Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this essay I examine recent
adoptions of Carl Schmitt's writings in debates surrounding the
preconditions and limits of global liberalism. I first situate
Schmitt's critique of liberalism in the context of threats to national
sovereignty in Weimar Germany, drawing several analogies to present
concerns. I then consider Chantal Mouffe's avowedly paradoxical
attempt to recruit Schmitt
as an ally for a political revision of democratic pluralism. For
Mouffe, Schmitt's critique of liberalism serves to highlight its basis
in a set of constitutive exclusions. However, while thinkers including
Slavoj Zizek use this insight to chastise a pluralist imagination for
its displacement of internal conflict to a fundamentalist enemy, Mouffe
embraces the polemical distinctions that sustain attachments to liberal
institutions and processes. In doing so, I argue, she falls prey to the
same Schmittian wager she seeks to elide, consolidating liberal
hegemony against fundamentalist enemies rather than exploring the
potentials within each for rearticulation. In the current political
climate, such moves are particularly dangerous. As I show, one finds a
similar logic at work in the Bush administration's rhetorical
justifications for the War on Terror. Along these lines, Giorgio
Agamben, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have characterized American
imperialism as the exception become the rule. However, while I endorse
the latter theorists' critique of liberal hegemony, I argue that they
fail to identify the mechanisms by which, for Schmitt, polemical
identification is in fact mobilized. A closer look at Schmitt's
account of the discursive and technological foundations of democratic
identification, I argue, reveals potential resources for mitigating
liberal/fundamentalist oppositions.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores the way three retired military officers’ arguments worked to counter the Bush Administration views of the war. A rationale for examining the general’s arguments is offered. The paper then assesses the context of justifications to which the arguments were addressed. Finally, the paper offers a detailed analysis of the arguments to reveal strategies to counter the administration’s view of the war.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper, I employ stasis theory in order to investigate the Supreme Court’s opinion in Rumsfeld v. FAIR. In this the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment did not protect law schools’ right to voice their opinion against homophobia and discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the military by excluding military recruiters from campus. I conclude that stasis theory better explains the Supreme Court’s actions than contemporary models of proceduralism.