Suchergebnisse

Over the last 30 years, post-structuralist, feminist and other IR theorists have asked questions of the ways in which discourses on sovereignty seek to foreclose political possibility. To do so, they have advanced a decentralised, contested, incomplete and relational understanding of politics that presupposes some sort of intersubjective agency, however fragmented. There is one site, however, that appears to confound this line of argument insofar as it is commonly understood to exemplify an entirely non-relational, anti-political 'desolation': the concentration camp. Drawing on feminist theory to establish the terms of an aesthetic mode of 'interruption', this article will identify a compelling challenge to this position in a comic book drawn by Horst Rosenthal, a German–Jewish detainee at Gurs in Vichy, France, who was later killed at Auschwitz–Birkenau. Rosenthal's piece will be read as an 'aesthetic interruption' that mounts a powerful critique of the logic underpinning his concentrationary experience, and in so doing demonstrates one way in which (to however painfully limited a degree) the political might be 'brought back in' to discussions about sovereign power.

This article interrogates the role of tragedy within the work of International Relations theorists including Michael Dillon, Mervyn Frost, Richard Ned Lebow and Hans Morgenthau. It argues that a tragic sensibility is a constituent part of much thinking about politics and the international, and asks what the reasons for this preoccupation might be. Noting that a number of diverse theoretical appeals to tragedy in International Relations invoke analytically similar understandings of tragic-political subjectivity, the article problematises these by building on Michel Foucault's intermittent concern with the genre in his Collège de France lecture series. It proposes that a genealogical consideration of tragedy enables an alertness to its political associations and implications that asks questions of the way in which it is commonly conceived within the discipline. The article concludes by suggesting that International Relations theorists seeking to invoke tragedy must think carefully about the ontological, epistemological, ethical and political claims associated with such a move.

This article interrogates the role of tragedy within the work of International Relations theorists including Michael Dillon, Mervyn Frost, Richard Ned Lebow and Hans Morgenthau. It argues that a tragic sensibility is a constituent part of much thinking about politics and the international, and asks what the reasons for this preoccupation might be. Noting that a number of diverse theoretical appeals to tragedy in International Relations invoke analytically similar understandings of tragic-political subjectivity, the article problematises these by building on Michel Foucault's intermittent concern with the genre in his Collège de France lecture series. It proposes that a genealogical consideration of tragedy enables an alertness to its political associations and implications that asks questions of the way in which it is commonly conceived within the discipline. The article concludes by suggesting that International Relations theorists seeking to invoke tragedy must think carefully about the ontological, epistemological, ethical and political claims associated with such a move.

Abstract
International Relations is a discipline that takes itself seriously. What functions does this posture of seriousness serve? What is at stake in its maintenance and reproduction? And what ways of knowing, understanding, and performing politics are marginalized as a result? This article addresses these questions, drawing on feminist theory in order to show how the discipline's performances of seriousness have served to exclude particular ways of being and knowing. While some feminists have responded to these exclusions by demanding to be taken seriously, we draw on queer theorists including Lauren Berlant, Jack Halberstam, and Cynthia Weber in order to suggest that IR might profitably benefit from the exploration of other critical and analytical registers. Engaging in what Berlant calls a "counterpolitics of the silly object," we outline three sites of ontological, epistemological, and methodological intervention that emerge from a counterpolitical embrace of silliness.

AbstractSeveral scholars have raised concerns that the institutional mechanisms through which transitional justice is commonly promoted in post-conflict societies can alienate affected populations. Practitioners have looked to bridge this gap by developing 'outreach' programmes, in some instances commissioning comic books in order to communicate their findings to the people they seek to serve. In this article, we interrogate the ways in which post-conflict comics produce meaning about truth, reconciliation, and the possibilities of peace, focusing in particular on a comic strip published in 2005 as part of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report into the causes and crimes of the 1991–2002 Civil War. Aimed at Sierra Leonean teenagers, the Report tells the story of 'Sierrarat', a peaceful nation of rats whose idyllic lifestyle is disrupted by an invasion of cats. Although the Report displays striking formal similarities with Art Spiegelman's Maus (a text also intimately concerned with reconciliation, in its own way), it does so to very different ends. The article brings these two texts into dialogue in order to explore the aesthetic politics of truth and reconciliation, and to ask what role popular visual media like comics can play in their practice and (re)conceptualisation.

In this article, we propose the category of "foreign policy performance" in order to argue that a recognition of foreign policy's theatricality can illuminate its contribution to generative processes of social construction and world-making. We focus on the practice of summit diplomacy, which operates according to a "theatrical rationality" that blurs the boundary between substantive and symbolic politics. Noting that Donald Trump's presidency called into question many of international relations' prevailing assumptions regarding foreign policy's formulation and execution, we suggest that a performance-oriented analytic can facilitate a critical reckoning both with Trump himself and with the "statesmanlike" norms he eschewed. We read Trump's performances at international summits with reference to professional wrestling, which for all its melodramatic absurdity is a venerable and complex theatrical tradition with a highly developed critical language. Guided by four pieces of wrestling argot ("heat," "heel," "kayfabe," and "cutting a promo"), we use process-tracing techniques to develop a wrestling-oriented reading of Trump's 2018 summit with Kim Jong-Un in Singapore. We argue that using wrestling in order to read Trump and Kim's deviation from the conventional norms and repertoires of foreign policy performance enables a critical assessment of the stakes at play in their reconstruction and re-establishment.

In this article, we propose the category of "foreign policy performance" in order to argue that a recognition of foreign policy's theatricality can illuminate its contribution to generative processes of social construction and world-making. We focus on the practice of summit diplomacy, which operates according to a "theatrical rationality" that blurs the boundary between substantive and symbolic politics. Noting that Donald Trump's presidency called into question many of international relations' prevailing assumptions regarding foreign policy's formulation and execution, we suggest that a performance-oriented analytic can facilitate a critical reckoning both with Trump himself and with the "statesmanlike" norms he eschewed. We read Trump's performances at international summits with reference to professional wrestling, which for all its melodramatic absurdity is a venerable and complex theatrical tradition with a highly developed critical language. Guided by four pieces of wrestling argot ("heat," "heel," "kayfabe," and "cutting a promo"), we use process-tracing techniques to develop a wrestling-oriented reading of Trump's 2018 summit with Kim Jong-Un in Singapore. We argue that using wrestling in order to read Trump and Kim's deviation from the conventional norms and repertoires of foreign policy performance enables a critical assessment of the stakes at play in their reconstruction and re-establishment.

A series of reflections on Covid-19 that looks at: how the pandemic affects processes of bordering and increases the indeterminate grey zones within which so many people are forced to live; the way nurses are presented in the media and the hypocrisy of praising them in a moment of crisis
while simultaneously devaluing their work and underpaying them; health inequalities in Newham; the inequalities in the craft sector spotlighted by the pandemic; the relationships between radical neighbourliness and local politics; how perceptions of time have been affected during lockdown
- and how 24-7 capitalism may seek to take advantage of this radical reorganisation of time.