George Shulman
Biographic Data
| ID | 447804 |
|---|---|
| NAME | George Shulman |
| GIVEN NAMES | George |
| FAMILY NAME | Shulman |
| SIGNATURE | SHULMAN G |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9571-4908 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 92 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Ordinary Language and Race: Hanna Pitkin and Toni Morrison in Tandem and Tension
Fred Moten’s Refusals and Consents: The Politics of Fugitivity
This essay analyzes Fred Moten’s “antipolitical” romance with the “fugitive black sociality” that he radically opposes to “politics,” defined as inescapably tied to antiblack modernity. By comparing Moten’s argument to other voices in the black radical tradition, and by triangulating Moten with Hannah Arendt and Sheldon Wolin, this essay opens inherited conceptions of the political to risk and reworking but also complicates figurations of fugitiv…
Mourning work: Death and democracy during a pandemic
Michael Paul Rogin: Derangement and Liberalism
Michael Paul Rogin’s scholarship profoundly altered the scope, content, and disposition of political theory. He reconstituted the field by opening it to an array of texts, performances, and methods previously considered beyond the purview of the discipline. His work addressed the relationship between dimensions of politics typically split apart – institutional power and cultural forms, material interests and symbolic meanings, class projects and …
From Generic Tragedy to Political Genres: Stow’s American Mourning
Donald Trump, the TV Show: Michael Rogin Redux
While conventional tools of political science failed to capture the dynamics fueling Trump's improbable ascent, the scholarship of the late political theorist, Michael Rogin, brings together the multifaceted analysis needed to understand the United States under Trump. Whereas prevailing idioms of critique separate the material and symbolic, and institutional and cultural dimensions of politics, Rogin's creative approach theorizes their complex in…
Afro pessimism
Rethinking equality
This essay criticises the limitations of the idea of formal equality in the liberal (and French republican) traditions by drawing on Karl Marx, Alexis de Tocqueville, and contemporary feminist and critical-race theories. These suggest that any credible theory of equality must begin in fact with inequality in its many dimensions, but it also must theorise how countervailing power is developed by political action, or what Tocqueville calls associat…
White Supremacy and Black Insurgency as Political Theology
The Political Theory of Michael Rogin
Radical Future Pasts: Untimely Political Theory
A Flight from the Real: American Literature and Political Theory
In this essay, I pursue two related claims. One is that American literature is recurrently read by theorists as a form of flight from politics, a view they argue in various ways by deploying a distinction between the real and the fictive, and so also between forms of realism in contrast to genres aligned with the fantastical. My examples are Alexis de Tocqueville's account of "poetry," work in American studies that distinguishes "romance" from "t…
Marx's Nightmare: Marxism, Culture, and American Politics
On Vulnerability as Judith Butler's Language of Politics: From Excitable Speech to Precarious Life
On Vulnerability as Judith Butler's Language of Politics: From Excitable Speech to Precarious Life George Shulman (bio) It is often said that philosophy begins in wonder, but it may be the case that political theory begins in a sense of danger—in emotions of fear or dread, in perceptions of impending or potential harm, in experiences of vulnerability or injury. Most famously, Thomas Hobbes made the English Revolution a "state of nature" to elicit…
Political Theory from the Shadows
Political Theory from the Shadows George Shulman (bio) Robert Gooding-Williams, In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. $35.00 (hardcover) 368 pp. ISBN 9780674035263 In the Shadow of Du Bois is an important book, for several reasons. First, Gooding-Williams reads Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk as one of the “great works of political philosophy” and he rigorously reconstructs…
Thinking Authority Democratically: Prophetic Practices, White Supremacy, and Democratic Politics
This essay explores Hebrew prophecy and its modern reworkings to develop an account of authority in democratic politics that contrasts with prevailing genres of political theory. At first, we use William Blake to reveal the poetic and democratic dimensions in the biblical prophecy typically associated with absolute truth and law as command. By using the examples of Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin, we then argue that critics of white supremac…
American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture
Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice
Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice. By W. James Booth. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. 264p. $42.50. W. James Booth has written a profound book about memory in relation to identity and justice in politics. On the one hand, he analyzes the central place of memory in the constitution of identity: A sense of continuity over time, the basis and sign of personal or collective identity, depends on memory. On the other …
Michael Rogin (1937-2001)
Books in Review
American Political Culture, Prophetic Narration, and Toni Morrison's Beloved
HUMAN BEINGS TELL STORIES; we may call them narratives. They are crucial to human life and fruitful to study because they mediate past and present, social condition and interior experience, inherited circumstance and agency, and collective and personal identity. As collective artifacts internalized as part of identity, stories also foster the reflection that infuses them with new meanings. For a political theorist, then, narratives visible the cu…
Conference Panel: On Political Identity
In May, 1990, a conference was held at UCLA on the theme of “American Politics in Historical Perspective.” Panels were organized on political institutions and social history, on periodization, and on political identity. The panel presentations on political identity are printed below, along with some of the exchanges among the conference group. Slightly edited for clarity, they are offered to readers in the interest of conveying some of the intell…
Metaphor and Modernization in the Political Thought of Thomas Hobbes
Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? ... Will he make supplications unto thee? . . . Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant forever? . . . Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils go smoke, as out of a seething pot or cauldron . . . When he raiseth himself up, the mighty are afraid; by reason of breakings they purify themselves ... Upon the earth there is not his like, …
II. Hobbes, Puritans, and Promethean Politics
Gerrard Winstanley: The Radicalism of the Good Son
At the same time that Hobbes published Leviathan, Gerrard Winstanley wrote and worked to oppose market institutions and possessive individualism. He has not had much of an audience, and this neglect of him, Professor Shulman thinks, would seem to have been undeserved. He submits that Winstanley's argument takes account of both class interests and unconscious motives while avoiding reductionism about meaning, action, and politics. Based on an unde…
American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture
Fred Moten’s Refusals and Consents: The Politics of Fugitivity
This essay analyzes Fred Moten’s “antipolitical” romance with the “fugitive black sociality” that he radically opposes to “politics,” defined as inescapably tied to antiblack modernity. By comparing Moten’s argument to other voices in the black radical tradition, and by triangulating Moten with Hannah Arendt and Sheldon Wolin, this essay opens inherited conceptions of the political to risk and reworking but also complicates figurations of fugitiv…
Mourning work: Death and democracy during a pandemic
Afro pessimism
Thinking Authority Democratically: Prophetic Practices, White Supremacy, and Democratic Politics
This essay explores Hebrew prophecy and its modern reworkings to develop an account of authority in democratic politics that contrasts with prevailing genres of political theory. At first, we use William Blake to reveal the poetic and democratic dimensions in the biblical prophecy typically associated with absolute truth and law as command. By using the examples of Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin, we then argue that critics of white supremac…
On Vulnerability as Judith Butler's Language of Politics: From Excitable Speech to Precarious Life
On Vulnerability as Judith Butler's Language of Politics: From Excitable Speech to Precarious Life George Shulman (bio) It is often said that philosophy begins in wonder, but it may be the case that political theory begins in a sense of danger—in emotions of fear or dread, in perceptions of impending or potential harm, in experiences of vulnerability or injury. Most famously, Thomas Hobbes made the English Revolution a "state of nature" to elicit…
American Political Culture, Prophetic Narration, and Toni Morrison's Beloved
HUMAN BEINGS TELL STORIES; we may call them narratives. They are crucial to human life and fruitful to study because they mediate past and present, social condition and interior experience, inherited circumstance and agency, and collective and personal identity. As collective artifacts internalized as part of identity, stories also foster the reflection that infuses them with new meanings. For a political theorist, then, narratives visible the cu…
Metaphor and Modernization in the Political Thought of Thomas Hobbes
Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? ... Will he make supplications unto thee? . . . Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant forever? . . . Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils go smoke, as out of a seething pot or cauldron . . . When he raiseth himself up, the mighty are afraid; by reason of breakings they purify themselves ... Upon the earth there is not his like, …
II. Hobbes, Puritans, and Promethean Politics
Ordinary Language and Race: Hanna Pitkin and Toni Morrison in Tandem and Tension
Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice
Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice. By W. James Booth. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. 264p. $42.50. W. James Booth has written a profound book about memory in relation to identity and justice in politics. On the one hand, he analyzes the central place of memory in the constitution of identity: A sense of continuity over time, the basis and sign of personal or collective identity, depends on memory. On the other …
Conference Panel: On Political Identity
In May, 1990, a conference was held at UCLA on the theme of “American Politics in Historical Perspective.” Panels were organized on political institutions and social history, on periodization, and on political identity. The panel presentations on political identity are printed below, along with some of the exchanges among the conference group. Slightly edited for clarity, they are offered to readers in the interest of conveying some of the intell…
Gerrard Winstanley: The Radicalism of the Good Son
At the same time that Hobbes published Leviathan, Gerrard Winstanley wrote and worked to oppose market institutions and possessive individualism. He has not had much of an audience, and this neglect of him, Professor Shulman thinks, would seem to have been undeserved. He submits that Winstanley's argument takes account of both class interests and unconscious motives while avoiding reductionism about meaning, action, and politics. Based on an unde…
II. The Myth of Cain: Fratricide, City Building, and Politics
Gerrard Winstanley: The Radicalism of the Good Son
At the same time that Hobbes published Leviathan, Gerrard Winstanley wrote and worked to oppose market institutions and possessive individualism. He has not had much of an audience, and this neglect of him, Professor Shulman thinks, would seem to have been undeserved. He submits that Winstanley's argument takes account of both class interests and unconscious motives while avoiding reductionism about meaning, action, and politics. Based on an unde…
II. The Myth of Cain: Fratricide, City Building, and Politics
II. Hobbes, Puritans, and Promethean Politics
Metaphor and Modernization in the Political Thought of Thomas Hobbes
Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? ... Will he make supplications unto thee? . . . Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant forever? . . . Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils go smoke, as out of a seething pot or cauldron . . . When he raiseth himself up, the mighty are afraid; by reason of breakings they purify themselves ... Upon the earth there is not his like, …
Conference Panel: On Political Identity
In May, 1990, a conference was held at UCLA on the theme of “American Politics in Historical Perspective.” Panels were organized on political institutions and social history, on periodization, and on political identity. The panel presentations on political identity are printed below, along with some of the exchanges among the conference group. Slightly edited for clarity, they are offered to readers in the interest of conveying some of the intell…
American Political Culture, Prophetic Narration, and Toni Morrison's Beloved
HUMAN BEINGS TELL STORIES; we may call them narratives. They are crucial to human life and fruitful to study because they mediate past and present, social condition and interior experience, inherited circumstance and agency, and collective and personal identity. As collective artifacts internalized as part of identity, stories also foster the reflection that infuses them with new meanings. For a political theorist, then, narratives visible the cu…
Books in Review
Michael Rogin (1937-2001)
Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice
Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice. By W. James Booth. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. 264p. $42.50. W. James Booth has written a profound book about memory in relation to identity and justice in politics. On the one hand, he analyzes the central place of memory in the constitution of identity: A sense of continuity over time, the basis and sign of personal or collective identity, depends on memory. On the other …
Thinking Authority Democratically: Prophetic Practices, White Supremacy, and Democratic Politics
This essay explores Hebrew prophecy and its modern reworkings to develop an account of authority in democratic politics that contrasts with prevailing genres of political theory. At first, we use William Blake to reveal the poetic and democratic dimensions in the biblical prophecy typically associated with absolute truth and law as command. By using the examples of Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin, we then argue that critics of white supremac…
American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture
Political Theory from the Shadows
Political Theory from the Shadows George Shulman (bio) Robert Gooding-Williams, In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. $35.00 (hardcover) 368 pp. ISBN 9780674035263 In the Shadow of Du Bois is an important book, for several reasons. First, Gooding-Williams reads Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk as one of the “great works of political philosophy” and he rigorously reconstructs…
On Vulnerability as Judith Butler's Language of Politics: From Excitable Speech to Precarious Life
On Vulnerability as Judith Butler's Language of Politics: From Excitable Speech to Precarious Life George Shulman (bio) It is often said that philosophy begins in wonder, but it may be the case that political theory begins in a sense of danger—in emotions of fear or dread, in perceptions of impending or potential harm, in experiences of vulnerability or injury. Most famously, Thomas Hobbes made the English Revolution a "state of nature" to elicit…
Marx's Nightmare: Marxism, Culture, and American Politics
Radical Future Pasts: Untimely Political Theory
A Flight from the Real: American Literature and Political Theory
In this essay, I pursue two related claims. One is that American literature is recurrently read by theorists as a form of flight from politics, a view they argue in various ways by deploying a distinction between the real and the fictive, and so also between forms of realism in contrast to genres aligned with the fantastical. My examples are Alexis de Tocqueville's account of "poetry," work in American studies that distinguishes "romance" from "t…
White Supremacy and Black Insurgency as Political Theology
The Political Theory of Michael Rogin
Rethinking equality
This essay criticises the limitations of the idea of formal equality in the liberal (and French republican) traditions by drawing on Karl Marx, Alexis de Tocqueville, and contemporary feminist and critical-race theories. These suggest that any credible theory of equality must begin in fact with inequality in its many dimensions, but it also must theorise how countervailing power is developed by political action, or what Tocqueville calls associat…
From Generic Tragedy to Political Genres: Stow’s American Mourning
Donald Trump, the TV Show: Michael Rogin Redux
While conventional tools of political science failed to capture the dynamics fueling Trump's improbable ascent, the scholarship of the late political theorist, Michael Rogin, brings together the multifaceted analysis needed to understand the United States under Trump. Whereas prevailing idioms of critique separate the material and symbolic, and institutional and cultural dimensions of politics, Rogin's creative approach theorizes their complex in…
Afro pessimism
Michael Paul Rogin: Derangement and Liberalism
Michael Paul Rogin’s scholarship profoundly altered the scope, content, and disposition of political theory. He reconstituted the field by opening it to an array of texts, performances, and methods previously considered beyond the purview of the discipline. His work addressed the relationship between dimensions of politics typically split apart – institutional power and cultural forms, material interests and symbolic meanings, class projects and …
Mourning work: Death and democracy during a pandemic
Fred Moten’s Refusals and Consents: The Politics of Fugitivity
This essay analyzes Fred Moten’s “antipolitical” romance with the “fugitive black sociality” that he radically opposes to “politics,” defined as inescapably tied to antiblack modernity. By comparing Moten’s argument to other voices in the black radical tradition, and by triangulating Moten with Hannah Arendt and Sheldon Wolin, this essay opens inherited conceptions of the political to risk and reworking but also complicates figurations of fugitiv…
Political science (22 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (19 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (14 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (6 works)