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Introduction : an approach to public philosophy : James Tully in contextsIn James Tully (ed.), James Tully: to think and act differently, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 2022.
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38James Tully: To Think and Act DifferentlyRoutledge. 2022.James Tully’s scholarship has profoundly transformed the study of political thought by reconstructing the practice of political theory as a democratising and diversifying dialogue between scholars and citizens. Across his writings on topics ranging from the historical origins of property, constitutionalism in diverse societies, imperialism and globalisation, and global citizenship in an era of climate crisis, Tully has developed a participatory mode of political theorising and political change c…Read more
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17In Extremis: The Wildness of William JamesContemporary Pragmatism 19 (1): 23-34. 2022.William James advocates strenuousness as the key to the moral life yet his hunger for extreme experiences sometimes leads him to risk sacrificing morality in their pursuit. This paradox is best represented by James’s fascination with soldiers and warfare as exemplars of the strenuous life. This essay examines the tension between strenuousness and morality in James’s ethical thought through the lens of his celebration of wildness. Wildness, I argue, names the hungry craving for meaning, lust for …Read more
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41Power for the Powerless: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Late Theory of Civil DisobedienceJournal of Politics 2 (82): 700-713. 2020.Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” has been canonized as an essential statement of the political theory of civil disobedience. This article examines the early reception of King’s essay and the development of the liberal idea of civil disobedience it has become synonymous with to argue that its canonization coincided with, and displaced, the radicalization of King’s developing thinking about disobedience. It examines published and archival writings from 1965 through 1968 to…Read more
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24Tough Love: The Political Theology of Civil DisobediencePerspectives on Politics 3 (18): 851-866. 2020.Love is a key concept in the theory and history of civil disobedience yet it has been purposefully neglected in recent debates in political theory. Through an examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s paradoxical notion of “aggressive love,” I offer a critical interpretation of love as a key concept in a vernacular black political theology, and the consequences of love’s displacement by law in liberal theories of civil disobedience. The first section locates the origins of aggressive love in an e…Read more
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2[Book Review] The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, Samuel Freeman (ed.) (review)Gnosis 7 (1): 1-10. 2003.
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11From Honor to Dignity and Back Again: Remarks on LaVaque-Manty's “Dueling for Equality”Political Theory 35 (4): 494-501. 2007.
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12The Virtues of Exit: On Resistance and Quitting Politics (review)Political Theory 47 (4): 612-616. 2017.
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34Violence and civility: On the limits of political philosophyContemporary Political Theory 16 (2): 303-307. 2017.
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54Stuttering Conviction: Commitment and Hesitation in William James|[rsquo]| Oration to Robert Gould ShawContemporary Political Theory 12 (4): 255. 2013.This article reconstructs a pragmatist conception of political conviction from the works of William James. Pragmatism is often criticized for failing to account for the force of moral convictions to motivate risky and confrontational political action. This article argues that such criticisms presume a conception of conviction as an experience of moral command that pragmatism rejects. In its place, pragmatism portrays the experience of conviction as acting on faith. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s no…Read more
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25Damn Great Empires!: William James and the Politics of PragmatismOxford University Press USA. 2016.Damn Great Empires! offers a new perspective on the works of William James by placing his encounter with American imperialism at the center of his philosophical vision. This book reconstructs James's overlooked political thought by treating his anti-imperialist Nachlass -- his speeches, essays, notes, and correspondence on the United States' annexation of the Philippines -- as the key to unlocking the political significance of his celebrated writings on psychology, religion, and philosophy. It s…Read more
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26Stuttering Conviction: Commitment and Hesitation in William James’ Oration to Robert Gould ShawContemporary Political Theory 12 (4): 255-276. 2013.This article reconstructs a pragmatist conception of political conviction from the works of William James. Pragmatism is often criticized for failing to account for the force of moral convictions to motivate risky and confrontational political action. This article argues that such criticisms presume a conception of conviction as an experience of moral command that pragmatism rejects. In its place, pragmatism portrays the experience of conviction as acting on faith. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s no…Read more
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39Fidelity to Truth: Gandhi and the Genealogy of Civil DisobediencePolitical Theory 46 (4): 511-536. 2018.Mohandas Gandhi is civil disobedience’s most original theorist and most influential mythmaker. As a newspaper editor in South Africa, he chronicled his experiments with satyagraha by drawing parallels to ennobling historical precedents. Most enduring of these were Socrates and Henry David Thoreau. The genealogy Gandhi invented in these years has become a cornerstone of contemporary liberal narratives of civil disobedience as a continuous tradition of conscientious appeal ranging from Socrates to…Read more
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28Some Political Consequences of PragmatismContemporary Pragmatism 16 (4): 329-336. 2019.The question of what political consequences, if any, follow from American pragmatism is nearly as old as pragmatism itself. David Rondel’s Pragmatist Egalitarianism breathes new life into this old debate. Rondel outlines a distinctively pluralistic and problem-oriented approach to political philosophy that claims to “reconcile and mediate” the false dichotomies and interminable debates marking philosophical discourses of egalitarian justice. This article identifies two competing visions of the p…Read more
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46Pragmatism, Practice and the Politics of CritiqueContemporary Pragmatism 14 (2): 212-220. 2017.Colin Koopman’s Pragmatism as Transition offers an argumentative retelling of the history of American pragmatism in terms of the tradition’s preoccupation with time. Taking time seriously offers a venue for reorienting pragmatism today as a practice of cultural critique. This article examines the political implications third wave pragmatism’s conceptualization of time, practice, and critique. I argue that Koopman’s book opens up possible lines of inquiry into historical practices of critique fro…Read more
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24Some Political Consequences of PragmatismContemporary Pragmatism 16 (4): 329-336. 2019.The question of what political consequences, if any, follow from American pragmatism is nearly as old as pragmatism itself. David Rondel’s Pragmatist Egalitarianism breathes new life into this old debate. Rondel outlines a distinctively pluralistic and problem-oriented approach to political philosophy that claims to “reconcile and mediate” the false dichotomies and interminable debates marking philosophical discourses of egalitarian justice. This article identifies two competing visions of the p…Read more
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22Entangled Humanism as a Political Project: William Connolly’s Facing the PlanetaryContemporary Political Theory 18 (1): 115-134. 2019.
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34Book Review: Democracy’s Spectacle: Sovereignty and Public Life in Antebellum American Writing, by Jennifer GreimanDemocracy’s Spectacle: Sovereignty and Public Life in Antebellum American Writing, by GreimanJennifer. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. xi + 276 (review)Political Theory 44 (1): 136-140. 2016.
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54Avoiding Deliberative Democracy? Micropolitics, Manipulation, and the Public SpherePhilosophy and Rhetoric 45 (3): 269. 2012.This article examines the critique of deliberative democracy leveled by William Connolly. Drawing on both recent findings in cognitive science as well on Gilles Deleuze's cosmological pluralism, Connolly argues that deliberative democracy, and the contemporary left more generally, is guilty of intellectualism for overlooking the embodied, visceral register of political judgment. Going back to Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, this article reconstructs the working assumptions of Connoll…Read more
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233Theorizing the Politics of Protest: Contemporary Debates on Civil DisobedienceContemporary Political Theory 19 (3): 513-546. 2020.
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22Book Review: The Virtues of Exit: On Resistance and Quitting Politics, by Jennet Kirkpatrick (review)Political Theory 47 (4): 612-616. 2019.
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50Against Civil Disobedience: On Candice Delmas’ A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should be UncivilRes Publica 25 (4): 591-597. 2019.
Ithaca, NY, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Political Theory |
Government and Democracy |
Social and Political Philosophy |
American Pragmatism |
Areas of Interest
Civil Disobedience |
Political Power |
Citizenship |
Participatory Democracy |
Peace and Nonviolence |