Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T13:21:04.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Criminal Is Political: Policing Politics in Real Existing Liberalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2018

KOSHKA DUFF
KOSHKA DUFF*
Affiliation:
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The familiar irony of ‘real existing socialism’ is that it never was. Socialist ideals were used to legitimize regimes that fell far short of realizing those ideals—indeed, that violently repressed anyone who tried to realize them. This paper suggests that the derogatory concept of ‘the criminal’ may be allowing liberal ideals to operate in contemporary political philosophy and real politics in a worryingly similar manner. By depoliticizing deep dissent from the prevailing order of property, this concept can obscure what I call the ‘legitimation gap’. This is the gulf between (a) liberal accounts of state legitimacy, and (b) the actual functioning of liberal states. Feminists have long pointed out that the exclusion of what is deemed ‘personal’ from political consideration is itself a political move. I propose that the construction of the criminal as a category opposed to the political works similarly to perpetuate unjust forms of social power.

Keywords

legitimacyliberalismpolitical obligationcivil disobediencecrime and punishmentproperty
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , Winter 2017 , pp. 485 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, Michelle. (2011) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Wendy. (1995) States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brownlee, Kimberley. (2012) Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cameron, David. (2011) ‘Riots: David Cameron's Commons Statement in Full’. BBC News. 11 August. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14492789.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. (2015) Year 501: The Conquest Continues. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Coicaud, Jean-Marc. (2002) Legitimacy and Politics: A Contribution to the Study of Political Right and Political Responsibility. Translated by Ames Curtis, David. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colburn, Ben. (2013) Autonomy and Liberalism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
El-Enany, Nadine. (2014) ‘“Innocence Charged with Guilt”: The Criminalisation of Protest from Peterloo to Millbank’. In Pritchard, David and Pakes, Francis (eds.), Riots, Unrest and Protest on the Global Stage (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 72–97.Google Scholar
Finlayson, Lorna. (2015a) The Political Is Political: Conformity and the Illusion of Dissent in Contemporary Political Philosophy. London: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Finlayson, Lorna. (2015b) ‘With Radicals like These, Who Needs Conservatives? Doom, Gloom, and Realism in Political Theory’. European Journal of Political Theory. doi:10.1177/1474885114568815.Google Scholar
Fricker, Miranda. (2007) Epistemic Injustice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Greene, Amanda. (2016) ‘Consent and Political Legitimacy’. In Sobel, David, Vallentyne, Peter, and Wall, Steven (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, vol. 2 (Oxford Scholarship Online). doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198759621.003.0004.Google Scholar
Hanisch, Carol. (1970) ‘The Personal Is Political’. In Firestone, Shulamith and Koedt, Anne (eds.), Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation (New York: Radical Feminism), 76–78.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. (2011) ‘Feral Capitalism Hits the Street’. Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey. 11 August. Available at: http://davidharvey.org/2011/08/feral-capitalism-hits-the-streets/.Google Scholar
Hooker, Juliet. (2016) ‘Black Lives Matter and the Paradoxes of US Black Politics: From Democratic Sacrifice to Democratic Repair’. Political Theory, 44, 448–69.Google Scholar
Hulsman, Louk H. C. (1986) ‘Critical Criminology and the Concept of Crime’. Contemporary Crises, 10, 63–80.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, David. (2007) ‘On a Moral Right to Civil Disobedience’. Ethics, 117, 202–33.Google Scholar
Losurdo, Domenico. (2014) Liberalism: A Counter-History. Translated by Elliot, Gregory. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Lyons, David. (1998) ‘Moral Judgement, Historical Reality, and Civil Disobedience’. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 27, 31–49.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catharine. (1991) Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles. (2007) ‘White Ignorance’. In Sullivan, Shannon and Tuana, Nancy (eds.), Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (New York: SUNY Press), 11–38.Google Scholar
Myers, Matt. (2017) Student Revolt: Voices of the Austerity Generation. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Nozick, Robert. (1974) Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. (1999) A Theory of Justice. Edited by Richard Freeman, Samuel. Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. (2001) Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. (1988) The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shelby, Tommie. (2007) ‘Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto’. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 35, 126–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelby, Tommie. (2016) ‘Punishment’. In Shelby, Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 228–51.Google Scholar
Sleat, Matt. (2013) ‘Coercing Non-Liberal Persons: Considerations on a More Realistic Liberalism’. European Journal of Political Theory, 12, 347–67.Google Scholar
Swain, Val. (2013) ‘Disruption Policing: Surveillance and the Right to Protest’. News. Open Democracy (blog). 8 August. Available at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/val-swain/disruption-policing-surveillance-and-right-to-protest.Google Scholar
Threadcraft, Shatema. (2014) ‘Intimate Injustice, Political Obligation, and the Dark Ghetto’. Signs, 39, 735–60.Google Scholar
Wilson, Graeme. (2011) ‘“Feral Underclass” to Blame for Riots’. The Sun. 5 September. Available at: https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/762539/feral-underclass-to-blame-for-riots/.Google Scholar
Wolff, R. P. (1970) In Defence of Anarchism. New York: Harper Torchbooks.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. (2001) ‘Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy’. Political Theory, 29, 670–90.Google Scholar