Liturgy, Art and Politics

This article examines the category of "liturgy" in its relation to aesthetics, ethics and politics. It is argued that liturgy occupies a unique mediating position between art and politics, for, on the one hand, it ensures that the political points perpetually beyond itself, and, on the other hand, the artistic is prevented from lapsing into a "magic circle" of compensatory reality or merely "fine" art. Alternative aesthetic formulations, for example, that of Adorno, are examined and shown to be problematic and ultimately nihilistic and unrealizable. By contrast, a liturgical aesthetic is shown to have a genuine ethical practicability. Modernity is then examined. It is argued that late capitalist structures—including (contra Paul Piccone) is apparently opposed structures, such a post-Fordist organicism—can be seen as a kind of anti-liturgy liturgy, or, one might say here, "ritual" (for all the latter term's more dubious post-nineteenth century assumptions can here be assumed), which has produced an entirely self-perpetuating minimal automated subjectivity. Finally, it is concluded that the manifold problems faced by non-liturgical aesthetics and politics can be reduced to this separation of the ideal from the real. This separation is further examined. The lineaments of a specific liturgical tradition—in this case, the Christian—and especially its eucharistic focus—are analyzed, and it is suggested that here one might find suggestions as to a fusion of the ideal and the real, and hence indications of how one might begin to outwit several of the problems in aesthetic and political theory already shown to involve difficulties.     

Art,Politics, and the Pedagogical Relation

In recent years the French philosopher Jacques Rancière has addressed the predicament of artists and curators who, in their eagerness to convey a critical message or engage their viewers in an emancipatory process, end up predetermining the outcomes of the experience, hence blocking its critical or emancipatory potential. In this essay I consider Rancière’s writing on this topic and draw out the parallels with the predicament of teachers and curriculum designers who have critical and emancipatory objectives. The risk of education that strives for emancipation is that it can become so directive in steering students to the “right” outcomes that it does not leave these students any intellectual room. Rancière’s work is helpful in reminding us that teachers and curricula with explicitly critical, political, emancipatory objectives can defeat their own purposes and become stultifying if they do not leave the student room to use her or his own intelligence.     

Happiness, Economics and Public Policy: A Critique

If politicians and their advisers want to promote the well-being or happiness of citizens they have three ways to find out what they should do. (1) They can analyse the behaviour and the decisions of citizens to find out what they want, in other words: they can try to identify their “revealed preferences”. This is common practice in economics. (2) They can analyse the “stated preferences” of people as they express them explicitly in inquiries, referenda, polls and elections. (3) They can analyse the conditions that make people happy by comparing the conditions of people at different levels of happiness. Economists, like Helen Johns and Paul Ormerod, have an outspoken preference for the first option and they are sceptical about the third. Their argument is unbalanced because they are too critical about the authenticity and complexity of self-reported happiness and not critical enough about the authenticity and complexity of revealed preferences. Economists should appreciate the comparative advantages and additional value of each option and try to find optimal combinations with synergistic effects. Economists should appreciate happiness research as an option to assess the nature and magnitude of “externalities” within their own discipline.     

Public Art and Dewey's Democratic Experience: The Case of John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls

The aesthetic and political sides of public art have recently been examined from different theoretical vantage points. Pragmatist accounts, however, have been largely absent from the discussion. This article develops a theory of public art on some central ideas of John Dewey's aesthetics and social philosophy. From a pragmatist perspective, the best cases of public art turn out to have high social significance, for they are means of promoting the sense of community, which Dewey saw as foundational for well‐functioning democracies. The Deweyan account of public art developed in this article is set against theories that explain its social value by public artworks’ ability to disrupt people's everyday routines and beliefs, as well as by the political alertness they often raise. Diana Boros's recent treatment of what she calls “visionary public art” serves as the main specimen of this approach. The Deweyan understanding of public art is illuminated and defended with the help of a reading of John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls—a piece composed in memory of the victims of 9/11—that highlights its capacity to generate such communal experiences that have a fundamental role in Dewey's theory of democracy.     

Between Ethics and Right: Kantian Politics and Democratic Purposes

Force and Freedom insists that, ‘Freedom, understood as independence of another person's choice, is [all] that matters’. In this paper I suggest that this premise leads Ripstein to an instrumentalization of democracy that neglects a properly public and collective notion of freedom. The paper first criticizes Ripstein's key argument against any extension of public purposes beyond the upholding of persons’ ‘independence of others’ choice’. More constructively, the paper then suggests that a space of public freedom is opened up when people deliberate in order to form and pursue democratic purposes. Citizens may act together to promote ends that they think are worthwhile, without dominating one another or restricting individual freedom.     

Role of Art in Politics: Popper and Marcuse

The aim of the paper is to explore the role of art in politics and understand the limitations of the liberal model of state with respect to aesthetic freedom. This paper critically engages with the claim that political action should be directed towards specific goals that can be rationally justified. It argues that this approach is exclusionary in nature as it leaves little room for art and creative communication. It attempts to do so through the contrasting philosophies of Popper and Marcuse.

     

Public Reason, Objectivity, and Journalism in Liberal Democratic Societies

How should we understand the familiar demand that journalists ‘be objective’? One possibility is that journalists are under an obligation to report only the facts of the matter. However, facts need to be interpreted, selected, and communicated. How can this be done objectively? This paper aims to explain the concept of journalistic objectivity in methodological terms. Specifically, I will argue that the ideal of journalistic objectivity should be recast as a commitment to John Rawls’s conception of public reason. Journalism plays a vital role in the operation of all modern liberal democracies, functioning as the public watchdog, the fourth estate, or the conduit through which vital information flows to the citizenry. Journalism is, therefore, an institution that is best understood as part of the basic structure of society. In Political Liberalism, Rawls explicitly excludes media of any kind from the demands of public reason because he doesn’t think that they play a political role that is important enough to bring them under the official auspices of public reason. I will argue that overlooking the political significance of journalism is a mistake, but one that can be corrected while keeping within the spirit and most important elements of his theory. This revision will widen the scope for what counts as journalism beyond traditional outlets and forms of media but will impose the demands of public reason on anyone who intends to participate in the institution.     

The Politics and Economics of Computer-Aided Careers Guidance Systems

The impact of computer-aided careers guidance systems is strongly influenced not only by technical and professional issues but also by political and economic ones. The development of the main North American systems, and of the UK PROSPECT system, is examined. The roles of government, of the private sector, and of guidance professionals, in relation to the future of such systems are discussed, particularly in relation to guidance in Europe.     

Parental Involvement and Public Schools: Disappearing Mothers in Labor and Politics

In this article, I argue that the material and rhetorical connection between “parental involvement” and motherhood has the effect of making two important features of parental involvement disappear. Both of these features need to be taken into account to think through the positive and negative effects of parental involvement in public schooling. First, parental involvement is labor. In the following section of this paper, I discuss the work of feminist scholars who have brought this to light. Second, parental involvement remains one of the most significant ways in which citizens participate in the public sphere. While education reform projects centered on parental involvement do show some recognition that what parents/mothers do is in fact work, even as they ignore the gendered dimensions of this work and sunnily demand that parents do ever more of it, these projects resist the recognition that parents’/mothers’ involvement is also political.     

Kaci Hickox: Public Health and the Politics of Fear

Kaci Hickox was a nurse who worked with persons who were infected with Ebola in West Africa. When she returned to the United States, the governors of New Jersey and Maine intervened to confine her to inpatient quarantine despite the fact that she was asymptomatic and had no serological evidence of infection. She defied the quarantine which resulted in enormous public attention and discussion of quarantine and public fear. This article summarizes the case discussing the history of the case, the government actions, and the final legal rulings.