THE POLITICS OF ARENDTIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: EUROPEAN FEDERATION AND<i>THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM</i>

Selinger, William

doi:10.1017/s1479244314000560

Cited by 53 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…lies in a new European federal system.” The “territorial” conception of the nation, she added, was undergoing a much-needed revision (2007, 129–130). Arendt also observed that the British Empire reveals the “rudiments of a new arrangement” in a “distorted form”—for different peoples had been coexisting under the shared commonwealth without losing their nationality (2007, 130; on Arendt’s federalism, see Selinger 2016). As recent scholarship has demonstrated, Arendt’s prescient observation regarding the future of “small peoples” was shared by anticolonial thinkers across Asia and Africa.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between the Many and the One: Anticolonial Federalism and Popular Sovereignty

Sultan

2021

Political Theory

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Recovering a marginal body of pluralist political thought from early twentieth-century India, this article explores how the question of popular sovereignty shaped the federalist reconfiguration of the anticolonial democratic project. The turn to federalism was facilitated by the Indian reckoning with Hegel in the late nineteenth century, which led to the diagnosis that the universality ascribed to monist sovereignty relies on a “unilinear” theory of development. Through a sustained engagement with British pluralist and American progressive thought, Indian federalist thinkers eventually developed a many-willed conception of the people. In so doing, they hoped to overcome the denial of Indian peoplehood on the ground of its lack of national unity and historical backwardness. However, the alternative source of sovereignty the federalists pointed to—plural and many-willed—stood in tension with their simultaneous pursuit of a people speaking in one voice. In this way, the constitutive tension of the pluralist conception of sovereignty came strikingly alive in the colonial world.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between the Many and the One: Anticolonial Federalism and Popular Sovereignty

Sultan

2021

Political Theory

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“…Similar issues in the relationship of action, power, and law can be raised regarding the international application of Arendt's arguments about federalism. Several works in Arendt studies engage with international federation, or what Arendt envisions as "a world-wide federated structure," by tracing her writings on postwar European reconstruction and Israel-Palestine relations (Arendt, 1968, p. 93;Rubin, 2015;Selinger, 2016;Ashcroft, 2017;Lederman, 2019). Early IR scholarship that attends to Arendt's thoughts seldom elaborates the international implications of her federalism (Owens, 2007, p. 145;Hayden, 2009, p. 26;Lang & Williams, 2005).…”

Section: International Federationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hannah Arendt and International Relations

Lee¹

2021

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies

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International relations (IR) scholars have increasingly integrated Hannah Arendt into their works. Her fierce critique of the conventional ideas of politics driven by rulership, enforcement, and violence has a particular resonance for theorists seeking to critically revisit the basic assumptions of IR scholarship. Arendt’s thinking, however, contains complexity and nuance that need careful treatment when extended beyond domestic politics. In particular, Arendt’s vision of free politics—characterized by the dualistic emphasis on agonistic action and institutional stability—raises two crucial issues that need further elaboration for IR research that appropriates her thinking. One involves the orientation of her international thoughts. Although Arendt showed “idealistic” aspirations for authentic politics practiced by diverse equals in an institutionally articulated space of freedom, she never lost interest in the extant situation of “non-idealistic” politics. Engaging with Arendt’s theory orientation requires a careful analysis of difficult topics, such as her distinctive conception of the political and her critiques of the nation-state and international law. The other topic that needs clarification when Arendt’s thoughts are applied to IR involves specific ways of associating different sites of power. A close examination of Arendt’s council-based federalism reveals her distinctive idea of international politics, based on her acute awareness of the fundamental complexity that lies in power association and state agency. Bringing IR topics like state agency into conversation with her works generates illuminating questions for Arendt scholarship. Likewise, the ongoing debate on agonistic and institutional features of Arendt’s thoughts can provide crucial insights into critical studies of international politics.

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“…Subsequent interpretation of Arendt's writings suggest several different critiques at work. Firstly, Arendt argues that the collapse of the European nation-state was the result of nineteenth-century imperialism, anti-Semitism, and the European colonial project (Selinger 2016): 'Unquestionably fascism has been once defeated, but we are far from having completely eradicated this arch-evil of our time. For its roots are strong and they are called Anti-Semitism, Racism, Imperialism' (Arendt 1945in Kohn 1994.…”

Section: Development Of Critical Social Theory Through Critiquementioning

confidence: 99%

The Routledge Handbook of Critical European Studies

Manners

2020

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Origins of critical social theory of emancipationCritical Social Theory (CST), in its broadest sense, is a transdisciplinary approach to the social sciences that applies critique to the status quo in order to emancipate humans and the planet from the negative consequences of modernity.A broad understanding of CST includes historical materialism, Frankfurt School theory, cultural theory, poststructural theory, feminist theory, and postcolonial theory (Manners 2018a, 322-3). For example, Craig Calhoun's seminal 1995 study of CST included engagements with Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas' Frankfurt School; Derrida and Foucault's postmodernism; Bourdieu's habitus, field, and capital; Haraway and Fraser's feminist theory; and hooks and Spivak's politics of identity and recognition.The transdisciplinary approach of CST demands the reorganisation of disciplinary practices in order to transgress and transcend pre-existing frames of knowledge organisation found in the social sciences and humanities, in particular history, sociology, economics, ecology, and politics. In this context, CST is an 'interpenetrating body of work which demands and produces critique … [that] depends on some manner of historical understanding and analysis' (Calhoun 1995, 35). This historically-grounded critique is essential because 'theory is always for someone and for some purpose' since 'theory constitutes as well as explains the questions it asks (and those it does not ask)' (Cox 1981, 128; Hoskyns 2004, 224). Scholarship and activism within CST is concerned with understanding how 'tradition', the 'status quo', and the 'mainstream' are self-perpetuating practices of modernity that have significantly negative consequences for humans, society, and the planet as a whole.As Max Horkheimer put it in 1937, these conditions necessitate a 'critical theory of society as it is, a theory dominated at every turn by a concern for reasonable conditions of life' (Horkheimer 1972(Horkheimer [1937. As discussed in the final section on imagining another Europe is possible, CST is different to the other critical theoretical approaches in setting out a holistic, ecological, and progressive approach to the planetary politics that characterise the 21st century.This contribution is a continuation and development of two decades of work on CSTs of European integration including 'unconventional explanations', 'critical perspectives', and 'dissident voices' that help make 'another theory ' and 'another Europe' possible (Manners and Whitman 2003;Manners 2007;Manners and Whitman 2016), building on the intellectual heritage

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THE POLITICS OF ARENDTIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: EUROPEAN FEDERATION ANDTHE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM

Cited by 53 publications

References 22 publications

Between the Many and the One: Anticolonial Federalism and Popular Sovereignty

Between the Many and the One: Anticolonial Federalism and Popular Sovereignty

Hannah Arendt and International Relations

The Routledge Handbook of Critical European Studies

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