HannahArendt.net (E-Journal)
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Gisli Vogler: Judging Complicity. How to Respond to Injustice and Violence, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024, 200 pp., Open Access
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Astrid Hähnlein: Urteilen und Ereignis. Zur Theorie politischen Denkens nach Hannah Arendt und Karl Jaspers, Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2023, 237 S., 50,00 EUR
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Sarah Schulman: Let the Record Show. A Political History of ACT UP New York. 1987-1993, New York: Picador. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021, 736 S., gebunden: 40 EUR, Taschenbuch: 24 EUR, eBook: 18,50 EUR
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Das Verhältnis von Arbeit und Welt: Hannah Arendt, Emanuel Levinas, Eugen Fink und Donna J. Haraway im Polylog
Full text linkSo uneindeutig das Verständnis von Welt wie auch von Arbeit sind, so widersprüchlich sind die Antworten auf ihr Verhältnis. Stehen beide in einem Fundierungsverhältnis mit unserer Wirklichkeit, so wird mit ihnen die Entfaltung des Menschen in seiner existenziellen Dimension thematisiert, insofern es um nicht mehr und nicht weniger als unser konkretes Leben geht.
Ob Welt und Arbeit als einander gegenüberstehende oder einander fundierende Dimensionen verstanden werden, ist ebenso bedeutsam für unser menschliches Miteinander und auch das Geflecht des konkreten Lebens im allumfassenden Sinne, wie die Verortung der Arbeit im individuellen und/ oder intersubjektiven Bereich. Arendts, Levinas, Finks und Haraways Ansatz werden diesbezüglich in Stellung gebracht, um der Frage nach der Wirkkraft der Arbeit nachzugehen, den Facettenreichtum der Arbeit zu entdecken und damit schließlich einen Möglichkeitshorizont von uns zu erkunden.As ambiguous as the understanding of the world and of work are, the answers to their relationship to each other are just as contradictory. If both are in a foundational relationship with our reality, they address the development of the human being in its existential dimension, insofar as it is about nothing more and nothing less than our concrete life.
Whether world and work are understood as opposing or mutually underpinning dimensions is just as important for our human coexistence and the web of concrete life in an all-encompassing sense as the location of work in the individual and/or intersubjective sphere. Arendt's, Levinas', Fink's and Haraway's approaches are positioned in this respect in order to pursue the question of the effectiveness of work, to discover the many facets of work and thus ultimately to explore a horizon of possibilities for us
Maria Robaszkiewicz and Michael D. Weinman: Hannah Arendt and Politics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023, 232 pp., 24,59 EUR
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Here and Elsewhere: Phenomenological Reflections on the Time and Space of Mass Street Protests
Full text linkThis paper pursues a phenomenological clarification of the spatial and temporal constitution of the mass street protest experience. To bring into view its unique structure and meaning, I consider how a mass street protest is comparable to but importantly unlike other forms of resistant collective action that take place in public spaces: in particular, scenes of violent revolt (I draw on Sartre’s analysis of the storming of the Bastille in the Critique of Dialectical Reason) and Arendtian “spaces of appearance” that emerge in the context of revolutionary activity. I then argue that a crucial feature of the mass protest experience is that the protest always also takes place elsewhere and that it is an experience of what I call “the middle.” I conclude with reflections on what it might mean for a democratic politics to speak to and out of this feature of the experience. Drawing on Arendt, I propose an art of storytelling and historical comprehension. This paper pursues a phenomenological clarification of the spatial and temporal constitution of the mass protest experience. I argue that important features of its unique structure can guide an exploration of its significance and potential. I begin by bringing some of these into relief by considering how a mass street protest is unlike other forms of resistant collective action that take place in public spaces: in particular, scenes of violent revolt (I draw on Sartre’s analysis of the storming of the Bastille in The Critique of Dialectical Reason) and Arendtian “spaces of appearance” that emerge in the context of revolutionary activity. I then argue that a crucial feature of the mass protest is that it always also takes place elsewhere. This can be understood both spatially (it happens in other neighborhoods, in other cities, perhaps in other countries; it may be broadcasted to spectators all over) and temporally (mass protests inevitably recall and seem to participate in past protests and portend future ones). This is not simply a matter of resemblance, but part of their internal sense. They should therefore not be understood as beginnings but as experiences of what I call “the middle.” One is always in the middle of a crowd and in the middle of an arc of political time. I conclude with reflections on what it might mean for a democratic politics to speak to and out of this feature of the mass protest experience. Drawing on Arendt, I propose an art of storytelling and historical comprehension. What requires illumination and expression, I contend, are modes of co-belonging and solidarity with distant others, in time and space, and the massiveness of the problems that define our contemporary situation
'The Wheel is Crooked': Hannah Arendt, action, public happiness, success, and the role for other emotions in political action
No full textIn “Action and the ‘Pursuit of Happiness,’” Hannah Arendt tells the story of “an inveterate gambler” who arrives late in a town and goes straight to the gambling place, where he discovers that the wheel he wishes to gamble on is crooked. He gambles anyway, because there is no other wheel in town. The story, she suggests, “tells us that there exists such intense happiness in acting that the actor, like the gambler, will accept that all the odds are stacked against him.” In this article I use this story as a motif to investigate references to success in Arendt’s work. I argue that Arendt sought to preclude action and happiness from utilitarian notions of success, and that she ultimately presents the human impulse toward action as tragic. I also discuss the role of the historian or poet in this tragedy, concluding that what remains unclear in Arendt’s work is how the public happiness of the actor and the pleasure of the historian and poet are related.In this article I show that Hannah Arendt sought to rescue action and public happiness from utilitarian notions of success, such that we can understand why human beings engage in political action even when the likelihood of successfully achieving a political aim is low. First, I elucidate Arendt’s claims in a little discussed essay titled “Action and the ‘Pursuit of Happiness’” in which Arendt tells the story of “an inveterate gambler”. In the story, the gambler arrives late in a town, asks to be taken to the only gambling wheel in town, and is eager to play even though he is told that the wheel is crooked. Arendt explains that the story, “tells us that there exists such intense happiness in acting that the actor, like the gambler, will accept that all the odds are stacked against him.” Second, I show that for Arendt, this story shows that public happiness is not dependent on success. At the end of Thinking, the first volume of The Life of the Mind, Arendt turns to the following phrase, attributed to Cato the Elder: “The victorious cause pleased the gods, but the defeated one pleases Cato.” Cato was a soldier, a politician, and an historian. He was also—it goes almost without saying—human, that is, not a god. I show that the defeated cause pleases the historian and human being precisely because it is incomplete, imperfect, and thus human. Meanwhile, the complete, successful cause, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, pleases the gods. It is only in the defeated cause that the joy of speaking and acting together shows itself for what it is, since it is separated from the joy of success. Third, I temper Arendt’s account of public happiness, by arguing that her observations regarding public happiness do not preclude the need for other emotions to be involved in motivating human beings to engage in political action. Political action is not simply the joyful coming together of human beings in protest or conversation, but must have a content, must have a specific aim participants wish to achieve, which will often be a response to injustice. To make this claim I turn to Myisha Cherry’s work on anger, and more specifically on what she calls Lordean rage. In the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests, Cherry argues convincingly that there is a role for rage in political struggle and discourse. Lordean rage is a response to a specific form of injustice: racism. Cherry argues for a role for Lordean rage precisely because it can motivate political action, and she offers several practical ways in which both people of colour and allies can harness rage positively and productively. In this article I conclude that public happiness and Lordean rage, as well as other emotions in other contexts, can coexist, and that protestors can be both motivated by emotions such as Lordean rage and feel a sense of joy at acting together
“Just go back to your place!” Women and the Politics of Contested Public Spaces
Full text linkWomen have been part of political movements and uprisings throughout the modern age. Why is it that the overall perception is otherwise, namely that the political and public sphere are inimical, if not hostile to women and that “women’s place” is considered to be elsewhere, above all away from the light of the public? In my essay I examine the notion of “public space/spaces” understood in the Arendtian sense of a space that is created when people, in their plurality, come together as exemplify by women’s action within the Italian Resistenza. That women’s presence in public spaces appears still contentious is indicative of a notion of the political that precludes and excludes women as speakers and as agents, the legacy of a past that has forced women to the private sphere calling it “their place.” It is therefore crucial to revisit the relationship between“public” and “private” so that the complex play of visibility-invisibility, of political affirmation and political exclusion come fully to the fore, and the public space reveals itself as the site for reinforcing existing relations but also the site for their subversionWomen have been part of political movements and uprisings throughout the modern age. Why is it that the overall perception is otherwise, namely that the political and public sphere are inimical, if not hostile to women and that “women’s place” is considered to be elsewhere, above all away from the light of the public? In my essay I examine the notion of “public space/spaces” understood in the Arendtian sense of a space that is created when people, in their plurality, come together as exemplify by women’s action within the Italian Resistenza. That women’s presence in public spaces appears still contentious is indicative of a notion of the political that precludes and excludes women as speakers and as agents, the legacy of a past that has forced women to the private sphere calling it “their place.” It is therefore crucial to revisit the relationship between“public” and “private” so that the complex play of visibility-invisibility, of political affirmation and political exclusion come fully to the fore, and the public space reveals itself as the site for reinforcing existing relations but also the site for their subversion
Judging the Masses: Spectatorship, Action, and Politics in Arendt’s Critique of the Masses
Full text linkThis paper focuses on Arendt’s treatment of the masses and uses Arendt’s methodological commitments to contingency and intersubjectively constituted truth-claims to read against her own overdetermined conclusions about the antipolitical fate of the masses. Drawing on Arendt’s own appraisals of certain episodes of mobilization and revolutionary politics, most notably the Hungarian Revolution, this paper shows how masses are not inherently sites of depersonalization as Arendt claims. Rather, masses can allow for the individual appearance, action, and judging that Arendt herself frames as the foundation of freedom and politics. This paper distinguishes between masses as an historical reality as opposed to a representative term, showing how Arendt’s commitment to the former obscures both the diverse array of street politics that she reduces into the masses and how her conclusions rely upon her own subjective judgments. As quintessentially public events and spaces, masses are shaped by the judgments of both those within and outside the mobilization in question. Turning to Arendt and Linda Zerilli’s theories of judging, this paper emphasizes how judging is a practice which can define masses as political (or not). This does not mean that there are no evaluative standards with which to differentiate mobilizations. Rather, this paper shows how Arendt’s theory is flexible enough to recover a more contingent, political reading of masses without collapsing distinctions between antidemocratic and democratic mobilizations.This paper focuses on Arendt’s treatment of the masses and uses Arendt’s methodological commitments to contingency and intersubjectively constituted truth-claims to read against her own overdetermined conclusions about the antipolitical fate of the masses. Drawing on Arendt’s own appraisals of certain episodes of mobilization and revolutionary politics, most notably the Hungarian Revolution, this paper shows how masses are not inherently sites of depersonalization as Arendt claims. Rather, masses can allow for the individual appearance, action, and judging that Arendt herself frames as the foundation of freedom and politics. This paper distinguishes between masses as an historical reality as opposed to a representative term, showing how Arendt’s commitment to the former obscures both the diverse array of street politics that she reduces into the masses and how her conclusions rely upon her own subjective judgments. As quintessentially public events and spaces, masses are shaped by the judgments of both those within and outside the mobilization in question. Turning to Arendt and Linda Zerilli’s theories of judging, this paper emphasizes how judging is a practice which can define masses as political (or not). This does not mean that there are no evaluative standards with which to differentiate mobilizations. Rather, this paper shows how Arendt’s theory is flexible enough to recover a more contingent, political reading of masses without collapsing distinctions between antidemocratic and democratic mobilizations