Call for papers for the volume 7, number 1, year 2022
Aiming to encourage academic production in the State sciences field, the Editorial Board of REVICE makes public this call, referring to the composition of the dossier of volume 7, number 1, year 2022. The theme of this issue's dossier will be RETURN TO POLITICAL: THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN REASON AND PASSION IN DEMOCRACY.
After a year of reflections on Brazilian studies, the need to question not only national institutions but especially those that constitute the structure of Western civilization itself continuously grows. By rethinking them, we are able to reflect on ourselves and, perhaps, we will even be able to imagine answers to contemporary problems. Although similar efforts have already been made, such as the proposed change of perspective by Pierre Rosanvallon, it is still necessary to return to the political.
As evidenced by Chantal Mouffe, the political is the study subject that concerns the very formation of a society, that is, the way in which a human group organizes its disputes for power, its inherent conflicts, its spaces of antagonism and clashes. It differs, therefore, from Politics, which is limited to determining practices and institutions for organizing the clashes arising from the sphere of politics — politics carries out a process of ordering of conflicts formed and/or recognized at the political level, confining them, for example, elections, parliamentary disputes, political parties.
In this sense, Mouffe, when recovering and updating the theory of friend and enemy, returns to the political to treat it as an arena of opposition between projects that aim to be hegemonic, in a society where their peaceful coexistence or union is impossible: the goal of every ideology is the seizure of power. However, this clash would no longer be between enemies, but between opponents, who do not seek the destruction of their opponent, but the victorious conquest of political space.
The academic branch represented by Mouffe perceives the necessarily passionate and agonizing nature of the political, contrary to the view that Jürgen Habermas has as one of its main exponents. For this other group, it is a discursive relationship, where conflicts would be logically resolved through a rational consensus. The passionate and conflictive are removed, mitigating differences in favor of resolving differences through reason and dialogue. For them, these would be the foundations of liberal democracy, which considers that the period of great clashes for power and ideological projects has already ended, with all disagreements in thought falling to the liberal political arena.
In this context of interpretative clashes about the political, we can see, in recent years, events such as Brexit, the rise of the extreme right — in Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and even Brazil and the United States — as well as the resumption of Latin American populism in Argentina and Mexico, the crises and protests against immigration, the proliferation of fake news, and the social fracture caused by disagreements in the face of measures to contain the pandemic, such as lockdowns and vaccination. Which seems to indicate the insufficiency, or not, of contemporary organizations in responding to crises, whether under conflicting and passionate views or under logical and rational perspectives.
Finally, REVICE invites the academic community to return, once again, to the political, with its interpretive disputes and its relations between politics and the State. Is liberal democracy in decline, confirming the friend-adversary paradigm? What are the impacts of this possible change on the essential activities of the State? How have these hegemonic disputes interfered in the execution of public policies, such as those aimed at controlling the pandemic, violence, customs, immigration? What is the impact of new forms of communication on the definition of the political, or conversely, how does the form of organization of the political shape the choice of ways to communicate and mobilize?
This issue, therefore, encompasses works on the political; the political organization; the elections; political parties; political communication; public policies and their relationship with politics; liberal democracy, its possible crises or conquests; the antagonism versus the consensus; the neoliberalism and its consequences about the political; internal and external sovereignty; foreign policy as an affirmation of political pluralism; the ideology; the role of the State; democratic political institutions; the power; the hegemonic projects of power; the history of the politician; the philosophical history of the political; left and right populism; the limit of the political; the limit of political discourse; political cosmopolitanism; political culturalism; the transnationalis; the democratic; and global governance.
I - The issue of REVICE will follow a rolling publishing process.
II – REVICE will receive works for the present dossier from the date of its publication up until April 20th, 2022.
III - Works whose evaluation and correction process is not completed by June 30, 2022, will be published in the following issues of REVICE.
IV - All REVICE’s submission policies, as well as its editorial policies, can be found on its official website.
V – Only unpublished articles, essays, reviews, and translations will be accepted.
VI – Free-themed works continue to be accepted by REVICE.
Belo Horizonte, February 20th, 2022.
Victoria Nicolielo Reginatto
Editor-in-Chief
Joao Pedro Braga de Carvalho
Deputy Editor-in-Chief
