Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores the role of critical intellectuals in the inter-war period ? such as Benjamin, Gramsci and Neumann ? and theorists on the left today ? such as Agamben; Hardt and Negri -- with respect to how they theorize questions of ethics, theory and praxis. The paper will argue that a key problem is that such contemporary theorists occlude the fundamental links made in earlier critical theory between the political economy of capital, (transnational) class formations, hegemony, supremacy and state power and not least, issues of constitutionalism and the rule of law. This is surprising since a central characteristic of the present conjuncture in global politics is the intensification of the disciplines of capital in social life (reflected in a rising rate of exploitation and the expropriation or dispossession of communities in a process of primitive accumulation) as well as the intensification and globalization of resistance. Indeed such current intellectual preoccupations with sovereign and arbitrary power fall well short of theorisations that can identify the multiple forms of supremacy, discipline and power. Thus they also occlude the significant forms of transformative resistance and the making of alternatives to disciplinary neo-liberalism or ?empire?.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, I propose to examine Thomas Hobbes’s two
works most closely associated with the English Revolution, Leviathan
and Behemoth, in a somewhat non-traditional fashion. Leviathan and
Behemoth are biblical creatures mentioned in the Book of Job. Behemoth
is a land monster, as Leviathan is a sea creature (see Job 40, 15-24
and 41, 1-34). While Behemoth is clearly designed to be a history of
the Revolution, Leviathan is rarely, if ever treated as one. However, I
believe that useful and enlightening comparisons can be made between
the two works. In this paper I will ask whether Hobbes’s analysis of
the causes, effects and danger of civil strife remained the same in
these two works or whether his views changed between the writing of
Leviathan and Behemoth. I will consider what effect, if any, the
changed political contexts between the writing of the two works (1651
and approximately 1668) affected Hobbes’s conclusions about the causes
and effects of the English Revolution. I also ask whether or not, as
Stephen Holmes suggested, Hobbes consistently applies the analytical
framework for interpreting the breakdown of authority developed in
Leviathan. I will also ask what effects any changes in Hobbes’s view
might have for the larger enterprise of Hobbes scholarship. Area of
expertise: Early modern political thought and American Political
Thought

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper argues that Behemoth is Hobbes's demonstration of how history is to be taught in light of the science of justice he develops in Leviathan.