James Martel
Biographic Data
| ID | 323179 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James Martel |
| GIVEN NAMES | James |
| FAMILY NAME | Martel |
| SIGNATURE | MARTEL J |
| AFFILIATIONS | San Francisco State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9061-2355 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
We don’t have the body: Law, politics and aesthetics in the case of missing or stolen corpses
For Democratic Governance of Universities: The Case for Administrative Abolition
In this essay, we argue for administrative abolition, that is, the elimination of all college presidents, provosts, deans and other top level administrators who we argue form a parasitical group that was developed over time in order to exercise both political and financial control over faculty, staff and students. We examine the way that the idea of "shared governance" disguises the de facto dictatorship of administration over faculty self-govern…
Singularity and the Commandment: Another Form of Law
In this essay I look at how Samuel Weber helps to explain Benjamin’s reading of the commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” His concept of singularity helps to explain how for Benjamin, each time one encounters this commandment, it must be as if for the first time and each time, one may well come up with a different response. This understanding of how singularity functions helps more generally to understand how one can approach decisions and judgments…
Introduction to the Dossier: Samuel Weber at Eighty
Three and a half years ago, the new normal of video conferencing forced upon the world by the COVID-19 pandemic turned forth an unexpected silver lining: scholars separated by seemingly insurmountable physical distances were able to gather in celebration of Samuel Weber's 80th birthday at an online event jointly organized by the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths, University of London and Northwestern University.Over the cou…
Anarchism Is the Only Future
In this paper I argue that archism, a form of political power that is ubiquitous in the world and is based on hierarchy and violence, effectively denies us a future. Archism in invested in continuing the current power dynamics. Accordingly, it projects a false sense of the future which is actually only a continuation of the present on and on forever. I look at two thinkers, Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt, who try to take the future back from a…
Why a Different World is Possible: Review of The Dawn of Everything
Why a Different World is Possible:Review of The Dawn of Everything James Martel (bio) David Graeber and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. London: Allen Lane, 2021. 704 pp. $18.59 (hc). ISBN 978-0374157357. The Dawn of Everything is a huge, sprawling and deeply ambitious book. Its central thesis is that our current forms of political and economic organization, characterized by hierarchy, state violence and economic …
Benjamin Still Makes Sense: Forum on the Actuality of Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ at Its Centenary, Introduction - Why We Need Benjamin More than Ever
Walter Benjamin published his influential essay ‘Critique of Violence’/‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt’ in 1921, and the work has troubled and provoked thinkers across disciplines for over a century now. This Forum gathers a group of scholars in philosophy, political science, international relations and legal studies to reflect on the actuality of Benjamin’s essay for contemporary critical theory. In this opening to the Forum, the guest editors Gabriela A…
Anarchist Prophets: Disappointing Vision and the Power of Collective Sight
In Anarchist Prophets James R. Martel juxtaposes anarchism with what he calls archism in order to theorize the potential for a radical democratic politics. He shows how archism—a centralized and hierarchical political form that is a secularization of ancient Greek and Hebrew prophetic traditions—dominates contemporary politics through a prophet’s promises of peace and prosperity or the threat of violence. Archism is met by anarchism, in which a c…
The Ethical Fantasy of Rhetorical Theory
In The Ethical Fantasy of Rhetorical Theory, Ira Allen does much more than give us a theory of rhetoric. He gives us a map of reality, of how we make the world real to ourselves, how we convince one another (and ourselves) of its realness, even as what we so deem is constantly changing. This book is a primer on how the fact of radical contingency is not in and of itself fatal to the project of human life and politics. On the contrary, for Allen, …
A Universe for Everyone: Review of Max Tomba's Insurgent Universality
A Universe for Everyone:Review of Max Tomba's Insurgent Universality James Martel (bio) Massimiliano Tomba. Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 304 pp. $36.95 (hc). ISBN: 9780190883089. From the very beginning of Insurgent Universalities, Max Tomba tells us that he is not going to construct a history based on political leaders and their big ideas. Instead, he gives us what could be …
Nietzsche, Revelation, and the Materiality of Metaphor
Nietzsche, Revelation, and the Materiality of Metaphor James Martel (bio) I. Introduction Nietzsche is probably one of the last people that you would expect to offer a political theology of metaphor (much less a political theology of anything else for that matter).1 And yet, in Ecce Homo, he offers us precisely that. More accurately, in that book he reflects on an earlier one, his masterpiece Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where he considers the relatio…
How to Make Concrete Laws Out of Thin Air: Peter Fitzpatrick on the Myths and Groundings of Legality
In search of Atheism: Benjamin and Nietzsche on secularity and occult theologies
In this article, I argue that atheism is different from secularism. Secularism is based on a faux elimination of theology which effectively preserves that theology in the guise of overcoming it. To achieve atheism (a term that I draw from the work of Maria Aristodemou), I argue that one needs to directly confront the theological element in order to come to terms with it. In this essay I look at how two political theological thinkers, Nietzsche an…
The Magic of Matter: Bodies, Together and Apart in a Time of Pandemic
I look at what Walter Benjamin calls the “magic of matter,” a silent form of communication between material objects, including our bodies. This communion exists even when bodies are separated as they are during the pandemic and becomes especially sensible to us when the physical presence of others is removed
Sina Kramer's Excluded Within: The (Un)intelligibility of Radical Political Actors
Sina Kramer's Excluded Within:The (Un)intelligibility of Radical Political Actors James Martel (bio) Sina Kramer. Excluded Within: The (Un)intelligibility of Radical Political Actors. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 256 pp. £46.49 (hc). ISBN: 9780190625986. Sina Kramer's Excluded Within is one of those rare books that states things that seems obvious in the telling but which no one had quite thought of before. Her claim is that constituted…
The Law is Not a Thing: Kafkan (Im)materialism and Imitation Jam
In this article, I look at the question of how the law continually refounds itself in relationship to the material world by borrowing from that materiality a sense of its own tangibility (which it otherwise does not have) even as it in turn draws material orbits into its object lending them a certain sense of power and nobility (which they otherwise do not have either). This exchange suggests an unexpected vulnerability for the law insofar as it …
Juxtaposition, Hemispheric Thought, and the Bounds of Political Theory: Juliet Hooker’s Theorizing Race in the Americas
Response to Claudia Leeb’s review of The Misinterpellated Subject
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Why Does the State Keep Coming Back? Neoliberalism, the State and the Archeon
Marco Wan. Masculinity and the Trials of Modern Fiction . New York: Routledge, 2017. 177 pp
A Divine Pedagogy
In "Critique of Violence," Benjamin writes that the "educative power, which in its perfected form stands outside the law, is one of [divine violence's] manifestations." To recognize the connection Benjamin makes between a messianic power and acts of pedagogy allows us to revisit Benjamin's earlier writings on education with an eye toward uncovering their radical messianic potential. Against the manifestations of the "mythic violence" inherent in …
The Misinterpellated Subject
Although Haitian revolutionaries were not the intended audience for the Declaration of the Rights of Man, they heeded its call, demanding rights that were not meant for them. This failure of the French state to address only its desired subjects is an example of the phenomenon James R. Martel labels Complicating Althusser's famous theory, Martel explores the ways that such failures hold the potential for radical and anarchist action. In addition t…
The Law of Rules: Hyperlegalism, Emergency and the Violence of Procedure
This article draws on the work of Nasser Hussain and Keally McBride to think about the way that law is violent. Hussain’s work shows that the law’s much vaunted distinction between ordinary law and the state of emergency is a false dichotomy, one that stems from Britain’s colonial legacy wherein only Britain was said to follow “the rule of law” and other parts of the world (including areas that it therefore got to colonize) were subject to a perp…
Are We Out of Time? Thinking about Neoliberalism and Fascism in an Age of Radical Transition
In this commentary, I explore the question of how the way we think about time affects the conclusions that we draw about specific political questions. To demonstrate this, I consider two questions, the relationship between liberalism and neoliberalism and the relationship between neoliberalism and fascism. I look at these issues first from within the normal teleological notions of time that are prevalent and then from a more ‘dissociated’ form of…
The Political Theory of Michael Rogin
Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness
aCknowl EdgmEntSThis volume reflects impor tant collaborations beyond those of the coeditors, Benjamin Lawrance and Jacqueline Stevens, who first conceived of the project at a dinner party in Berkeley, California, in 2009.Comparing experiences outside academia, Lawrance as an expert witness and Stevens as an investigative journalist, they noted similarities in their encounters with people struggling to prove their identity and citizenship.Convers…
Can There Be Politics Without Sovereignty? Arendt, Derrida and the Question of Sovereign Inevitability
In this essay I look at Arendt and Derrida and the way that they seem forced to compromise with sovereignty despite their ardent opposition to it. In both cases, the sense of the inevitability of sovereignty comes from a particular understanding of time, that is to say, it comes from an eschatological perspective that sees the unity and continuity of sovereignty as the only possible form of politics. I show how both thinkers seek to bypass the se…
Against Thinning and Teleology: Politics and Objects in the Face of Catastrophe in Lear and Von Trier
In this essay, I write a companion piece to Bonnie Honig’s commentary on “Public Things.” In looking at Honig’s comments on Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope and Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia, I focus on the question of stealth teleologies, particularly in Lear’s case. I argue that what Lear calls “radical hope” is not particularly radical. Instead, it disguises a teleology whereby, passing through some catastrophe, redemption follows. Against thi…
The Spectacle of the Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes, Guy Debord and Walter Benjamin on Representation and its Misuses
In this paper, I compare Thomas Hobbes’ notion of demonology with contemporary notions of “the spectacle”, an idea articulated by Guy Debord and embellished (albeit in a somewhat different way and with a different name) by Walter Benjamin. I note that despite the three centuries that separate these authors (and despite Hobbes’ apparent enthusiasm for the spectacle itself as displayed in the frontispiece to Leviathan), Hobbes’ notion of demonology…
Juxtaposition, Hemispheric Thought, and the Bounds of Political Theory: Juliet Hooker’s Theorizing Race in the Americas
The Law of Rules: Hyperlegalism, Emergency and the Violence of Procedure
This article draws on the work of Nasser Hussain and Keally McBride to think about the way that law is violent. Hussain’s work shows that the law’s much vaunted distinction between ordinary law and the state of emergency is a false dichotomy, one that stems from Britain’s colonial legacy wherein only Britain was said to follow “the rule of law” and other parts of the world (including areas that it therefore got to colonize) were subject to a perp…
Are We Out of Time? Thinking about Neoliberalism and Fascism in an Age of Radical Transition
In this commentary, I explore the question of how the way we think about time affects the conclusions that we draw about specific political questions. To demonstrate this, I consider two questions, the relationship between liberalism and neoliberalism and the relationship between neoliberalism and fascism. I look at these issues first from within the normal teleological notions of time that are prevalent and then from a more ‘dissociated’ form of…
Amo: Volo ut sis
Although critical of what she calls the `antipolitical' forces of love and sovereignty, Arendt reluctantly embraces these aspects as the basis of politics itself. I explain this paradox by arguing that Arendt seeks to balance Greek and Roman notions of freedom with modern conceptions of the will. The solipsistic will poses a threat to politics (it is the source of sovereignty itself). Yet the will is a fact of modern life and cannot be ignored. I…
Prophetic Politics: Christian Social Movements and American Democracy
Prophetic Politics: Christian Social Movements and American Democracy. By David S. Gutterman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 236p. $34.95 cloth, $18.95 paper. Are religion and democracy hopelessly incompatible forces in our time? David Gutterman would like us to believe that they are not. In this book, he examines both recent historical and contemporary examples to show how religion can either thwart or support democratic politics, d…
Can We Do Away with Sacrifice
The Role of Emotion in Political Life
Politics in Chastened Times
The Role of Emotion in Political Life
The Spectacle of the Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes, Guy Debord and Walter Benjamin on Representation and its Misuses
In this paper, I compare Thomas Hobbes’ notion of demonology with contemporary notions of “the spectacle”, an idea articulated by Guy Debord and embellished (albeit in a somewhat different way and with a different name) by Walter Benjamin. I note that despite the three centuries that separate these authors (and despite Hobbes’ apparent enthusiasm for the spectacle itself as displayed in the frontispiece to Leviathan), Hobbes’ notion of demonology…
Prophetic Politics: Christian Social Movements and American Democracy
Prophetic Politics: Christian Social Movements and American Democracy. By David S. Gutterman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 236p. $34.95 cloth, $18.95 paper. Are religion and democracy hopelessly incompatible forces in our time? David Gutterman would like us to believe that they are not. In this book, he examines both recent historical and contemporary examples to show how religion can either thwart or support democratic politics, d…
Can We Do Away with Sacrifice
Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat
"In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes's landmark work on political philosophy, James R. Martel argues that although Hobbes pays lip service to the superior interpretive authority of the sovereign, he consistently subverts this authority throughout the book by returning it to the reader."--Jacket
Amo: Volo ut sis
Although critical of what she calls the `antipolitical' forces of love and sovereignty, Arendt reluctantly embraces these aspects as the basis of politics itself. I explain this paradox by arguing that Arendt seeks to balance Greek and Roman notions of freedom with modern conceptions of the will. The solipsistic will poses a threat to politics (it is the source of sovereignty itself). Yet the will is a fact of modern life and cannot be ignored. I…
The Messiah who Comes and Goes: Franz Kafka on Redemption, Conspiracy and Community
The Messiah who Comes and GoesFranz Kafka on Redemption, Conspiracy and Community James Martel (bio) Introduction If we look at Franz Kafka's writings from the perspective of political theory, it seems that the politics he offers us, if any, are those of passivity, failure and doom. When his friend Max Brod asked Kafka if there was any hope, Kafka famously replies "Oh [there is], plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope—but not for us."1 This s…
"Hobbes's "Thinking-bodies
Hobbes's "Thinking-bodies" James R. Martel (bio) Samantha Frost . Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics. Palo Alto CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. 212 pages. $47.22 (cloth); $21.95 (paper). ISBN 978-0-8047-5747-8 In "Lessons from a Materialist Thinker," Samantha Frost begins by telling us that "Thomas Hobbes is not who we think he is." (1) She proceeds to offer a dramatic retelling of Hobbes, princi…
Can There Be Politics Without Sovereignty? Arendt, Derrida and the Question of Sovereign Inevitability
In this essay I look at Arendt and Derrida and the way that they seem forced to compromise with sovereignty despite their ardent opposition to it. In both cases, the sense of the inevitability of sovereignty comes from a particular understanding of time, that is to say, it comes from an eschatological perspective that sees the unity and continuity of sovereignty as the only possible form of politics. I show how both thinkers seek to bypass the se…
How Not to Be Governed: Readings and Interpretations from a Critical Anarchist Left
How Not to Be Governed explores the contemporary debates and questions concerning anarchism in our own time. The authors address the political failures of earlier practices of anarchism, and the claim that anarchism is impracticable, by examining the anarchisms that have been theorized and practiced in the midst of these supposed failures. The authors revive the possibility of anarchism even as they examine it with a critical lens. Rather than br…
Nietzsche's Cruel Messiah
Nothing Exists Except an Earthenware Pot”: Resisting Sovereignty on Robinson’s Island
In this essay I would like to focus on “The Beast and the Sovereign”—and especially the Second Volume—as being something of an exception to Derrida’s usual hesitations about sovereignty. In other works, such as “Rogues”, Derrida displays a deep ambivalence about sovereignty insofar as for all of his condemnation of sovereign authority, he fears that what might replace it could be even worse (and, to be fair, he also sees positive aspects of sover…
Divine Violence: Walter Benjamin and the Eschatology of Sovereignty
Divine Violence looks at the question of political theology and its connection to sovereignty. It argues that the practice of sovereignty reflects a Christian eschatology, one that proves very hard to overcome even by left thinkers, such as Arendt and Derrida, who are very critical of it. These authors fall into a trap described by Carl Schmitt whereby one is given a (false) choice between anarchy and sovereignty, both of which are bound within—a…
The One and Only Law: Walter Benjamin and the Second Commandment
Division Is Common
In this essay, I engage with Jodi Dean's idea from The Communist Horizon (2012) that "division is common; we must seize it." I argue that this is a critical insight that helps us think both about the kinds of political subjectivity that we find in Marxist philosophy as well as the actual practices of communism. Looking to Marx's Capital, and especially his writing about the development of a community of laborers, I argue that readings of the prol…
LCH Bookshelf
Walter Benjamin’s Black Flashlight: Promoting Misreading over Persuasion to Decenter Textual and Political Authority
Many theorists promote a decentralized politics but very few of them practice this decentralization textually. In this essay, I engage with three techniques Benjamin employs to decenter his authority in the text: allegory, montage and the production of text as “pure means.” Taken together, these practices amount to what I am calling Benjamin’s use of a “black flashlight.” Rather than illuminate his text with his own knowledge, seeking to win the …
Against Thinning and Teleology: Politics and Objects in the Face of Catastrophe in Lear and Von Trier
In this essay, I write a companion piece to Bonnie Honig’s commentary on “Public Things.” In looking at Honig’s comments on Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope and Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia, I focus on the question of stealth teleologies, particularly in Lear’s case. I argue that what Lear calls “radical hope” is not particularly radical. Instead, it disguises a teleology whereby, passing through some catastrophe, redemption follows. Against thi…
The Political Theory of Michael Rogin
Radio Benjamin
Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness
aCknowl EdgmEntSThis volume reflects impor tant collaborations beyond those of the coeditors, Benjamin Lawrance and Jacqueline Stevens, who first conceived of the project at a dinner party in Berkeley, California, in 2009.Comparing experiences outside academia, Lawrance as an expert witness and Stevens as an investigative journalist, they noted similarities in their encounters with people struggling to prove their identity and citizenship.Convers…
The Misinterpellated Subject
Although Haitian revolutionaries were not the intended audience for the Declaration of the Rights of Man, they heeded its call, demanding rights that were not meant for them. This failure of the French state to address only its desired subjects is an example of the phenomenon James R. Martel labels Complicating Althusser's famous theory, Martel explores the ways that such failures hold the potential for radical and anarchist action. In addition t…
The Law of Rules: Hyperlegalism, Emergency and the Violence of Procedure
This article draws on the work of Nasser Hussain and Keally McBride to think about the way that law is violent. Hussain’s work shows that the law’s much vaunted distinction between ordinary law and the state of emergency is a false dichotomy, one that stems from Britain’s colonial legacy wherein only Britain was said to follow “the rule of law” and other parts of the world (including areas that it therefore got to colonize) were subject to a perp…
Are We Out of Time? Thinking about Neoliberalism and Fascism in an Age of Radical Transition
In this commentary, I explore the question of how the way we think about time affects the conclusions that we draw about specific political questions. To demonstrate this, I consider two questions, the relationship between liberalism and neoliberalism and the relationship between neoliberalism and fascism. I look at these issues first from within the normal teleological notions of time that are prevalent and then from a more ‘dissociated’ form of…
Philosophy (33 works) · Political science (32 works) · Law (31 works) · Politics (28 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · Epistemology (22 works) · Law (22 works) · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation (12 works) · Aesthetics (9 works)