Political Theory without the Bannister of Progress

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Faced with persistent and cyclical moral and ethical crises, such as climate change, racial discrimination, and the perpetuation of slavery, does progress remain a pertinent orienting frame to understand the movement of history and our orientation to political imagination? How should political theory address what the late Tracy Strong once referred to as “Thinking without a Banister?” This collection of papers seeks to answer this question by considering the relationship between destiny, action, and progress. Together we ask whether scientific and technological progress is the appropriate solution to the climate crisis, whether political activism requires specific expectations, and how to think about the cyclical re-emergence of abhorrent social and political practices, when the moral arc of history does not trend in a teleological fashion. In pursuit of these collective goals, Anthony Dean Norton explores Guisseppe Mazzini’s political theology and progressive understanding of history in counterbalance to Carl Schmitt’s political theology; Mary Witlacil considers how ecopessimism might overcome the teleological assumptions of techno-optimists and eco-managerialists; Scott Rittner proposes a theory of revolutionary pessimism as an approach to anti-fascist activism without expectations of progress by putting Simone Weil in conversation with James Martel and contemporary theorists of fascism. Finally, Ira Allen uses Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, in conversation with Sylvia Wynter and John Dewey to grapple with how things morally progress, as well as how they fail to progress. Each paper contributes to the problematization of progress and progressive narratives that put the horseless carriage before the horse, fixating on goals and providence in lieu of politics and process.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• Providence as and against Progress: Giuseppe Mazzini’s Political Theology - Anthony Dean Norton, University of California, Los Angeles

• Techno-Optimism Is Climate Denial - Mary Witlacil, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

• Antifascism: Resistance Contra Progress in Simone Weil’s Political Thought - Scott Benjamin Ritner, University of Colorado, Boulder

• The Necessity and Impossibility of Progress: A View from Complexity - Ira Allen, Northern Arizona University

Chair

• Matthew Stein College of Southern Nevada- Social Sciences

Discussant

• Noga Rotem University of Washington