Political Theory

H04(c) - Method & Ontology in Political Theory

Date: Jun 3 | Time: 01:45pm to 03:15pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Barbara Arneil (University of British Columbia)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Timothy Berk (University of Ottawa)

“Rich and Strange”: An Arendtian Method for Political Theory: Catherine Frost (McMaster University)
Abstract: In this paper Hannah Arendt’s writings are used frame a methodology for renewing political thought with a special focus on issues of equality in international law. Arendt showed that a semi-structured orientation to the past can reinvigorate the capacity for fresh insight and she called for recovering what has become “rich and strange” over time as a way to awaken a thinker to their contingent circumstances (Arendt 1971, p. 212). More specifically, her approach involves “tearing fragments out of their context and arranging them afresh” to create a jolt of awareness in the present. She considered it a “Homeric” exercise because it required adopting the perspective of the defeated while preserving its fundamental strangeness (Arendt, 1968; Disch, 1993). This orientation makes it an especially important resources for researching marginalized perspectives or patterns of inequality that have become commonplace, as these require the ability to understand oneself as a product of the systems under study. This mindset cannot be achieved through good intentions alone, leaving the researcher struggling for the right place to start. Because it seeks the unfamiliar, Arendt’s technique is well-suited to capturing moments in political life that conventional thinking overlooks, and may be especially useful when theory or practice bogs down in dogma (Bradshaw, 2007; Whitehall, 2013). Because it takes an illustrative rather than comparative approach, it avoids the urge to standardize what should be received on its own terms, and celebrates what is unique or “fragmentary” as source of insight (Herzog, 2000, p. 9). In this regard it meets the call for what one scholar termed a “counter-comparability” approach to international law, one which uses “induced forgetfulness” to destabilize prevailing thinking and allow new voices through (D’Aspremont, 2020, p. 110).

Interpretation, Constellation, and Textual Excess: The History of Political Thought as Normative Political Theory: Christopher Holman (Nanyang Technological University)
Abstract: What is it that political theorists are doing when they undertake research in the history of political thought? Whereas recent methodological debate in the field has tended to focus on the extent to which interpretation should be considered primarily as an historical endeavour, a philosophical endeavour, or some combination of the two, I suggest that much practice in the history of political thought may be understood as a variety of normative political theory specifically. In order to clarify the operations characterizing such research, I develop an interpretative frame drawn from the philosophical notion of thinking in constellations. The analyst, mining the surplus of textual meaning necessarily inhering in the work, can perform an original illocutionary act meant to advance a particular political end. Such may proceed through i) the critical identification of the necessary gaps and ambiguities traversing a substance that is never adequate to the thematization of the political world, and ii) the reconstruction of the text via the critical reorganization of its textual elements in new configurations, configurations that work to illuminate a dimension of meaning otherwise occulted.

Political Marketing and Its Conceptual Cousins: Similarities and Distinctions: Émilie Foster (Carleton University), Vincent Raynauld (Emerson College)
Abstract: Back in 1969, Kotler and Levy pioneered the study of the marketing strategies and techniques used to package, promote, and sell political candidates and policies much like commercial goods and services. Since then, research on political marketing —viewed as the complex, but unavoidable, marriage between politics and marketing—has evolved, intensified, and diversified significantly. Despite this growth, political marketing has remained a largely under conceptualized area of study and practice as it stands at the intersection of several interconnected, but distinct, academic disciplines. Among them include political science, communication, psychology, and marketing. Several scholars have argued that existing political marketing research often rests on loosely defined conceptual frameworks lacking clarity and needing more robust ties with other conceptual constructs. This paper addresses and fills this gap in the academic literature. It proposes a more holistic theoretical conceptualization of political marketing that delineates the similarities and distinctions it has with its conceptual cousins, including campaign professionalization, Americanization, permanent campaign, and political advertising. Through a comparative analysis, the paper leverages existing marketing theoretical frameworks to compare and contrast these concepts as well as positions political marketing within its conceptual ecosystem. Specifically, it utilizes visual tools like non-intersecting Venn diagrams to map the theoretical landscape in which political marketing inserts itself. In doing so, this paper spotlights the features of political marketing that go beyond campaign strategies and that influence political practices as well democratic life. More importantly, it lays the groundwork for additional research work in this area of political marketing.

Kino-politics and growth: towards a critique of momentum: Joshua Ayer (University of Alberta)
Abstract: Kino-politics refers to the study of politics from a motion-centric perspective, in contrast to the majority of political analyses which treat the movement of goods, resources, and people as a secondary phenomenon. Thus far, the kino-political literature has dwelled primarily on the particular social flows (e.g., immigrants) and their sites of regulation (e.g., the border). This paper builds on the kino-political literature by theorizing a kino-centric critique of momentum in the context of economic growth. Economic growth is often criticized as an ideology that prevents meaningful action on climate policy. Namely, that pursuing 'green' alternatives to the status quo is only feasible if it contributes to economic growth. This paper synthesizes work in new materialism, post-Marxism, and kino-politics to conceptualize momentum as a specific form of kino-power that best explains the tensions between climate policy and economic growth. The paper begins with an overview of the kino-political paradigm, moves to a conceptualization of momentum, and concludes with a discussion of the specific apparatuses that maintain the political momentum of economic growth.