In the sovereign machine: sovereignty,governmentality, automaticity

Abstract

This essay explores a series of sovereign ‘machines’ – slaves, puppets, automata – in political theory from Benjamin to Agamben. It is now well-documented that the philosophical question of ‘the machine’ – of whether a complex system requires a human operator or whether it can function autonomously – is also a crucial political question that haunts every discussion of sovereignty from Hobbes onwards. However, my wager in what follows is that this machine is not just a metaphor for a metaphysical situation – whether it be rationality (Hobbes), bureaucratization (Weber), neutralization (Schmitt), historicism (Benjamin) or governmentality (Foucault) – but a material phenomenon that carries transformative political promise and threat. To summarize the argument of this essay, I contend that ‘sovereign machines’ like slavery (Aristotle, Hegel, Kojève, Agamben), puppets, automata or clockwork (Descartes, Hobbes, Schmitt, Benjamin, Derrida), lens, optics and mirrors (Hobbes, Kantorowicz, Benjamin, Lacan, Foucault) and so on do not merely reflect but change our understanding of the causal relationship between sovereignty and governmentality, decision and norm, exception and rule. If the self-appointed task of the modern political theorist has so often been to obtain or regain sovereignty of, or over, the machine – to jam its gears – I seek to expose what the later Derrida calls the ‘machine’ of sovereignty itself. In conclusion, I argue that political theory’s attempt to reveal or retroactively invent the sovereign person at the heart of the machine only ends up revealing the sovereign machine at the heart of the person. What – if anything – is really inside the machine of sovereignty?     

Deconstruction,postmodernism and philosophy of science: Some Epistemo‐critical bearings

Abstract

In the recent critique of ‘Western metaphysics’ by post‐structuralist and postmodern theorists, there has emerged a distinctive line of thought which seeks to apply such critique to the domain of political theory. This paper approaches Hannah Arendt's conceptualisation of the political as a proto‐type of such a theorisation, deploying as it does key elements of the Heideggerian (and more broadly, phenomenological) position so as to rethink the nature of the political. By delineating the specifically ‘post‐metaphysical’ moments of Arendt's theory and its corresponding critique of political modernity, I endeavour to illuminate both the advantages and pitfalls of contemporary efforts at developing a philosophical conception of the political on the basis of a neo‐Heideggerian position.     

THE MICRO-ETHICS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

In this article I offer an unfashionably ideological critique. I argue that, in the USA, ideology now appears in the form of the narratives that capitalism tells itself about itself, in particular at sites of commodity consumption. I examine three everyday sites in which capitalism constructs an Imaginary version of itself as it exhorts contemporary consumers to consume ethically: during a visit to a Target Superstore; on an overnight stay in a hotel room; and while purchasing a bag of fair trade coffee. In these moments and at these sites, corporations instruct us in the ‘ethical’ use of their commodities, and obeying those instructions promotes us to the rank of ‘consumer activist’. This article attempts to explain how this ‘ethical consumption’ – a form of what I call ‘micro-ethics’ – has displaced more social, or ‘macro’, forms of ethical action. To make my case, I argue that globalized capitalism denies many of us the social coordinates, or handholds, that are necessary if we are to feel that we can act meaningfully within the Symbolic Order, or social reality itself. This ‘deworlding’ effect, as Alain Badiou calls it, encourages us to reject social forms of ethical and political life and to retreat to a careful policing of the Imaginary boundaries of our ‘inner selves’ instead. In other words, global capitalism logically produces, as its own ideological support and supplement, a micro-ethics that attends only to what the single person can do, and only within the realm of consumption. We participate in this fantasy version of ‘eco-capitalism’ that advertising, publicity and other discourses establish to the extent that we accept consumption as the ultimate horizon of our ability to intervene in problems of ecological depredation and the exploitation of labour in the First and Third Worlds.     

Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action

This article examines the genesis, dynamics and positioning of activist groups of translators and interpreters who engage in various forms of collective action. The activism of these groups is distinctive in that they use their linguistic skills to extend narrative space and empower voices made invisible by the global power of English and the politics of language. They further recognise that language and translation themselves constitute a space of resistance, a means of reversing the symbolic order. Their use of hybrid language, their deliberate downgrading of English, the constant shuffling of the order and space allocated to different languages on their websites—all this is as much part of their political agenda as their linguistic mediation of texts and utterances produced by others, in their capacity as translators and interpreters. The article examines the positioning of these groups vis-à-vis what Tarrow (2006, p. 16) terms ‘the new generation of global justice activists’ on the one hand, and professional translators and interpreters on the other, and argues that they occupy a ‘liminal’ space between the world of activism and the service economy.     

The twenty-first century revolutions and internationalism: a world historical perspective

ABSTRACT

In his essay, ‘It is imperative to reconstruct the Internationale of workers and peoples’, Samir Amin (2018) suggested that in order to ‘deconstruct the extreme centralization of wealth and the power that is associated with the system’, we should seriously study ‘the experience of the worker Internationales […], even if they belong to the past. This should be done, not in order to “choose” a model among them, but to invent the most suitable form for contemporary conditions’. In this paper, I will follow Amin's suggestion and provide a brief examination of the past experiences of first Internationales in the nineteenth century, and conditions that produced them, with an eye to the present moment. By comparing the political climate of the early twenty-first century to analogous comparable periods in world history, I will argue that today we need two distinct forms of global political organizations. First one should serve as a horizontal ‘movement of movements’ that reflects the spontaneous and creative energy of mass movements from below; the second one should serve as a hierarchically organized international party which points out, brings to front and represents the global and long-term interests of the movements against their local/short-term interests.     

Nature and the international: towards a materialist understanding of societal multiplicity

ABSTRACT

The global environmental crisis requires a grasp of how human society interacts with nature, but also, simultaneously, how the world is divided into multiple societies. International Relations has a weak grasp of nature treating it as external to the international – an ‘environment’ to be managed – while environmentalism has a planetary epistemology that occludes the significance of the international. How to break this impasse? While neither Geopolitics nor ‘new materialism’ capture the complex conjuncture of socio-natural and inter-societal dynamics, I argue that Justin Rosenberg’s theorization of the international as ‘the consequences of societal multiplicity’ provides a theoretical opening. If a materialist notion of societal is adopted, ‘societal multiplicity’ allows human-natural and international dynamics to be grasped together. Thus, climate change is not a problem arising exogenously to the international, but something emerging through international dynamics, reciprocally affecting the units, structure and processes of the international system itself.     

Rethinking about Civilizations: The Politics of Migration in a New Climate

Abstract

In this paper, I will lay out some useful conceptual/theoretical markets that will help us to understand, and resolve, significant political challenges to ‘action’ on climate change migration. Thus, while this paper is concerned with climate change and migration responses, it is also concerned with understanding how we understand migration in the context of climate change, and how climate change forces a radical shift in such understandings. To do so, I pick up on the work of Robert W. Cox and push it in a different direction. In particular, I am interested in his work on civilizations, and how this civilizational account of world politics opens up space for thinking about climate change broadly, and climate change migration specifically. I argue that Cox’s account of ‘inter-civilizational’ politics helps us to solve a pressing analytical problem: how to rethink the coordinates of contemporary cosmopolitics in the ‘Anthropocene’, and reconsider the frames of analysis that we adopt to understand and respond to climate change migration. I demonstrate this by considering two distinctly different ‘civilizational’ accounts of migration and mobility in the Asia-Pacific/Oceania region (one territorial and the other maritime), and consider how these might reveal an important source of future change. By sketching out this approach, my intention is to mobilize the resources offered by Cox in order to further his project of envisaging alternative world orders, and post-hegemonic political relations therein.     

The politics of identity: from potential to pitfalls,and symbols to substance

In this public lecture to mark the 25th anniversary of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, award-winning Guardian journalist and author Gary Younge reflects on the potentialities, ambivalences and challenges of ‘identity’ as a basis for political action in the contemporary climate.     

Rule of law: Sharia panic and the US Constitution in the House of Representatives

In spring of 2011, Peter King (R-NY) convened a hearing titled ‘The Extent of Radicalization among American Muslims’ in the US House of Representatives. Democratic participants critiqued the hearings and contextualized the proceedings within the long history of institutionalized racism in the USA. They argued that the hearings were a threat to the Constitution itself, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause and the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion. Republican participants shared concerns about threats to the Constitution but suggested that the hearings were part of a strategy to combat this threat. Numerous Republican participants identified forms of Islamic law, or sharia law, as the primary threat to the integrity of the rule of law (ROL). Despite opposing positions, all actors agreed that the ‘ROL’ is that which will save the nation from threats posed from both outside and inside the nation and, as such, it is the ROL itself that must be protected. In this sense, the ‘ROL’ ensured by the Constitution inadvertently became the primary object of the hearings. In this essay, we bring analytical approaches from performance studies and anthropology to argue that the hearings impel a re-examination of the concept of ‘ROL’ itself. Rather than simply addressing the legislative effects of the hearings, we are interested in what they reveal about the performative and cultural dimensions of the law and the lawmaking process. While critics of the hearings derisively referred to them as ‘political theater’, we suggest that it is the nature of the King Hearings as staged public spectacle that imbue them with a politically performative power. We also identify the specific effects of sharia panic in contemporary US American political and legal discourse.     

‘The outraged young’: young Europeans,civic engagement and the new media in a time of crisis

Public involvement in traditional political institutions has declined significantly over the past few decades, leading to what some have seen as a crisis in citizenship. This trend is most striking amongst young people, who have become increasingly alienated from mainstream electoral politics in Europe. Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence to show that younger citizens are not apathetic about ‘politics’ – they have their own views and engage in democracy in a wide variety of ways that seem relevant to their everyday lives. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, young Europeans have borne the brunt of austerity in public spending: from spiralling youth unemployment, to cuts in youth services, to increased university tuition fees. In this context, the rise and proliferation of youth protest in Europe is hardly surprising. Indeed, youth activism has become a major feature of the European political landscape: from mass demonstrations of the ‘outraged young’ against political corruption and youth unemployment, to the Occupy movement against the excesses of global capitalism, to the emergence of new political parties. This article examines the role that the new media has played in the development of these protest movements across the continent. It argues that ‘digitally networked action’ has enabled a ‘quickening’ of youth participation – an intensification of political participation amongst young, highly educated citizens in search of a mouthpiece for their ‘indignation’.     

Starting somewhere different: methodological cosmopolitanism and the study of world politics

In this article, I contribute to the debate on Ulrich Beck's idea of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ from a political science perspective. How fruitful is Beck's idea for the study of world politics? How can a political science perspective turn ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ into a more transdisciplinary subject of debate? Guided by these questions, I speak to two audiences. First, I offer political scientists a distinct strategy for empirical ‘cosmopolitan political science’ research. At the heart of this strategy is a novel object of research, the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’, understood as a discourse that breaks with the ‘national outlook’ to open possibilities for a world beyond ‘reflexive modernization’. With that, I shift the perspective from structure to discourse and broaden the normative grounds on which to assess cosmopolitan reality. Rather than just considering the emergence of normative cosmopolitan ideals, I build into cosmopolitan research the normative, empirical question of whether we see an emergence of a world beyond reflexive modernization. Second, I address scholars outside the field of political science who are interested in methodological cosmopolitanism by offering the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’ as a novel object of study that could also be explored from other disciplinary perspectives and by proposing they put the question of the purpose of methodological cosmopolitanism centre stage. This question can, I argue, constitute grounds for substantial debates on methodological cosmopolitanism not already precluded through disciplinary premises and concerns. Contributing to such a transdisciplinary debate, I distinguish between the long‐term and immediate purpose of methodological cosmopolitanism, the former being about the development of a cosmopolitan language and grammar and the latter about empirical explorations of the reality of the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’, eventually and in a collective and transdisciplinary endeavour building up to contribute to the former.     

On ‘flip‐flopping’: Branded stance‐taking in U.S. electoral politics1

This article examines stance in U.S. political discourse, taking as its empirical point of departure Democratic candidate John Kerry's epistemic stance‐taking in the televised 2004 presidential debates. Kerry's stance‐taking is shown to help display the characterological attribute of ‘conviction’ and serve as a rejoinder to critics who had branded him as a ‘flip‐flopper.’ His stance‐taking is thus not primarily ‘to’ or ‘for’ copresent interactants, but is largely interdiscursive in character. ‘Conviction’ and its opposite, ‘flip‐flopping,’ suggest further how stance‐taking itself has been an object of typification in the agonistic dynamics of candidate branding and counter‐branding. In moving from epistemic stance‐taking in discourse to models of the stance‐taker as a social type, this article addresses questions about the units and levels of analysis needed to study stance in contemporary political discourse.     

Crowding‐in: how Indian civil society organizations began mobilizing around climate change

This paper argues that periodic waves of crowding‐in to ‘hot’ issue fields are a recurring feature of how globally networked civil society organizations operate, especially in countries of the Global South. We elaborate on this argument through a study of Indian civil society mobilization around climate change. Five key mechanisms contribute to crowding‐in processes: (1) the expansion of discursive opportunities; (2) the event effects of global climate change conferences; (3) the network effects created by expanding global civil society networks; (4) the adoption and innovation of action repertoires; and (5) global pressure effects creating new opportunities for civil society. Our findings contribute to the world society literature, with an account of the social mechanisms through which global institutions and political events affect national civil societies, and to the social movements literature by showing that developments in world society are essential contributors to national mobilization processes.     

Collective action of ethno-national minority groups and the cost of inaction: Arab Palestinians in Israel

ABSTRACT

Collective action requires resources, organization, leaders and political opportunities. In the case of disadvantaged minority groups, long-standing conflict with the majority, a closed political opportunity structure and the difficulty of acquiring resources, increases the costs and risks of the action. We argue that the development of such an action is a function of leaders’ perceptions about the cost of inaction (COI) and symbolic resources of the group, such as solidarity. Combining these evaluations creates three trajectories: growth, restriction and decline. We examine this argument by four collective actions carried out by Arab Palestinians citizens in Israel to improve education. The findings show that leaders increased efforts even if they assessed opportunities are limited when they thought that COI is high, since inaction means not only the loss of instrumental costs but also the loss of potential symbolic gains such as recognition of the group collective identity.     

Projections internationales ou détours vers le local? Les diplomaties identitaires des sikhs (Inde) et des Mohajirs (Pakistan)

Ethnic diplomacy can be characterised as a ‘popular mode of diplomatic action’. As such, it is an illustration of the privatisation of diplomacy, which may involve private actions sponsored by state actors or, on the contrary, private actions with a public outcome in the realm of foreign policy. By attempting to reach out to state actors, international organisations and global NGOs, ethnic diplomats articulate a cultural mode of transnational mobilisation. But these two dimensions of ethnic diplomacy, its ‘culturality’ and its ‘transnationality’, cannot be taken for granted and should be questioned thoroughly. Through this analysis, it appears that long-distance nationalists do not always succeed in transnationalising their activities and that they often end up re-locating themselves in exile. And more than ethnicity or cultural repertoires, it is the political culture of ethnodiplomatic organisations and their relations with the diasporic environments in which they evolve which helps to explain the outcome of these popular modes of diplomatic action.     

Changement climatique : Dynamiques scientifiques, expertise, enjeux géopolitiques

In less than thirty years, climate change became a both scientific and geopolitical crucial stake, concerning a great variety of research groups, epistemic communities, and political actors. An international organisation of scientific assessment- the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC)- played a key role in the domain and tends to become a paradigmatic model for other international scientific assessments. In this paper, we wanted to analyse this evolution of climate change regime, the IPCC, and the feedbacks of this evolution in France on the climate sciences community.     

9-11 and Its Anxious Phantoms

Abstract

“Metaphysical mutations – that is to say, global transformation in the values to which the majority subscribe – are rare in the history of humanity. The rise of Christianity might be cited as an example.

Once a metaphysical mutation has arisen, it tends to move inexorably toward its logical conclusion. Heedlessly, it sweeps away economic and political systems, aesthetic judgments and social hierarchies. No human agency can halt its progress – nothing except another metaphysical mutation.”     

Climate Change,the Quadrilemma of Globalization,and Other Politically Incorrect Reactions

Abstract

Current global climate change negotiations face some contradictions that are not always addressed as they are considered politically incorrect. These include, first, the decoupling of commitments for planetary environmental policies with the actual national strategies. A relevant example is the Bolivian administration, which presents a strong rhetoric for biospheric Mother Earth Rights, but its national development strategies generate more environmental impacts and weaken enforcement at the local level. Second, the core ideas and beliefs that explain development varieties that generate climate change are deeply rooted, so changes in political ideologies, either from traditional ‘left’ or ‘right’, do not determine policies to effectively overcome climate change. Third, accumulation of scientific information is not enough to promote the necessary changes, because these deep roots conditioned perceived and acceptable alternatives. Fourth, this lead to tensions among the pursuit of economic financial globalization, the sovereignty of the nations-states, democracy, and the basement of global environmental conservation. This is a quadrilemma, because if one or two of these objectives are pursued, at least one other is violated. Nevertheless, international negotiations rest on wishful thinking that this is possible. Uncovering these contradictions is politically incorrect for many realms.     

Cosmopolitan communities of climate risk: conceptual and empirical suggestions for a new research agenda

Mitigating human‐induced climate change calls for a globalized change of consciousness and practice. These global challenges also demand a double transformation of the social sciences – first, from ‘methodological nationalism’ to ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ and, second, an empirical reorientation towards ‘cosmopolitization’ as the social force of emerging cosmopolitan realities. One of these realities is the possible emergence, locally and globally, of ‘cosmopolitan communities of climate risk’ in response to a ‘world at risk’. A key research question for contemporary social science is thus: how and where are new cosmopolitan communities of climate risk being imagined and realized? In this article, we propose and explore a research agenda formulated around this key question. We both develop a theoretical perspective and provide short empirical illustrations of case studies regarding ongoing research in Europe and East Asia on such cosmopolitan climate risk communities.