4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political...

29
+--------------------------------------------------------- 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference Thursday 13 February and Friday 14 February 2020 Author: Keith Haring. Large outdoor mural by American artist Keith Haring in Collingwood, Melbourne, painted in 1984. Photo taken by the artist himself, and reproduced here under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International Licence. See here for details: https//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keith_Haring_Mural_Collingwood.jpg Twitter: #APTP2020

Transcript of 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political...

Page 1: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

+---------------------------------------------------------

4th Australasian Political Theory

and Political Philosophy Conference

Thursday 13 February and

Friday 14 February 2020

Author: Keith Haring. Large outdoor mural by American artist Keith Haring in Collingwood, Melbourne, painted in 1984. Photo taken by the

artist himself, and reproduced here under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International Licence. See here for details: https//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keith_Haring_Mural_Collingwood.jpg

Twitter: #APTP2020

Page 2: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

2

Contents

.............................................................................

4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference ...................................................... 1

Timetable ......................................................................................................................... 3

DAY 1 – Thursday 13th February 2020 ........................................................................................ 3

DAY 2 – Friday 14th February 2020 ........................................................................................... 5

Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. 7

Welcome to Country ............................................................................................................. 7

Keynote Panellists ............................................................................................................... 8

Panels and Abstracts ........................................................................................................... 10

Thursday 13th February, 11.30am - 1.00pm ............................................................................... 10

Thursday 13th February, 2.00pm – 3.30pm ................................................................................ 13

Friday 14th February, 9.00am-10.30am .................................................................................... 16

Friday 14th February, 1.10pm – 3.10pm .................................................................................... 19

Friday 14th February, 3.30pm – 5.30pm Room 3.08 ....................................................................... 24

Venue Information ............................................................................................................. 29

PowerPoint Presentations ..................................................................................................... 29

Page 3: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

3

Timetable

Colour-code for Themes: Race/ Decolonisation/ Non-Western Gender and Sexuality Markets Methodology History of Political Thought Democracy/ State/ Collective Obligations Justice/ Freedom

DAY 1 – Thursday 13th February 2020 8.30 Welcome to Country and Conference Opening

Room Level 3 – Room 3.08 Level 3 – Room 3.09 Level 20 – Room 20.17 Level 20 – Room 20.16 9.00-11.00 The Minefield for ABC’s RN

Hosts: Scott Stephens and Waleed Aly Guests: Jessica Whyte and Daniel Halliday Followed by a discussion of the moral and intellectual challenges of bringing political philosophy to the media

11.00-11.30 Morning tea

11.30-1.00 Racial and Gender Literacy in Political Theory and Philosophy – (Thematic panel discussion: No papers) No chair required Carolyn D’Cruz Alana Lentin Odette Kelada Dianne Jones

Neoliberalism and the Economy Chair: Melinda Cooper Lindy Edwards, “The Political Implications of the Problem of Scarcity: Erasing Exploitation from Neoliberal Discourse”. Bryce Weber, “Are Communicative Freedom and Social Freedom Compatible Approaches to Meeting the Challenges Posed by Neoliberalism”? Scott Robinson, “The Neoliberal Enterprise and the Nihilism of the Liberal Individual: Wendy Brown and Michel Foucault”.

Theorising Private Power in Liberal Democracy Chair: Karen Strojek Jensen Sass, “Some Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the Corporation”. Peter Balint, “Private Multiculturalism”. Tiziana Torresi, “Regulating the Virtual Public Sphere: The Role of Private Actors”.

Methodology in Political Theory Chair: Nicholas Barry Edmund Handby, “Are Intuitions Historically Coded?” Keith Dowding and Lars Moen, “Ideal Principles, Yes-- Ideal Theory, No”. Simon Cotton, “Nonideal Theory: Beyond the Comparative Approach and Partial Compliance Theory”.

Page 4: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

4

Room Level 3 – Room 3.08 Level 3 – Room 3.09 Level 20 – Room 20.17 Level 20 – Room 20.16 1.00-2.00 Lunch 2.00-3.30 Multispecies Justice

Chair: Anya Daly Christine Winter “Decolonial from the Start: What Ontological Parameters Can We Use to Frame Multispecies Justice?” Blanche Verlie “Becoming (With) Climate: Challenges and Possibilities for Relational Climate Justice”. Hal Conyngham “Ideal Theory and Human-Animal Relationships”.

The Morals of the Market (Thematic panel discussion: No papers) No chair required Jessica Whyte Melinda Cooper Miriam Bankovsky

History of Political Thought Chair: Sandra Field Dimitris Vardoulakis, “Spinoza, the Epicurean”. George Duke, “Constant’s Liberal Critique of Popular Sovereignty”. Thomas Corbin, “The Political History of Natural Equality”.

DEBATE: Is Political Philosophy Part of Social Science? (Short presentations, followed by debate) Facilitator: Alexandra Oprea will both offer comments and facilitate discussion between Keith, Adrian and the audience Keith Dowding, “Synthetic Political Philosophy: A Manifesto”. Adrian Walsh, “Methodological Naturalism and the Necessarily Speculative Nature of Political Philosophy”.

3.30-4.00 Afternoon Tea 4.00-6.00 Keynote: Academic Freedom with Robert French, Katharine Gelber and Miriam

Bankovsky

7.30 Conference dinner

Page 5: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

5

DAY 2 – Friday 14th February 2020 Room Level 3 – Room 3.08 Level 3 – Room 3.09 Level 20 – Room 20.17 Level 20 – Room 20.16

9.00-10.30 Decolonising Political Theory Chair: Priya Kunjan Rachel Joy, “The Art of Talking with Ghosts: The Work of Art in Decolonising Occupied Australia”. Amalia Louisson, “Facing Green Colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand”. Hamza Bin Jehangir, “Rethinking the Turn Towards ‘Non-Western Theory’: A Methodological Critique”.

Book Panel: Corporate Power in Australia: Do the 1% Rule? (Monash UP), by Lindy Edwards (Thematic panel discussion: No papers) No chair required Lindy Edwards Mary Walsh Jensen Sass Rob Manwaring

Justice and Equality Chair: Souresh Roy Karen Strojek, “Taxing Inherited Wealth: The Cruelty Objection”. William Hebblewhite, “A Critique of Rawlsian Egalitarianism from the Perspective of Real Equality”. Lars Moen, “Liberating Republicanism”.

Gender, Sexuality and Feminism Chair: Helen Pringle Kate Phelan, “Feminism as Epic Theory”. Louise Richardson-Self, “Right-Wing Women, Right-Wing Media, and Facebook Comments Sections”. Briohny Walker, “Queer Theories of Ecological Grief”.

10.30-11.00 Morning Tea 11.00-12.30 Keynote: Indigenous Knowledge as a Source for Theory, Mary Graham, Morgan

Brigg, and Sana Nakata

12.30-1.10 Lunch (40 minutes only today) 1.10-3.10 The Politics of Caring for Country and

Its Inhabitants Chair: Briohny Walker Gilbert Burgh, “Collective Relationalist Politics: A New Old Political Ordering”. Michelle Boulous Walker, “Melancholy Politics”. Simone Thornton, “Climate Change, Colonisation and Education”.

Employment, Authority and Trade Unions Chair: Dan Halliday Chris Naticchia, “Worker Democracy and the Limits of Managerial Authority”. Lachlan Umbers, “Do Employees Have A Duty To Unionise?” Stewart Braun, “A Politically Liberal Argument for a Slightly Socialist System: Rawls’ Political Virtues and the Labour Managed Firm”. Ned Dobos, “Are Strikes Extortionate?”

Book Panel: Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics (Oxford UP), by Sandra Field

No chair required

Sandra Field Haig Papatan Dimitris Vardoulakis Aurelia Armstrong

Democracy, Courts and Civility Chair: Lance Wright QC Alexandra Oprea, “Defending Education: A Democratic Role for Courts in Education Policy”. Raul Sanchez-Urribarri, “Judicial Loyalties and the Rule of Law”. Scott Stephens, “Contempt as a Threat to Democratic Morality”. Piero Moraro, “To Be Civil”.

Page 6: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

6

Room Level 3 – Room 3.08 Level 3 – Room 3.09 Level 20 – Room 20.17 Level 20 – Room 20.16 3.10-3.30 Afternoon tea (20 minutes) 3.30-5.30 Comparative & non-Western Political

Theory Chair: Anastasia Kanjere Adrian Little and Hamza Bin Jehangir, “Time, Change, and Comparisons: Temporality in Comparative Political Theory”. Ahlam Mustafa AbuKhoti, “Political Philosophy in Malek Bennabi’s Thought: An Argument for Alternative Political Theories”. Gerald Roche, “A Cinderella Justice? On Emerging Theories of Linguistic Justice”. Jan Robert R Go, “Conceptualising Power: Developments in Contemporary Philippine Political Thought”.

(Neo) Liberalism, Politics and Property Chair: John King Jessica Whyte, “The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and Neoliberalism”. Charles Barbour, “The Young Marx and the Strong State”. Harry Maher, “On the Free Market as Political Theory”.

Freedom, Non-Domination and Civil Liberties Chair: Souresh Roy Garrett Cullity, “Liberty, Security, and Fairness”. John Tate, “Burqinis, Burqas and Hajibs: Liberalism, Republicanism and Laïcité in France”. Helen Pringle, “After Blasphemy: Religion and Race as Comparable Grounds of Discrimination”.

Critical Perspectives on the Anarchism, the State, and Collective Obligations Chair: Maxwell Deutscher Matthew Joseph, “In Defence of Reasonable Cosmopolitanism”. Nathan Bell, “Refugees: Towards a New Concept of the Political”. Gearóid Brinn, “Realist Anarchism”. Anne Schwenkenbecher, “Collective Ignorance, and Epistemic Obligations”.

Informal drinks at own expense for those still in town

Page 7: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

7

Acknowledgements

The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy at La Trobe University. The conference conveners would like to thank the School and Department for their support, and Julie Blythe, for her help in organising the conference.

Welcome to Country

We would like to thank Perry Wandin (cultural heritage officer at Wurundjeri tribe council) for welcoming us

to country for this conference.

Page 8: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

8

Keynote Panellists

Scott Stephens is the ABC’s online religion and ethics editor, and the co-host, with Waleed Aly, of The Minefield on ABC Radio National. He is a frequent guest presenter of The Philosopher’s Zone and Big Ideas (also on ABC Radio National), and hosted two seasons of the acclaimed ABC television series, Life’s Big Questions. He has written widely on moral and political philosophy, and has appeared in periodicals such as Meanjin, The Monthly, lacanian Ink and Times Literary Supplement. He is the co-editor (with Rex Butler) and translator of the award-winning two-volume Selected Works of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Interrogating the Real and The Universal Exception (Bloomsbury). His book On Contempt is forthcoming from Melbourne University Press in 2020. He will deliver the twentieth annual Simone Weil Lecture on Human Value at the Australian Catholic University in June 2020, on the topic, “Democratic Hope? Cultivating the Moral Conditions of our Common Life”. Waleed Aly is a broadcaster, author, academic and musician. He is a lecturer in politics at Monash University and was awarded his PhD in 2018 on global terrorism. Waleed is co-host of Network TEN’s The Project and presents The Minefield on ABC Radio National with ethicist Scott Stephens every Wednesday morning. In 2019, Waleed co-hosted Australia Talks alongside Annabel Crabb, a live TV event exploring the results of an ABC national survey into the lives of average Australians. In 2014 Waleed was awarded the prestigious Walkley Award for Commentary, Analysis, Opinion and Critique. Within his first year as a full-time presenter on The Project, Waleed took home the 2016 Gold Logie Award for Most Popular Australian TV Personality, Silver Logie Award for Best Presenter and delivered the 2016 Andrew Olle Media Lecture. Waleed won the Silver Logie Award for Best Presenter again in 2017, received another nomination for the Silver Logie in 2019, and has been nominated twice more for the Gold Logie in 2017 and 2019. Robert French AC served as Chief Justice of Australia from 1 September 2008 until 29 January 2017. He is a graduate of the University of Western Australia in science and law. He served as a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia from November 1986 until his appointment as Chief Justice of the High Court on 1 September 2008. From 1994 to 1998 he was the President of the National Native Title Tribunal. Since his retirement as Chief Justice, Mr French has been appointed as a Non-Permanent Justice of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (May 2017), as an International Judge of the Singapore International Commercial Court (January 2018), and as a Judge of the Court of Appeal of the Dubai International Financial Centre (June 2019). He was elected as Chancellor of the University of Western Australia in December 2017. Katharine Gelber is Head of the School of Political Science and International Studies, and Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Queensland. Her research is in the field of freedom of speech, and the regulation of public discourse. She has been awarded several ARC, and other, competitive research grants. In November-December 2017, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Global Freedom of Expression Project, Columbia University, New York. In Dec 2017, she jointly hosted, with Prof Susan Brison, a workshop at the Princeton University Center for Human Values on, 'Free Speech and its Discontents'. In 2014, with Prof Luke McNamara, she was awarded the Mayer journal article prize for the best article in the Australian Journal of Political Science in 2013. In 2011 she was invited by the United Nations to be the Australian Expert Witness at a regional meeting examining States' compliance with the free speech and racial hatred provisions of international law. In 2009 she presented the Mitchell Oration in Adelaide on the topic 'Freedom of Speech and its Limits'. She is the author of Free Speech After 9/11 (OUP 2016), Speech Matters (UQP, 2011), and joint editor with Susan Brison of Free Speech in the Digital Age (OUP 2019).

Page 9: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

9

Miriam Bankovsky is Senior Lecturer in Politics and director of the Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics at La Trobe University. She is also staff-member elect to University Council. With a French-Australian PhD, her first book argued for the complementarity of continental and analytic concepts of justice in the tradition of Kant. But her recent work extends concerns with justice to encompass mainstream economic theory. In 2017, she was awarded the Australasian Association of Philosophy’s Annette Baier Prize for her work on economic envy and she is now writing up her recently completed ARC DECRA fellowship as a book, entitled The family, economics and ethics: an unorthodox history. Her short contribution to the keynote panel on academic freedom will report on the findings of a survey that she asked staff and post-graduate students to complete about their experiences of academic freedom at La Trobe. She will also draw on relevant policy work as staff rep on La Trobe’s “Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom working party”, tasked with proposing a range policies to accommodate Robert French’s “Independent Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Universities” (2019). Mary Graham is a Kombumerri person (Gold Coast) through her father’s heritage and affiliated with Wakka Wakka (South Burnett) through her mother’s people. She is adjunct Associate Professor at The University of Queensland with the School of Political Science and International Studies, and holds an honorary doctorate from the Queensland University of Technology. Her research interests include Aboriginal history, politics and comparative philosophy and law. Mary worked extensively for the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action, as a Native Title Researcher and was also a Regional Counsellor for the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. She has also lectured nationally, and developed and implemented ‘Aboriginal Perspectives’ and ‘Aboriginal Approaches to Knowledge’ at the post-graduate level in university curricula.

Morgan Brigg is Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies in the School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland. His research examines questions of culture, governance and selfhood in conflict resolution, peacebuilding and international development. In particular, he works to develop ways of knowing across cultural difference that work with local and Indigenous approaches to political community. His books include The New Politics of Conflict Resolution: Responding to Difference, Mediating across Difference: Oceanic and Asian Approaches to Conflict Resolution (co-edited with Roland Bleiker), and Unsettling the Settler State: Creativity and Resistance in Indigenous Settler-State Governance (co-edited with Sarah Maddison). Morgan’s key current project examines how ideas of relationalism can be used to re-theorise the peace and conflict studies field for improved engagement with diverse global peoples and traditions. Sana Nakata is the Associate Dean, Indigenous and co-director of the Indigenous-Settler Relations Collaboration at the Faculty of Arts at The University of Melbourne. Trained as a lawyer and political theorist, Associate Professor Sana Nakata’s research is centred upon developing an approach for thinking politically about childhood in ways that improve the capacity of adult decision-makers to act in their interests. She has recently completed an ARC Discovery Indigenous Research Fellowship examining Representations of Children in Australian Political Controversies (2016-2019). She is the author of Childhood Citizenship, Governance and Policy (Routledge 2015), and along with co-director Sarah Maddison, edits the Springer book series: Indigenous Settler Relations in Australia and the World.

Page 10: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

10

Panels and Abstracts

Thursday 13th February, 11.30am - 1.00pm Racial and Gender Literacy in Political Theory and Philosophy Panel discussion with Carolyn D’Cruz, Dianne Jones and Odette Kelada

Room 3.08

How well do political theory and philosophy deal with questions regarding colonisation, minor studies based on race, gender, sexuality and other marginal identities, and the culture wars surrounding issues of representation, censorship and discrimination? Join Alana Lentin, Odette Kelada, Dianne Jones and Carolyn D’Cruz as they discuss the problem of racial and gender literacy, representation, academic freedom and relations between politics, art and theory with a view to decolonising the academy and cultivating a more just future.

Neoliberalism and the Economy

Room 3.09

Chair: Melinda Cooper Lindy Edwards, “The Political Implications of the Problem of Scarcity: Erasing Exploitation from Neoliberal Discourse” Neoliberal theorization of the economy focuses our attention on some economic phenomena while rendering others invisible and unthinkable. This paper analyses the way in the assumption of the problem of scarcity renders exploitation invisible and unthinkable in debates about the abuse of market power. The problem of scarcity assumes there is always more demand than supply, such that if someone is being poorly paid or exploited in one industry they can always exit the market and find another job in another industry. This paper will draw on an analysis of the policy discourse around the 2017 abuse of market power reforms debates to demonstrate how this assumption served render farmers complaints of being exploited by the supermarkets as inadmissible as a matter of policy debate, and to give the supermarkets a free hand in the way in which it sort to squeeze those in its supply chain. Bryce Weber, “Are ‘Communicative Freedom’ and ‘Social Freedom’ Compatible Approaches to Meeting the Challenges Posed by Neoliberalism?” In their recently published book, (Critical Theory, Democracy and the Challenge of Neoliberalism: Toronto, 2019) Caterino and Hansen claim that the theory of radical participatory democracy which they attempt to develop shares in common with the work of Habermas, Macpherson and others what they see as a concern with what Honneth calls “social freedom”; the idea that he draws from Hegel of “being with oneself in the other,” (Caterino and Hansen, ms.256; Honneth, Freedom’s Right, 43ff.; Honneth, Socialism, pp.25-70). The paper proposed here for presentation at the APTP conference evaluates Caterino’s and Hansen’s claim by comparing their “communicative freedom”-

Page 11: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

11

based approach to developing a critical theory response to the challenges posed by neoliberalism with Honneth’s account of a revived understanding of socialism. Scott Robinson, “The neoliberal enterprise and the nihilism of the liberal individual: Wendy Brown and Michel Foucault” In this paper, I examine Wendy Brown’s analysis of nihilism across the past two decades. I propose that although Brown ascribes a specific form of nihilism to white male resentment, certain aspects of her analysis are continuous with the liberal capitalism Brown analysed earlier. The phenomena attributable as nihilism in neoliberalism is, I argue by turning back to Michel Foucault’s lectures on neoliberalism, in fact the dissolution of the liberal individual into the form of the enterprise, which, contrary to many versions, is not a heightened individualism but a form of economic activity that can take place across various individuals incorporated into one economically intelligible unit. Extrapolating from various analyses of neoliberalism, I show that the individual is becoming increasingly functionally irrelevant, and propose that nihilism acts as an affective solvent towards its absorption into the enterprise. I argue, then, that what Brown identifies as nihilism is in fact the overcoming of the liberal individual, and the spectacle of violent white male resentment is its death throes. Theorising Private Power in Liberal Democracy

Room 20.17

Chair: Karen Strojek Jensen Sass, “Some Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the Corporation” Since the late 19th century, corporations have numbered among the defining institutions of modern societies. You would not reach this conclusion were the social sciences your main window to the world. Corporations are a minor occupation in political science and sociology and (in consequence I believe) they are almost entirely ignored within contemporary political theory. My aim in this paper is to explain this neglect and propose its remedy. I suggest that the methodological standards which reign over large swathes of the social sciences render corporations undesirable objects of our attention; due to the absence of complete and objective data about their behaviour (especially their political behaviour) social scientists direct their attention on more accessible populations and institutions. To remedy this, our methodological standards should be calibrated against the normative significance of our objects of analysis. Drawing on the distinction made by Hirsch, Michaels, and Friedman (1987), we should not expect “clean models” in the study of corporations; we should accept that these closed institutions must for now be studied with “dirty hands”. The understanding such inquiry yields will not be perfect but it might be good. The larger challenge is to render corporations perfectly studiable. This however is not primarily a matter of political theory or methodology; it is rather one of law, regulation, and democratic politics. Peter Balint, “Private Multiculturalism” Debates on the accommodation of minority differences typically focus on state-citizen relations. Here the question is often framed as one of justice or recognition of minority ways of life by the state. While there has been some focus on inter-citizen relations more recently, there has been a dearth of focus on corporate-individual relations and how they may differ. Given the importance of corporations for our daily lives, whether as

Page 12: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

12

consumer or employee, this seems as significant oversight. Divergent individuals wish for services that meet their needs, and job opportunities consistent with their beliefs and practices. The problem, of course, is that corporations are private, or at least not public in the way state agencies are, and thus the demands of justice one may wish to place upon the state seem problematic when placed on corporations whose duties are to shareholders, and who may wish to explicitly promote particular conceptions of the good. In this paper I explore these issues, and argue that balancing the two sets of private interests will require pragmatic solutions that examine the weight of each competing claim. Tiziana Torresi, Regulating the virtual public sphere: The role of private actors” The paper considers the question of the regulation of the virtual public sphere: how should access to the virtual public sphere be regulated? What is hate speech and when, if at all, should speech be banned? Who has the responsibility to ascertain the veracity of the information available on social media? Private actors are assuming an ever growing role in these and other regulatory practices, while governments are increasingly interested in exercising their control in this area. The paper explores these issues by analysing two case studies: Facebook and the online platform “Rousseau”, employed by the populist Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy for their political communication. Methodology in Political Theory

Room 20.16

Chair: Nicholas Barry Edmund Handby, “Are Intuitions Historically Coded?” Intuitions have come to play an increasingly prominent role in philosophical enquiry, particularly in contemporary analytic philosophy and political theory, in that the rigour of conceptual claims is derived from intuitive judgements, including both the measurement and definition of political concepts. A consequence of a reliance on intuitions, however, is a diminished dependence on the history of ideas. The resulting tension has yet to be sufficiently addressed. I argue that the nexus between analytic philosophy and the history of ideas is in the nature of our intuitions. I draw on the availability heuristic to highlight the nature of intuitions as being premised on underlying cognitive states, which I then extend to the historical use of terms. This process occurs as the historical use of terms is incorporated into ordinary language, and therefore forms the basis of our intuitions. In this way, our intuitions are historically coded. Keith Dowding and Lars Moen, “Ideal Principles, Yes—Ideal Theory, No” Ideal theory identifies principles to serve as long-term aims for real societies. In his ideal theory of justice, John Rawls (1999: 119) assumes that the rational parties develop these principles on the basis of knowledge of ‘the general facts about human society’—that is, they know the economic theory and human psychology necessary for understanding how social organization is possible. This knowledge is essential for determining the rules governing a society. However, knowing these general facts is to know that people respond unpredictably and strategically to any rules, and that institutions interact with preferences to shape human values. We therefore cannot prescribe precise institutional

Page 13: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

13

arrangements for all time. So while the parties need this information to make rules for a society, it also makes them understand the futility of ideal theory. This paradox makes ideal theory redundant. Ideal principles defined independently of facts about human behaviour, however, have an important role in normative theorizing, albeit not as long-term aims for a theory of institutional arrangements, but as standards of evaluation for such institutions. Simon Cotton, Nonideal Theory: Beyond the Comparative Approach and Partial Compliance Theory Where ideal theory is understood as seeking to identify what state of political affairs would be best, nonideal theory is often understood in either of two senses. Sen’s comparative approach seeks a way of ranking states of affairs that are less than best, whereas Rawls’s partial compliance theory identifies who has an obligation to do what to make the world a better place (thereby supplementing principles of justice with additional obligations). In other words, nonideal theory is invariably understood as involving either non-instrumental evaluation or instrumental prescription. This points to two additional ways that nonideal theory could be understood, and hence where we should locate two other senses of nonideal theory. The first is instrumental evaluation, which is exemplified by the positive or empirical theory of institutional design. The second is non-instrumental prescription, which, in a Hobbesian spirit, seeks to identify who has a permission to do what given that the world is not a better place (thereby substituting ideal principles of justice with more permissive ones). In this paper, I clarify all four senses in order to assist us to do nonideal theory without overlooking relevant possibilities.

Thursday 13th February, 2.00pm – 3.30pm

Multispecies Justice

Room 3.08

Chair Anya Daly Christine Winter, “Decolonial from the start: What ontological parameters can we use to frame multispecies justice?” Multispecies justice is a developing field - or perhaps more accurately, fields. It draws together a range of academic fields to examine human and nonhuman relationships. These include relationships of respect, responsibility and, to some, reciprocity. The extent of those relationships and the range of species, forms and being remain indistinct and variable. For some they are anthropocentric - motivated by the desire to enhance human experience, life opportunities, goods and virtues. For others the nonhuman realm has intrinsic value and values, and it is this intrinsic worth that motivates the call for multispecies justice. My argument here is that given the relative infancy of multispecies justice as a field of study in the western academy, there is an opportunity to ensure it examines not only how to avoid damaging domination of the nonhuman realm, but also the ongoing colonial domination of Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies. I am not suggesting an appropriation of Indigenous knowledge, but rather an exploration of ways in which the field may remain sufficiently nuanced and open to accommodate multiple epistemological and ontological framings of theory. In this paper I will draw from Mātauranga Māori to discuss one aspect of that decolonial project - why the scope of multispecies justice must cover all planetary being and all time.

Page 14: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

14

Blanche Verlie, “Becoming (with) climate: Challenges and possibilities for relational climate justice” Climate justice claims succeed despite, or perhaps because of, an oscillation between relational and Cartesian climate ontologies. The very premise of climate injustice is that we cannot separate humans from climate, as infamous examples such as Hurricane Katrina demonstrate all too well. Yet, paradoxically, climate justice relies on and re-articulates quite firm distinctions between particular groups of people and between natural climate and anthropogenic (or fossil fuelled) climate change. Becoming (with) climate is my attempt to story the entanglement of humans with climate, and it both challenges and furthers climate justice considerations. Becoming (with) climate refers to how all entities differ from themselves through their intra-action (Barad, 2007) with climate; how climate is simultaneously changed; and also how the boundaries between entities and the climate are differentially enacted through these processes. Hal Conyngham, “Ideal Theory and Human-Animal Relationships” Many of the works in animal ethics’ recent political turn are heavily ideal, that is, they do not make certain facts about the current world central to their theorising. Given the issues with ideal theory in political philosophy, and given that the political turn is interested in causing or guiding action, the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of idealisation is important to ascertain. I defend ideal theory for animals, based on its ability to include and investigate relationships that do not exist in reality. I draw on Derrida and Sartre’s analyses of shame to argue that portrayals of positive dyadic relationships in political philosophy contribute to action-guidance or -causation. Given that so many human-animal relationships do not exist in reality, inclusion of these relationships in political philosophy is inherently ideal. I argue that there is value in portraying these relationships and, as such, there is value in ideal theory for animals. Morals of the Market

Room 3.09

Panel discussion with Jessica Whyte, Melinda Cooper and Miriam Bankovsky Notwithstanding their differences and intersections, neoliberalism and neoclassical economics are regularly presented as amoral ideologies that attempt to remain agnostic about the ethical value of individual preferences. This view of neoliberal and neoclassical approaches has been elaborated, among others, by Wendy Brown (for whom neoliberalism threatens democracy by being “expressly amoral at the level of both ends and means”) and by Michel Foucault (for whom neoliberalism draws “no difference between the infraction of the highway code and a premediated murder”, thereby offering a refreshing break with punitive moralism). The economist A.B. Atkinson has also explained how this view dominates the mainstream self-understanding of neoclassical economists today, with economists understanding themselves to practice a division of labour. Where the moral philosopher is responsible for determining what counts as a socially acceptable objective (or distribution), economists are purportedly to limit themselves to identifying efficiency improvements alone. Our panel interrogates this popular interpretation, instead positioning neoliberalism and neoclassical economics as imbued with substantive moral values. Drawing on her

Page 15: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

15

book The Morals of the Market (Verso 2019), Jessica Whyte will explore how neoliberals (from the first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society onwards) formulated their own unique “human rights” agenda, presenting rights as conditional upon the prior existence of a well-functioning market, and dismissing counter claims by post-colonial societies to a right to economic self-determination. Melinda Cooper will explore how neoliberals (and not just neoconservatives) sought to “restore a belief in individual responsibility, by strengthening the family” (Rose and Milton Friedman, cited in Cooper’s Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism), presenting increased access to credit as a means to promote family consumption (and increased family debt), bolstering inheritance, rendering welfare accountable, and liberalising laws to extend this logic even to unconventional families. Miriam Bankovsky deepens these analyses by featuring how similar versions of neoliberal familial “morality” were already pre-figured by mainstream market-paradigm economists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The discussion revolves around a number of loose themes. How do neoliberals and neoclassical economists understand the “social question”? Do neoliberal and neoclassical thinkers seek to respond to destitution or reward merit? What sorts of economic techniques do these neoliberal societies and neoclassical economists defend? The panel closes by considering what to make of the morals of the market. History of Political Thought

Room 20.17

Chair: Sandra Field Dimitris Vardoulakis, Spinoza, the Epicurean I present here the main argument of my new book, Spinoza, the Epicurean (2020). This book is the first to make a case for reading Spinoza as an epicurean, and especially his political philosophy in the Theological Political Treatise. I will explain how it develops an original conception of materialism in modernity. Spinoza, the Epicurean suggests a new account of practical judgment that has direct implications for how Spinoza can helps us conceive of the possibility of democracy in the age of neoliberalism. George Duke, “Constant's Liberal Critique of Popular Sovereignty” Benjamin Constant’s Principes de politique (1815) opens with a critique of Rousseau and argument for the limitation of popular sovereignty by law. In section 1 of the current paper I examine several points of instability in Constant’s account of popular sovereignty with a view to uncovering the source of some underlying tensions between democracy and liberalism that are still evident today. Section 2 then demonstrates that these points of instability have a close relationship to Constant’s more famous – but fundamentally flawed – contrast between the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns. Thomas Corbin, The Political History of Natural Equality The role of natural equality in political theory today is clear, but it is not clear when this role began. The existing literature commonly portrays natural equality emerging in the early political theory of the Catholic Church. Certainly, early Church figures such as Gregory the Great (540 – 604) did argue for natural equality. However, this paper will demonstrate that these early argument were kept intentionally separate from political theory. The primary reason for this separation was the concept of pride and its relation to God’s will. Because of how pride was understood, acceptance of natural equality did not translate into political theory at this time. This paper traces the genealogy of

Page 16: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

16

natural equality in political theory and argues that the first major figures to place natural equality at the heart of political theory were those who explicitly altered the accepted definition of pride. These figures emerged not in the first few centuries of the Church but instead in 17th century Protestant Europe.

Is Political Philosophy Part of Social Science?

Room 20.16

Debate facilitated by Alexandra Oprea

Short presentations followed by a debate with Keith Dowding, Adrian Walsh and the audience

In this panel Adrian Walsh and Keith Dowding will give two different views on the role of political philosophy within social science. Walsh will argue that political philosophy is essentially autonomous from social science and uses different methods. Dowding will argue that whilst political philosophy is normative and so its subject is not quite that of social science, its methodological concerns should not be far removed from those of social science. Walsh thinks political philosophy needs to be a priori – Dowding will argue it needs to take account of a posteriori necessary truths.

Friday 14th February, 9.00am-10.30am Decolonising Political Theory

Room 3.08

Chair: Priya Kunjan Rachel Joy, “The Art of Talking with Ghosts: The work of art in decolonising occupied Australia” Art matters when considering society because artworks are cultural productions, which in turn spring from the political. My claim is that visual art can be a sensory provocation towards destabilising occupier subjectivity in Australia on one of many pathways toward settler decolonisation. It asks how an art practice can help facilitate acknowledgement of Indigenous sovereignty and the continuing harm done by contemporary settler society. By engaging with politics of subjectivity and histories of violent dispossession my work engages viewers in a process of emotionally informed thinking driven by their own sensory experiences. They might reflect on their family history, their own subjectivity in relation to others and thus through this very act - change; becoming other than they were. The act of engaging with art does not resolve the problem of decolonising Australia but it can begin a process of reflection, listening and learning that enables change. Amalia Louisson, “Facing green colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand” Because of ecological annihilation by early European settlers in Aotearoa New Zealand—driven by reckless industrial deforestation and the perverse drive to wipe out all indigeneity—Pākehā [white people] have an ongoing responsibility to conserve indigenous species. While the current government expends considerable resources into ecological conservation, since its establishment in the early twentieth century,

Page 17: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

17

ecological conservation perpetuates colonialism in two unacknowledged ways. First, reserve conservation actively undermines practices of kaitiakitanga [Māori environmental guardianship] by cutting Māori from active engagement with their land, and thus knowledge and traditions. Second, Pākehā conservation practices are based on the ongoing appropriation of indigenous species for a white national identity that positions Pākehā as ‘white saviours’. Both require address. Engaging with Karen Barad’s agential realism, Nancy Tuana’s wilful ignorance, and Robbie Shilliam’s white self-therapy, this talk calls for Pākehā to create and participate in ongoing introspective workshops to uproot colonialism from environmental conservation practices. Hamza Bin Jehangir, “Rethinking the turn towards ‘Non-Western Theory’: A Methodological Critique” Debates within political theory over the west-centric nature of the discipline have yielded an expansion of theoretical engagement with non-western texts and traditions. This engagement has been characterised by various methodological moves aimed at understanding radical Otherness, learning from the Other, to an emphasis on shared conditions of modernity. In this paper, I raise methodological objections to the expansion of political theory via an epistemological critique of the categorisation of ‘non-West’, ‘West’, and the construction of ‘tradition’. I argue that pre-colonial intercultural encounters, processes of colonial knowledge production, and institutionalisation of the nation-state as a container of political life par excellence pose real-world challenges to abstract discussions of broadening the field of political theory. I draw on examples of pre-colonial encounters between Europe and South Asia and the works of two ‘Eastern’ thinkers Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Iqbal to showcase how ideas thought to be ‘Eastern’ or ‘non-Western’ are a product of cross-boundary engagement with modes of thought commonly understood to be ‘Western’. I conclude by proposing a method of doing political theory which is grounded in an understanding of historical contexts, their relational development, and transmission of ideas.

Corporate Power in Australia: Do the 1% Rule? (Monash UP)

Room 3.09

Book panel discussion with Lindy Edwards (author), Mary Walsh, Jensen Sass and Rob Manwaring

Justice and Equality

Room 20.17

Chair: Souresh Roy

Karen Strojek, “Taxing inherited wealth: the cruelty objection” Daniel Halliday’s writings on inherited wealth argue against the “cruelty objection”: that taxing inheritances can represent cruelty to the deceased testator and/or to the heirs. Drawing on the work of Bernard Williams, Robert Goodin and others, I develop the themes of cruelty, coercion and harm in inheritance tax law. Drawing further on empirical research, I provide two examples of cruel harms done to heirs. First, the hardships suffered by surviving spouses who were constrained from acquiring their own wealth during legal or de facto marriage; and second, the hardships suffered by unpaid workers in family businesses – particularly family farms. I argue that, in cases where a

Page 18: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

18

testator’s heirs contributed to the acquisition and maintenance of real property, and depended on it for their shelter and/or livelihood, but had no legal ownership over it, the forced sale of that property to meet tax obligations does represent cruelty. William Hebblewhite, “A Critique of Rawlsian Egalitarianism from the Perspective of Real Equality” The contemporary field of egalitarian theory is principally divided between Distributive Egalitarian Justice and Social Egalitarian Justice. Distributive egalitarians and social egalitarians both see John Rawls as a foundational figure in the establishment of the contemporary debate regarding equality. In Rawls's work, we find both the development of an ideal distribution of goods that would satisfy the requirement by which one could live a satisfactory life, as well as a focus on the values of social goods (such as self-respect)for understanding justice. The question that is pursued in this paper is whether the division between distributive justice and social justice is appropriate in terms of conceptualizing real, or actual equality. By bringing Rawls into dialogue with the critical philosophy of Jacques Rancière, this paper contributes to the egalitarian debate by arguing that Rawls's twin concerns of distributive equality and social justice rely on an assumption about the naturalness of inequality, and the unimaginability of real equality. Lars Moen, “Liberating Republicanism” Some critics (esp. Carter 2008) argue that promoting of republican freedom involves making the same judgments as promoting pure negative freedom. Philip Pettit, however, stresses that republican freedom requires that citizens enjoy a more robust protection of their capacity to exercise the basic liberties than does pure negative freedom. In this paper, I argue that this is so only if republican freedom demands that citizens be particularly committed to protecting the basic liberties. This virtue requirement robustly protects certain opportunities, but it prevents more opportunities than it creates. It therefore conflicts with the promotion of pure negative freedom. So promoting republican freedom may differ from promoting pure negative freedom, but only if it restricts the set of permissible actions to an extent that is incompatible the pluralism of conceptions of the good that characterises modern society. Republican freedom is therefore either too demanding for modern society, or it requires the same social and political institutions as does pure negative freedom.

Gender, Sexuality and Feminism

Room 20.16

Chair: Helen Pringle Kate Phelan, “Feminism as Epic Theory” Sheldon Wolin identifies a particular tradition of thought within political theory. He terms this tradition “epic theory.” Epic theory, he explains, is political theory’s equivalent of the Kuhnian scientific revolution. In this paper, I take up the analogy between epic theory and scientific revolution in order to show that feminism is an epic theory in the truest sense of the term, a sense perhaps not fully grasped by Wolin. It is so for two reasons: first, it is a theory of the whole; second, it is less a discovery than an invention of the world. My aim in doing so is twofold: first, to account for the existence

Page 19: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

19

of feminism in the face of its impossibility; second, to demonstrate the magnitude of the achievement that feminism is. Louise Richardson-Self, “Right-Wing Women, Right-Wing Media, and Facebook Comments Sections” This paper explores the hostile attitudes towards right-wing women-politicians displayed in The Australian’s Facebook comments sections. Via a thematic analysis, the paper evaluates the means through which commentators (across the political spectrum) seek to undermine right wing women and interrogates the role of feminism in addressing such hostilities, simultaneously highlighting the ways in which conservative values themselves undermine efforts to bring about an equal society for all genders. The paper ultimately argues that, towards the right, we must expend greater efforts to advance an intersectional feminism, connecting women’s subordination to that of many other minority groups, and, towards the left, we must centre critique on policies and practices, resisting the temptation to personalise political disagreement, given the tendency for this to dissolve into misogyny. Briohny Walker, “Queer Theories of Ecological Grief” This paper argues for queer theories and histories as resources for navigating and politicising ecological grief. Following Sara Ahmed’s work on orientation and Jack Halberstam’s discussions of failure, I argue that living a life that does not follow anticipated trajectories can lead to bewildering grief. Grief can also be a process of profound subjective change, as discussed in Judith Butler’s work on the transformative potentials of grief and Jan Zita Grover’s account of grief as an attuning of attentiveness. Vitally, grief and collective action have a complex relationship, which I will consider through Douglas Crimp’s writing on AIDs crisis mourning and militancy and Ann Cvetkovich’s reflections on AIDs activism and public feelings. What results is an account of the capacities of queer grief and mourning to undo and unmake the normative and the familiar, and to draw together unforeseen configurations and potentialities: vital concerns in an era of ecological crisis.

Friday 14th February, 1.10pm – 3.10pm

The Politics of Caring for Country and its Inhabitants

Room 3.08

Chair: Briohny Walker Mary Graham’s publications, community engagement, consultancy and teaching are underpinned by her commitment to establishing an ongoing series of discussions focussing on how different disciplines approach the social and political ordering of human societies. Our panel discussion will focus on various philosophical concepts that appear in her work, those that have implications for political governance, environmental challenges and inclusive education. Gilbert Burgh, “Collective Relationalist Politics: A new old political ordering” Can Western-style liberal-democratic nation-states, founded on methodological individualism, statism, private property rights and lineal social progress, reconcile with Indigenous land related politics, a form of governance that acknowledges the

Page 20: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

20

conditioning constraints and influences of Country on its peoples as a basis of political ordering? According to Mary Graham, the predominant survivalist ethos that has accompanied European-derived politics of individualism excludes systematic consideration of what a politics of Aboriginal society might be. In this sense, from an Aboriginal perspective, liberalism is ‘wild’; unruly, amoral, and imbalanced as it relies on exercising ‘raw power’. Demarchy offers an alternative to liberal representative systems of democracy, which rely on the ‘strength’ of the majority. By placing emphasis on sortition and multi-dialogue, demarchy provides opportunities for what Graham calls a ‘relational ethos’. Through relations with others, in a network of overlapping decision-making communities, we operate as mini-collectives ‘coming into being together in a settler-colonial setting’. Michelle Boulous Walker, “Melancholy Politics” Mary Graham speaks of the unacknowledged sorrow that lingers at the borders of white colonial society. She suggests that a deep sadness pervades the lives of those dispossessed and abandoned by the ‘motherland’. And yet, there are few accounts that name this dispossession or exile. There are no memorials to what they lost, or to the fact of being lost. There is, quite literally, a loss of loss. Is it then surprising that such dispossession is taken out on the land, the people, and the women who appear to the bereft as strange and threatening, responsible? Graham talks about this sorrow in terms of melancholy, and it’s this term that provokes me to reconsider our current political context. The history of melancholy in the West, since antiquity, associates the term with a capacity for deep thinking, reflection, and philosophy, so I use this term to link politics to philosophy. Simone Thornton, “Climate Change, Colonisation and Education” Climate change and colonisation share many similarities. Both are the result of complex interactions between epistemology and ontology. Both are the indirect results of individualism and industrialisation. Colonisation’s failure to recognise limits, human and non-human, have surely contributed to climate change. Val Plumwood argues that our current (Western/colonial) form of rationality, marked by a stark separation of human from the earth and earth Others, is a potentially suicidal rationality, in that it is not only divorced from, but unable to recognise, environmental limits essential to human survival. Western rationality then, is ecologically irrational. Education as an instrument of liberal-democracy is implicated in the reproduction of ecological irrationality. In response to Mary Graham’s call for education to include philosophy in all its forms, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, I argue that philosophy, so conceived, can help undo the colonial self and is a necessary step in the mitigation of both climate change and colonisation.

Employment, Authority and Trade Unions

Room 3.09

Chair: Dan Halliday Chris Naticchia, “Worker Democracy and the Limits of Managerial Authority” In this paper, I defend the view that justice requires worker democracy as the default position for workplace organization. I defend it by using a fair hypothetical social contract. The basic idea is that such a contract establishes pre-contractual limits on

Page 21: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

21

freedom of contract. Just as you don’t need to bargain with your employer for your right to vote and hold political office, or to be free from slavery or discrimination, so too you don’t need to bargain with your employer to have a right to worker democracy. I show this by demonstrating the rationality of selecting worker democracy over alternatives under conditions of limited ignorance. Unlike the other limits on freedom of contract, however, the right to worker democracy is one that, under certain narrow circumstances, can be justifiably alienated. The challenge is to justify the asymmetry and keep it narrow (such as to public safety). Lachlan Umbers, “Do Employees Have A Duty To Unionise?” There has recently been a revival of interest in questions concerning justice in the workplace (see esp. Anderson, 2017). Much attention has focused upon the nature of the relationship between employers and employees, and the ways in which employment ought to be regulated and reformed. Relatively little has been said, however, concerning the obligations of employees with respect to justice in the workplace. In this paper, I consider the possibility that employees may have a duty to unionise – i.e. to form and join labour unions, at least where this is legally permitted and not excessively costly. I consider three arguments to this effect – an argument from free-riding, an argument from solidarity, and an argument from respect. I then consider the implications for the institution of compulsory unionism. Stewart Braun, “A Politically Liberal Argument for a slightly Socialist System: Rawls’ Political Virtues and the Labour Managed Firm” It has recently been claimed that the neutralist liberalism of Rawls is incompatible with an economy mandated to be composed largely of labour managed firms (Taylor 2014; Thomas 2017). In this paper I dispute that claim, showing, first, that labour management can enhance Rawls’ political virtues, and, second, that labour management does not violate liberal neutrality. In both Political Liberalism (1993) and Justice as Fairness (2003) Rawls speaks of the important roles that the political virtues—civility, tolerance, moderation, reasonableness, fairness—play in securing the background conditions for a cooperative, well-ordered, democratic society. In Justice as Fairness, he even muses that labour managed firms might better encourage the political virtues (178). This paper shows how labour management supports the political virtues, especially in comparison to a traditional capitalist system while remaining consistent with political liberalism. Ned Dobos, “Are Strikes Extortionate?“ When workers threaten to go on strike unless they receive increased pay and/or improved conditions, they are—according to some thinkers—engaging in extortion. After all, these workers are proposing to harm their employer’s interests unless he gives them more money, or else spends more money on them. Economist William Hutt went so far as to argue that strikes are extortionate even when the workers do not employ any of the coercive tactics that unions have traditionally relied upon, such as picketing and intimidation. And he thought that this characterisation was apt even if the workers happen to have a justified moral claim to whatever it is that they are demanding. On Hutt’s view, then, any strike that is aimed at securing a greater share of economic resources for workers is extortionate, even if the strike is limited to the withdrawal of labour, and even if the workers have a right to said resources. In this paper I explain why Hutt is mistaken.

Page 22: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

22

Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics (Oxford UP, forthcoming)

Room 20.17

Book panel discussion with Sandra Field (author), Haig Papatan, Dimitris Vardoulakis and Aurelia Armstrong

Democracy, Courts and Civility

Room 20.16

Chair: Lance Wright QC Alexandra Oprea, “Defending Education: A Democratic Role for Courts in Education Policy” What should be the role of courts when it comes to defending education rights in democratic communities? Drawing on decades of education litigation in the US concerning integration, school finance, and special education, this paper provides a democratic theory of court involvement in education policy. Courts have a key democratic role in defending minority rights, particularly under non-ideal circumstances where political power is unequally distributed. However, overreliance on courts in education policy can have important democratic costs. This paper discusses four such costs worth considering from a democratic perspective: (1) policy effectiveness costs, (2) standardization costs, (3) democratic education costs; and (4) special interest costs. In constructing a democratic theory of courts, the paper therefore argues for legal strategies that minimize the relevant costs while protecting minority rights. Such an approach favors bottom-up approaches that focus on specific harms to individuals and groups without aiming directly at controlling the legislative agenda. Raul Sanchez-Urribarri, Judicial Loyalties and the Rule of Law What are judicial loyalty connections, and why do they matter for our understanding of how courts fulfil their accountability duties, especially in weakly institutionalized contexts? How do their effects overlap with, or differ from, other reasons that explain judicial behavior? More importantly, why should this matter for the purposes of understanding under what conditions the judiciary is willing and able to assert its power vis-à-vis elected leaders and other political authorities? This working paper further develops the concept of judicial loyalties, discussing informal commitments between judges and political actors in the context of weakly institutionalized democracies. It discusses how these commitments influence judicial behavior – including politically salient cases – and comments on the influence of these relationships on patterns of judicial power, this is, the ability of high court judges to control the government and uphold the rule of law. Scott Stephens, “Contempt as threat to democratic morality” The last decade has witnessed a rather surprising resurgence of interest in the political and moral emotions. Though what is surprising is not that the emotions should suddenly

Page 23: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

23

be of interest to political theorists and moral philosophers, but that, for a long while, they weren’t. In part, I suspect, this neglect – perhaps nowhere more remarkable, or perfidious, than in the relative disinterest that met John Rawls’s treatment of the moral sentiments, or what he termed “the sense of justice”, in the final section of his epochal Theory of Justice, compared to the seemingly endless fascination elicited by the rest of that book – reflects a misplaced overconfidence or even faith in the political efficacy a kind of liberal rationality. If this is right, then the renewed interest in the political and moral emotions may well suggest a kind of bewilderment or despair in the face of the potency of antipluralistic political irrationality: what is sometimes called populism. But if this interest in the political and moral emotions arises from a kind of expediency, or the need to address the challenges presented by this particular historical moment, then we should hardly be surprised that many of the more prominent treatments of, for example, anger or patriotic devotion or compassion or love or envy or disgust or shame or forgiveness or contempt have been written with the exigencies of our situation in mind, and therefore have lacked the capaciousness, the historical and aesthetic sensibilities, the foresight, the patience and even the generosity that such treatments require (and that one typically finds in, say, Montaigne or Kant or Hume or Iris Murdoch or John Rawls or Annette Baier or Martha Nussbaum). The recent rehabilitation of contempt, at the hands of several prominent political and moral philosophers, as a form of appropriate moral censure or judgment of behaviour we find ‘beyond the pale’, strikes me as an almost uniquely dangerous and counterproductive move. For it fails recognise the affective and communicative force of contempt – as a disposition that is, after all, not merely felt but expressed – or the racial and gendered overtones it has long displayed, or the degree to which it is, as Kant recognised, a fundamental violation of the demands of human dignity. Just to the extent that contempt renders the one so contemned incapable of offering reply, of holding the contemnor to account – which is to say, unable to meet one another in a moral encounter – contempt proves corrosive to the very conditions of what Stanley Cavell calls ‘democratic morality’: that we conduct ourselves in such a way that the conversation is never closed, that defeats are never final, that moral encounter is never proscribed, that reconciliation is never ruled out. Piero Moraro, “To Be Civil” Most Western democracies (including Australia) profess their commitment to respecting the right to protest while, at the same time, they introduce harsher and harsher anti-protest laws. We are told that citizens can only engage in ‘civil’ disobedience, and that we must beware of ‘extremists’ and ‘green collar criminals’. This is puzzling, for the protesters targeted by these laws are indeed acting ‘civilly’. In this talk, I offer an account of civility, seeking to shed some light on the notion of ‘civil’ vs. ‘uncivil’ disobedience. I briefly discuss the Extinction Rebellion movement, suggesting one reason why some media portray it as ‘extremism’ rather than as civil disobedience. Finally, I consider the tension between civility and extremism, asking (a) can there be civil disobedience in support of a racist cause?, and (b) is there a duty to be civil towards racist people?

Page 24: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

24

Friday 14th February, 3.30pm – 5.30pm Room 3.08 Comparative and Non-Western Political Theory

Room 3.08

Chair: Anastasia Kanjere Adrian Little and Hamza Bin Jehangir, “Time, Change, and Comparisons: Temporality in Comparative Political Theory” Comparative political theorists have brought into question the Eurocentric focus of political theory. This questioning of political theory’s overt reliance on the western canon has resulted in efforts to rethink the concept of tradition, construct cross-cultural dialogues by neutralizing the normative power of western political thought, and engage with issues of radical alterity in a global context. However, despite the implicit operationalization of time as a key factor in the construction of dialogue across traditions of thought, otherness in the context of globalization, and recent attempts to focus on the shared condition of modernity across the East-West divide, comparativists rarely locate temporality at the center of their inquiry. In this paper, we forward a case for understanding temporality, the implications of temporal change, and the undertaking of temporal comparisons, as central concerns of comparative political theory (CPT). We argue that this shift towards taking temporality, and temporal change, seriously entails taking stock of how time plays an unstated role in methodological debates within CPT. We note that clarification of the specific role that time plays within these debates has consequences for the force and validity of arguments advanced by comparative political theorists. Furthermore, we elaborate that temporal comparisons involve understanding how different perceptions of political concepts, such as the state, might exist agonistically across, and within, various cultural contexts and timeframes. Temporal comparisons also consist of exploring how time is organized methodologically in different traditions of political thought and the relationship of this treatment of time with processes of imagining political futures and pasts beyond familiar linear conceptions of time. Finally, a focus on temporality also holds the potential to push CPT closer to real-world issues by inquiring how assumptions of synchronicity of time animate and constitute particular problems of justice. Ahlam Mustafa, “Political Philosophy in Malek Bennabi’s Thought: An Argument for Alternative Political Theories” There is a growing interest within the area of political philosophy in the potential benefits of exploring indigenous political theories and practices. Yet, this interest seams to centre around the cultural production of indigenous peoples in north America, Australia, and New Zealand. There is little work done on the political thought available within indigenous peoples in the Middle East and North Africa as previously colonised nations. Malek Bennabi (1905-1973) is an Algerian philosopher who wrote extensively about human society developing his own theory for social change. This paper will focus on Malek Bennabi’s argument for moral reformation in political thought/practice. He distinguishes between the politician (as a practitioner) and politics (as a moral code) and explains how along the quest for human-centred societies the line between the two blurs. This results in a dysfunctional and unjust political system within the accepted democratic practice. He proposes an approach to political thought in which local

Page 25: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

25

knowledge and cultural practice informs the development of contemporary political theories that includes religion and spirituality as sources of moral reform. Gerald Roche, “A Cinderella Justice? On emerging theories of linguistic justice”. In 2011, sociolinguist Stephen May described linguistic rights as ‘Cinderella rights’ that arrived late to the ‘human rights ball’. In a similar way, the issue of language is a latecomer to broader discussions of social justice. This presentation will look at emerging theories of linguistic justice and attempt to situate them more broadly in the continually expanding family of social justice theories, including environmental justice, spatial justice, disability justice, mobility justice, and global justice. The presentation will primarily aim to raise questions that will help frame an emerging research agenda around linguistic justice, and discuss how this agenda may be advanced by recourse to comparative study of other social justice theories. Jan Robert R Go, “Conceptualising Power: Developments in Contemporary Philippine Political Thought” Philippine politics is largely characterised by patronage and clientelism, money and violence, and clans and families. Scholars have conducted various research on these aspects of Philippine politics and have come up with various conceptualisations of political relationships and frameworks in understanding the not-so-unique political landscape of the country. In the process of studying Philippine politics, there has been also a variety of definitions of “power” coming from local (municipality and city), national (state), and even international (interstate relations) levels. In this paper (or presentation), I intend to look at how power is conceptualised in the Philippines. Looking at the works of some key political scientists and treatises on political theory by Philippine authors, I extract the different conceptions of power. I answer the following questions: (1) how was power conceptualised? (2) what were the factors that led to such conceptualisation of power? and (3) how will these conceptions be able to explain the contemporary Philippine politics? (Neo) Liberalism, Politics and Property

Room 3.09

Chair: John King Jessica Whyte, “The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and Neoliberalism” In 1992, the Chicago School economist Milton Friedman told an interviewer that the original purpose of neoliberal Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS), founded in 1947, was “to promote a classical, liberal philosophy, that is, a free economy, a free society, socially, civilly and in human rights.” Coming from a thinker who described the authoritarian regime of Chile’s General Pinochet as an economic and a political “miracle” this evocation of human rights appears out of place. After all, human rights NGOs came to prominence in the 1970s precisely for contesting the torture and disappearances that accompanied neoliberal shock treatment in the Southern Cone. According to a dominant view, the struggle for human rights, dignity, civil liberty and bodily integrity taken up by human rights NGOs is self-evidently at odds with what is often perceived as the neoliberal subordination of all values to cash value. In this paper, I argue that Friedman’s account deserves to be taken seriously. Neoliberalism was never as narrowly economistic as such a view assumes; rather, the neoliberal argument for the competitive market was itself moral and political, and human rights played a significant and

Page 26: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

26

overlooked role in neoliberal efforts to instil what the Austrian neoliberal and MPS founder Friedrich Hayek called “the morals of the market”. Neoliberal thinkers, I suggest, contributed more than has been acknowledged to the version of human rights that came to prominence decades later. By 1992, when Friedman spoke, the neoliberal argument that only a liberal market economy could foster human rights was taken as self-evident by many international human rights NGOs. Charles Barbour, “The Young Marx and the Strong State” There is general consensus among Marx scholars that Marx’s earliest treatments of the state were bound up with juridical and constitutional questions that he surpassed or set aside once he began his more mature investigations of political economy. Marx moved from understanding the state in Hegelian terms, as an abstract container of the universal, to understanding it as an instrument or epiphenomena of class struggle or economic relations of production. Against this view, this paper holds that, from the time of his 1842-3 ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’, Marx recognised the distinction between state and society, not as a modern constitutional limitation on state power, but as integral to the form of the modern strong state – a roughly Hobbesian state that is strong precisely insofar as it extracts itself from the realm of social interests and market competition, which it then facilitates, regulates, and administers from a transcendental position. Drawing on the recent work of Werner Bonefeld, I propose that such a sophisticated conception of the strong state has significantly more contemporary purchase than the traditional Marxist theory of the state as an instrument of class domination. Harry Maher, “On the Free Market as Political Theory” The idea of the ‘free market’ is crucial to neoliberal thought, yet the concept has received curiously limited theoretical scrutiny, often being treated as an economic object rather than a political theory. In this paper, I begin the process of developing a genealogical account of the free market, highlighting that the term only entered common usage in the 1930s, in response to a particular crisis in the discourse of classical liberalism. I argue that the free market became central to the nascent neoliberal discourse in the 1930s because it offered the rhetorical means to resolve the long-running liberal antinomy between freedom and order, with the free market conceptual framework discursively unifying the idea of freedom with that of a stable market order. I locate the emergence of the free market discourse in Walter Lippmann’s The Good Society, and in the related Walter Lippmann Colloquium attended by many key early neoliberal thinkers. Subsequently, I trace the adoption of the free market nomenclature by the different schools of neoliberal thought in the post-war era, and the process by which the free market was elevated from embryonic political concept to naturalized institution and master signifier of the economic. Freedom, Non-Domination and Civil Liberties

Room 20.17

Chair: Souresh Roy Garrett Cullity, “Liberty, Security, and Fairness” The “Principle of Fairness” is Rawls’s name for the idea that there is a moral requirement, under certain conditions, to share the burdens that others are meeting in order to produce collectively available benefits in which one participates (Rawls 1971:

Page 27: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

27

111-12). One ambitious application of this idea in political philosophy seeks to use it as the basis of a theory of political obligation generally (Klosko 1992, Dagger 1997). This paper looks at two more restricted applications. First, it asks what assumptions need to be made in order to generate a fairness-based defence of the legitimacy of conscription under circumstances of national emergency. From there, it asks: If we accept those assumptions, what are the implications for the extent to which governments are justified in restricting civil liberties for the sake of protecting national security? What would it take to make such restrictions into fair contributions towards securing our common good? John Tate, “Burqinis, Burqas and Hajibs: Liberalism, Republicanism and Laïcité in France” In 2004, the French Parliament banned the “hijab” in public schools (as part of a broader ban on all overt “religious symbols” worn by school students) and in 2010 it prohibited the “burqa” and “niqab” in “public places” (as part of a broader ban on all garments that covered the face in public). In 2016, local French councils sought to ban the “burqini” on French beaches. These bans were underwritten by an ideal of laïcité which is widely interpreted as requiring “secularism” within the public sphere. This paper problematizes this assumption concerning laïcité by revealing deep fissures within official French state discourse concerning this concept. These fissures were most recently manifest in 2016 when senior French politicians found themselves divided on the “burqini” ban in a way that they were not concerning the “hijab” and “burqa”. Time permitting, the paper will also seek to investigate some American parallels to these events in France. Helen Pringle, “After Blasphemy: Religion and Race as Comparable Grounds of Discrimination” The question of my paper is the appropriateness of protecting religion, religious believers and/or beliefs in modern liberal societies, and how we might justify such measures, if at all. The law of blasphemy has traditionally been employed in order to perform such a service, but its proposed abolition by the Religious Freedom Review, in the context of its seeming desuetude in Australia, raises this question again. Measures against religious vilification, in particular, are often proposed as a way to protect the religious along similar lines as racial vilification measures. However, a common response is that religious vilification laws are vulnerable to certain criticisms to which racial vilification laws are immune. Such perspectives claim that there is an asymmetry between religious and racial vilification, in terms of the (alleged) indelibility of race, and not merely of its historical intractability as a ground of enmity and injury. One of the chief arguments against the extension of vilification measures to religion is the non-indelibility of religion, as if religion were a matter of beliefs or feelings that can be set apart from the identity of the believer. The apparent ability of religious beliefs to ‘shift’ in response to reason is sometimes taken to illustrate the difference between race and religion as a ground of anti-discrimination laws more broadly. Such arguments continue that religious vilification laws hence fail, in the same way as blasphemy law does, to capture a stable or indelible aspect of identity, with the result that the state becomes involved in the regulation and policing of permissible beliefs, and thereby in the adjudication of theological orthodoxy. I refer to the 1933 Australian case of Anne Lennon as illustrative here.

Page 28: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

28

Critical Perspectives on Anarchism, the State, and Collective Obligations

Room 20.16

Chair: Maxwell Deutscher

Matthew Joseph, “In Defence of Reasonable Cosmopolitanism” Some statist political philosophers justify the state’s right to exclude non-citizens because of the morally relevant goods associated with citizenship. But citizenship is not acquired on moral grounds. Typically, it is assigned at birth according to morally arbitrary facts about a newborn’s location or lineage. It is a distinctly political act performed for political purposes separate from presumed moral justifications. In this paper I defend a reasonable cosmopolitanism, according to which states should not have the right to exclude on morally arbitrary grounds. Contra critics of cosmopolitanism, I argue that we should prefer socio-political arrangements that reflect our moral commitments, such as universal moral equality. If this argument holds, then we should reject the rights of states to exclude would-be immigrants according to morally arbitrary facts about them. As citizenship assignation is a morally arbitrary political act, statists ought to agree that it is an unjust basis for exclusion. Nathan Bell, “Refugees: Towards a new Concept of the Political” I will be presenting the central thesis of my forthcoming book where I seek to articulate a new concept of the political centered on the right to asylum. I argue that that the constitution of the membership of a political community is not simply a matter of rational or fearful decisions consciously willed by a community attending to its own interests, but rather are always-already called into question by ethical subjectivity and un-chosen human plurality. That is, following Arendt, that human beings do not get to choose with whom they share the earth, or indeed ‘their’ political communities with, and following Levinas, human beings are always-already called to responsibility for those unchosen others. What results from this articulation of the mediating conditions of political life is, to borrow Judith Butler’s formulation, the conclusion that an ethics of care and cohabitation are the proper work of politics, that politics equals asylum. Gearóid Brinn, “Realist Anarchism” Anarchism is subject to many misrepresentations. Even leaving aside popular images of anarchism as violent lawlessness, serious academic treatments as well as ostensibly sympathetic radical accounts, perpetuate a simplistic stereotype of anarchism as the most naïvely idealistic of radical perspectives. This paper will demonstrate, however, that within the diverse field of anarchist thought there exist tendencies, strains and thinkers which falsify the validity of this representation. Drawing on examples from across the modern and contemporary eras of anarchism it will show that rather than a universally idealistic perspective, there are expressions of anarchism which should be considered politically realist. Recognition of this ‘realist anarchism’ is useful not only for appreciating the true scope of anarchist thought, action, and potential, but also for contextualizing and clarifying other contemporary radical theoretical discourses, such as agonistic radical democratic theory, and radical strains in the revival of realism in contemporary political theory. Anne Schwenkenbecher, “Collective ignorance, and epistemic obligations” Ignorance is standardly seen as an excusing factor for wrongdoing if it is blameless. The main disagreement in the literature on ignorance and blame concerns what constitutes

Page 29: 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy ... · The 4th Australasian Political Theory and Political Philosophy Conference was made possible in part by funding from

29

blameless ignorance? According to some authors, ignorance is blameworthy only if an agent has previously failed in fulfilling their epistemic obligations: “epistemic obligations amount to obligations to do certain things that will or might result in an improved epistemic position with respect to one thing or another” (Miller 2017). With existing literature focusing predominantly on individual agents, this paper develops a typology of collective ignorance and explores the notion of group-based epistemic obligations. I show that (i) our epistemic obligations do not just concern our own epistemic status but that of others, too. I might be blameworthy for someone else’s ignorance (or for ‘our’ joint ignorance). Further, (ii) there might be some specifically collective kinds of epistemic obligations.

Venue Information

The La Trobe City Campus is located at 360 Collins Street, Melbourne.

The main reception for the conference will be on Level 3, and all catering for the conference will be hosted on Level 3.

The conference will be hosted on both Level 3 and Level 20.

Please note that there is no direct lift connection between Level 3 and Level 20 – you must travel via the Ground Floor in order to change to a different elevator when moving between Levels.

PowerPoint Presentations Speakers are requested to arrive 10 minutes prior to their session in order to upload PowerPoint presentations to the desktop. In the event of any issues with a PowerPoint presentation, we request that speakers continue their presentation without their PowerPoint presentation in order that individual papers are still completed within 20 minutes (to permit the panels to keep within the scheduled time).