The Value of the Surface : Reappreciating Embodiment, Labor, and Necessity in Arendt's Political Thought

Through an unorthodox reading of Hannah Arendt, this article argues that her political thought contains unacknowledged resources for conceptualizing embodiment in politics, and in relation to the economy, physical needs, and appearance. In contrast to the way she is typically read, this essay develops an affirmative account of embodiment in Arendt's work. Arendt not only recognizes the role of the appearing body in action but also underscores the importance of labor and necessity for a human sense of reality. Throughout her oeuvre, she presents a historical analysis of the rise of a functionalist, processual understanding of life under capitalist modernity. She also develops an alternative,…

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Onko sosiaalinen media alusta totuudenjälkeisyydelle?

Sosiaalisesta mediasta on viimeisen vuosikymmenen aikana tullut julkisen keskustelun keskeinen alusta. Sen rakennetta ei kuitenkaan ohjaa huoli demokratiasta, vaan yksityinen voitontavoittelu. Osana muita poliittisia kehityskulkuja tämä ”julkisuuden rakennemuutos” uhkaa demokraattisen politiikan ennakkoehtoja, kuten faktoihin perustuvaa mielipiteenmuodostusta. nonPeerReviewed

Invisible streams : Process-thinking in Arendt

For Hannah Arendt, some of the most distinctive features of the modern age derived from the adoption of a process-imaginary in science, history, and administration. This article examines Arendt’s work, identifying what it calls the ‘process-frame’ in her criticism of imperialism, economy, and the biologization of politics. It discusses an interpretation in which ‘natality’ presents a completely alternative mode of temporality, a resistance to the process-frame. This interpretation, it is argued, needs to be specified by taking into account that political action both interrupts and starts processes of its own. To confine and overcome the negative effects of process-framing, it is important t…

Political Action Beyond Resistance: Arendt and "Revolutionary Spirit" in Egypt

The article examines what it calls the "politics-as-resistance" frame in contemporary political theory, originating in the works of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. This way of organizing political experience is contrasted with Hannah Arendt's political thought, particularly her writings on revolutionary action. Arendt's often overlooked – and partly unpublished – passages on virtù and fortuna are further suggested as important additions to her thinking on action. I argue that Arendt's "world-centric" approach can illuminate certain aspects of political experience that remain dimmed in the more subject-oriented politics-as-resistance frame. Particular focus is paid to the austere notion o…

"Tentative lessons of experience: Arendt, essayism, and ""the social"" reconsidered"

The article addresses the role of the essay in Hannah Arendt’s theorizing. By paying attention to Arendt’s style, we are better able to draw the full conclusions from the well-known fact that she was not a system-builder but took her bearings from concrete experiences. First, the concept of experience—too often taken at face value—is explicated. It is argued that Arendt’s understanding of the concept cannot be reduced to her personal experiences, but must be read against the background of the common world. A crucial dimension in the incorporation of experiences into the Arendtian political theory is the essayistic style of her writings. The essay, as an experimental and tentative platform,…

Resilience, security and the politics of processes

The prominence of resilience thinking in contemporary governance and security policies has received increasing critical attention. By engaging in dialogue with some of these recent critiques, predominantly leaning on biopolitics or neoliberal governmentality, this article develops an Arendtian reading of resilience as a temporal regime of processuality. Originating from life sciences such as ecology and complexity thinking, the increasingly malleable resilience discourse privileges the functioning of societal life processes over political action and human artifice. The article argues that this ‘rule of nobody’ is in danger of suffocating the concept of public space, so crucial for politics …

Visualising political thinking on the screen : a dialogue between von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt and its protagonist

This article analyses Margarethe von Trotta’s film Hannah Arendt: The Woman Who Saw Banality in Evil through its protagonist’s own writings on visual culture, visibility and invisibility in the context of political thinking. We start by clarifying Arendt’s understanding of political theory as an activity aiming to provoke thinking. We then discuss systematically the visual language of the film and offer a typology of its representations of political thinking, subdivided into a part on internalisation and one on externalisation (dialogue). We emphasise von Trotta’s reliance on a negative approach, i.e. the representation of thinking through the absence of any other activity while thinking, c…

Koronakriisi, informaatio ja resilienssipolitiikka

Globaali koronaviruspandemia on vakavin poliittista päätöksentekoa kohdannut kriisi vuosikymmeniin. Nykypolitiikassa kriiseihin vastaamista ja niistä toipumista hahmotetaan usein resilienssin käsitteen avulla, joka viittaa kriisinsietokykyyn ja kriisiä seuraavaan mukautumisprosessiin. Tässä artikkelissa koronapandemian hoitoa Suomessa arvioidaan resilienssikirjallisuuden käsitteiden avulla. Muotoilemme ”kokonaisresilienssin” viitekehyksen, jota voidaan soveltaa kriisipolitiikan empiiriseen, analyyttiseen ja normatiiviseen arviointiin. Viitekehyksen avulla tarkastelemme Suomen hallituksen keväällä 2020 soveltaman kriisinhallintalinjan piirteitä ja painotuksia. Erityisesti kiinnitämme huomiot…

The Janus Face of Political Experience

Arendt’s concept of experience can contribute in important ways to the contemporary debates in political and feminist theory. However, while the notion is ubiquitous in Arendt’s thinking we lack an understanding of experience as a concept, as opposed to the impact of Arendt’s personal experiences on her thought. Drawing from her notes for “Political Experiences in the Twentieth Century,” the article seeks to enrich our understanding of the Janus-faced character of political experience. It emphasizes the importance of vicariousness, and argues that experience should be understood as a process of suffering, enduring, and re-experiencing events beyond our conscious control. The article further…

Labor as Action: the Human Condition in the Anthropocene

Abstract The Anthropocene has become an umbrella term for the disastrous transgression of ecological safety boundaries by human societies. The impact of this new reality is yet to be fully registered by political theorists. In an attempt to recalibrate the categories of political thought, this article brings Hannah Arendt’s framework of The Human Condition (labor, work, action) into the gravitational pull of the Anthropocene and current knowledge about the Earth System. It elaborates the historical emergence of our capacity to “act in the mode of laboring” during fossil-fueled capitalist modernity, a form of agency relating to our collectively organized laboring processes reminiscent of the…