The big questions that motivate my research are directly related to the concerns of contemporary democratic citizens: What is public space? What opportunities exist for it in an ever-increasing global and digital age? How can we speak to each other and not at or against one another? How can citizens feel empowered to engage in political action through non-electoral means? How might participation in politics not merely be an instrumental exercise? Inspired by the thought of Hannah Arendt, I am less interested in normative concerns about the most just or fair arrangement of political life and more about existential concerns regarding why citizens experience politics as an alienating form of life. I would describe my overall research program as primarily concerned with critical political theory, providing a critique of the problematic trends of modern life that must be thought through so that normative political theory—especially the ongoing legacies of Habermas and Rawls—does not become blind to its own historical situation. My research involves the attempt to re-imagine and re-think the following concepts in light of the alienation that characterizes contemporary citizens’ experience of politics: public space, public discourse, political identity, and liberal pluralism.
My monograph with Lexington Press on Hannah Arendt’s political thought was released in April 2021 titled Public Space and Political Experience: An Arendtian Interpretation.
I recently was interviewed about my book by Dr. Sahar Joakim on her Youtube channel where she interviews many philosophers about specific topics in order to reach a wider audience.
Below, you find can links to current papers in progress and publications as well as abstracts for all papers.
Moreover, links to several popular articles I have written for the site 1000 Word Philosophy can be found here and here as well as a link to a book symposium I edited and wrote an introduction for at the online humanities forum Syndicate.
Papers in Progress
Abstract: The separation of powers of American government is perhaps the single most important aspect of its constitutional system. Discussions surrounding the separation of powers have loomed large during the Trump administration because of its seeming disregard for it. As many others have during these turbulent times in politics, I suggest turning to Hannah Arendt’s thought is needed to help us make sense of them. In this essay, I argue Arendt’s thought provides us with needed resources for empowering citizens to affect the separation and balance of powers within government. Specifically, through non-electoral political action in the form of civil disobedience, citizens can re-claim the power that belongs to them. I use Arendt’s writings as a vehicle for expanding our political imagination in showing how citizens can function as their own site of power when the government fails to be responsive to its legitimating source, i.e., the citizenry.
Publications
Abstract: While its status as the name of a political movement and its ubiquity as a slogan to be uttered in the face of continued black suffering is undeniable, I contend that we need a political concept to think through what Black Lives Matter is. In other words, I want to try and answer the following question: how can we make sense of how this phrase—these three words—have emerged so precipitously to become an enduring feature of American political life? While I am not denying the obvious—that Black Lives Matter has persisted as a movement because black men have continued to be killed by police—I think there is some philosophical work to be done regarding precisely why this specific choice of words—Black Lives Matter—has resonated so powerfully with the public. In what follows, I will argue that Hannah Arendt’s concept of a principle can best help illuminate how Black Lives Matter is and will continue to be so successful in fighting back against oppression.
Abstract: This essay argues for a concept of political identity that is fundamentally relational in nature contra more liberal accounts of identity that are atomistic. I consider John Rawls’ account of political identity in his Political Liberalism and provide a response stemming from Hannah Arendt’s account of political identity grounded in the existential condition of politics: human plurality. Using her concept of human plurality, I argue that political identity ought to be conceived as relationally individuated as opposed to atomistically so, meaning that our identities only emerge in and through appearing before other political actors and not prior to it. The larger upshot is that conceiving of political identity as relational provides a more fruitful concept of the citizen and might allow progress to be made regarding some of the more entrenched political problems in American political culture, especially polarization and partisanship.
- Human Plurality as Object: Understanding the Rise of Trump through An Arendtian Framework
- Link to essay (Spring 2018 in Southwest Philosophy Review)
Abstract: Nearly a week after the election of Donald Trump, a public policy institute at my university hosted what they called an “Election Autopsy” (the name had been chosen in advance regardless of who the winner of the election was going to be). I, like many others, having felt shaken up in the subsequent days after the election, attended this event hoping some clarity would be provided that could allow me to understand how and why Donald Trump was capable of being elected president. Surely, I thought, I was not just going to be presented with a smattering of data and exit polls—not after this election, I thought. There was a panel composed of political scientists and public policy analysts who proceeded to discuss exit polling and electoral, demographic breakdowns of how Donald Trump won. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised because, after all, this is what they are trained to do but I was still left in a bit of shock because to anyone who had been awake on election night like myself, I didn’t see how it was possible to believe that this was simply the swinging of the pendulum back to the other party as in past elections. But, to my surprise, this was the conclusion they had drawn from this election. I heard things like “The polls, at the end of the day, turned out to be within the margin of error”—as if this was supposed to make us feel better! I tell this story because it illustrated to me a failure of our human capacity to understand and interpret the phenomenon of Donald Trump and his stunning rise to power. I, of course, refer to “understand” in the way that Arendt did as “reconciling ourselves to a world in which such things are possible at all. It is this sense of reconciliation that I felt was necessary as opposed to reaching for the easiest or most readily available conclusion. With this background context in place, what I will do in the following essay is provide an attempt at understanding the rise of Donald Trump using some familiar Arendtian categories.
- “Re-thinking Judgment and Opinion as Political Speech in Hannah Arendt’s Political Thought” (summer 2020 in The Pluralist)
Abstract: Within the current political context, it seems uncontroversial to assert that public discourse about matters of shared concern is generally regarded as toxic and not as an inviting opportunity for citizens. Generally speaking, participation in public discourse and in the public space is not something we seek out unless, perhaps, it is from behind the privacy of our electronic devices. Hannah Arendt’s thought provides some of the best resources for re-thinking these concepts. This essay, then, seeks to accomplish two tasks at once. First, I utilize Arendt’s thought as a vehicle for attempting to re-think public discourse as perhaps the political problem confronting contemporary citizens. Second, it will be this very rethinking of public discourse that allows me to wade into a more specific debate within Arendt scholarship about the role of judgment in her thought.
David Antonini, PhD 