John Gaffney
Biographic Data
| ID | 1161497 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Gaffney |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Gaffney |
| SIGNATURE | GAFFNEY J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aston University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4667-4241 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Thinking, meaning, and truth: Arendt on Heidegger and the possibility of critique
Few topics in Arendt's corpus have garnered more attention than her analysis of the dangers inherent in Adolf Eichmann's inability to think. Eichmann revealed what Arendt describes as the banality of evil, a new kind of evil born not of monstrous or demonic motives but of thoughtlessness (Arendt, 2006, p. 54).11 Hereafter EJ. Yet, while Eichmann made clear the urgent need we have to think, scholars remain at odds as to whether Arendt succeeds in …
The Pregnant Body and the Birth of the Other: Arendt’s Contribution to Original Ethics
This paper examines Hannah Arendt’s contribution to recent debate concerning the urgency of Martin Heidegger’s original ethics. To this end, I turn to Arendt’s existential interpretation of birth as this takes shape in her discourse on the miracle. Though recent commentators have criticized Arendt’s emphasis on the miracle, I argue that she deepens a conversation about birth that Dennis Schmidt, following Jacques Derrida, has set in motion in his…
Narrative, persona and performance: The case of Theresa May 2016–2017
A narrative and performance analysis of the period between the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 general election makes an empirical and theoretical contribution to understanding personalised politics at the present time. This article contends that Theresa May’s initial success proceeded from her rhetorical construction and performance of a persona founded on the archetypal healer, together with a narrative based on the myth of One Nation. However,…
Solidarity in dark times: Arendt and Gadamer on the politics of appearance
This essay surveys the theme of solidarity in the respective works of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hannah Arendt. Recent discourses in continental political philosophy have arrived at an impasse regarding solidarity. On the one hand, solidarities are important for galvanizing historically oppressed peoples against dominant discourses. On the other hand, solidarities that impose similarities in advance run the risk of absorbing difference and becoming e…
Memories of exclusion: Hannah Arendt and the Haitian Revolution
This article examines Hannah Arendt's concern for remembrance in political life in light of contemporary discourses regarding the memory of slavery and colonization in the African diaspora. Arendt's blindness to questions of exclusion within this context has given way to a set of critical debates in Arendt studies concerning the viability of her political project. In this paper, I give further contour to these debates by considering Arendt's disc…
Another Origin of Totalitarianism: Arendt on the Loneliness of Liberal Citizens
This paper examines Hannah Arendt's notion of citizenship with reference to her account of loneliness in the modern age. Whereas recent scholarship has emphasized Arendt's notion of the "right to have rights" in order to advance her conception of citizenship in the context of global democratic theory, I maintain that this discourse threatens to overshadow the depth of her critical relation to the liberal tradition. By turning to loneliness, I aim…
Political leadership and the politics of performance: France, Syria and the chemical weapons crisis of 2013
Political Culture in France and Germany: A Contemporary Perspective
The Morphology of the Labour Party's One Nation Narrative: Story, Plot and Authorship
By applying narrative theory to the party political texts emerging within the UK Labour Party after 2010, which make up the corpus of One Nation discourse, we can grasp the underlying significance of this ideational revision of Labour Party and leftist thought. Through an identification and analysis of the sequence of texts and their constitution as a “story” that interpolates an underlying “plot,” we can see how a revision of Labour's “tale” off…
Political Performance and Leadership Persona: The UK Labour Party Conference of 2012
This article is a contribution to an emerging scholarship on the role of rhetoric, persona and celebrity, and the effects of performance on the political process. We analyse party leader Ed Miliband at the UK Labour Party Conference in Manchester in 2012. Our analysis identifies how, through performance of ‘himself’ and the beginnings of the deployment of an alternative party narrative centred on ‘One Nation’, Ed Miliband began to revise his ‘rec…
Leadership and style in the French Fifth Republic: Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency in historical and cultural perspective
The political art of Bob Dylan
Political Leadership in France: From Charles de Gaulle to Nicolas Sarkozy
Gaffney analyzes how de Gaulle came to power in 1958: The drama surrounding the Fourth Republic's collapse, and the focus upon an exceptional individual meant that de Gaulle was able to confer a parti
The Presidential Election of 2007
In this chapter, we shall concentrate our analysis on Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, and look in particular at how they used the opportunities provided by the Fifth Republic’s institutions and culture, its ‘settlement’; and how these created the conditions of their leadership ‘performance’. We need also to bear in mind the gender factor, for Royal’s presence: the first major female contender for the presidency throws into relief in a startli…
Stardom in Postwar France
The 1950s and 1960s were a key moment in the development of postwar France. The period was one of rapid change, derived from post-World War II economic and social modernization; yet many traditional characteristics were retained. By analyzing the eruption of the new postwar world in the context of a France that was both modern and traditional, we can see how these worlds met and interacted, and how they set the scene for the turbulent 1960s and 7…
The EU and Territorial Politics within Member States: Conflict or Co‐operation? – Edited by A.K. Bourne
Highly Emotional States: French-US Relations and the Iraq War
Understanding the true nature of the relations between France and the United States is central to an understanding of the diplomatic crisis that broke out between them in 2003 over the War in Iraq. An analysis of the political cultures of France and the US offers considerable explanatory power to this dramatic diplomatic dispute. The inordinately emotional aspects of the Franco-US arguments of 2003 mask the fact that the two countries understand …
The French Fifth Republic as an Opportunity Structure: A Neo-institutional and Cultural Approach to the Study of Leadership Politics
The Gaullist settlement of 1958 reconfigured the political institutions of France, introducing into the republican mainstream a new form of leadership politics. Adapting the literature on political opportunity structure (POS) theory, and using the French left as a case study, can help us understand how political parties, ideology and leadership adapt to political institutions and norms. It also illuminates what the consequences are of such adapta…
Political Parties and the European Union
Protocol, image, and discourse in political leadership competition: The case of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, 1997-2002
This article examines the relationship between Prime Minister Jospin and President Chirac in the period 1997 to 2002. It is concerned in particular with symbolism, discourse and protocol, and how these have mediated the political competition between Chirac and Jospin. We develop a framework of analysis with several main strands. We consider the effects of the institutions of the Fifth Republic upon the political conduct of Prime Minister and Pres…
Short notices
ATTALI, J., Verbatim Vol. III, Part 1 1988–1989, Part 2 1990–1991, Fayard Livre de poche, 1998, Part 1 485 pp., Part 2 483 pp., 50F. each, ISBN 2 213 59424 4 AUBRAC, R., The French Resistance 1940–1944, Nazan Pocket Archives, 1997, 197 pp., 60F., ISBN 2 85025 567 X CAILLAT, M., René Payot. Un regard ambigu sur la guerre, Georg Editeur, 1998, 479 pp., no price indicated, ISBN 2 8257 0605 1 CHALINE, J.‐P., La Restauration, PUF, 1998, 128 pp., 42F.,…
The Gatt and the Gats: Should They Be Mutually Exclusive Agreements
The GATT 1994 and the GATS contain separate multilateral rules on trade in goods and services. The question arises as to whether the GATT 1994 and the GATS are therefore mutually exclusive. This paper argues that the GATT 1994 and the GATS should be mutually exclusive in the application of their respective obligations to the specific aspects of any given measure. The paper offers a test, based on a similar test applied under EC law, to determine …
Socialism in France: An appraisal
The Mitterrand Era. Edited by A. DALEY. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp.xiv + 285, index, £45.00 (cloth). ISBN 0–333–63265–6. France during the Socialist Years. Edited by G. RAYMOND. Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1994. Pp.xi + 278, £41.50 (cloth). ISBN 185521–5187. The Politics of Fun: Cultural Policy and Debate in Contemporary France. Edited by D. LOOSELEY. Oxford: Berg, 1997. Pp.xv + 279, biblio, index. £34.95 (cloth); £14.95 (paper). ISBN 1–85973013–…
Political Culture in France and Germany: A Contemporary Perspective
The political think‐tanks in the UK and the ministerialcabinetsin France
In the United Kingdom, since the electoral victory of the Conservative Party in 1979, the right‐wing think‐tanks, in particular the Centre for Policy Studies, have had direct access to government. In France, the ministerial cabinets have long been a site of interaction between political reflection and policy initiatives. Since 1981, the French left, far from restricting the influence of the cabinets, has used them to enhance its control over the …
Narrative, persona and performance: The case of Theresa May 2016–2017
A narrative and performance analysis of the period between the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 general election makes an empirical and theoretical contribution to understanding personalised politics at the present time. This article contends that Theresa May’s initial success proceeded from her rhetorical construction and performance of a persona founded on the archetypal healer, together with a narrative based on the myth of One Nation. However,…
The political think‐tanks in the UK and the ministerialcabinetsin France
In the United Kingdom, since the electoral victory of the Conservative Party in 1979, the right‐wing think‐tanks, in particular the Centre for Policy Studies, have had direct access to government. In France, the ministerial cabinets have long been a site of interaction between political reflection and policy initiatives. Since 1981, the French left, far from restricting the influence of the cabinets, has used them to enhance its control over the …
Political Performance and Leadership Persona: The UK Labour Party Conference of 2012
This article is a contribution to an emerging scholarship on the role of rhetoric, persona and celebrity, and the effects of performance on the political process. We analyse party leader Ed Miliband at the UK Labour Party Conference in Manchester in 2012. Our analysis identifies how, through performance of ‘himself’ and the beginnings of the deployment of an alternative party narrative centred on ‘One Nation’, Ed Miliband began to revise his ‘rec…
Another Origin of Totalitarianism: Arendt on the Loneliness of Liberal Citizens
This paper examines Hannah Arendt's notion of citizenship with reference to her account of loneliness in the modern age. Whereas recent scholarship has emphasized Arendt's notion of the "right to have rights" in order to advance her conception of citizenship in the context of global democratic theory, I maintain that this discourse threatens to overshadow the depth of her critical relation to the liberal tradition. By turning to loneliness, I aim…
The Morphology of the Labour Party's One Nation Narrative: Story, Plot and Authorship
By applying narrative theory to the party political texts emerging within the UK Labour Party after 2010, which make up the corpus of One Nation discourse, we can grasp the underlying significance of this ideational revision of Labour Party and leftist thought. Through an identification and analysis of the sequence of texts and their constitution as a “story” that interpolates an underlying “plot,” we can see how a revision of Labour's “tale” off…
The French Fifth Republic as an Opportunity Structure: A Neo-institutional and Cultural Approach to the Study of Leadership Politics
The Gaullist settlement of 1958 reconfigured the political institutions of France, introducing into the republican mainstream a new form of leadership politics. Adapting the literature on political opportunity structure (POS) theory, and using the French left as a case study, can help us understand how political parties, ideology and leadership adapt to political institutions and norms. It also illuminates what the consequences are of such adapta…
Political leadership and the politics of performance: France, Syria and the chemical weapons crisis of 2013
Solidarity in dark times: Arendt and Gadamer on the politics of appearance
This essay surveys the theme of solidarity in the respective works of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hannah Arendt. Recent discourses in continental political philosophy have arrived at an impasse regarding solidarity. On the one hand, solidarities are important for galvanizing historically oppressed peoples against dominant discourses. On the other hand, solidarities that impose similarities in advance run the risk of absorbing difference and becoming e…
Memories of exclusion: Hannah Arendt and the Haitian Revolution
This article examines Hannah Arendt's concern for remembrance in political life in light of contemporary discourses regarding the memory of slavery and colonization in the African diaspora. Arendt's blindness to questions of exclusion within this context has given way to a set of critical debates in Arendt studies concerning the viability of her political project. In this paper, I give further contour to these debates by considering Arendt's disc…
The Gatt and the Gats: Should They Be Mutually Exclusive Agreements
The GATT 1994 and the GATS contain separate multilateral rules on trade in goods and services. The question arises as to whether the GATT 1994 and the GATS are therefore mutually exclusive. This paper argues that the GATT 1994 and the GATS should be mutually exclusive in the application of their respective obligations to the specific aspects of any given measure. The paper offers a test, based on a similar test applied under EC law, to determine …
French socialism and the fifth republic
The French Socialist Party's strategic acceptance of presidentialism in the Fifth Republic from 1971 created a relationship within the party which involved its discourse, its organisation, and the treatment of leadership within Socialism. The relationship between these elements changed after 1981 as a result of the party's winning the Presidency and attaining government. In the 1984–86 period, ‘modernisation’ began the adaptation of discourse to …
Leadership and style in the French Fifth Republic: Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency in historical and cultural perspective
French Political Culture and Republicanism
L'interprétation de la violence. Une analyse du discours sur les troubles sociaux au Royaume-Uni: Le cas de Handsworth, Birmingham, 1985
Gaffney John, "Interpreting violence. Discourse analysis on social troubles in the U.K.: the Handsworth (Birainghai) case, 1985". The 1985 racial riots in Handsworth have been discoursively treated at many institutional levels : government, the left, press, police, social workers. Examining in detail the discourses of these institutional poles enables one to show what logic they use in front of events whose main actors remain silent. The governme…
French Political Culture and Republicanism
French socialism and the fifth republic
The French Socialist Party's strategic acceptance of presidentialism in the Fifth Republic from 1971 created a relationship within the party which involved its discourse, its organisation, and the treatment of leadership within Socialism. The relationship between these elements changed after 1981 as a result of the party's winning the Presidency and attaining government. In the 1984–86 period, ‘modernisation’ began the adaptation of discourse to …
The French Left and the Fifth Republic: The Discourses of Communism and Socialism in Contemporary France
An examination of the ways in which the French Left adapted, through a series of transformations, to the exigencies of presidentialism and the myths which underpin it. The study aims to illustrate the
Individualism: Theories and Methods
The political think‐tanks in the UK and the ministerialcabinetsin France
In the United Kingdom, since the electoral victory of the Conservative Party in 1979, the right‐wing think‐tanks, in particular the Centre for Policy Studies, have had direct access to government. In France, the ministerial cabinets have long been a site of interaction between political reflection and policy initiatives. Since 1981, the French left, far from restricting the influence of the cabinets, has used them to enhance its control over the …
Political Culture in France and Germany: A Contemporary Perspective
Socialism in France: An appraisal
The Mitterrand Era. Edited by A. DALEY. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp.xiv + 285, index, £45.00 (cloth). ISBN 0–333–63265–6. France during the Socialist Years. Edited by G. RAYMOND. Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1994. Pp.xi + 278, £41.50 (cloth). ISBN 185521–5187. The Politics of Fun: Cultural Policy and Debate in Contemporary France. Edited by D. LOOSELEY. Oxford: Berg, 1997. Pp.xv + 279, biblio, index. £34.95 (cloth); £14.95 (paper). ISBN 1–85973013–…
Short notices
ATTALI, J., Verbatim Vol. III, Part 1 1988–1989, Part 2 1990–1991, Fayard Livre de poche, 1998, Part 1 485 pp., Part 2 483 pp., 50F. each, ISBN 2 213 59424 4 AUBRAC, R., The French Resistance 1940–1944, Nazan Pocket Archives, 1997, 197 pp., 60F., ISBN 2 85025 567 X CAILLAT, M., René Payot. Un regard ambigu sur la guerre, Georg Editeur, 1998, 479 pp., no price indicated, ISBN 2 8257 0605 1 CHALINE, J.‐P., La Restauration, PUF, 1998, 128 pp., 42F.,…
The Gatt and the Gats: Should They Be Mutually Exclusive Agreements
The GATT 1994 and the GATS contain separate multilateral rules on trade in goods and services. The question arises as to whether the GATT 1994 and the GATS are therefore mutually exclusive. This paper argues that the GATT 1994 and the GATS should be mutually exclusive in the application of their respective obligations to the specific aspects of any given measure. The paper offers a test, based on a similar test applied under EC law, to determine …
Political Parties and the European Union
Protocol, image, and discourse in political leadership competition: The case of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, 1997-2002
This article examines the relationship between Prime Minister Jospin and President Chirac in the period 1997 to 2002. It is concerned in particular with symbolism, discourse and protocol, and how these have mediated the political competition between Chirac and Jospin. We develop a framework of analysis with several main strands. We consider the effects of the institutions of the Fifth Republic upon the political conduct of Prime Minister and Pres…
The French Fifth Republic as an Opportunity Structure: A Neo-institutional and Cultural Approach to the Study of Leadership Politics
The Gaullist settlement of 1958 reconfigured the political institutions of France, introducing into the republican mainstream a new form of leadership politics. Adapting the literature on political opportunity structure (POS) theory, and using the French left as a case study, can help us understand how political parties, ideology and leadership adapt to political institutions and norms. It also illuminates what the consequences are of such adapta…
Highly Emotional States: French-US Relations and the Iraq War
Understanding the true nature of the relations between France and the United States is central to an understanding of the diplomatic crisis that broke out between them in 2003 over the War in Iraq. An analysis of the political cultures of France and the US offers considerable explanatory power to this dramatic diplomatic dispute. The inordinately emotional aspects of the Franco-US arguments of 2003 mask the fact that the two countries understand …
The EU and Territorial Politics within Member States: Conflict or Co‐operation? – Edited by A.K. Bourne
Stardom in Postwar France
The 1950s and 1960s were a key moment in the development of postwar France. The period was one of rapid change, derived from post-World War II economic and social modernization; yet many traditional characteristics were retained. By analyzing the eruption of the new postwar world in the context of a France that was both modern and traditional, we can see how these worlds met and interacted, and how they set the scene for the turbulent 1960s and 7…
Political Leadership in France: From Charles de Gaulle to Nicolas Sarkozy
Gaffney analyzes how de Gaulle came to power in 1958: The drama surrounding the Fourth Republic's collapse, and the focus upon an exceptional individual meant that de Gaulle was able to confer a parti
The Presidential Election of 2007
In this chapter, we shall concentrate our analysis on Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, and look in particular at how they used the opportunities provided by the Fifth Republic’s institutions and culture, its ‘settlement’; and how these created the conditions of their leadership ‘performance’. We need also to bear in mind the gender factor, for Royal’s presence: the first major female contender for the presidency throws into relief in a startli…
Leadership and style in the French Fifth Republic: Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency in historical and cultural perspective
The political art of Bob Dylan
The Morphology of the Labour Party's One Nation Narrative: Story, Plot and Authorship
By applying narrative theory to the party political texts emerging within the UK Labour Party after 2010, which make up the corpus of One Nation discourse, we can grasp the underlying significance of this ideational revision of Labour Party and leftist thought. Through an identification and analysis of the sequence of texts and their constitution as a “story” that interpolates an underlying “plot,” we can see how a revision of Labour's “tale” off…
Political Performance and Leadership Persona: The UK Labour Party Conference of 2012
This article is a contribution to an emerging scholarship on the role of rhetoric, persona and celebrity, and the effects of performance on the political process. We analyse party leader Ed Miliband at the UK Labour Party Conference in Manchester in 2012. Our analysis identifies how, through performance of ‘himself’ and the beginnings of the deployment of an alternative party narrative centred on ‘One Nation’, Ed Miliband began to revise his ‘rec…
Political leadership and the politics of performance: France, Syria and the chemical weapons crisis of 2013
Political Culture in France and Germany: A Contemporary Perspective
Another Origin of Totalitarianism: Arendt on the Loneliness of Liberal Citizens
This paper examines Hannah Arendt's notion of citizenship with reference to her account of loneliness in the modern age. Whereas recent scholarship has emphasized Arendt's notion of the "right to have rights" in order to advance her conception of citizenship in the context of global democratic theory, I maintain that this discourse threatens to overshadow the depth of her critical relation to the liberal tradition. By turning to loneliness, I aim…
Political science (24 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (22 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Law (14 works) · Art (10 works) · Political economy (9 works) · French Historical and Cultural Studies (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works)