Duff, Koshka

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ReviewThe political is political: Conformity and theillusion of dissent in contemporary politicalphilosophyLorna FinlaysonRowman & Littlefield International, London, 2015, x+240pp.,ISBN: 978-1783482870Contemporary Political Theory advance online publication, 6 October 2015;doi:10.1057/cpt.2015.51History shows there is no desirable alternative to liberalism. Dissenters from thestatus quo need to be constructive. Unless they can specify what they would put inplace of existing social arrangements, they cannot expect to be taken seriously. In anycase, liberalism can accommodate even its critics. While we can argue about theextent to which any set of political institutions can be genuinely neutral betweendifferent moral perspectives, we can agree that liberal ones have legitimacy preciselybecause they do not impose (or not too much) any particular vision of ‘the good life’on individuals. Rather, the liberal state provides a framework within which free andequal citizens can disagree – so long as they are reasonable about it. In the real world,of course, liberal democracies have often, perhaps always, fallen short of liberalideals, by excluding (either formally or de facto) certain groups from politicalparticipation, allowing economic power to undermine democratic processes, orengaging in drone warfare against civilians, for example. Yet that does notundermine the ideals themselves. To implicate liberal political philosophers in thesereal-world failures is uncharitable.Such adages define the accepted parameters of debate within contemporarypolitical philosophy. Yet, according to Finlayson, they deserve closer examination.Why, for instance, is Marx so easily dismissed as ‘refuted by history’, while pointingto the more bloody moments of Actually Existing Liberalism does not count as anargument against J. S. Mill? In this incendiary new study, Finlayson focusescritical attention on the methodological assumptions that suffuse the air ofphilosophy departments: that criticism of the dominant (liberal) view must alwaysbe ‘constructive’ and ‘charitable’, and that (love him or hate him) all must pay tributeto the great contribution of John Rawls. In each case, she argues, ‘What is presented© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory 1–4www.palgrave-journals.com/cpt/as politically neutral “common sense” turns out to be politically controversial, andthe illusion to the contrary serves to reinforce the philosophical and political statusquo’ (p. 55). However, Finlayson does not argue against these methodologicalprinciples. She does not claim that there is no value to interpreting another’s positioncharitably, or that it is illegitimate to ask a critic to suggest a feasible alternative to thething they are criticizing. Rather, she shows how the ways in which these so farschematic demands are actually deployed involves a surreptitious ‘filling in’ withcontent which is itself political and in fact biased towards the more (small ‘c’)conservative position.For instance, we can agree that it is a good thing for a proposal to be ‘realistic’(which is not to say that an unrealistic proposal might not have other qualities, likebeing mind-opening, or beautiful). To be realistic means to take appropriate accountof reality. However, in order for the instruction ‘Be realistic!’ to offer any guidance, itneeds to be filled in with some views about what reality is like, including its causalrelationships and possibilities for change. These, of course, are precisely the thingsthat people with different political views are going to disagree on. So far, so obvious.As Finlayson shows, however, when the value of realism is invoked in politicalphilosophy it tends to be assumed that taking appropriate account of the way that theworld is involves accepting that it continues to be that way. As the debate is currentlyset up, in other words, all sides assume that realism equals conservatism –compromising high-flown ideals in the face of hard facts.Thus, while realist currents in political philosophy in one sense challengethe orthodoxy of so-called ‘ideal theory’ (which invents elaborate liberal utopiasoblivious to the social power conditioning that very project), the conflation of taking-account-of-reality with not-changing-reality actually locks discussion still furtherwithin a narrow liberal framework. On reflection, though, this equivalence is notsomething we have to accept. It is not always realistic to propose that somethingremain the same. Just because I am doing a headstand now does not mean you canmake me continue to do a headstand indefinitely. Perhaps that is just not a sustainablearrangement. Push it too far and I will either collapse or rebel – or so a radical critic ofthis inverted reality might argue.In Finlayson’s analysis, then, familiar moves that are supposed to justify keepingpolitical philosophy within the confines of liberalism are revealed as ‘begging thequestion’ against more radical positions. They rely on standards of assessment – suchas the measure of a proposal as realistic to the extent that it demands only modestchanges from existing institutions – which we would have reason to accept only if wealready agreed with the dominant position. Rawls’s doomed attempt to come up witha non-circular definition of ‘reasonableness’ such that all reasonable persons mustaccept his favoured political arrangements is a case in point. Having laid out exactlywhy this cannot work, Finlayson comments that Rawls might as well have talkedabout his system being justifiable to jolly decent chaps (p. 55). The image of politicalphilosophers that emerges from these pages is hardly flattering: a comfortableReview2 © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory 1–4orthodoxy propped up by double-standards which just so happen to serve thosealready in power, both inside and outside philosophy.The discipline’s own understanding of its role in ‘real politics’ also comes in forscrutiny. Finlayson shows how political philosophers’ apparently innocuous state-ments about the worth of their own contributions in fact presuppose substantial(political) commitments about the nature of society and how social change can(or should) occur: ‘Just as the neoliberal idea is that wealth will “trickle down” fromthe top of a society to the bottom, the thought here seems to be that politicalphilosophers’ wisdom will percolate through the minds of politicians, throughexisting political structures, through the public culture and, in diluted form, throughthe muddled and distractible minds of the masses, who will then send such wisdom asthey have absorbed back up into the political machine in the form of a stream ofballot papers’ (p. 143).The bias Finlayson identifies towards a conception of politics as policy (which‘limit[s] attention to the output of a given political system leaving aside morefundamental political questions of how that system is structured, who gets to decidewhat the “output” of the system should be, and how this is decided’ (p. 144)) isparticularly pronounced in another area which should disrupt the mainstream, yet isin serious danger of being co-opted by it: feminism. Finlayson argues that the(liberal) form of feminism which is currently gaining some ground within a stilloutrageously hostile discipline is limited by (i) its determination to squeeze everyinsight into the language of ‘some big man’s prior thought’ (Catharine MacKinnon,cited p. 89), conceding this as a prerequisite for being taken seriously, and (ii) thebackground assumption that the only real political import which arguments aboutsilencing, speech, pornography and freedom might aspire to is to lubricate sterilewranglings about what the liberal state should or should not censor.Here Finlayson could perhaps have gone further in considering contradictionsbetween the feminist project of challenging gendered violence and the legislativeframework it tends to assume. She could have engaged with existing objections towhat Victoria Law calls ‘carceral feminism’, which ‘sees increased policing,prosecution and imprisonment as the primary solutions to violence against women’,ignoring ‘the ways in which race, class, gender identity, and immigration status leavecertain women more vulnerable to violence and that greater criminalization oftenplaces these same women at risk of state violence’ (Law, 2014). From thisperspective, Catharine MacKinnon’s own entanglements with law, which Finlaysonbrushes off as irrelevant to the particular argument she wants to make, might appearof more significance.Finlayson’s book will doubtless be found extremely irritating by the politicalphilosophical establishment. What will be found most irritating is its skill in tracingthe argumentative moves with which they will try to dismiss it. Precisely for thisreason, though, people outside the narrow academic culture which is its direct objectof criticism might assume her project to be of limited interest. This would be aReview3© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory 1–4mistake. Although her focus is on the somewhat rarified literature produced andconsumed by the denizens of philosophy departments, the argumentative tricks anddouble-standards which she exposes all have their counterparts in everyday politicaldiscourse and no philosophical training is required to follow her lucid and often pithywriting style. Readers versed in more radical theory may find it frustrating how littleFinlayson avails herself of existing critiques of liberalism, yet her dexterity inunmasking the internal contradictions of a discipline which, as she shows, is so loathto acknowledge even the existence of ‘deep dissent’ much less its validity, is alsowhat is distinctive about this book. Equally, that this dexterity evidently comes inpart from her own background in that discipline is a good lesson in not throwing outbabies with bathwater. It would obviously be an overstatement to say that analyticpolitical philosophy has produced its own grave-digger. Perhaps, though, it willreveal something of itself in how it chooses to deal with this enemy within.ReferenceLaw, V. (2014) Against carceral feminism. Jacobin [Online], https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/against-carceral-feminism/, accessed 30 August 2015.Koshka DuffUniversity of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UKReview4 © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory 1–4

Review of 'The Political Is Political: Conformity and the Illusion of Dissent in Contemporary Political Philosophy' by Lorna Finlayson.

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Review of 'The Political Is Political: Conformity and the Illusion of Dissent in Contemporary Political Philosophy' by Lorna Finlayson.

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