unavoidable will of the people who are also always a multitude, and the not only regulative but also productive powers of law.

Argues that the "liberty vs security" dichotomy that frames arguments about increasing state power or executive discretion during emergencies fails to consider complex issues related to the legitimacy of administrative, judicial, & popular political powers. Emergency politics debates should be part of larger debates about the risks & benefits to democracies in both emergency & nonemergency times. This is pointed out by describing Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post's response to immigrants during the First Red Scare in 1919. Post, who fought for procedural rights/due process during the arbitrary roundups of the Palmer Raids, was a champion of proceduralism as a legal mechanism by which political aims could be pursued. Post distinguished between political & philosophical anarchism & used all of the law's resources to find in favor of aliens marked for deportation whenever possible. The Red Scare ended when the nation elected democracy over despotism & fairness over arbitrariness. It is concluded that lessons learned from Post's struggle to make the Constitution more democratic can be applied to the current political scene. J. Lindroth