Practical Ethics of Responsibility and Protection
2023-08-10
August 10 (Thursday), 10:30-12:00
Keynote: Ranabir Samaddar (Calcutta Research Group, India)
Moderator: Joyce C. H. Liu (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan)
Abstract
The discussion on responsibility is full with philosophical, quasi-philosophical, sociological, and legal reflections while political reflection and analysis is relatively less. This is because political power is suffused with the idea of sovereignty, and very little with responsibility. While a theory of separation of powers and the constitutional principle of division of powers imply responsibility as an intrinsic element of power, yet power is measured not by responsibility but by the extent of constraints or fetters. Power inherently transgresses restraints and is therefore inherently violent. Even though power is honed with prudence to be exercised in a measured manner, yet power has the capacity to turn itself into a centre, a univocal sovereign signifier of capacity. A capillary existence of power does not guarantee the federalisation of political power or, to be precise, its existence in a responsible mode. Our study of responsibility as an essential component of politics has suffered from a top-down approach. Posing from the margins the question of responsibility is a post-colonial reflection of the way power is organized. A post-colonial framing of responsibility will mean taking into account the background of decolonization, partitions, structural reforms, environmental disasters, and neoliberal development against which population flows continue, and bio-political responses from below to events of crises. It is important to study local dynamics of power and responsibility in protection of the victims of forced migration. We need to study local and variegated experiences of refugee protection, because there is a greater burden of protection at the micro level – at the margin. We need to study the neglected histories of sovereignty as responsibility. The dual figure of migrant and refugee has emerged as a significant subject under conditions of globalization, aggressive wars, transgression of borders, and a political economy that allows differential inclusion of migrant labour. In this context, post-colonial experiences suggest plural responsibilities for protection and hospitality, and it means that we must accept legal pluralism and regional mechanisms as the foundational principle for rebuilding the architecture of protection. The salient feature of the situation at the margins is that there is no transfer of will here from the ruled to the ruler or the other way round. The feature is that of a flexible juridical structure, and a flexible sense of direction: therefore, responsibility does not have a monolithic structure asking the subject to be directed towards a point of direction. Autonomy and responsibility enmesh each other in unpredictable ways. Responsibility becomes essential to the government of the living. Mutual responsibility creates a community. It becomes the name of solidarity, the name of a collective. Solidarity, a sense of the common, and a stake in the common produce responsibility as a collective virtue.
近期影音 Recent Video
20240322｜China-Nepal New Found Friendship and Repercussion on Tibetan Refugees in Nepal
2024-04-02
more
