In this episode we’ll be exploring the work of Falguni Sheth and learning about race, racialization, and political philosophy. In part 2 we’ll be looking at a case study and discuss the racialization of Muslims in so-called Western liberal societies. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today. So, I’m gonna jump right in. There’s this big debate over whether race is a series of biological categories or whether it’s just a social construct. And in her book ‘Toward a Political Philosophy of Race,” Falguni Sheth tries to break away from that binary. She says that to talk about race just as a biological category ignores all the ways that it’s used in politics and law, and to talk about it just as a social construct ignores the more interesting questions
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An insistence that all citizens are equal; emphasis on the ‘rule of law’, where the law is through to be fair and consented to democraticallu by the people. Liberalism also usually means capitalism, and since the tail end of the 20th century it’s increasingly meant neoliberal capitalis,, with an emphasis on low welfare, low taxes and free markets. Sheth has a very interesting view of what Sovereign Power and its legal and political systems are for. She thinks that the purpose of the state is to conserve its own power, and, by extension, conserve those basic liberal assumptions. The function of government is not to ensure peace, or justice, or fairness, or anything like that. “This is the self-preservation …show more content…
We’ve covered the ‘who?’ But preserve itself against what exactly? Time to look at the ‘Why?’
Fortunately this bit;s pretty easy. Sovereign Power wants to preserve itself against what Sheth calls ‘the unruly.’ The unruly is that which is “unpredictable, undependable, or threatening to a political order. “Sovereign power doesn’t make exceptions of people randomly. If your existence or the way you live threatens any of the basic liberal assumptions, or even, as is often the case, if it’s just perceived as a threat to them, you’re in danger of baing marked as unruly. So for instance, If you openly display your private values in public, if you remind people that the law isn’t always administered equally, if you actually need the welfare state to survive, then in the eyes of Sovereign Power you can ve a threat, whether they’re consciously aware of that and whether you actually are, or not.
So Sovereign Power wants to preserve itself against perceived Challenges from the unruly by making exceptions of
An insistence that all citizens are equal; emphasis on the ‘rule of law’, where the law is through to be fair and consented to democraticallu by the people. Liberalism also usually means capitalism, and since the tail end of the 20th century it’s increasingly meant neoliberal capitalis,, with an emphasis on low welfare, low taxes and free markets. Sheth has a very interesting view of what Sovereign Power and its legal and political systems are for. She thinks that the purpose of the state is to conserve its own power, and, by extension, conserve those basic liberal assumptions. The function of government is not to ensure peace, or justice, or fairness, or anything like that. “This is the self-preservation …show more content…
We’ve covered the ‘who?’ But preserve itself against what exactly? Time to look at the ‘Why?’
Fortunately this bit;s pretty easy. Sovereign Power wants to preserve itself against what Sheth calls ‘the unruly.’ The unruly is that which is “unpredictable, undependable, or threatening to a political order. “Sovereign power doesn’t make exceptions of people randomly. If your existence or the way you live threatens any of the basic liberal assumptions, or even, as is often the case, if it’s just perceived as a threat to them, you’re in danger of baing marked as unruly. So for instance, If you openly display your private values in public, if you remind people that the law isn’t always administered equally, if you actually need the welfare state to survive, then in the eyes of Sovereign Power you can ve a threat, whether they’re consciously aware of that and whether you actually are, or not.
So Sovereign Power wants to preserve itself against perceived Challenges from the unruly by making exceptions of