Political Theory

H19(b) - Political Theory and Epistemology

Date: Jun 5 | Time: 01:45pm to 03:15pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Alexis Bibeau (University of Virginia)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Kaitie Jourdeuil (Queen's University)

The Principle of Pooh: Reading Children’s Literature as Political Theory: Martha Pitre (McGill University)
Abstract: Works of children’s fiction, rich with varied depictions of ideal worlds and transformative possibilities, are rarely considered within the tradition of utopian political thought. Why is this, and why does it matter? To answer this question, the paper examines Ernst Bloch’s The Principle of Hope (1954) alongside A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). The paper aims to demonstrate that recognizing children’s literature as part of the utopian tradition necessitates reconceptualizing the child as an equal subject. The argument unfolds in three parts. In Part I, I deconstruct Bloch's conceptualization of the child subject and the time of childhood, highlighting issues with his highly idealized treatment. In Part II, I defend the classification of Milne’s Pooh stories as works of utopian literature, drawing on the three evaluative dimensions proposed by Ruth Levitas (1990): content, form and function. The third section focuses more narrowly on how Milne’s Pooh works figure within the Blochian framework, arguing that the works reveal moments of concrete utopia by: (1) breaking down the “contents of fear” (Bloch, 5); (2) providing “open space [for] its object which is to be realized and which realizes itself forward” (Bloch, 156); and (3) exploring the abstract principles for human flourishing. Given that Bloch’s notion of concrete utopia depends on a connection between what is imagined and the Real-Possible, I argue that this interpretation ultimately requires that the child subject is regarded as a competent interpreter of the Real-Possible.

The Epistemology of Dissent: Understanding protests and the present: Marta Bashovski (Campion College at the University of Regina)
Abstract: This paper examines the significance of the politics of classification to how activists, scholars, popular commentators have come to understand and study practices of protest and dissent. Examining both contemporaneous and retrospective progressivist commentaries on the 2009-2013 wave of global protests, I argue that commentators do not pay enough attention to the epistemological concepts and practices that constitute, inform, and limit discussions of dissent and political transformation. A key part of this epistemological and political gap, I suggest, is due to specific, and specifically limited, modern modes of diagnosing the emergence of novelty in and of the present. To make these arguments, I first work with Foucault’s essays on the Enlightenment to describe the specific mode of novelty associated with modern knowledge. I then work with Foucault’s archaeological studies to examine how the lack of attention paid to the politics of classification in progressive political analysis is symptomatic of a hegemony of particular classificatory practices and categories associated with the emancipatory promises of Enlightenment thought, on the one hand, and Marxian thought on the other. In this situation, as Nandy has argued, dissent articulated otherwise than these categories, is rendered “inaudible” (1989). To take seriously the question of dissent, I conclude that we must take into account the epistemological inheritances within which our claims about practices of dissent are located.

Sects and Violence: Hobbes’ and Descartes on the Political Problem of Disagreement for a Post-Truth Era: Tyler Chamberlain (Trinity Western University)
Abstract: We live in an age characterized by the politics of alternative facts, conspiracy theories, and a general lack of agreement on matters of fact. It increasingly seems that rival political factions are divided less by different conceptions of what should be the case than by different opinions concerning what is the case. The negative political consequences of this are manifold. The political thinkers of the early modern period were motivated by similar considerations. This paper will analyze and compare two conceptions of and solutions to this problem, namely from Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes. Descartes’ individualist solution prioritizes right reasoning on the part of each individual – if we could all follow the proper method then metaphysical agreement might be possible – whereas Hobbes’ statist solution replaces the individual’s private conscience with the public conscience of the sovereign. The conclusion will develop some contemporary implications of each solution and attempt to situate them in relation to the epistemological situation of our post-truth era.

Defending Critical Epistemology: its Essential Role in the Decolonization of Political Science: Missila Izza (Université de Montréal)
Abstract: Is the field that has built its own legitimacy on preventing totalitarian or fascist resurgence in a state to do so? In this proposal I argue that political science can only be a valid scientific field by decolonizing its epistemological framework, starting with the idea of progress. By demonstrating its role in creating and maintaining a colonial epistemological framework in political science despite methodological and linguistic changes, I seek to find avenues for the decolonization of its historical and temporal categories. Deconstructing Habermas and Honneth’s normative grounding in the idea of historical progress and echoing Said’s (1993) criticism that the Frankfurt School – from its inception – espouses a “blithe universalism” that “incorporate(s) the inequality of races” and “the subordination of inferior cultures”, Amy Allen calls for the decolonization of critical theory’s normative grounding. This proposal demonstrates that political science’s normative grounding espouses the same “blithe universalism”, doubled by its blindness towards the ideological nature of notions like “historical stages”, “development” or the belief that conformity to Western economic practices lead to (modern liberal) democracy (Lipset, 1959), seen as the ultimate political regime (Fukuyama, 1992). The empirical basis for historical stages “remains weak just because the idea becomes embedded in the conceptual framework of social sciences.” (Bhambra, 2007) Thus, the burden of proof is put on those who hold diverging epistemological understandings of history, on both sides of the research process. Without a radical epistemological regrounding, neither epistemic position can access equal belonging to the social-political world. PhD supervisor : Pascale Devette, Political Science, Université de Montréal. pascale.devette@umontreal.ca