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A Loss for Words

2024; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 56; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/729385

1744-1684

Alyson Cole, Robyn Marasco, Charles Tien,

Political theory and Gramsci

Previous articleNext article FreeA Loss for WordsAlyson Cole, Robyn Marasco, and Charles TienAlyson Cole, Robyn Marasco, and Charles TienPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreWe were so incredibly honored when Chris Raschka agreed to paint something for this issue's cover, a volume that includes a symposium on Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City. Raschka is a two-time Caldecott Medal winner (The Hello, Goodbye Window and A Ball for Daisy), a Caldecott Honor Award winner (Yo? Yes!), and the recipient of numerous other awards, including The New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children's Books Award in 2023 for Mary's Idea, a beautiful picture book about jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams.1 The artist has noted that he finds inspiration walking New York City's varied neighborhoods. Raschka's painting on the cover shows a vibrant city street in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, near the location of the Red Apple Boycott (the focus of Bitter Fruit) from over thirty years ago.The watercolor image depicts the multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multilingual residents of Flatbush, who walk the same streets, play in the same parks, send their children to the same schools, frequent the same stores, and travel to work on the same buses and subways every day. None of the figures are rendered with great detail other than a few sartorial items—a straw hat and red tote on one, an orange hoodie on another, a brightly striped tunic on a third, and what seems to be a black yarmulke on a fourth. Though there are no features on the faces, the postures of the figures convey the brisk pace of city life, a dynamic movement that seems carefully choreographed to visitors, but is simply part of the rhythm of dense urban co-existence. The medium of watercolor, which is absorbed into the paper rather than laying on top like oil-based paint, with colors bleeding and blending into one another, seems especially fitting.Every now and then, the ordinary rhythm of life in a crowded city is broken by an encounter that turns violent. In 1990, a Korean American shop owner was accused of beating a Haitian American customer, after an escalating exchange with her in his grocery store. A year-long boycott of two Korean-owned produce stores ensued. Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City was published twenty years after the boycott. Claire Jean Kim provided a different way to view the black-Korean conflict and showed how the media's coverage of the story relied on a racist scapegoating narrative that failed to address the larger context of racial power and white supremacy in the United States.2Selecting Kim's award-winning book for our "Classics Revisited" feature was easy, since its lasting impact on the field of Race and Ethnic Politics is indisputable. Before Bitter Fruit was published, research on interracial conflicts between people or communities of color primarily focused simply on the races and ethnicities of those directly involved in the conflict. The role of white supremacy remained unclear or, more often, was completely absent. Kim's work refocused the lens on how the American racial order structures interracial conflicts in the United States. Bitter Fruit, we think, should be required for all students of American politics. As the United States continues to diversify demographically, Kim's theory of racial triangulation still provides a useful framework for understanding "race relations" in this country.3 Bitter Fruit was also groundbreaking on another level: it is the first and only book about Asian Americans to win the American Political Science Association's esteemed Ralph J. Bunche Award.4We are fortunate to have assembled six prominent scholars to reflect on the enduring importance of Bitter Fruit from different sub-disciplinary perspectives. Fred Lee first proposed Bitter Fruit for our "Classics Revisited" feature, which, as he explains in his own contribution, is exemplary of how Asian American political thought maps Asian American positionalities within local and regional political orders.5 Lee was instrumental in assembling and editing the collection of essays, which includes Michael Javen Fortner's analysis of Kim's added "insider/foreigner" dimension to the American racial order. Fortner argues that Kim's research uncovers the importance of class and economics, but he suggests she might have pursued these dimensions of power in contemporary urban politics more fully.6 Jane Junn applauds Bitter Fruit as a tour-de-force that pushes scholars to acknowledge complexity and the importance of a relational methodological approach.7 Dianne M. Pinderhughes writes that Kim's introduction of "civic ostracism" and "relative valorization" allowed scholars of race to compare black Americans to other non-white groups. Pinderhughes also addresses Kim's recent work that explores the relatively new concept of "anti-Blackness."8 Janelle Wong warns against a thin reading of racial triangulation theory that draws false equivalencies across racial groups and minimizes analyses of institutional anti-black racism.9 Lester K. Spence explains that Bitter Fruit pushed political science to consider how race is produced, and that until Kim's book was published, political scientists relied too heavily on national attitudinal surveys, national politics, and black-white dynamics in the study of race and ethnic politics. Still, Spence suggests that further examination of race as a political construction rather than a social one, and how violence and political economy shaped black identities, would enrich the analysis.10 Claire Jean Kim replies to her readers and previews the arguments of her new work, Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World, which "significantly revises the racial triangulation theory laid out in Bitter Fruit."11 Kim explains that her new book engages more recent work on anti-blackness, which looks at "structural anti-Blackness—the organization of psychic, social, economic, and political life around the phobic hatred and avoidance of Blackness—as a global phenomenon."12 To revise one's previous theories is brave and bold; Bitter Fruit taught us that we should expect nothing less from Claire Jean Kim.The Big Apple Boycott is only one among many such instances when New York City suddenly erupted in protest, ruptures that exposed deep racial, economic, and religious divides under a deceptively quiet coexistence—the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville Teachers' Strike, the Crown Heights Riot in 1991, the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the 2020s all come to mind. We are living through another period of tumult, though this time seemingly ignited by war abroad rather than frictive local conflicts. We typically use our Editors' Note to reflect briefly on the political landscape as we are preparing an issue to go to print. This has always been challenging, not only because we are writing a good four months prior to publication, but also because we never want our Note to distract from the content of the volume. After all, Polity is an academic journal, not the op-ed page. At the same time, we believe it imperative that political scientists engage the world of politics, to stake out difficult positions and throw light on the challenges we face. We consider Polity one vehicle for doing both. Planning this issue and our Note, we could not avoid the parallels, and the differences, between the Big Apple Boycott and the antiwar protests currently dividing our city and many cities across the country. We also felt we could not avoid addressing the catastrophic situation in Gaza. In October 2022, inspired by our cover artist, Lilia Levin, and appalled by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we drafted an Editors' Note with the tagline, STOP WARS. Today that demand feels more urgent than ever.There has been no shortage of reflections on the horrors unfolding in the Middle East since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on the morning of October 7th. To the contrary, there has been a deluge of statements, counter-statements, and statements on statements, to say nothing of the fierce debates over the terms of war and public debate. We have grappled—among ourselves, our colleagues, and our students—with a number of critical questions: What is the relevant history for understanding the current war in Gaza? Do concepts such as settler colonialism, racial capitalism, or necropolitics clarify or obscure the situation? Should we look instead to theories of national culture, political theology, and postcoloniality to make sense of this conflict? Are well-worn legal categories—crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, or ethnic cleansing—effective instruments to end the war? Or do these categories emerge out of the geopolitical order that caused this crisis in the first place? What does it mean to say, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," or to revise that slogan into a demand for equality ("From the river to the sea, we want equality"), or to censure a member of the United States Congress for using the slogan in a social media post? How does a competing claim on the land "from the river to the sea" animate right-wing discourse in Israel today? Why might President Biden remark that "were there no Israel, there wouldn't be a Jew in the world who was safe"13 and how does the brutality of the assault on October 7th—the rape, torture, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis and other nationals—confirm and intensify this feeling of insecurity? How has the global response to October 7th, including among some parts of the American Left, contributed to the perceived veracity of Biden's claim? Is the antisemitism of the Left more pervasive than the antisemitism of the Right? What about the antisemitism of the Center, arguably the most influential and the hardest to see, in part because it gets integrated into a "common sense" set of prejudices and practices? What are the words to name anti-Palestinian racism? Is "Islamophobia" adequate for that task? Are the voices of Palestinian struggle suppressed in the corridors of power? Who speaks for Jews in the United States—AIPAC, J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace? And who can speak for the tens of thousands of dead Gazans, or the two million displaced from their homes?In our classrooms, we found students engaging these questions with a sensitivity and seriousness too-often absent from the media portrayals of campus "culture wars." We discovered that our own classroom discussions were far more productive than the official statements coming from university administrators, to say nothing of the political spectacle of the US House Committee hearings on campus antisemitism. It remains clear to us that the university is uniquely positioned in the pursuit of knowledge and the exchange of ideas. It is equally apparent that the university is an arena for political mobilization and organization, a political target of opportunity, and a political actor in its own right. The politics of knowledge, as it relates to our work inside and outside of the classroom, should be of profound concern to political scientists, especially those drawn to the idea of vocation as described by Max Weber.Our CUNY colleagues and, more alarmingly, our students have been subject to aggressive doxxing campaigns. Their faces and personal information have been plastered across city tabloids and right-wing websites. Student organizations have been surveilled. Student leaders have been threatened. Campus events have been suddenly canceled. Amidst the outpouring of words spoken and written about the war in Gaza, we also sense that there are many on our campuses who censor themselves or disengage from politics altogether. Some may find themselves, like us, struggling to find the right words, overwhelmed by the images and scale of brutality, devastation, suffering, and death. And the seeming intractability of the conflict.In response to mounting failures of political courage and analysis, we hope that college presidents and trustees will return to the vital mission of higher education, especially the protection and promotion of academic freedom, eroded over decades by neoliberalism and rampant financialization, now facing new threats from opportunistic politicians, donor capitalists, and outrage entrepreneurs. If inclined to make official statements, university leaders should speak by their actions and without apology, for example through financial divestment, the redistribution of private endowments to public coffers, or the expansion of faculty and student bodies. In this way, university leaders could more plausibly reaffirm their commitment to collective life, the value of intellectual inquiry, and the norms that enable speaking with others, learning from others, and accepting disagreement as fundamental to life in a diverse community.This issue includes three research articles that address, in their own context, questions of freedom, speech and language, and the politics of education. In the lead article for this issue, "Angela Davis and Critical Theory, from Kant to Abolition" Cecilia Sebastian revisits Angela Davis's 1969 dissertation on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and her early work on German Idealism, putting it in conversation with her more recent writings on prison abolition.14 Sebastian offers an elegant reconstruction of Davis's early critique of Kantian moral freedom, as a universal claim that is undermined by the socio-historical determinants that foreclose its material realization. Sebastian shows how this critique of Kant is essential to the development of Davis's critical theory, in its political and philosophical dimensions. Sebastian also shows how Davis's early encounter with Kantian philosophy illuminates key questions in abolitionist theory and practice. Sebastian dwells on two issues in particular: the antagonism between moral freedom and state coercion that is the object of abolitionist theory, and the subjective-moral aspect of abolitionist practice. The result is a powerful reading of Angela Davis's early and later works, one that does justice to her philosophical project, and connects post-Kantian critical theory to black radical and revolutionary politics.In the second research article in this issue, Zachariah Black argues that Hobbes's Leviathan offers a theory of sovereignty shaped and even limited by the practical and pedagogical work of government. In "Educating the Body Politic: How Hobbes's Civil Science Strengthens and Constrains the Sovereign," Black clarifies a Hobbesian theory of government that mediates the sovereign's power and constrains it through rational implementation. "It is not in acts of individual or collective resistance that the sovereign's commands are to be moderated in the direction of the common good," Black argues, "but through the expectations of subjects, and especially of those subjects who serve as ministers, set by sovereigns themselves through the public promulgation of Leviathan's doctrine."15 Black's reading results in a counterintuitive but ultimately persuasive view of sovereignty and civil government in Hobbes, as well as a novel theory of political education.Finally, in "'The People' and Climate Justice: Reconceptualizing Populism and Pluralism within Climate Politics," John M. Meyer brings the populist debates to bear on climate politics.16 Meyer argues that at least one version of populism can be understood as a political response to perceived exclusion and marginalization. This form of populism eschews unity and sameness in recognition of difference and inequality among "the people." Along these lines, Meyer argues, we can contrast between two competing examples of political organizing against climate change, rooted in contrasting conceptions of the people. On the one hand, the elite representation of climate change action in which "we are all in this together" relies on a unity principle, while climate justice organizing offers a more pluralist version of populist politics. Meyer's article makes two compelling moves at once: it reframes climate justice as a populist issue, and it recasts the relationship between "the people" and climate change.As always, this issue concludes with our Ask a Political Scientist interview, this time featuring Professor William Howell of the University of Chicago Political Science Department, the Harris School of Public Policy, and co-host of Not Another Politics Podcast.17 Professor Howell is the author of numerous books, including Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy and Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government—and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency (with Terry M. Moe), The Wartime President: Executive Influence and the Nationalizing Politics of Threat (with Saul Jackman and Jon Rogowski), Thinking about the Presidency: The Primacy of Power (with David Brent), While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers (with Jon Pevehouse), and Power without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action.18 Howell is a leading scholar of American political institutions and has written widely on the separation of powers and executive authority for both academic and non-academic audiences. He is also co-host of one of our favorite political science podcasts, which goes beyond political punditry to discuss new and classic research in the field. For this interview, Professor Howell kindly agreed to answer some of Robyn Marasco's questions about podcasting, the presidency, and political science. We think Polity readers will gain much from listening to Not Another Politics Podcast, in part because it covers the empirical and data-driven sides of the discipline, not always included in our pages, but that we see as invaluable to political science nonetheless. We think that our readers will also appreciate the clarity and purpose that Professor Howell brings to the study of American politics and the presidency. We extend our deep thanks to Professor Howell for all of the work that he does for the discipline—as a professor, a podcaster, and as Director of the Center for Effective Government—and for talking with us about his wide-ranging work.Finally, we want to thank Chris Raschka again for generously spending his time walking through the streets of Flatbush, Brooklyn and then rendering this unforgettable scene for Polity's cover. We are grateful, as well, to the production staff at the University of Chicago Press, for their attention to aesthetics and design. We believe that Polity is, by far, the most beautiful political science journal in circulation today. We thank the artists and the design team for their extraordinary work. And we are as grateful as ever to our Associate Editor, Be Stone. Be does so much of the day-to-day work of the journal while also managing a full workload as a tenure-track professor at Rhodes College. We have long been in awe of Be's organizational skills and work efficiency, but now more than ever, as Be prepares new courses, establishes a life in a new city, and produces new scholarship, while also helping other scholars bring their work to print in Polity. We are lucky to have Be on our team and are delighted that Polity has made our ongoing collaboration possible.Notes1. Norton Juster and Chris Raschka, The Hello, Goodbye Window (New York, NY: Hyperion Books for Children, 2005); Chris Raschka, A Ball for Daisy (New York, NY: Penguin Randomhouse, 2011); Chris Raschka, Yo? Yes! (New York, NY: Scholastic, 2007); and Chris Raschka, Mary's Idea (New York, NY: Greenwillow Books, 2023).2. Claire Jean Kim, Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).3. We use quotes to acknowledge the limits of the concept of "race relations." Cf. Stephen Steinberg, Race Relations: A Critique (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); and Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2022).4. "Ralph J. Bunche Award," American Political Science Association (accessed December 12, 2023), https://www.apsanet.org/PROGRAMS/APSA-Awards/Ralph-J-Bunche-Award.5. Fred Lee, "On Claire Jean Kim's Bitter Fruit: Asian American Positionality in Asian American Political Thought," Polity 56 (2024): 275–84.6. Michael Javen Fortner, "Race, Class, Bitter Fruit, and the Big Apple: A Short Story," Polity 56 (2024): 285–96.7. Jane Junn, "The Legacy of Bitter Fruit in Political Science," Polity 56 (2024): 297–302.8. Dianne M. Pinderhughes, "Claire Jean Kim: A Classic Revisited," Polity 56 (2024): 303–11.9. Janelle Wong, "Avoiding the Anti-Black Trap: Toward a Robust Interpretation of the Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans," Polity 56 (2024): 312–27.10. Lester K. Spence, "Bitter Fruit as Boundary Pushing and Sustaining," Polity 56 (2024): 328–37.11. Claire Jean Kim, "Bitter Fruit at Twenty," Polity 56 (2024): 338–46, at 343.12. Ibid., 343–44.13. Joe Biden, "Remarks by President Biden at a Hanukkah Holiday Reception," The White House (December 11, 2023), https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/12/11/remarks-by-president-biden-at-a-hanukkah-holiday-reception/.14. Cecilia Sebastian, "Angela Davis and Critical Theory, from Kant to Abolition" Polity 56 (2024): 207–29.15. Zachariah Black, "Educating the Body Politic: How Hobbes's Civil Science Strengthens and Constrains the Sovereign," Polity 56 (2024): 230–51, at 230.16. John M. Meyer, "'The People' and Climate Justice: Reconceptualizing Populism and Pluralism within Climate Politics," Polity 56 (2024): 252–74.17. "Not Another Politics Podcast," William Howell, Wioletta Dziuda, and Anthony Fowler, Hosts, The University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy (accessed December 20, 2023), https://effectivegov.uchicago.edu/initiatives/podcast.18. William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe, Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2020); William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe, Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government—and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2016); William G. Howell, Saul P. Jackman, and Jon C. Rogowski, The Wartime President: Executive Influence and the Nationalizing Politics of Threat (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013); William G. Howell with David Milton Brent, Thinking about the Presidency: The Primacy of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013); William G. Howell and Jon Pevehouse, While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); and William G. Howell, Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Polity Volume 56, Number 2April 2024A Loss for Words The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/729385 PermissionsRequest permissions Views: 237Total views on this site HistoryPublished online February 29, 2024 © 2024 Northeastern Political Science Association. 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