Abstract
To start off this New Year at the journal with an auspicious new beginning: on behalf of the Editors and Executive Editorial Committee, I announce with great pleasure that Jane Bennett (Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University) has accepted appointment as the new Editor of Political Theory. Jane’s term officially begins in January 2013 but the journal will be making its unofficial transition from Northwestern University to Johns Hopkins University in summer 2012. As former Book Review Editor of PT, Jane brings to the journal an already highly charged experiential sense of its long-standing commitments and responsibilities to our expansive field of inquiry. Yet as we know from her two most recent books, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Duke University Press 2010) and The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton University Press 2001), Jane is also a political theorist who values energy, vitality, surprise, and innovation. To appreciate the richness of Jane’s scholarship, then, is to anticipate an exhilarating ride and new directions for Political Theory in the years to come.
Ringing in the new includes a welcome to the journal’s most recent additions to the Executive Editorial Committee: Rainer Forst and Achille Mbembe. Rainer Forst is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Co-Director of the Research Cluster “The Formation of Normative Orders,” and Vice Director of the Research Centre “Justitia Amplificata.” His specializations include Frankfurt School critical theory; contemporary liberal political theory; theories of justice and toleration; and ethical theory. Rainer is the author of many books and articles, including Contexts of Justice (U California Press 2002), and now forthcoming in English translation, The Right to Justification (Columbia U Press), Justification and Critique (Polity Press), and Toleration in Conflict (Cambridge U Press). Achille Mbembe is Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and Visiting Professor of Romance Studies, Duke University. He specializes in Continental theory, decolonial and postcolonial studies, African history and politics, aesthetics, and literary criticism. In addition to numerous papers and essays, Achille is the author of On the Postcolony (U California Press 2001), On Private Indirect Government (Codesria, 2002), “Necropolitics,” Public Culture (2003), and editor (with S. Nuttall) of Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (Duke University Press 2008). I look forward to working with Rainer and Achille over the next six months as they begin their respective six-year terms on the Executive Editorial Committee of PT.
With some beginnings there also arrive endings or, perhaps, merely temporary cessations. Accordingly, I must say farewell for the time being to two valuable members of the journal’s Executive Editorial Committee, both of whom have completed their respective six-year terms. To William Galston, I offer sincere appreciation for his unstinting service as a reviewer of and counselor on manuscripts representing an array of specializations, too many to count, but including analytical and normative political philosophy, political liberalism, value pluralism, global justice, governance, and cosmopolitanism, and realist political theory. One of Bill’s virtues, dear to any editor, consists in his never saying “no” or even “I’ll get back to you” when asked for commentary, verbal or written, on a matter of importance to the journal. As the subtitle of one of his many books indicates, Bill’s attitude as a reader of texts is always geared toward “connecting theory, practice, and possibilities.” I thank him for encouraging many authors and manuscripts toward that goal.
To Wendy Brown, I extend gratefulness beyond easy measure for six years of constant efforts and labors on behalf of the journal. Constant, in all senses of the word: continuous, unceasing, invariable; steadfast in purpose, loyalty, and affection. Wendy’s constancy extends not only to her work for the journal in areas of scholarship and expertise, from contemporary Continental and critical theory to postcolonial, feminist, and critical race theory, that challenge political theory’s more established predilections and presumptions. She also brings her capacities for perseverance to bear upon domains that influence the flourishing of the journal as a plural and collective academic and scholarly enterprise in a world of commercial and managerial capitalist imperatives. In those (hopefully rare) moments when the urgencies of the latter threaten to undermine the strivings of the former, there is nothing more vital or important for a journal than having to hand a few risk takers ready to stand fast for it. I thank Wendy for being the one always prepared to take on such edgework according to the necessity of the case, with requisite manifestations of fearlessness, gravity, and grace.
Neither these acknowledgements nor the New Year would be complete without my also thanking Consulting Editor Jim Tully, Book Review Editor Don Herzog, Assistant Editors Ross Carroll and Doug Thompson, and the rest of the Executive Editorial Committee for their continuing and dedicated work on behalf of the journal. Finally, to all scholars in the field and supporters of Political Theory, I wish a happy, productive, and exciting year 2012.