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Using the master's tools: rights and radical politics

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posted on 2018-10-02, 12:40 authored by Ruth KinnaRuth Kinna
This chapter brings anarchist perspectives to bear on Charles Mills’s and Carole Pateman’s critical review of Rawlsian contract theory to explore the possibility of re-appropriating ‘master’s tools’ to advance radical change. It uses a concept of prefiguration to consider how activists operate within the framework of the state to promote libertarian politics and it recovers an anarchist conception of free agreement to explore the theoretical grounding of this activism. The argument is that the state is reimagined through the active contestation of the powers states reserve to determine the rightness of actions and the underpinning principles of justice. The argument has three parts. The first discusses Charles Mills’s analysis of Rousseau’s contract theory to redress structural domination as an exemplary model of contemporary theoretical reimaging. The second part of the chapter develops a critique of Mills’s position, drawing on the work of Carole Pateman and Martin Buber. The final section discusses the reclamation of the state’s powers through direct action.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Politics and International Studies

Published in

Reimagining the State: Theoretical Challenges and Transformative Possibilities

Citation

KINNA, R., 2019. Using the master's tools: rights and radical politics. IN: Dhawan, N., Cooper, D. and Newman, J. (eds.) Reimagining the State: Theoretical Challenges and Transformative Possibilities, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, pp.??-??.

Publisher

Routledge

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© The Author

Publisher statement

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Reimagining the State: Theoretical Challenges and Transformative Possibilities on 13 August 2019, available online: http://www.routledge.com/9780815382195.

Publication date

2019-08-13

Copyright date

2020

ISBN

9780815382195; 9780815382157; 9781351209113

Book series

Social Justice;

Language

  • en

Editor(s)

Davina Cooper, Nikita Dhawan, Janet Newman

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