Conceptions of Collectivity

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel will focus on how contemporary challenges to our understanding of political collectivity and collective agency—whether in the resurgence of “populist” authoritarianism, global climate disaster, or the crisis of neoliberalism—might be confronted by critically rethinking the dominant modes through which these categories have been conceptualized. Critical reflection on political collectivity and collective agency has long been a preoccupation of canonical political theory, albeit one rarely engaged at length by contemporary scholars, whether in Hobbes’s seminal distinction between the people and the multitude, Rousseau’s sovereign assemblies, Kant’s critical publics, Marx’s class conscious proletariat, or nineteenth century theories of crowd and mass. Drawing on a diverse nineteenth and twentieth century archive, this panel will engage with some of these canonical works, as well as more contemporary discussions, while also challenging the adequacy of our inherited categories of political collectivity and collective agency to productively confronting the contemporary political challenges that we face.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• "The Déclassés of All Classes" - Patchen Markell, Cornell University

• The People: From Identification to Praxis - Jason Frank, Cornell University

• Thwarting Neoliberalism: Bureaucracy, Malaise, and Other Disappointments - Elisabeth Robin Anker, George Washington University

• Arendt/Carson: Rethinking Collective Action through Environmental Politics - Lida E. Maxwell, Boston University

Chair

• Paulina Ochoa Espejo Haverford College

Discussant

• Kevin Duong University of Virginia