This article explores the affirmative dimension of necropolitics by looking at the articulation of the dead as an aesthetic and political subject in the work of the art-activist collective “the party of the dead.” Since 2017, their performances have exposed and challenged an aesthetic order based on the erasure of mortality in Russia. I draw on Rancière’s distinction between “politics” and “the police” to foreground the sensory aspect of that order and call it “necropolice.” In the logic of necropolice, death is insensible, immortality reigns—and therefore life is expendable. Focusing on the visual style, political statements, and ritualistic aspects of “the party’s” artistic practice, the article shows that in trying to speak as the dead, the activists fail to speak as truly dead. That failure is productive—it affirms death as the limit of experience. I conceptualize that affirmation as necropolitical by complementing Rancière’s notion of “politics” with Georges Bataille’s theory of sovereignty, which underlies Mbembe’s formulation of necropower. If sovereignty consists in the transgression of limits, then in the aesthetic order, where death is insensible and so omnipresent, it is the suspense of the illusion of immortality that constitutes the essence of necropolitics.
{"title":"Necropolitics and Necropolice: Death, Immortality, and Art-Activism in Russia","authors":"Vladimir Ogula","doi":"10.1093/ips/olaf006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaf006","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the affirmative dimension of necropolitics by looking at the articulation of the dead as an aesthetic and political subject in the work of the art-activist collective “the party of the dead.” Since 2017, their performances have exposed and challenged an aesthetic order based on the erasure of mortality in Russia. I draw on Rancière’s distinction between “politics” and “the police” to foreground the sensory aspect of that order and call it “necropolice.” In the logic of necropolice, death is insensible, immortality reigns—and therefore life is expendable. Focusing on the visual style, political statements, and ritualistic aspects of “the party’s” artistic practice, the article shows that in trying to speak as the dead, the activists fail to speak as truly dead. That failure is productive—it affirms death as the limit of experience. I conceptualize that affirmation as necropolitical by complementing Rancière’s notion of “politics” with Georges Bataille’s theory of sovereignty, which underlies Mbembe’s formulation of necropower. If sovereignty consists in the transgression of limits, then in the aesthetic order, where death is insensible and so omnipresent, it is the suspense of the illusion of immortality that constitutes the essence of necropolitics.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143857747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical security studies and emotion research in international relations have highlighted that the emotion of fear is a pivotal driver of material and psychological securitization processes and that political actors may attempt to instrumentalize fear to obtain their political objectives. This article suggests that complementing this focus on fear with closer attention to the emotion of hate provides significant analytical value and enhances our understanding of how actors invoke emotions and with what political implications. Specifically, the article argues that looking at invocations of fear and hate at the macro-level of public discourse generates a better understanding of how political actors can and do attempt to instrumentalize the label of these emotions to describe embodied affective experiences at the micro-level to (de)mobilize audiences and (de)legitimize certain positions and actions. The fact that fear and hate are difficult to differentiate by mere observation, possess similar capacities for mobilization, but have vastly different normative connotations renders them in particular useful in political discourse. To illustrate how the emotion of hate can facilitate a better understanding of the politics of emotions surrounding (de)securitization processes, the article uses the illustrative case study of Germany during the so-called migration crisis.
{"title":"The Politics of Fear and Hate: Experience, (De)Legitimization, and (De)Mobilization","authors":"C Nicolai L Gellwitzki","doi":"10.1093/ips/olaf001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaf001","url":null,"abstract":"Critical security studies and emotion research in international relations have highlighted that the emotion of fear is a pivotal driver of material and psychological securitization processes and that political actors may attempt to instrumentalize fear to obtain their political objectives. This article suggests that complementing this focus on fear with closer attention to the emotion of hate provides significant analytical value and enhances our understanding of how actors invoke emotions and with what political implications. Specifically, the article argues that looking at invocations of fear and hate at the macro-level of public discourse generates a better understanding of how political actors can and do attempt to instrumentalize the label of these emotions to describe embodied affective experiences at the micro-level to (de)mobilize audiences and (de)legitimize certain positions and actions. The fact that fear and hate are difficult to differentiate by mere observation, possess similar capacities for mobilization, but have vastly different normative connotations renders them in particular useful in political discourse. To illustrate how the emotion of hate can facilitate a better understanding of the politics of emotions surrounding (de)securitization processes, the article uses the illustrative case study of Germany during the so-called migration crisis.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":"91 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143847277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pablo Victor Fontes Santos, Victoria Motta de Lamare França, Cristina Rego Monteiro da Luz, Mônica Leite Lessa
In this article, we examine the three Unfairy Tales advertising videos as part of the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) Act of Humanity campaign, which depicts the stories of Syrian refugee children fleeing armed conflict. Shared on UNICEF’s digital platforms, these videos sensibilize the audience to the challenges these children have faced in their migrations and stimulate the adult public to contribute with donations. We argue that the advertisements’ obvious critique when contrasting the pain and despair with a fairy tale storytelling style reinforces obtuse elements. Following a semiotic approach based on postcolonial readings of the Other, we explore how the Unfairy Tales humanize, dehumanize, and spectacularize the three Syrian refugee children who narrate their experiences as it mediates the audience’s engagement with these stories. We suggest that the Unfairy Tales mediate the spectator’s relationship with these children-characters to orient political action toward maintaining a Western representation of childhood and accepting UNICEF’s role in managing humanitarian and migration “crisis” related to children. This article stimulates a dialogue between the critical literature on humanitarianism, childhood, and migration, promotes interdisciplinary discussions on semiotics, and contributes to critical engagements with digital humanitarian advertising.
{"title":"Humanization, Dehumanization, and Spectacularization: The Semiotics of UNICEF’s Unfairy Tales","authors":"Pablo Victor Fontes Santos, Victoria Motta de Lamare França, Cristina Rego Monteiro da Luz, Mônica Leite Lessa","doi":"10.1093/ips/olaf004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaf004","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we examine the three Unfairy Tales advertising videos as part of the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) Act of Humanity campaign, which depicts the stories of Syrian refugee children fleeing armed conflict. Shared on UNICEF’s digital platforms, these videos sensibilize the audience to the challenges these children have faced in their migrations and stimulate the adult public to contribute with donations. We argue that the advertisements’ obvious critique when contrasting the pain and despair with a fairy tale storytelling style reinforces obtuse elements. Following a semiotic approach based on postcolonial readings of the Other, we explore how the Unfairy Tales humanize, dehumanize, and spectacularize the three Syrian refugee children who narrate their experiences as it mediates the audience’s engagement with these stories. We suggest that the Unfairy Tales mediate the spectator’s relationship with these children-characters to orient political action toward maintaining a Western representation of childhood and accepting UNICEF’s role in managing humanitarian and migration “crisis” related to children. This article stimulates a dialogue between the critical literature on humanitarianism, childhood, and migration, promotes interdisciplinary discussions on semiotics, and contributes to critical engagements with digital humanitarian advertising.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":"55 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143653366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article examines the performance of crisis in the UK Government’s push toward the Illegal Migration Act 2023. It considers political operations underpinning this campaign as “crisis work,” drawing attention to the staging of dangerous, harmful, and tragic subjects in a panoramic space of spectacular visibility. I develop this perspective based on a review of programmatic speeches, parliamentary debate, and the coverage of UK newspapers with emphasis on a single moment: March 2023. The article grapples with the spectacular politics of crisis, whose effects are underexplored in literatures that consider migration crisis primarily for corresponding emergency measures, processes of securitization, or conjunctural openings. The spectacle of crisis requires attention for the layers of social visibility it produces and for its role in the symbolic consolidation of immigration policy.
{"title":"The Spectacular Politics of the United Kingdom’s “Small Boats Crisis”","authors":"Jan Dobbernack","doi":"10.1093/ips/olaf003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaf003","url":null,"abstract":"The article examines the performance of crisis in the UK Government’s push toward the Illegal Migration Act 2023. It considers political operations underpinning this campaign as “crisis work,” drawing attention to the staging of dangerous, harmful, and tragic subjects in a panoramic space of spectacular visibility. I develop this perspective based on a review of programmatic speeches, parliamentary debate, and the coverage of UK newspapers with emphasis on a single moment: March 2023. The article grapples with the spectacular politics of crisis, whose effects are underexplored in literatures that consider migration crisis primarily for corresponding emergency measures, processes of securitization, or conjunctural openings. The spectacle of crisis requires attention for the layers of social visibility it produces and for its role in the symbolic consolidation of immigration policy.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143618356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How is diplomacy, a profession long premised on face-to-face interactions, adjusting to life with and on the screen? In this article, I present insights from 5 years of fieldwork (2018–2023) focused on the diplomatic scene in Brussels. I approach this material through Sherry Turkle's concept of the “evocative object” to theorize how digitalization relates to diplomatic practice. In contrast to most existing scholarship that works with remotely collected digital data such as images or tweets, I work ethnographically and explore the associations screens evoke among diplomatic practitioners themselves. If in the form of a smartphone in a diplomat's hand or as a projection surface on a meeting room wall, I show how the screen emerges as an effective and an affective object that diplomats relate to in multiple ways. By paying attention to how diplomatic practitioners relate to the screen, we can capture pragmatic rituals, professional priorities, and formal procedures just as much as personal anxieties, power struggles, and informal relations of competence and trust. Overall, the article contributes detailed empirical insights into the lived experience of an otherwise largely closed-off world and nurtures a new theoretical language to make sense of the digitalization of international politics.
{"title":"Evocative Screens: Ethnographic Insights into the Digitalization of Diplomacy","authors":"Kristin Anabel Eggeling","doi":"10.1093/ips/olae046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olae046","url":null,"abstract":"How is diplomacy, a profession long premised on face-to-face interactions, adjusting to life with and on the screen? In this article, I present insights from 5 years of fieldwork (2018–2023) focused on the diplomatic scene in Brussels. I approach this material through Sherry Turkle's concept of the “evocative object” to theorize how digitalization relates to diplomatic practice. In contrast to most existing scholarship that works with remotely collected digital data such as images or tweets, I work ethnographically and explore the associations screens evoke among diplomatic practitioners themselves. If in the form of a smartphone in a diplomat's hand or as a projection surface on a meeting room wall, I show how the screen emerges as an effective and an affective object that diplomats relate to in multiple ways. By paying attention to how diplomatic practitioners relate to the screen, we can capture pragmatic rituals, professional priorities, and formal procedures just as much as personal anxieties, power struggles, and informal relations of competence and trust. Overall, the article contributes detailed empirical insights into the lived experience of an otherwise largely closed-off world and nurtures a new theoretical language to make sense of the digitalization of international politics.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143599956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A growing body of literature builds on the observation that power is relational and directs attention to the diplomacy of marginal and liminal subjects, implying that they harbor a potential to change the structures undergirding international politics. However, performances of state power routinely find other loci than diplomacy, and all states are more or less marginalized from the conceptual core of statehood. This article therefore offers a re-calibrated take on the liminal potential emanating from marginal subjects in international politics, broadening the analytical focus beyond classical diplomacy to wider discourses of international law, international security, and international economy. After introducing the notion of power as performative, the article conceptualizes the margins and what liminality adds in terms of a different temporality, developing transition, suspension, and hybridization to describe marginal strategies with a liminal potential for change. The article then analyzes how the Greenlandic non-state, as an exemplary case, works in the margins to empower itself internationally. In conclusion, Greenlandic political practice reveals how the spatio-temporal margins of international politics—the gaps in and between the three constitutive discourses of law, security, and economy—enable the wielding of Greenlandic power with liminal potential.
{"title":"Liminal Strategies in the Margins of International Politics: The State-Like Power of Non-State Greenland","authors":"Ulrik Pram Gad, Kristian Søby Kristensen","doi":"10.1093/ips/olae045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olae045","url":null,"abstract":"A growing body of literature builds on the observation that power is relational and directs attention to the diplomacy of marginal and liminal subjects, implying that they harbor a potential to change the structures undergirding international politics. However, performances of state power routinely find other loci than diplomacy, and all states are more or less marginalized from the conceptual core of statehood. This article therefore offers a re-calibrated take on the liminal potential emanating from marginal subjects in international politics, broadening the analytical focus beyond classical diplomacy to wider discourses of international law, international security, and international economy. After introducing the notion of power as performative, the article conceptualizes the margins and what liminality adds in terms of a different temporality, developing transition, suspension, and hybridization to describe marginal strategies with a liminal potential for change. The article then analyzes how the Greenlandic non-state, as an exemplary case, works in the margins to empower itself internationally. In conclusion, Greenlandic political practice reveals how the spatio-temporal margins of international politics—the gaps in and between the three constitutive discourses of law, security, and economy—enable the wielding of Greenlandic power with liminal potential.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":"97 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143599959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How does a state’s marginalization of borderland communities influence their sense of belonging? We argue that, in unstable regions in the Global South, such marginalization reinforces people’s sense of belonging to a transnational community. As we demonstrate, two causal mechanisms account for this process: the marginalization enhances (i) the border’s “disguising” quality that muddies diverse forms of insecurity and (ii) the border’s “facilitating” quality that permits certain actors and activities to cross borders while stopping others. Consolidation of people’s sense of belonging to a transnational community has implications for the state, as losing part of its citizenry to this transnational community undermines its own authority and the state–society relationship. Drawing on the case of the Colombian–Venezuelan borderlands, we substantiate our argument through evidence collected during in-depth fieldwork, including interviews and focus groups with peasants and other residents from remote borderland regions as well as with state and civil society stakeholders. We contribute to scholarship on identity and sense of belonging by theorizing its link to marginalization in the context of international borders. We further contribute empirically by documenting little-known cross-border practices and activities of residents of the shared border region of the Colombian department of Cesar and the Venezuelan state of Zulia.
{"title":"Secession or Sense of Belonging? Marginalization in the Context of Transnationality","authors":"Annette Idler, Dáire McGill","doi":"10.1093/ips/olae044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olae044","url":null,"abstract":"How does a state’s marginalization of borderland communities influence their sense of belonging? We argue that, in unstable regions in the Global South, such marginalization reinforces people’s sense of belonging to a transnational community. As we demonstrate, two causal mechanisms account for this process: the marginalization enhances (i) the border’s “disguising” quality that muddies diverse forms of insecurity and (ii) the border’s “facilitating” quality that permits certain actors and activities to cross borders while stopping others. Consolidation of people’s sense of belonging to a transnational community has implications for the state, as losing part of its citizenry to this transnational community undermines its own authority and the state–society relationship. Drawing on the case of the Colombian–Venezuelan borderlands, we substantiate our argument through evidence collected during in-depth fieldwork, including interviews and focus groups with peasants and other residents from remote borderland regions as well as with state and civil society stakeholders. We contribute to scholarship on identity and sense of belonging by theorizing its link to marginalization in the context of international borders. We further contribute empirically by documenting little-known cross-border practices and activities of residents of the shared border region of the Colombian department of Cesar and the Venezuelan state of Zulia.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142696689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article theorizes smartphone detoxing as a practice of sovereignty. The article begins by arguing that the smartphone enables the exercise of psychopolitical control, a new mode of neoliberal governmentality under which individuals are governed through the algorithmic modification of behavior. Against this background, smartphone detoxing can be seen as a practice of sovereignty in the sense that it aims to recover the subject's autonomy and rationality—qualities that are lost as humans become smartphone addicts. Ironically, however, smartphone detoxing is also a neoliberal practice in the sense that it plays on an ethos of self-care and cultivates market-oriented notions of freedom. As such, the article contends that the detoxing subject is a post-smartphone subject that performs political subjectivity by negotiating the tension between sovereignty and neoliberalism. To explore how smartphone detoxing performs political subjectivity in practice, the article analyses the testimonies of four influencers who share their detoxing journeys on YouTube. The analysis finds that detoxers recover sovereignty by rediscovering the Self, reconnecting with Others, and reclaiming time, and that they—through these very practices—also strive for the neoliberal virtues of wellness, authenticity and productivity.
{"title":"“I Flip, Therefore I Am”: Smartphone Detoxing as a Practice of Sovereignty","authors":"Håvard Rustad Markussen","doi":"10.1093/ips/olae040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olae040","url":null,"abstract":"This article theorizes smartphone detoxing as a practice of sovereignty. The article begins by arguing that the smartphone enables the exercise of psychopolitical control, a new mode of neoliberal governmentality under which individuals are governed through the algorithmic modification of behavior. Against this background, smartphone detoxing can be seen as a practice of sovereignty in the sense that it aims to recover the subject's autonomy and rationality—qualities that are lost as humans become smartphone addicts. Ironically, however, smartphone detoxing is also a neoliberal practice in the sense that it plays on an ethos of self-care and cultivates market-oriented notions of freedom. As such, the article contends that the detoxing subject is a post-smartphone subject that performs political subjectivity by negotiating the tension between sovereignty and neoliberalism. To explore how smartphone detoxing performs political subjectivity in practice, the article analyses the testimonies of four influencers who share their detoxing journeys on YouTube. The analysis finds that detoxers recover sovereignty by rediscovering the Self, reconnecting with Others, and reclaiming time, and that they—through these very practices—also strive for the neoliberal virtues of wellness, authenticity and productivity.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":"79 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142444521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper draws on fieldwork interviews with migrants who fled their home countries (Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan) and irregularly traveled through Sudan, Sahara, Libya, and the Mediterranean Sea, eventually reaching Europe. It demonstrates how, throughout their journeys, migrants were targeted by various armed groups (particularly non-state) for purposes including recruitment, extortion, ransom, immobilization, torture, slavery, sexual violence, and how they evaded capture. Building on and contributing to literatures on bio/necropolitics, migration/borders, and surveillance, the paper advances the categories of bio/necropolitical capture and evasion. The paper emphasizes the key role of non-state actors in acts of capture, and race and racialized microbio/necropolitical practices (torture, spectacle, discipline, and surveillance) as key categories of capture. The paper also shows effects of capture for migrants and how migrants engage in acts of evasion (which include not only bodily acts of running away or hiding, but various forms of communicational, mental, spiritual, and psychological tactics) as expressions of agency. Focusing on migrants’ long journeys to Europe, the paper provides a more holistic view of the migration experience and highlights persisting patterns of capture and evasion despite changing actors and locations. The paper demonstrates how Europe’s borders externalize inside the African continent through delegated and opportunistic actors (such as the Libyan Coast Guard and various other militia/trafficking/mafia groups), and reproduce racism at both the macrolevel (maintaining global racist borders) and the microlevel (through racialized practices).
{"title":"Bio/Necropolitical Capture and Evasion on Africa–Europe Migrant Journeys","authors":"Özgün Erdener Topak","doi":"10.1093/ips/olae039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olae039","url":null,"abstract":"This paper draws on fieldwork interviews with migrants who fled their home countries (Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan) and irregularly traveled through Sudan, Sahara, Libya, and the Mediterranean Sea, eventually reaching Europe. It demonstrates how, throughout their journeys, migrants were targeted by various armed groups (particularly non-state) for purposes including recruitment, extortion, ransom, immobilization, torture, slavery, sexual violence, and how they evaded capture. Building on and contributing to literatures on bio/necropolitics, migration/borders, and surveillance, the paper advances the categories of bio/necropolitical capture and evasion. The paper emphasizes the key role of non-state actors in acts of capture, and race and racialized microbio/necropolitical practices (torture, spectacle, discipline, and surveillance) as key categories of capture. The paper also shows effects of capture for migrants and how migrants engage in acts of evasion (which include not only bodily acts of running away or hiding, but various forms of communicational, mental, spiritual, and psychological tactics) as expressions of agency. Focusing on migrants’ long journeys to Europe, the paper provides a more holistic view of the migration experience and highlights persisting patterns of capture and evasion despite changing actors and locations. The paper demonstrates how Europe’s borders externalize inside the African continent through delegated and opportunistic actors (such as the Libyan Coast Guard and various other militia/trafficking/mafia groups), and reproduce racism at both the macrolevel (maintaining global racist borders) and the microlevel (through racialized practices).","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":"99 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142444519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the importance of what we call “decolonial deconstruction” for contemporary global politics and policy discourses and develops a critique of this approach. “Decolonial deconstruction” seeks to keep open policy processes, deconstructing liberal policy goals of peace, democracy, or justice as always “to come”. It emerged through a nexus of postmodern and decolonial framings, well represented in the critical Black studies tradition, where theorists have focused upon identity construction, rejecting static conceptions. These approaches have increasingly been taken up in international policymaking approaches and International relations theory, particularly in the field of peacebuilding and the broad policy approach of resilience. After highlighting the ways that processual understandings of deconstruction have transformed these policy areas, we suggest an alternative deconstructive approach. In doing so, we draw upon the critical Black studies tradition but emphasize the need to critique underlying ontological assumptions about the world. We heuristically set out this approach as the “Black Horizon.”
{"title":"Justice “to Come”? Decolonial Deconstruction, from Postmodern Policymaking to the Black Horizon","authors":"Farai Chipato, David Chandler","doi":"10.1093/ips/olae041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olae041","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the importance of what we call “decolonial deconstruction” for contemporary global politics and policy discourses and develops a critique of this approach. “Decolonial deconstruction” seeks to keep open policy processes, deconstructing liberal policy goals of peace, democracy, or justice as always “to come”. It emerged through a nexus of postmodern and decolonial framings, well represented in the critical Black studies tradition, where theorists have focused upon identity construction, rejecting static conceptions. These approaches have increasingly been taken up in international policymaking approaches and International relations theory, particularly in the field of peacebuilding and the broad policy approach of resilience. After highlighting the ways that processual understandings of deconstruction have transformed these policy areas, we suggest an alternative deconstructive approach. In doing so, we draw upon the critical Black studies tradition but emphasize the need to critique underlying ontological assumptions about the world. We heuristically set out this approach as the “Black Horizon.”","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142444520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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