paul jackson | dilemmas of justice

ahhh… I forgot about political science [I did it in my undergrad]. The freedom of abstraction, with out having to put abstraction into conversation with existing places, practices, etc. Now Fraser putting words into idea boxes and moving them around each other is useful, productive, powerful, I support it, but I am always missing the…for the lack of a better word, materiality of it all? How would this play out? Where would this play out? I see this breaking down the moment the plane starts down the runway….

→ I don’t really know where to start with a summary of Fraser. How do you summarize a thought experiment? Fraser gives us a very logical, systematic, yet nuanced, outlining of the (continuing) present-day contemporary political and theory environment. For the summary I was going to put all the positions in relation to each other, but Fraser does that on p.87. So perhaps I will just jump to the conclusion:

“the scenario to that best finesses the redistribution-recognition dilemma is socialism in the economy plus deconstruction in the culture. But for this scenario to be psychologically and politically feasible requires that people be weaned from their attachment to current cultural constructions of their interests and identities” [91]

→ sounds great! but how?
→ I enjoyed the way she sets up the relationships and how I was always drawn towards the transformative gave me a little boost (never really knew where she was going with the whole thing), so at least I agree with her. Agreement is good, sign me up to the project. But so I agree with her logic, where does that get me?
→ she says the dilemma is real and no neat theoretical move can resolve or dissolve it. Okay then how do I/we proceed?

I have the same feeling with the talk of rights from last class and the Smith piece. How will rights and justice work? Who will enforce and at what scale or through which networks? How will these discussion take place? Rights are mere window dressing on states that have avenues for complaint and restitution (usually through legal frameworks, already problematic). How do we even enact a more-than-national way of rights and redistribution-recognition dilemma?

How do I help assist/be an ally in creating the permanences that Harvey speaks on p.359, if only to help tear down those permanences when they are no longer useful. Common languages, vigilance with including those left out of the picture, collective practices are part of a critical political project (I’m drifting in the Braun critique now), but how are they negotiated? So yes Marxism is not enough, but how do you build more-than-enough? How are these ideas put into social practice and have material effects? (I’m also don’t think Thrift has anything to help here) Fraser uses the words “deep restructuring”, what does that look like?

How do we talk about/theorize/envision/describe/give examples of practices of socialism in the economy plus deconstruction in the culture?

It is interesting that the only examples of an ideological transformative practices I have are negative examples (I’m thinking of the neoliberal project). More and more through this course I have been thinking through my dissertation research as an example of an ideological project that worked the local level in co-ordination transnational organization and affected changes at a variety of scales and levels. The actually did institutionalize change (some of which did raise the standard of living of a greater proportion of the population). But those who were working on basically ideological project, with the support of science and the state, used the politics of fear.