Political Theory

H01(a) - Decolonization #1: Inclusion and Resistance in Political Theory

Date: Jun 12 | Time: 08:30am to 10:00am | Location: 680 Sherbrooke St. West 391

Chair/Président/Présidente : Marion Trejo (York University)

The Asceticism of the Oppressed: Recovering the Emancipatory Tradition of Discipline: William Tilleczek (Université de Montréal and McGill University), Dimitri M'Bama (Université de Montréal)
Abstract: If in political theory asceticism is not ignored entirely, it tends to be aligned with positions of social dominance—a special privilege of an aristocratic or religious elite, which alone has the leisure to turn away from worldly affairs and cultivate the self as an aesthetic object. Meanwhile, since Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, discipline has been widely used as a means of describing and condemning modern social domination. Workers are disciplined in the factory; their children are disciplined in the public schools. If we say: “practices of the self,” it is far more likely that the listener thinks of Socrates and Marcus Aurelius than of Harriett Tubman or of all those “improbable aristocrats” of which James Baldwin spoke. If we say: “industrial discipline,” we think of the crushing grind of the factory instead of those countless labourers who playfully redeployed this same discipline in order to provide themselves a rigorous education—sometimes while at work. At its core, discipline is simply the organized use of training techniques; and ascesis is really the name for any practice of the self. As such, they belong to no one; they are tools instrumental to the most various projects. This essay recovers a lost revolutionary tradition – the asceticism of the oppressed – in which discipline has been used for the self-empowerment of the powerless. In so doing, we explore divergences and overlaps in the disciplinary tactics of anti-colonial and anti-capitalist movements.

Relationality, Decoloniality, and Comparison in Political Theory: Pinar Dokumaci (University College Dublin)
Abstract: In this paper, I aim to explore relationality and comparison in political theory, especially concerning comparative political theory. Although comparative political theory is an emerging subfield that explores the works of “non-Western” political thinkers as well as “non-Western” ideas about politics; the comparison aspect of comparative political theory has been argued to be not quite novel. Political theorists have been comparing different ideas from different traditions since the establishment of the field. What is novel about the comparative political theory is rather its growing influence and precursory role in “decolonizing” political theory and theorizing from the margins. While this is a meaningful and inspiring effort, the subject of analysis, as well as both the author and audience in this attempt, is still Western. Hence, comparative political theory has also been argued to reproduce the dichotomy that it was set to demolish, which is the separation, if not the divide, between Western and non-Western intellectual traditions. This paper will rethink this puzzle of comparison as a method for decolonizing political theory concerning relationality and address two main questions: Can relationality provide a better normative basis for decolonizing the way we think about political concepts and issues? Should comparative political theory become more relational to respond to the broader decolonial challenges it addresses?