The Politics of Wounds

What configuration of strategies and discourses enable the white male and settler body politic to render itself as simultaneously wounded and invulnerable? I contextualize this question by reading the discursive continuities between Euro-America’s War on Terror post-9/11 and Algeria’s War for Independence. By interrogating political-philosophical responses to September 11, 2001 beside American rhetoric of a wounded nation, I argue that white nationalism, as a mode of settler colonialism, appropriates the discourses of political wounding to imagine and legitimize a narrative of white hurt and white victimhood; in effect, reproducing and hardening the borders of the nation-state. Additionally, by turning to Fanon and Mbembe, I argue that settler colonialism produces what I term as “scenes of captivity,” where the settler nation-state detains, incarcerates, and interrogates brown, Indigenous, and black bodies both for producing knowledge about those bodies and protecting and securitizing the nation-state. Understanding the ways in which settler colonialism’s logics of detention, captivity, and interrogation, both then and now, provides insights into how we might begin dismantling detention centres

Practicing Benedictine Values to Create an Inclusive Learning Environment

The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University (CSB/SJU) are historically white, Catholic, and Benedictine residential liberal arts colleges in central Minnesota. The institutions define eleven dispositions as “Our Benedictine Values”: Awareness of God, Community Living, Dignity of Work, Hospitality, Justice, Listening, Moderation, Peace, Respect for Persons, Stability, and Stewardship. If practiced intentionally, the Benedictine values may help instructors and students create inclusive learning environments in which all persons have the opportunity to learn and thrive. In addition, incorporating aspects of the Benedictine values into their pedagogy may help instructors at CSB/SJU strengthen their “academic commitments to the mission.” This essay shares my attempts to incorporate the Benedictine values into my pedagogy, how I invited and encouraged students in my 2016 fall semester first-year seminar section to practice these values, our reflections on our attempts to practice the values, and observations on the effectiveness of practicing these values to create an inclusive learning environment

Economic Efficiency Versus Public Choice: The case of Property Rights in Road Traffic Management

This Article argues, using the case of responses to traffic congestion, that public choice theory provides a greater explanation for the emergence of property rights than does economic efficiency. The traditional solution to traffic congestion is to provide new roadway capacity, but that is not an efficient response in that it does not lead to internalization of costs and may actually exacerbate congestion problems by inducing travel that would not have taken place but for the new construction. By contrast, congestion charges, which impose tolls designed to internalize the costs of driving, offer an efficient way to address the problem of congestion. Nonetheless, the continued popularity of providing new roadway capacity turns upon public choice theory. New roadway construction is attractive for politicians as a way to satisfy both constituents generally, and well-organized and powerful interest groups in particular. Although congestion charging regimes tend to be less popular across the board politically, there appears currently to be a shift in position. This Article argues that it is possible for concerns of efficiency to override (or at least to curtail) politics when the inefficiencies of a response grounded in political economy become too large. But at the same time, public choice theory continues to hold considerable sway—the shift toward congestion pricing may require not only pressing efficiency concerns, but also a shift in the political climate

Framing Effects and Regulatory Choice

This Article proceeds as follows. First, in Part I, I describe the contributions of behavioral law and economics literature, and then focus on the notion of framing effects. In Part II, I provide an overview of the regulatory tools generally available to environmental regulators. In Part III, I elucidate the right to pollute and commodification critiques as applied to environmental regulation. In Part IV, I analyze the economically proper scope of the right to pollute and commodification critiques with respect to environmental regulatory instruments. In Part V, I first describe the differing frames of various environmental regulatory tools. I then describe how those differing frames give rise to framing effects that are likely to affect public perception of and reaction to different regulatory tools. In Part VI, I assess the prospect for refraining as a means to defuse objections to the introduction of market-based regulation. I conclude by outlining broad lessons that might be taken, as well as possible avenues for future research