Search

There is little doubt that our political discourse has become more polarized over the last thirty years. I argue that as radical thinkers we can turn to politeness as one way to begin working past this partisan and adversarial atmosphere. I define politeness as a self-conscious appreciation of the role of social convention in repairing and maintaining our relationships. The first section compares politeness and decency to highlight what is unique about politeness. The second section argues that politeness can be considered a form of care. The third and final section describes how radical theory can use politeness to start initiating healthier dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates areas of knowledge production in contemporary queer-feminist punk countercultures in/from the US and draws a connection from countercultural accounts to academic anti-social queer theory. Based on the thesis that queer-feminist punk-countercultures, bands, musicians, writers and organizers-can be understood as a political movement, their productions--lyrics, writing, sound and performances--will be seen as a form of queer-feminist activism and agency. The main argument developed in the article is that queer-feminist punk countercultural agents do not only engage with queer and feminist politics, as well as academic theory, but also produce queer-feminist political theory--a more or less coherent set of ideas to analyze, explain and counter oppressive social structures, as well as explicit and open violence and oppression. Queer-feminist punk musicians combine decolonial and antiracist accounts with their specific punk philosophy of anti-social queerness or queer negativity. Lyrical content, and writing will be analyzed to show examples of queer-feminist anti-social accounts of punk music. Relating such queer-feminist punk negativity to academic concepts and scholarly work, it will be shown how punk rock is capable of negotiating and communicating academic queer-feminist theoretical positions in a non-academic setting. Moreover, it will be proven that queer-feminist punk does not only negotiate, translate and appropriate academic accounts, but also produces similar negative and repoliticized queer-feminist theories without any direct inspiration through academic discourses. Furthermore, it will be proposed that queer-feminist punk communities accomplish what academic queer theory following the anti-social turn often does not: they transform their radically anti-social queer positions into (models for) liveable activism/artivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on issues regarding sociology of education in the U.S. According to the author, radical education historians tend to focus on conflicts over the structure of the educational system. On the other hand, Max Weber suggested that a critical element of the power of dominant groups resides in their capacity to impose educational and cultural ideals on school. Furthermore, the absence in conflict theory of an analysis of educational system has proved damaging to the emergence of a radical theory of educational politics.