Papers by Gisli Vogler
Contemporary Political Theory, Jan 17, 2024
This article studies the response of the US disability community to the prevalent assumption that... more This article studies the response of the US disability community to the prevalent assumption that disabled people do not have a future, in the form of the disability rights movement. It provides an exploratory discussion of the key role played by utopianism in the response. In doing so, the article adds to critical theorizing on the importance of utopia to the oppression of non-dominant groups and to transcending that oppression. I use utopian studies scholarship to interpret the activities leading up to the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 as a minor utopia, characterized by an ambiguous, grounded, and provisional effort to imagine alternative ways of being. I articulate the central role played by a positive vision of disability and disabled people for this inversion of the historically negative relationship between utopia and disability. The article turns to disability activists to show that the movement countered exclusionary utopian approaches by acting as if it had a right to envision and enact a different, better future for all from the perspective of disability and disabled people.
Routledge, 2024
This chapter explores discussions about failure in relation to the Americans with Disabilities Ac... more This chapter explores discussions about failure in relation to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The act prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities and is seen as one of the great achievements of the US disability rights struggle. The decades that followed the passing of the ADA in July 1990 were however marked by a narrow interpretation of its provisions by federal courts (Colker 2005; Krieger 2003b). This development resulted in a sense of disappointment at the failure of progressive politics that chimes with the notion of left melancholia. Indeed, alongside the judicial backlash to the ADA, the theoretical underpinning of the law, the social model of disability, also faced significant challenges (Shakespeare and Watson 2001). 1 This left disability activism and scholarship without the grand narrative that fuelled the global disability rights movement and the emergence of disability studies in the late 20th century. The chapter looks at how disability scholar-activists debated engaging with failure productively to articulate lessons to be learned from the failings of the ADA. I trace different interpretations of how the Americans with Disabilities Act failed, and how to respond to this failure, that loosely form a “backlash” and a “tension” narrative. The “backlash” narrative took as its starting point the assumption that the ADA failed to achieve its goals because the act was met with a backlash by courts and the media (Krieger 2003b). Disability activists should therefore respond to this failure by learning to limit future backlash. In contrast, the “tension” narrative suggested that the “backlash story” does not account sufficiently for the contradictions already present in the ideas and goals of the various organizations that form the US disability rights movement (Bagenstos 2009). It was these contradictions that facilitated a selective interpretation of the ADA by federal courts and that should be the focal point of a response to the failure of the ADA.
Contemporary Political Theory, 2024
This article studies the response of the US disability community to the prevalent assumption that... more This article studies the response of the US disability community to the prevalent assumption that disabled people do not have a future, in the form of the disability rights movement. It provides an exploratory discussion of the key role played by utopianism in the response. In doing so, the article adds to critical theorizing on the importance of utopia to the oppression of non-dominant groups and to transcending that oppression. I use utopian studies scholarship to interpret the activities leading up to the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 as a minor utopia, characterized by an ambiguous, grounded, and provisional effort to imagine alternative ways of being. I articulate the central role played by a positive vision of disability and disabled people for this inversion of the historically negative relationship between utopia and disability. The article turns to disability activists to show that the movement countered exclusionary utopian approaches by acting as if it had a right to envision and enact a different, better future for all from the perspective of disability and disabled people.
Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 2021
This article addresses the role of thinking in politics by engaging with two radically different ... more This article addresses the role of thinking in politics by engaging with two radically different literatures: theorizing on affect and sociological research into reflexivity through internal conversation. Brian Massumi and his fellow affect theorists have made an important contribution to dismantling overly rationalist conceptions of thought, by conceptualizing the embeddedness of humans in processes beyond cognitive control. At the same time, the turn to affect has been criticized for its ‘anti-intentionalist’ tendencies. These are said to undermine the role of ideas, beliefs, and judgements in politics. In response, the article turns to emerging debates on reflexivity. Associated with the work of Margaret Archer, they aim to formulate a middle ground between the entrenched positions of ‘rational’ deliberation and non-cognitive affectedness. Put in conversation, the two literatures point to the potential of affective thinking, or thinking-feeling, in politics. The article gauges the relevance by discussing the theoretical advancements in relation to leading scholar of protest and emotions, James Jasper.
Arendt Studies, 2021
This article contributes to debates on complicity in injustice and violence by deepening the rece... more This article contributes to debates on complicity in injustice and violence by deepening the recent efforts to map out an ethics of responsiveness to complicity. The ethics of responsiveness aims to increase the affective engagement of people who disproportionately benefit from domination, exploitation, and exclusion, with the impact of their complicity on others. It articulates different strategies for tackling the dispositions that help the privileged disavow complicity. To extend the responsiveness approach, this article builds on Hannah Arendt's theorisation of the relationship between politics, reality, and responsibility. A turn to Arendt helps us respond to the political problem of an erosion of the frameworks of judgement and action across society that enable critical engagement with complicity. I argue that the problem adds a burden on the privileged to strengthen and protect the institutions and processes that allow us to come to terms with reality together by developing a disposition towards 'world-in-formation'.
Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 2021
Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 2020
This article explores subversion as a practice of resistance and draws on the example of subversi... more This article explores subversion as a practice of resistance and draws on the example of subversive radio for illustration. Radio became an important site of power struggles in the twentieth century, often placed in the service of both resistance and oppression. An examination of subversive acts in radio broadcasting, I argue, helps shift the focus away from the myths of heroic resistance, directing attention to the uncertainties encountered by the subversive actor. To make this argument, I build on Frantz Fanon's influential work on the resistant potential of radio and engage with literature on subversion and everyday resistance. The article illustrates the ambiguity of subversion on the case study of Radio Bantu, a broadcaster of ethnic-specific radio programmes established by the South African apartheid regime.
Contemporary Political Theory, 2019
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2019
This article argues that Hannah Arendt's thought can offer significant insights on political judg... more This article argues that Hannah Arendt's thought can offer significant insights on political judgement for realism in political theory. We identify a realist position which emphasises the need to account for how humans judge politically, contra moralist tendencies to limit its exercise to rational standards, but which fails to provide a sufficient conception of its structure and potential. Limited appeals to political judgement render the realist defence of the political elusive, and compromise the endeavour to offer a meaningful alternative to the moralist tendency to displace politics. The potential and limitations of realist discussions on judgement are made visible in relation to proto-realists Judith Shklar and Isaiah Berlin. In seeking to enrich the realist conception of the political, the article introduces the displacement critique found in the neglected Arendtian 'realism'. It also provides the foundations for a distinctly realist account of political judgement which, we argue, requires elaboration along two dimensions: the social coding of political judgement and the political capacities that help judgement build a suitable political sphere.
Journal of Political Power
This article introduces Margaret Archer’s research on reflexivity to the power debate, alongside ... more This article introduces Margaret Archer’s research on reflexivity to the power debate, alongside Pierre Bourdieu’s already influential concept of habitus. Both offer significant insights on social conditioning in late modernity. However, their tendency to the extreme of social determinism and voluntarism must be
avoided. To do so, this article adopts Haugaard’s family resemblance concept of power, describing habitus and reflexivity as an important new binary of power instead of a conceptual zero-sum game. This strengthens the explanatory role of agency, central to the three dimensions of power, without losing sight of constitutive, structural power. It also helps overcome the habitus–reflexivity dichotomy in social theory and provides a starting point to evaluate Archer’s work from a power perspective.
Conference Presentations by Gisli Vogler
Programme for CIAP2016, 20-21 October, University of Leeds.
Talks by Gisli Vogler
CRITIQUE Exchanges, 2020
Gisli Vogler, Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Open Learning, University of Edinburgh, interview... more Gisli Vogler, Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Open Learning, University of Edinburgh, interviews Judith Heumann on her memoir Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2020). Heumann is a leading disability rights activist and has held many major roles in organisations and US government, including the position of Special Advisor for International Disability Rights in the Obama Administration. The conversation was recorded and abridged.
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Books by Gisli Vogler
Edinburgh University Press, 2024
How can those profiting from inequality, racism, human rights violations and climate change respo... more How can those profiting from inequality, racism, human rights violations and climate change respond to their complicity in injustice and violence? In this book, Gisli Vogler argues that we need an improved conception of judging complicity under conditions of both plurality and inescapable social conditioning.
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Papers by Gisli Vogler
avoided. To do so, this article adopts Haugaard’s family resemblance concept of power, describing habitus and reflexivity as an important new binary of power instead of a conceptual zero-sum game. This strengthens the explanatory role of agency, central to the three dimensions of power, without losing sight of constitutive, structural power. It also helps overcome the habitus–reflexivity dichotomy in social theory and provides a starting point to evaluate Archer’s work from a power perspective.
Conference Presentations by Gisli Vogler
Talks by Gisli Vogler
https://critique.sps.ed.ac.uk/being-heumann/
Books by Gisli Vogler
Launch discount code NEW30 for 30% off
avoided. To do so, this article adopts Haugaard’s family resemblance concept of power, describing habitus and reflexivity as an important new binary of power instead of a conceptual zero-sum game. This strengthens the explanatory role of agency, central to the three dimensions of power, without losing sight of constitutive, structural power. It also helps overcome the habitus–reflexivity dichotomy in social theory and provides a starting point to evaluate Archer’s work from a power perspective.
https://critique.sps.ed.ac.uk/being-heumann/
Launch discount code NEW30 for 30% off