Political Theory Workshop: “Quite obscure until now:” Montesquieu’s constitutional history, foundings, and the modern state by Jacob Levy
2021-04-16 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Los Angeles, CA, United States
Speaker: Jacob Levy, McGill University
Title: “Quite obscure until now:” Montesquieu’s constitutional history, foundings, and the modern state
Topic: PT Workshop
Time: Friday, April 16th; 4:00pm PST

ZOOM LINK:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/8217815316?pwd=[REDACTED]

Meeting ID: 821 781 5316
Passcode: [REDACTED]

One tap mobile
+12133388477,,8217815316#,,,,,,0#,,4289# US (Los Angeles)
+16692192599,,8217815316#,,,,,,0#,,4289# US (San Jose)
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The password-protected paper is both attached and available on the PT website at
https://polisci.ucla.edu/events/workshops/political-theory-workshop

The password is (case-sensitive) UCLAtheory

Abstract:
The concluding Part 6 of The Spirit of the Laws is by far the longest of the book’s major sections— almost a third of the book’s total length— but it is almost certainly the least-discussed and least-understood. It offers a legal and constitutional history of France which, even by Montesquieu’s usual standards, offers few explicit normative conclusions and little by way of an explanation of its purpose. The material he discusses is obscure to contemporary readers, and so Part 6 is typically either ignored altogether or identified in a summary way with la thèse nobiliaire. In this chapter I will offer an interpretation of Part 6 and its purpose in the book, and use that to illuminate Montesquieu’s understanding of constitutional foundings and the emergence of the modern European state throughout SL, and, more tentatively, in The Persian Letters as well. Montesquieu rejects all of the contemporaneous theories of political normativity grounded in foundings and origins— la thèse nobiliaire as much as la thèse royale, historical contractarianism as is found in the monarchomachs and hypothetical contractarianism In the Grotius-Hobbes tradition, and the obsession with foundings and founders seen in Machiavelli and republicanism. He demonstrates the falseness and impossibility of all of these, rejecting them as incompatible with the pluralism and institutional evolution that genealted the moderate and balanced era of the Gothic constitution, “the best kind of government which men have been able to devise.” This government did not ultimately fail through its corruption, as one might think through reading the long discussion of regime types and their internal failure; it was itself such a corruption. Its merits were not based on a founding principle but on the institutional history traced in Part 6– a history that directs our attention to the social and political changes that did end the Gothic era, the rise of the modern Weberian state.

Political Theory Workshop: "The Use of Love" by Lida Maxwell
2021-05-21 16:00 - 18:00 | Los Angeles, CA, United States
Speaker: Lida Maxwell, Boston University
Title: The Use of Love
Topic: PT Workshop
Time: Friday, May 21st; 4:00pm PST

*Please note that the attached chapter is from Professor Maxwell’s book project on queer love*

ZOOM LINK:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/8217815316?pwd=[REDACTED]

Meeting ID: 821 781 5316
Passcode: [REDACTED]

One tap mobile
+12133388477,,8217815316#,,,,,,0#,,4289# US (Los Angeles)
+16692192599,,8217815316#,,,,,,0#,,4289# US (San Jose)
——————–

The password-protected paper is both attached and available on the PT website at
https://polisci.ucla.edu/events/workshops/political-theory-workshop

The password is (case-sensitive) UCLAtheory

Abstract:
This chapter of my book project, “Queer Love,” examines how the experience of queer love puts normal “uses” of love into question, and reframes the nature of “use” – of objects, people, non-human nature, institutions etc. – for queer lovers more generally. The chapter focuses on the relationship between Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, as well as Audre Lorde’s account of the erotic, while also examining some of Carson’s early writings while she worked at the Department of the Interior. A central claim of the chapter is that the use of love and the use of non-human nature are connected, and that when queer love puts the nature of “use” into question, this happens in part through unfamiliar uses of non-human nature.

Political Theory Workshop: "Out of Line: Line-Standing, Queues, and Distributive Justice" by Elizabeth Cohen
2021-06-04 16:00 - 18:00 | Los Angeles, CA, United States
Speaker: Elizabeth Cohen, Syracuse University
Title: Out of Line: Line-Standing, Queues, and Distributive Justice
Topic: PT Workshop
Time: Friday, June 4th; 4:00pm PST

ZOOM LINK:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/8217815316?pwd=[REDACTED]

Meeting ID: 821 781 5316
Passcode: [REDACTED]

One tap mobile
+12133388477,,8217815316#,,,,,,0#,,4289# US (Los Angeles)
+16692192599,,8217815316#,,,,,,0#,,4289# US (San Jose)
——————–

The password-protected paper is both attached and available on the PT website at
https://polisci.ucla.edu/events/workshops/political-theory-workshop

The password is (case-sensitive) UCLAtheory

Abstract:
Time is a fundamental ingredient of social justice. Yet political theory does not often directly interrogate the temporality of distributive justice. This paper examines one aspect of distributive justice and time. It looks at the impact of members of a society thinking of themselves to be waiting in queues to access political opportunities, goods, and standing. The process of “waiting in line” has become a common metaphor to describe the experience of seeking social and political mobility. Queues are associated with powerful social justice expectations and related emotions. Once people believe they have invested time waiting in line, they tend to treat their place in line to be a form of property, they expect the principle of first come first served to apply, and they react strongly to even a suggestion that a line has been “cut” or arbitrarily reordered. Such frames have important implications for how anyone seeking social mobility will regard immigrants, or anyone they believe should be behind them in a line.

Political Theory Workshop on 2/17/2023 (Lisa Disch)
2023-02-17 16:00 - 18:00 | CA
Speaker: Lisa Disch, University of Michigan
Title: Responsiveness in Reverse
Topic: PT Workshop
Time: Friday, February 17th; 4:00pmThe password-protected paper is both attached and available on the PT website at
https://polisci.ucla.edu/events/workshops/political-theory-workshop
The password is (case-sensitive) UCLAtheory
Abstract:
Classic accounts of representative democracy describe an interest-first model according to which constituencies form around things they want and elected representatives respond to their demands. Research into political knowledge and preference formation shows that in practice, responsiveness goes the other way. In mass democracies, acts of political representation often do not take constituencies and their interests as a starting point. Representatives of all kinds participate in forming group identities, crafting political demands, and defining political cleavages. In such a context, the model of interest-first representation and the responsiveness ideal set representative democracy up to fail: they create expectations about “competence” that most individuals cannot and need not meet. I propose a mobilization conception of political representation and defend a dynamic account of constituency making to shift those expectations.

Political Theory Workshop (3/3/23) - Alexander Diones (Loyola Marymount University)
2023-03-03 16:00 - 18:00 | CA
Speaker: Alexander Diones, Loyola Marymount University
Title: Criticism and Self-Criticism: The Combahee River Collective and the Critique of Global Maoism
Topic: PT Workshop
Time: Friday, March 3rd; 4:00pm
The password-protected paper is both attached and available on the PT website at
https://polisci.ucla.edu/events/workshops/political-theory-workshop
The password is (case-sensitive) UCLAtheory
Abstract:
How do we conceive of solidarity when we’re conditioned to treating one another as antagonists? To answer this question, I turn to the Combahee River Collective’s “Statement,” particularly its theory of what the authors call “criticism and loathing.” Building on recent scholarship on the collective’s place in the intellectual history of global Maoism, this essay argues that the account of criticism contained in this phrase should be thought of as both a reformulation of Maoist theories of vanguard politics and a claim about the relation of identity and solidarity.

34th Bollens-Ries-Hoffenberg Lecture
2023-10-19 17:00 - 19:30 | James West Alumni Center, Founders Room, UCLA, James West Alumni Center, Founders Room, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Click to RSVP
