Nonviolence as Positive Liberty

This reflection on Ian Shapiro's recent book, Politics against Domination, argues that there are strengths to conceiving of politics as a struggle against domination but the argument neglects the actual democratic politics of actual movements such as the African American freedom struggle. In the civil rights movement, in particular, nonviolence added to older understandings of politics as engagement across difference a view of positive liberty, recently described by theorists such as Karuna Mantena and Danielle Allen. This understanding of nonviolence as positive liberty has enormous relevance for our time. It finds expression in significant actual civic practices.