[{"id":175,"date":"2026-06-18T02:39:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T02:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/?page_id=175"},"modified":"2026-06-18T02:39:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T02:39:15","slug":"adam-burgos","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/participants\/adam-burgos\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Burgos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Adam Burgos, Bucknell University<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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“Neither War nor Politics: On the Meaning and Potential of Democratic Engagement”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper focuses on a circumstance partway between a state of war and a state of politics: partial politics<\/em>. Each refers to how reasons and justifications function politically. A state of war exists where political reasons are seen as unnecessary by the acting political authority; justification is simply assumed. A state of politics, conversely, occurs when authority assumes that such reasons are needed and that the response of the community to whom they are given matters. Partial politics names the blurred line between the two that emerges when historical injustice significantly impinges upon contemporary political life. In foregrounding the historical and contextual aspects of concepts like legitimacy, justice, and democracy, partial politics reveals a grey zone in political life in which political reason giving becomes opaque. Partial politics results in conflicts between modes of political engagement \u2013 elections, civil disobedience, violent resistance – that may be impossible to resolve without overcoming existing social arrangements.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Adam Burgos<\/strong> is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University. He works on social and political philosophy and critical philosophy of race and ethnicity. He is the author of Political Philosophy and Political Action: Imperatives of Resistance<\/em> (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017) and the editor of Philosophizing Contestation: Refusal, Disobedience, Resistance, Decolonization <\/em>(Bloomsbury, 2026). He has published in Philosophy & Social Criticism, Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy Today, Radican Philosophy Review, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Burgos, Bucknell University Adam Burgos is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University. He works on social and political philosophy and critical philosophy of race and ethnicity. He is the author of Political Philosophy and Political Action: Imperatives of Resistance (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017) and the editor of Philosophizing Contestation: Refusal, Disobedience, Resistance, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4444,"featured_media":0,"parent":132,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/template-full-notitle.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-175","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/175\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":173,"date":"2026-06-18T02:31:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T02:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/?page_id=173"},"modified":"2026-06-18T02:31:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T02:31:02","slug":"martin-breaugh","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/participants\/martin-breaugh\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Breaugh"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Martin Breaugh, York University<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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“Understanding, Refusing, Finding Inspiration: Towards a Living Critique of Domination”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a time when liberal democracy appears exhausted by the erosion of citizens\u2019 trust, this lecture proposes a \u201cliving critique of domination\u201d grounded in three gestures for radically rethinking politics and rediscovering emancipatory horizons: understanding, refusing, and finding inspiration. To understand<\/em> is to mobilize analytical capacities to better grasp contemporary forms of domination and the pathways opened by the politics of emancipation. To refuse<\/em> is to undertake a relentless critique of the mechanisms that allow for the illegitimate control over others. Finally, to find inspiration<\/em> is grounded upon a charitable understanding of the power of emancipatory political experiences\u2014plebeian secessions such as Black Lives Matter\u2014that embrace conflict, plurality, and indeterminacy as engines of freedom, equality, and solidarity. Together, these three gestures outline a bold political program aimed at breaking out of the ruts of the present and confronting the challenges of the twenty\u2011first century by reconnecting with a living, inventive, and resolutely democratic politics.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Martin Breaugh <\/strong>is a political theorist whose work explores the critical traditions of political thought, particularly those that interrogate freedom, emancipation, and plebeian forms of collective action. A full professor of politics at York University (Toronto), he is one of the leading contemporary theorists of plebeian political experiences, notably through his book The Plebeian Experience: A Discontinuous History of Political Freedom <\/em>(CUP, 2016). He has published numerous articles, book chapters and edited volumes, including Thinking Radical Democracy: The Return to Politics in Post-war France<\/em> (University of Toronto Press, 2015) and A Politics of Emancipation: The Miguel Abensour Reader<\/em> (SUNY Press, 2024).<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martin Breaugh, York University Martin Breaugh is a political theorist whose work explores the critical traditions of political thought, particularly those that interrogate freedom, emancipation, and plebeian forms of collective action. A full professor of politics at York University (Toronto), he is one of the leading contemporary theorists of plebeian political experiences, notably through his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4444,"featured_media":0,"parent":132,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/template-full-notitle.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-173","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/173\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":171,"date":"2026-06-18T02:24:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T02:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/?page_id=171"},"modified":"2026-06-18T02:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T02:26:15","slug":"stephen-c-angle","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/participants\/stephen-c-angle\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen C. Angle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stephen C. Angle, Wesleyan University <\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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“Confucian\u00a0Nei-Wai<\/em>\u00a0Citizenship”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most of the long history of Confucianism, inhabitants of Confucian polities were not citizens, but subjects. Modern Confucian theorists, both in East Asia and abroad, have rethought the nature of Confucian commitments for the post-monarchical era. This “Progressive Confucian” approach to social roles and civic engagement is quite different from mainstream Western liberalism, in part because it rests on a continuity between nei<\/em> (inner) and wai<\/em> (outer) rather than a sharp dichotomy between public and private. Indeed, modern Confucians should not see citizenship as only taking place in political or public contexts. While the idea that citizenship remains relevant even within the family may sound like an overly demanding ideal\u2014and risking what Robert Talisse has called \u201cthe political saturation of the social”\u2014the paper argues that Confucianism’s model of ritually mediated harmony between nei<\/em> and wai<\/em> concerns is both psychologically insightful and politically valuable.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Stephen C. Angle<\/strong> is Director of the Fries Center for Global Studies, Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, and Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. Angle\u2019s research looks both at the history of Confucian philosophy and at the development of \u201cProgressive Confucianism\u201d today. Angle is the author or co-author of six books, including Growing Moral: A Confucian Guide to Life<\/em> (Oxford, 2022).<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen C. Angle, Wesleyan University Stephen C. Angle is Director of the Fries Center for Global Studies, Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, and Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. Angle\u2019s research looks both at the history of Confucian philosophy and at the development of \u201cProgressive Confucianism\u201d today. Angle is the author or co-author […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4444,"featured_media":0,"parent":132,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/template-full-notitle.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-171","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":169,"date":"2026-06-18T02:19:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T02:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/?page_id=169"},"modified":"2026-06-18T02:26:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T02:26:51","slug":"jacob-abolafia","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/participants\/jacob-abolafia\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacob Abolafia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jacob Abolafia, American University <\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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“A New Theory of Democratic Interest”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper aims to reestablish a theory of democratic interest, the idea that an objective interest in democracy can be linked to one or more populations within a polity. Following Ernesto Laclau, the paper argues that we cannot project an interest in supporting a democratic regime onto any group based only on its formal qualities or social position. But against Laclau\u2019s political agonism, the paper argues that democratic interest has objective content, insofar as the interest claims of groups can only be said to be democratic if they preserve the contingency of the democratic process itself and encourage the circulation of power across society. Therefore, a theory of democratic interest requires both that group interests and group identities be understood \u201cincompletely and provisionally\u201d and that anything claim to democratic interests be aligned with the circulation of power as broadly as possible within the democratic boundary. According to this theory, democratic interest as the overlap between the interests of the majority and an interest in democratic government should be thought of as a principle of institutional design and a regulative ideal and not as a social fact.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Jacob Abolafia<\/strong> is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at American University. He studied Philosophy and Classics at Yale and Cambridge before receiving his doctorate in Political Theory from Harvard. Jacob held post-doctoral appointments in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and at Stanford before joining the Philosophy Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev as a Senior Lecturer. He has published widely across both the history of political philosophy, ancient and modern, as well as in critical and democratic theory. His first book, The Prison Before the Panopticon: Incarceration in the History of Political Philosophy<\/em>, was published by Harvard University Press in 2024.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jacob Abolafia, American University Jacob Abolafia is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at American University. He studied Philosophy and Classics at Yale and Cambridge before receiving his doctorate in Political Theory from Harvard. Jacob held post-doctoral appointments in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and at Stanford before joining the Philosophy Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4444,"featured_media":0,"parent":132,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/template-full-notitle.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-169","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/169\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":132,"date":"2026-04-27T00:01:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T00:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/?page_id=132"},"modified":"2026-06-18T02:48:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T02:48:18","slug":"participants","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/mcdowellconference\/participants\/","title":{"rendered":"Participants"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The 27th McDowell Conference: Philosophical Questions of AI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Location: Butler Board Room, 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Washington, DC 20016<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Website Manager: Kali Van Nostrand<\/p>\n\n\n