Approaching Definitions - What is Power?

A preliminary set of thoughts on the elusive notion of power - both as an expression of agency, and as a reflection of structure, concluding with an appeal to the primacy of Love...

Approaching Definitions - What are the 'Left' and the 'Right'?

In this video, we consider the notions of the 'Left' and the 'Right' as poles of the political spectrum, briefly recapitulating the history of the terms in this sense, and considering their implications of political and economic matters...

Approaching Definitions - What is the State?

In this consideration, we look to the distinction between the 'government' and the 'State', cashing out some of the implications in that distinction, and how the notion of the State as constitutive of a society's or group's identity gives rise to serious questions...

Approaching Definitions - What is Religion?

Here we look at the notion of religion, understanding a religion as a cultural or symbolic framework or set of practices, ideas, etc. that aims to orient the human person and species within the broader cosmic or universal context: the consequences are several, including that it recasts certain aspects of the scientific project itself as having a deeply religious ground, and its renders the relationship of the religious and the political as a close one...

Approaching Definitions - What is Science?

In this meditation upon science, we point to certain crucial distinctions, such as that between science as a methodology, as opposed to science as a body of theory, noting that efforts to the contrary notwithstanding, it is an all but inevitably political practice.

Approaching Definitions - What is Gender?

In this reflection, we briefly recapitulate the broadly accepted notion that sex is a reflection of biology, gender social construction, but turn quickly to the suggestion of Judith Butler that even this seemingly uncontroversial couching of the matter is problematic. Perhaps the body itself is far more the outcome of a constructed process than is immediately obvious? Certainly, turning our thoughts in the direction of this analysis, we are led to look at identity itself in a different, dramatically different light.

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Approaching Definitions - What is Race?

Here, we offer some thoughts on the notion of race. We investigate the measure to which race is a social construction serving to conceal relations of power, rather than a category rooted in any 'intrinsic' or 'biologically determined' reality. In the latter connection, we allude to the manner in which an appeal to 'scientific' or 'scientistic' vocabulary often serves to conceal and distract from the injustices created by racial division, pointing to the need to consider more carefully what is intended by 'scientific discourse'. We look also at the analogous dynamics which arise in connection with ethnicity, and draw somewhat on the analysis of Franz Fanon.

Approaching Definitions - What is Class?

In this video, we take up the question of class, which flows readily enough out of our previous discussions of capitalism and socialism. Class, or the segmentation of a community, can unfold in various ways, or, according to different 'critera', whether they be economic, racial, ethnic or gendered in aspect. It becomes of import for us though as what accompanies that segmentation is a differential attribution of power that translates into an iniquity which is at odds with egality as a cardinal human value. This maldistribution is often masked by an appeal to 'necessities', but is ultimately the outcome of consensus, and thus amenable to to change. In fact, it is imperative that we work to move to such a change.

Approaching Definitions - What is Socialism?

In this consideration, we take up the notion of socialism, which has come into greater prominence in the past few years. There is a welter of confusion around this concept, perhaps especially in an American context where it is often associated with the deployment of state to constrain the effects of so called market excess, or in fuller expression, to appropriation of private property to the state altogether. However, this is a flawed apprehension in two senses. On the one hand, at least under the first sense, a kind of compatibility is mooted between a market framework and the assumption of socialism which casts the task of the latter as the maintenance of the former. However, such an order of priority inverts the real end of socialism - namely the realization of a society where economic decisions are altogether subordinated to the attainment of the broader social good. Insofar as the market frameworks are structurally indifferent, and at times hostile to that good, there is likely an ultimate incommensurability between their perpetuation and socialism. On the other hand, the assimilation of property to the state, as in part happened under the Soviet or Maoist projects is also problematic as it can countenance an enormous coercive assertion on the state's part. Reliance on force stands in obvious tension with the aforementioned notion of socialism as aiming to broad social good. In both cases of misunderstanding, what in effect is happening is a reduction of socialism to a mode of economy or politics. However, socialism is a vision which transcends such a reduction, one which  should, by contrast, guide economy or politics rather than be determined by them.

Approaching Definitions - What is Capitalism?

In this initial reflection, we begin to approach a definition of that crucial term 'capitalism'. At first, we draw largely on the initial posing of the term by classical political economy and Marx's reading of it, then turning to the tensions between that account, and the colloquial manner in which the word 'capitalism' is often used. In the course of our considerations, it becomes evident both that the definition of capitalism will require both a clarification of prior 'presupposed' notions, and that it quickly opens up to engagement with other broader social and political questions.