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Paper short abstract:

Politics of denouncement has increased in volume and variety in response to crises in late-capitalist development. I focus on politics in Japan to ask whether politics of denouncement which may offer much justified criticism necessarily offers critical thinking and a progressive art of government.

Paper long abstract:

Is a genuinely progressive form of governance possible when politics is primarily about denouncing the Other? I here focus on issues of the Self and the State by looking at participatory politics of emerging publics in Japan. I explore questions about the progressiveness of the "anti-politics" position (James Ferguson) to illuminate how criticism and critical thinking are not automatically the same thing, but also how constant criticism affect governance. Political gain is increasingly obtained by creating mistrust of the Other with the "State" being presented as both the culprit and the saviour despite "it" being far from anything singular. Denunciatory politics create unity by creating a common adversary against which local populist activism can contest a US-led world order, for long intercepted with the US Security Alliance in Japan. War is the political ghost of the Japanese State, and the use of historical memory to undermine perceptions about the intention of the Other continues to shape people's imagined relationship to the State. Anyone who looks deeper into the politics of "pacifism" finds a hugely complex, contradictory and shifting picture overshadowed by potent phantoms created by dominant binary left-right ideologies. Based on long-term, first-hand research, I focus on the recent security debates to explore criticism of the "anti" politics position of the left. This is not because critique of the crises of the capitalist State is unjustified but because "pure critique" (Eva Illouz) itself seems to undermines democratic governance itself. This research also explores an influential alternative - politics of dialogue