2002 Abstracts / Résumés des exposés 2002 Abizadeh, Arash (
[email protected]) - Can Habermasian Discourse Shake the Charge of Motivational Impotence? On Constitutional Patriotism, Rhetoric, and Affect - Civic republican and cultural nationalist critics charge that Habermas's notion of constitutional patriotism is too affectively thin and thus impotent to motivate social integration. In this paper, I undertake critically to examine the philosophical underpinnings of Habermas's political theory in order to show how the susceptibility of his notion of constitutional patriotism to the charge of impotence can be traced to a problem in the way in which he conceives of discursive practical reason. By implicitly constructing the notion of discursive rationality in contrast to, and in abstraction from, the rhetorical and affective components of language use, Habermas's notion of discursive practical reason ends up reiterating the same binaries - between reason and passion, abstract and concrete, universal and particular - that provide the tacit parameters used by his critics to motivate the charge of impotence. I undertake to demonstrate how Habermas's theory of social and political integration can only succeed once his discourse ethical theory of politics is rebuilt upon a notion of discursive practical reason that overcomes these philosophy/rhetoric binaries common to both camps. This paper fits into a larger project about the relationship between discourse, rhetoric, and identity in democratic politics. Abu-Laban, Yasmeen (
[email protected]) - Multi-Culturalism and the Problem of Essentialism: Canadian and International Developments - In Canada, the introduction of an official policy of multiculturalism in 1971 provided a new understanding of what it meant to be a Canadian citizen.