Dr Andrew Schaap
BA(Hons) Melbourne, MSc, PhD Edinburgh
Extension: 3186
Telephone: 01392 723186
Senior Lecturer
I teach and supervise students in contemporary political theory and critical IR theory. My research broadly aims to conceptualize political action, politicization, and the constitution of political community. I draw on debates in political theory about 'agonism' (the Ancient Greek term for the struggle for distinction among citizens) and the concept of the political (more or less synonomous with 'polity' or 'the common') to examine issues surrounding the politics of reconciliation and human rights.
There are two inter-related strands to my current research. The first aims to understand the history of the Australian Aboriginal land rights struggle in relation to the the settler state and society. In some recent papers, co-authored with Paul Muldoon, we have examined the political significance of the Aboriginal Embassy for the Australian polity. I am currently co-editing a book with Gary Foley and Edwina Howell on the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, which will be published by Routledge in 2013.
The second strand examines how the problematic Hannah Arendt establishes with her notion of the 'right to have rights' has been addressed in continental political theory, particularly by Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Ranciere. In a recently published article in the European Journal of Political Theory, for instance, I examine Ranciere's critique of Arendt. This research will form part of a book I am writing called Human Rights and the Political, which will be published by Routledge in 2013.
