Having actually listened to American political theorist Wendy Brown I am not a convert, although she does, in my opinion, dig deeper than most of the intellectual left. In some ways her 'deep listening' (including use of new technologies for hearing signals from animals and plants) is promising, although it will still have to meet the problem of those people who just listen to what they want to hear. At the same time the conference at Brighton University threw up several other intriguing points:
- I personally endorse the plea from Brown herself and host Professor Devenney for the 'demos' element in democracy to be treated as 'to whom it may concern' rather than 'our people'. But we will wait a long time for that (sorry about the tariffs!);
- I am not entirely sure, but I probably agree with Brown's argument that 'neoliberalism' (most often an academic term for relying on markets to generate values) leads to nihilism;
- 'nihilism' (roughly a condition where values are either held as personal or group badges or are thrown away altogether) is a common concern for both Brown and the neoconservative guru Leo Strauss, who was popular with some of the Bush administration. Strauss believed nihilism leads to extremes, whilst Brown thinks it creates trivial partisanships and fads (the 21st century indicates both are right).
- while Strauss sought a solution to nihilism in philosophy, Brown seeks it in politics. Here I go with Strauss despite rejecting his conservatism; philosophy has a better chance of exposing the specious claims of political or moral extremists than political campaigns.
- Closely related was the discussion about hypermasculinity groups online. Despite the apparent signs of militarism as well as mysogyny here, I wonder whether some young men realise (subconsciously perhaps?) that online fantasy is one thing, and a real war involving the big powers something else - liable to reduce them to plasma or leave them with skin peeling off from radiation;
- last but sadly not least, we encountered the suggestion (borne out by Trump and Italian politics) that the 'right' bother about falling birthrates and the 'left' about climate change. This stupid demarcation ignores the way South Korea, China - and southern Europe - illustrate that working flat out to escape poverty for modern affluence piles on the pressure, making it hard to find time for children. Similarly, it ignores the dependence of climate change on the physical properties of carbon dioxide and methane, which do not change with cultural or political trends!!
Still, Wendy Brown - and Leo Strauss - are well worth checking out if you are interested in understanding the dismal state we are in.