States of Exceptionalism: Race, Violence, and Governance.

“States of Exceptionalism: Race, Violence, and Governance,” illuminates the role of racial ideologies in the organization and institutionalization of state power during the first quarter of the twentieth century, and shows the influence of this history on patterns of police and military violence in the present. Covering the lynching era (1880 – 1930), with the conclusion examining current events that have been labelled “modern-day lynchings,” this dissertation reveals the linkages between extralegal and state-sanctioned violence that emerge during times of crisis and emergency, what I call “states of exceptionalism.” Departing from historical and sociological studies that characterize lynching and race riots as lawless mob violence, my research demonstrates that these phenomena have been forms of legalized violence, which flourish under the legal ambiguity created by intersecting discourses of race and crisis. Such violence is simultaneously a product of law and yet detached from the accountability and oversight that law is supposed to provide. Rather than view lynching and race riots as problems of the distant past, I argue that these phenomena survive as legal precedent and shape a range of debates and discourses today – from crime and social unrest to terrorism and war.PHDAmerican CultureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116711/1/jesscarr_1.pd

Critique & Praxis: A Pure Theory of Illusions, Values, and Tactics, and An Answer to the Question: What is to Be Done?

We are going through an unprecedented period of political instability. With the rise of the alt-right and of xenophobic sentiment, and the fallout of neoliberal government policies, our political future is at stake. These times call for the type of critical theory and praxis that gave rise to the Frankfurt School in the 1920s and to the critical ferment of the 1970s. Yet, in the face of our crises today, contemporary critical theory seems disarmed. Critical theory is in disarray because of a wave of anti-foundational challenges in the 1960s that shattered the epistemological foundations of the Frankfurt School. The critiques fractured critical theory, but did not rebuild it. The result is that critical theory has since been mired in internecine battles of influence between Marxists and Foucaultians and others. Critique & Praxis is a corrective. Its ambition is four-fold. First, it reconstructs critical theory by proposing a pure theory of illusions. Second, it offers a new critical horizon for the future based on a pure theory of values. Third, it reconstructs critical praxis based on a pure theory of tactics. Fourth, the book proposes a situated and time-stamped response to the question “What is to be done?” Critique & Praxis performs these four tasks through a history of theory and praxis from the 19th to the 21st century, a reconstruction of critique, utopia, and praxis, and an answer to the question “What is to be done? New York, September 1, 2018.

Free Culture and the Digital Library Symposium Proceedings 2005: Proceedings of a Symposium held on October 14, 2005 at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Outlines the themes and contributions of the Free Culture and the Digital Library Symposium.The article provides a summary of the conflict of interests between those who seek to preserve ashared commons of information for society and those who seek to commodify information. Iintroduce a theoretical framework called Transmediation to help explain the changes in mediathat society is currently experiencing

The Age Demands It : Progressivism in Zion City, Illinois, a Conservative Protestant Theocracy

Historians have periodized the last decade of the nineteenth and first two decades of the twentieth centuries as the Progressive Era.The Era is characterized by booming industrialization, unregulated corporate capitalism, rapid urbanization, and immigration from countries other than northern Europe. These developments unleashed an explosion of reforms intended to solve the social problems that emanated from these unsettling developments. Reformers beseeched the courts and state and national legislatures to regulate banks and big businesses. Urban reformers and liberal religious leaders established settlement houses to uplift immigrants morally and socially. Other reformers espoused religious or secular communitarian philosophies to dignify labor, or to provide model communities that others could emulate.This is a case study of one such communitarian model, founded on conservative Protestant principles and intended to be an industrial city that would attract Christians to live, to work, and to prosper. Founder John Alexander Dowie developed a physical environment that encompassed many of the progressive priorities of the era, such as orderly neighborhoods, parks, and playgrounds. City ordinances forbad alcohol and other vices inherent in urban centers. Within a few years, Dowie was forced into bankruptcy, and died shortly thereafter. Progressive members of his congregation emerged to re-create the city as a modern, yet moral industrial city. In spite of their progressive vision, their success was thwarted by a powerful antagonist whose goal was to return the city to a conservative theocracy.Using multiple regional newspapers, trade journals, magazines, and institutional records, this project analyzes the strong progressive elements evident in the physical layout of the city and the labors of progressive businessmen who worked to advance the benefits of the city to industrialists, and to connect the city to the burgeoning Chicago market while maintaining the moral precepts vital to the era, and central to their own faith, assumptions, and values

Batman the Noble Dog: The Costs of Spiritedness for the Individual and Society

Batman’s self-imposed mission to rid Gotham City of its criminal element has always presented the problem of vigilantism. From the perspective of criminology, Batman’s methods raise the problem of whether society can be governed, or govern itself, with extralegal law enforcement. The problem presented by Batman’s behavior is often stated, as the ancient Roman satirist Juvenal famously put it, “quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“but who is going to guard the guards themselves?”).1 The threat posed by selfappointed guardians, such as Batman and other super heroes, has been frequently analyzed by scholars and fans alike. Yet, there is an additional, less frequently discussed, problem presented by Batman’s behavior: what are the costs to Batman and the citizens of Gotham from a guard who refuses to govern? In this chapter, the authors discuss Plato’s conception of spiritedness and analyze how Batman’s behavior affects his soul and the souls of Gotham City’s citizens

Towards a new transaesthetics: rap music in Germany and the United States

Diese Doktorarbeit vergleicht HipHop in Deutschland und in den Vereinigten Staaten und konzentriert sich dabei auf Interpret*innen, die mindestens auf zwei oder mehreren Sprachen rappen. Beginnend mit der Behauptung, dass zwei- oder mehrsprachige Rapmusik ein transkulturelles Phänomen sei, kehrt Kumpf zunächst zu der Theorie von Fernando Ortiz, kubanischer Anthropologe und Erfinder des Konzepts des Transkulturalismus, zurück, um zu klären, inwiefern dieser Begriff Ortiz relevant ist. Diese ersten Schritte sind insofern von hoher Wichtigkeit, als Akademiker*innen, die bisher HipHop als transkulturelles Phänomen betrachtet haben, nicht auf das Konzept von Ortiz rekurriert haben. Diese Doktorarbeit trägt das Denken von Ortiz klar und deutlich an HipHop-Studien heran. Basierend auf dem Verständnis, dass der Einsatz von und das Zusammenspiel zwischen Musik und Sprachen einen erheblichen Einfluss auf die Zuhörenden hat, erklärt Kumpf die ästhetischen Dimensionen von Songs, die nach bestimmten Themen organisiert sind. Um die musikalische und sprachliche Ästhetik zu verstehen, setzt Kumpf das Konzept „transaesthetics“ des französischen Philosophen Jean Baudrillard ein und fragt, inwiefern dieses hilfreich ist, um Rapmusik zu verstehen. Erstens argumentiert Kumpf, dass Baudrillards Begriff nutzbar ist und zweitens, dass es einer Erweiterung des Konzeptes bedarf. Kumpf versucht neue Inhalte und Bedeutungen von „transaesthetics“ zu implementieren und erläutern. Mit Winfried Flucks Idee von ästhetischer Erfahrung („aesthetic experience“) betrachtet Kumpf Rapmusik als Beispiel populärer Literatur. Kumpf argumentiert, dass die Songtexte von Rapliedern eine transkulturelle ästhetische Erfahrung („transcultural aesthetic experience“) der Zuhörenden bewirken, welche in der Folge zu einer Selbsterweiterung („self extension“) führen könnte: Bringen Songs Zuhörende mit mehreren Kulturen enger in Kontakt, so ermöglichen sie diesen, ihren Horizont zu erweitern. Das Ergebnis, so Kumpf, ist die Möglichkeit, sich selbst als transkulturelle Figur zu verstehen. Das könnte eine Auswirkung auf Identitäten, z.B. nationale, ethnische und andere politische sowie auf sexuelle und Geschlechtsidentitäten haben. Kumpf stützt diese Behauptung mit Theorien von Stuart Hall („new ethnicities“), Floya Anthias („translocational positionality“) und Irina Schmitt (Jugendliche als ein „transcultural avant-garde“). Diese Wirkung jedoch nur theoretisch erklärt, nicht jedoch mit soziologistischen Methoden überprüft. Am Ende seiner Dissertation schlägt Kumpf vor, welche weitere Forschung durchgeführt werden könnte, hauptsächlich soziologische Forschung wie die der US-Amerikanerin Lucila Vargas, um herauszufinden, wie Zuhörende diese Lieder rezipieren. Die Dissertation entfaltet sich über sechs Kapital, von denen und jedes nach bestimmten Themen organisiert ist, um eine sensible Vergleichsstudie zu ermöglichen. Kapitel 1 behandelt relevante kulturelle Theorien und den Stand der Forschung in Deutschland und in den Vereinigten Staaten. Kapitel 2 untersucht den Ursprung von zwei- und mehrsprachiger Rapmusik in beiden Ländern. In Kapitel 3 geht es um das Thema Migration und Aktivismus. In dem vierten Kapitel werden Sexualität und Gender diskutiert. Kapitel 5 beschäftigt sich mit Geistigkeit (Befreiung und Erhabenheit). Das letzte Kapitel diskutiert den Holocaust und Antifaschismus. Das Fazit thematisiert erstens die Wichtigkeit, Rapmusik als Form von populärer Musik und Literatur zu verstehen und zweitens, was man darunter in Deutschland und in den USA versteht. Diese Dissertation gilt als erste Vergleichsstudie von Rapmusik in Deutschland und der USA in englischer Sprache. Nach der Begutachtung und der erfolgreichen Verteidigung könnte diese Doktorarbeit ein Loch in dem Forschungsstand beider Länder füllen

Bosses, bullets and ballots : electoral violence and democracy in Thailand, 1975-2011

My research examines the relationship between political violence and democratic structures in Thailand since 1975. To examine this relationship, I focus specifically on violence in Thai electoral politics. The main objective of my research is to identify the primary factors and processes that enable or foment violence in elections and to explain the variation in Thai electoral violence across time and space. Since democratization began in the mid-1970s, electoral processes in Thailand have been tainted with various forms of violence. Apart from targeted assassinations, other forms of election-related violence include attacking polling stations on election day, bombing candidates' and vote canvassers' houses, threatening election-related personnel, burning of political parties' headquarters, and post-election mass protests. In the last fourteen national general elections from January 1975 to July 2011, including several local ones within the same period, hundreds of people have died or been injured as a result of election-related violence. Arising from this are two important elements of variation that call for investigation. First, the patterns and degrees of violence have shifted over time. Election-related violence first manifested itself in the 1975 and 1976 elections. The intensity and degree of violence increased in the 1980s and remained relatively constant until the late 1990s. Thai society then observed a sharp rise in violence in the 2001 and 2005 elections. Despite predictions that the deep political polarization which occurred after the 2006 military coup would intensify electoral competition and produce higher levels of bloodshed during polling, electoral violence declined in 2007 and 2011. In explaining the changes in forms and patterns of violence over time, I focus on the patrimonial characteristics of the state, the changes in electoral and party systems, the impact of decentralization, and the relative importance of ideological politics. These factors help to explain cross-temporal variation in electoral violence nationwide. Second, electoral violence in Thailand is unevenly distributed in spatial terms. National-level factors cannot account for the very substantial geographical variation in levels of violence across the country, as data show that some provinces are more violent than others. Since electoral violence in Thailand is province-specific, my research focuses specifically on the local factors that promote violent conflict. In short, rather than merely examining the macro-political picture at the national level, this research explores micro-political-economic conditions and micro-power structure at the provincial level of Thai politics, and the way in which national and local power interact. I compare three provinces harboring chronic electoral violence, namely Phrae, Nakhon Sawan, and Nakhon Si Thammarat, with three provinces that are relatively peaceful: Phetchaburi, Buriram, and Sa Kaeo. Each case represents different regional locations, socio-economic conditions, and political environments of provincial politics in Thailand. Collectively, they illuminate the dynamics of political contestation and violence in other provinces throughout the country

Free Culture and the Digital Library Symposium Proceedings 2005

This book of proceedings includes seventeen papers from a symposium held at Emory University. The symposium papers discuss subjects relating to free culture in digital libraries