Suchergebnisse

Causarum Cognitio -- Naked in the marketplace -- The courage and scourge of truth -- Excursus : Sloterdijk on a motorbike! (or, Zen and the art of neo-Kynicism) -- The resistible rise of Rawlsian reasonableness -- Thomas Pogge : ethics and the ire of the beholden -- Nancy Fraser's Subaltern Weltburger blues -- Excursus : the poverty of Agonism -- Jurgen Habermas' postmetaphysical paralysis? -- Defacing the political currency : cynicism as a normative perspective for critical theory

In Cynical Suspicions and Platonist Pretensions , John McGuire offers a critique of recent trends in contemporary political theory, specifically concerning the 'dangers' of cynicism and the contamination of public reason. In the view of many theorists and pundits, cynicism remains one of the gravest ills to befall any democratic society, injecting a virulent estrangement which leaves sufferers unable to trust elected representatives and unwilling to participate in collective action. Starting with a reconstruction of the performative and rhetorical tactics of the 'first' Cynic, Diogenes of Sinope (c. 323 BCE), John McGuire aims to demonstrate how cynicism's non-defeatist, relentlessly sceptical ethos provides an important counterweight to the self-aggrandising designs of moralists and policymakers alike.

Front Matter -- Copyright page -- For Mary Margaret -- -- Introduction: Causarum Cognitio -- Naked in the Marketplace -- The Courage and Scourge of Truth -- The Resistible Rise of Rawlsian Reasonableness -- Thomas Pogge: Ethics and the Ire of the Beholden -- Nancy Fraser's Subaltern Weltbürger Blues -- Jürgen Habermas' Postmetaphysical Paralysis? -- Defacing the Political Currency: Cynicism as a Normative Perspective for Critical Theory.

Building upon the theoretical framework of Italian activist and scholar Antonio Gramsci, and using historical and public administrative sources, this article argues that while social justice feminism as a social movement in the United States declined by 1940, former participants continued their counter-hegemonic actions after World War II. Facing a new political and cultural hegemony increasingly dominated by fears of atomic annihilation, Soviet domination, and domestic Communist infiltration, women progressives, such as Frieda Miller and Esther Peterson, developed new approaches to continuing their counter-hegemonic aims, particularly through reviving an alternative view of public administration. Miller and Peterson thus helped prepare the way for women's activism in the United States to shift from economic security to equal rights by the mid-1960s, thus establishing an increasingly effective counter-hegemonic effort against the continuing patriarchal hegemony.

This article examines how Frieda Miller and Esther Peterson, two influential directors of the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau after World War II, revived and continued the alternative view of public administration through a combination of primary and secondary sources. Miller, who served as director from 1944 through 1953, reestablished a social justice–centered view of public administration through the creation of a special advisory committee and the institution of a new agenda that stressed equality over economic security. Peterson, who served from 1961 through 1964, quickly moved the Women's Bureau into a political network with women's labor leaders and the John F. Kennedy presidential administration, helping to create the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) and to enact a federal Equal Pay Act.