EJCS is going negative this issue. Walters kicks things off by introducing the issue's theme: 'anti-policy' (measures against things; like poverty, drugs, corruption or terrorism). The framing of policy goals in the negative (even as outright 'wars') - superficially linked to liberal technocratic and depoliticizing impulses - should still be viewed as political, substantive and constitutive (think governmentality).
de Goede looks at the fight against terrorist financing: behind the seemingly unobjectionable goals and technocratic instruments lie a highly political web of means and ends which serve to regulate and undermine forms of Muslim affiliation, communication and philanthropy. Non-state actors are enrolled through legal threats, and those economically excluded are dismissed as collateral damage on the way to bigger terrorist fish.
What comes after anti-racism? Anti-anti-racism and post-anti-racism, obviously. Lentin leads us through the anti-racism scene and its critics on the left (race is a flawed or imaginary concept, a 'US folk concept' (.pdf), or a backdoor from 'real' economic issues). She offers a defense of the anti-racist cause against these voices, 'post-race' ideologies, and obscuritan state multicultural-wonkery.
Nyers discusses terrorism detainees' appeals for the release of hostages in Iraq. Rancière is deployed, as the detainees' statements rub up against the norms and aesthetics of dialogue and subject-hood at stake in their detention.
Simon offers the US (and NAZI) war on cancer as an antidote to the wars on crime and terrorism. A new war on cancer could - as it permeates government practices, Foucault-style - bring a new and more causally sophisticated focus upon problems of poverty, education, pollution and incarceration. Maybe...
Showing posts with label EJCS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EJCS. Show all posts
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