Suchergebnisse

In den USA lässt sich momentan in Echtzeit beobachten, wie Universitäten zu Brennpunkten einer politischen Auseinandersetzung werden, in der es um grundlegende Fragen des demokratischen Zusammenlebens, des Umgangs mit politischen Konflikten und der Notwendigkeit unabhängiger Bildungsinstitutionen und kritischer Wissenschaft geht. Daher ist es ein Gebot intellektueller Aufrichtigkeit und politischer Verantwortung genauer hinzusehen – ein Gebot, dem sich deutsche Medien scheinbar immer weniger verpflichtet fühlen, wenn sie die ideologisch extreme Position reproduzieren, dass propalästinensische Proteste an sich bereits als Bedrohung anzusehen sind und die Repression daher gerechtfertigt sei.

Abstract
Violence manifests as a force that dissects: it disjoins, divides, breaks up lives and bodies, communities, the environment. It also constitutes a field of forces that theory, in its critical registers, is trying to dissect, to anatomize, to take apart, to lay open, to open up for critique and transformation, especially when violence takes hidden, invisibilized, or structural forms. As Étienne Balibar's work exemplifies, for theory to do this, it not only needs to take account of the resistance and struggles of its age; it also needs to move beyond clichés about violence as the intentional infliction of bodily harm, and beyond the widespread assumption that violence is the absolute other of politics, that politics and violence are incompatible. The commentaries in this special section further explore the theoretical space opened up by Balibar's work in light of the current conjuncture.

This article argues that, far from being a merely defensive act of individual protest, civil disobedience is a much more radical political practice. It is transformative in that it aims at the politicization of questions that are excluded from the political domain and at reconfiguring public space and existing institutions, often in comprehensive ways. Focusing on the reconstitution of the political community also allows us to reconceptualize constituent power. Rather than portraying it as a quasi-mythical force erupting only in extraordinary moments, constituent power can be conceptualized as a dynamic situated within established orders, transgressing their logic and reconfiguring them from within. Civil disobedience as a transformative and potentially comprehensive practice aimed at reconstituting the political order can then be seen as an internal driving force keeping this dialectic in play. A concrete example can be found in protests and border struggles by irregularized migrants. They show how unexpected forms of civil disobedience manage to politicize symbolic and institutional structures that are usually taken for granted or naturalized and thereby removed from politicization, such as borders and citizenship. In this way, they exemplify not only the defensive/reactive but also the constituent/transformative force of disobedience.

Les formes de vie sont souvent entendues comme étant « données », et donc protégées de la critique et de la réflexivité. Dans cet article, l'auteur montre d'abord pourquoi cette approche problématique vient d'une lecture partiale de Wittgenstein, puis montre que cette même approche nourrit la conception de la sociologie critique de Bourdieu. En s'appuyant sur une sociologie pragmatique de la critique, l'auteur s'oppose à de telles conceptions « manichéennes » qui opposent l'« intérieur », caractérisée par l'immersion non-réflexive, et l'« extérieur », lieu de la perspective de l'observateur-théoricien. Il insiste au contraire sur le caractère fondamentalement hétérogène, réflexif et conflictuel des formes de vie. Ainsi peut émerger une conception bien plus large des possibilités de la critique, ainsi qu'une compréhension alternative (non-conventionnaliste et non-conservatrice) de la politique des formes de vie.

Forms of life are often understood to be pre-reflexively 'given' and thus immune to critique and reflexivity. In this paper I first show how this problematic view arises from a one-sided reading of Wittgenstein. I then go on to argue that a similar view also informs Bourdieu's conception of a critical social science. Building on the pragmatist sociology of critique, I argue against such 'Manichaean' visions that contrast the 'inside' characterized by unreflective immersion with the 'outside' perspective of the theorist-observer, instead emphasizing the essentially heterogeneous, reflexive and conflictual character of forms of life. Against this background, a much broader view of the possibilities of critique and an alternative - non-conventionalist and non-conservative - understanding of the politics of forms of life emerges. Adapted from the source document.