“From Prescription to Volition” by Peter Hallward

Peter Hallward, Politics & Society

I stand by the ‘politics of prescription’ that I outlined back in 2005, and that Timothy Kaposy has kindly taken the time to consider in his article above. I think the general emphasis on universalisable and egalitarian principle, on subjective commitment and resolve, on the logic of consequence and anticipation, on an engagement with the strategic constraints of a specific situation, etc., remain pertinent to any conception of emancipatory politics worthy of the name. If anything, the last few years (2011-2014) have shown that these themes deserve more systematic attention, and appreciation, both in the domain of practical politics and in the domains of philosophy and political theory.

The Politics of Prescription

by Peter Hallward, The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:4, Fall 2005.

The assassinations of Salvador Allende and Amílcar Cabral in 1973 mark the end of the last truly transformative sequence in world politics, the sequence of national liberation associated with the victories of Mao Tse-tung, Mohandas Gandhi, and Fidel Castro. It may be that this end is itself now coming to an end, through the  clarification of what Mao might have called a new ‘‘principal contradiction’’—the convergence, most obviously in Iraq and Haiti, of ever more draconian policies of neoliberal adjustment with newly aggressive forms of imperial intervention, in the face of newly resilient forms of resistance and critique.