All tagged 2018 elections

In the wake of the tumultuous Kavanaugh hearings marked by wrenching accusations of sexual assault and extreme examples of political bullying, in Part Three I focus on the two major political parties to explore why over the years Republicans and their right-wing supporters have freely resorted to extremely aggressive political tactics and — just as important — why Democratic Party leaders and their liberal allies have often failed to take seriously such acts of political violence and skullduggery by their opponents and respond accordingly. Part of the answer, I argue, lies in their respective practices of loyalty and identity, social composition, and conceptions of governing.

SUMMARY

- intimidation as a political and theoretical problem

- traumatic lessons

- taking political violence seriously

- political intimidation vs. everyday bullying

- from political tool to an entire political program & form of governing

- how it works

- affective challenges to civic action and activism

- resistance: a nimble politics of anticipation

- creating our own affective facts on the ground

THEORETICAL FRAME

My thinking has been in conversation with the work of Étienne Balibar on citizenship, globalization, extreme violence and the State, Wendy Brown’s deep inquiry into the political project of neoliberalism of “dedemocratization,” Judith Butler’s and Brian Massumi’s respective writings on lawless sovereignty, indefinite detention, and the affective politics of preemption in the endless War on Terror, and Corey Robin’s book on fear as an operative concept in the liberal political tradition.