Selectively lifting a single concept from a theory distorts its intended political meaning

Evidence

Admittedly, not everyone using the concept of conviviality need share these theoretical and political preoccupations. However, it remains instructive to ask what transpires when scholars read After Empire (or not, as some of the front-loaded citations might suggest), and then selectively bracket the concept of conviviality, while leaving the book’s other foundational and concomitant concerns untouched: melancholia, empire, colonialism, securitocracy, overdevelopment, marketisation, the evacuation of public good, anti-racism, humanism, planetarity? Of course, all scholarship involves lifting selectively from other people’s work, taking choice quotes and ideas and repurposing them. But the danger with After Empire is that by taking a single term, partially read, one ends up missing the point, and conviviality becomes an end in itself, as opposed to part of a wider challenge to all identitarian and ethnically absolutist closure. — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 35

Categorization

• XREF: Speaks to the general hazard of cherry-picking concepts from a body of work — echoes the perennial citation-without-context problem in any disciplinary field, where buzzwords outlive the theory that birthed them. — connects to: Political language weaponizes selective concepts to serve power.; Words do not label pre-existing political objects but must be made real through interpretation — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 430; Ideologies are crafted as political weapons, not theories — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 433 (+4 more)
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 35

Broader Connections

• Political language weaponizes selective concepts to serve power. #corroborates (0.78)
• Ideologies are crafted as political weapons, not theories #expands (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 433
• Excessive theorizing can empty power of its material exercise #exemplifies (0.74)
• Essentialized etymology discredits a people’s political agency while posing as neutral scholarship #exemplifies (0.74)
• Words do not label pre-existing political objects but must be made real through interpretation #expands (0.72) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 430
• Political category mistakes often stem from transferring aesthetic concepts into politics #exemplifies (0.72)