Les 2: 7 oktober
Political Theory
Political theory discusses the concept of politics (= betwiste / contested concept
Politics = ‘a mechanism / a process involving many actors for resolving conflicts regarding
who gets what, when and how’. Politics is everywhere, pervades all human relations /
interaction (everywhere, so also in your home, your friends group, in class,…)
Political theory = defining who should get what, when and how (normative thinking).
= Discussing and defining what politics should be like (= the ideal of what politics is)
A basic and important question to political theorist = “Who is entitled to ‘the good life’ and
how should this be organized?”
(= who is entitled to get something at a certain moment in a certain way. It is about the
what, so what are the things, the substance that can be negotiated about for giving access
to specific groups in society to material goods)
What political values, practices and institutions should we put in place to improve the world
we live in?
= value based activity, hence diverse results
= context & time specific, hence evolution
You can approach these questions of how should it work in very different ways, from
different positions. And these are linked to the very specific positions that also political
theorists occupy in society.
The ideal of how politics should work is in constant evolution. This is something that keeps
pace (tempo) with evolutions in society and there are heated debates about what politics
should be like.
The Good Life: who (dis)qualifies and what is it?
= who is entitled for the good life as a good citizen with full access to all freedoms, liberty,
rights and duties?
= a very fundamental question to which various answers has been giving throughout
centuries of political theory.
17th C English philosopher and political theorist: John Locke
His political thinking was the foundation for a lot of institutions, like the constitution how
electrical systems were designed, how parliaments representative democratic institutions
were then formed.
Who qualifies for the good life according to John Locke?
Wealthy, white men qualify for the good life because they are ‘rational and industrial’
(linked to masculinity: what men did and supposed to do) & qualify to own land because of
their traditional masculinity: they make land profitable and support their families.
, you see a link between heterosexuality, masculinity and class coming together. And
ofcourse patriarchy is there too.
This excluded a lot of citizens, like woman. Woman received in a secondary order.
19th C English philosopher: John S. Mill
He responded on the statement before by Locke and said that also property-owning women
should get the right to vote, so they also got the change and the right for the good life.
Based on their feminine characteristics and capacities (like run a household, household
management skills).
he was in favor for more political equality, he did include some woman in the group of
citizens that were entitled for instance to the right to vote. But this was still based on
difference: woman were different than men. But that difference had some quality, notably
that they could run a household. So they had specific skills that were seen usefull for society.
19th C Black sociologist Anna Julia Cooper
Had a completely different approach on this question. Her reasoning is that black woman
had specific qualities and skills that were very usefull to build a good society, to build a
society through politics as it should be.
The qualities that black woman have are that they have the capacity to understand the
intersection of race and gender, how this created specific forms of oppression and that
should be taken into account in building a just and fair society.
20th C theologian Vine Deloria
Had a total different approach. She pointed at the fact that Native Americans had specific
qualities and capacities to define the good life and was based on their philosophy or
theology where personality is adhered to nature and objects. There is not such a clear
distinction between the human sphere and the natural world. These are actually intertwined
and more inclusive ‘Indian knowledge’ and this is very useful to take in account when who
gets what and how.
Not only humans, but it is also nature that is important. And how they are both
intertwined.
21st C academic Martha Nussbaum
Her vision started very much from an female experience where she said that ‘if you don’t
have reproductive rights, when you are as a woman not in controle of your own fertility,
than that hinders human flourishing. So access to the good life could be open to all. It is not
only about voting rights, it is also about reproductive rights.
So who is qualified to partake in the good life and decision making about it, is very strongly
linked to the institutions. The broad sense of institutions is all under the term ‘the state’. The
state is here defined as that conglomerate, this set of institutions that is set in place in
specific countries and nations to organize political life.
Classic liberalism (ideas from John Locke): the small state. The gardian state, a very
small, effective state. ‘Just enough power to secure individual freedom (protect
money and ownership) but not enough to threaten individual liberty and
, opportunity’: equal opportunities to fulfill material needs (minimal amount of
schooling)
Marxism / Communism: Reject small state. State should meet needs of disabled,
elderly,… secure services like transportation, schools, healthcare… in order to have
equality of social and economic outcomes.
(Black feminist Marxists, Claudia Jones, critiques class as the main site of oppression, it is
gendered and racialized – state responsible for remedying)
This is about the ‘how should we organize the political life as it should be?’
Intersectionality ‘is everywhere …’
Who is qualified and disqualified for the Good Life
Eg. Locke – who qualifies defined by class #gender #race
What is needed in order to life the Good Life
Eg. Nussbaum: reproductive rights - #gender #race
The raison d’être of the State
Eg. Jones: black women’s oppression #gender #race
Text on Canvas: Mari Matsuda ‘ask the other question’
“When I see something that looks racist, I ask “where is the patriarchy in this?”. When I see
something that looks sexist, I ask “where is the heterosexism in this?”
‘… also in unexpected places’
Intersectionality is also present in activist movements and in political theorists thinking that
at first glance are very much about establishing political equality and inclusion. But de facto
(in feite) it has been shown that a lot of activists while opening up certain spheres for
specific marginalized groups in society at the same time also keep the door closed for others.
clip (ppt)
Critical Political Theory
= Exposes (racist, sexist elitist / classist) bias in Political Theory Canon:
The ‘who’ and the ‘how’ involves matters of inclusion and exclusion
Many political theorists from Aristotle to Marx not only ignore people of color and women,
but they explicitly exclude them from who are considered full citizends and from decision-
making powers (the how).
The ‘what’ is based on specific embodied experiences
, The what is based on conflation of white, elite European men’s experiences whit human
experience (Mary Hawkesworth).
Does it matter?
Theory has real-world effects:
Underpin constitutions and laws
Build political institutions and practices
(de)legitimizes
o Interests, claims, whishes and dreams
o Politcal behavior: individual and collective
Theory = power
Political Theory matters because it defines who is entitled, but also what is a legitimate
claim, what kind of interests are seen as relevant as political salient.
Critical is not cancel
The critical component of critical theory is about exposing biases and unfairness and
injustice, explaining where they come from (what are the roots of this way of thinking),
discussing solutions (identify remedies to make it better).
It is about imagination also, imagining what a better future looks like and can look like and
identify ways in which we can reduce oppression and increase human freedom: call to
action.
Mari Matsuda critical race theory (audio)
Expose: Racism, sexism, classism by intersectional analysis of how politics and power work
Explain: Where these ideas (white supremacy) come from (colonialism, slavery), how they
are deployed and today still structure our institutions, laws and social life
Remedy:
Not at individual level, but institutional: affirmative action to tackle bias, ‘door
closing’, affirmatively paying attention to inclusion
Imaginative / utopian thinking: the world as it should be and then work together to
get there
Inward (educate yourself, learn!) – outward (join something)
