Pub Date : 2023-04-11DOI: 10.1017/s0260210523000104
K. Kušić
After important critiques highlighted that studies of peacebuilding and statebuilding tend to bypass people living the consequences of intervention, scholars moved to include local experiences and subjects into knowledge production. This article builds upon these efforts by identifying and then furthering their common goal of coeval engagement. Coeval engagement implies encountering interlocutors as contemporaneous subjects of international politics and centring their experiences as a base for knowledge production. While the urgency and ongoing failures of coeval engagement are widely discussed, I focus on a thus far unconsidered possibility: that coeval engagement is impossible within the conceptual confines of intervention itself. The article delineates two defining parameters of intervention thinking that limit ongoing efforts at coeval engagement: predefined fields of visibility and the local-international binary. As an alternative, it proposes seeing intervention as part of a wider politics of improvement. This conceptual shift leads to unexpected empirical sites and continues challenging intervention’s constitutive binaries. The potential of this reorientation is demonstrated by showing how a common tool of ‘soft’ statebuliding – non-formal youth education – functions within the politics of youth (un)employment in Serbia.
{"title":"Rethinking international intervention through coeval engagement: Non-formal youth education and the politics of improvement","authors":"K. Kušić","doi":"10.1017/s0260210523000104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210523000104","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 After important critiques highlighted that studies of peacebuilding and statebuilding tend to bypass people living the consequences of intervention, scholars moved to include local experiences and subjects into knowledge production. This article builds upon these efforts by identifying and then furthering their common goal of coeval engagement. Coeval engagement implies encountering interlocutors as contemporaneous subjects of international politics and centring their experiences as a base for knowledge production. While the urgency and ongoing failures of coeval engagement are widely discussed, I focus on a thus far unconsidered possibility: that coeval engagement is impossible within the conceptual confines of intervention itself. The article delineates two defining parameters of intervention thinking that limit ongoing efforts at coeval engagement: predefined fields of visibility and the local-international binary. As an alternative, it proposes seeing intervention as part of a wider politics of improvement. This conceptual shift leads to unexpected empirical sites and continues challenging intervention’s constitutive binaries. The potential of this reorientation is demonstrated by showing how a common tool of ‘soft’ statebuliding – non-formal youth education – functions within the politics of youth (un)employment in Serbia.","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45627671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-22DOI: 10.1017/s0260210523000050
Z. Çapan, F. dos Reis
The social sciences and humanities in general and International Relations (IR) specifically are organised around what has been called ‘analytic bifurcation’. Analytic bifurcations artificially structure and divide analytic spaces into, for example, Europe/non-Europe, inside/outside, state/empire, and metropole/colony. Recently, these bifurcations have been problematised within IR and adjacent fields. Our article contributes to and extends these discussions by foregrounding two interrelated aspects that have not received sufficient attention: first, connections between colonies rather than between metropole and colony and, second, the construction and reproduction of the bifurcation of Europe/non-Europe. We explore how technologies of power, in our case mapping and the use of ‘blank spaces’, were used to create imaginaries of colonisable land. To do so, we trace two episodes from nineteenth-century German colonial discourse. The first episode analyses imaginaries of exploration in the Humboldtian tradition and how these imaginaries depict spaces outside of Europe, namely in Africa, as blank spaces. The second episode reconstructs the cartographic work of Paul Langhans, who focused on mapping ‘Germandom’ (Deutschtum) in Central and Eastern Europe. Juxtaposing these two episodes shows the interconnectedness between these spaces (Africa and the European East) and how techniques such as blank spaces were applied to create colonisable land.
{"title":"Creating colonisable land: Cartography, ‘blank spaces’, and imaginaries of empire in nineteenth-century Germany","authors":"Z. Çapan, F. dos Reis","doi":"10.1017/s0260210523000050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210523000050","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The social sciences and humanities in general and International Relations (IR) specifically are organised around what has been called ‘analytic bifurcation’. Analytic bifurcations artificially structure and divide analytic spaces into, for example, Europe/non-Europe, inside/outside, state/empire, and metropole/colony. Recently, these bifurcations have been problematised within IR and adjacent fields. Our article contributes to and extends these discussions by foregrounding two interrelated aspects that have not received sufficient attention: first, connections between colonies rather than between metropole and colony and, second, the construction and reproduction of the bifurcation of Europe/non-Europe. We explore how technologies of power, in our case mapping and the use of ‘blank spaces’, were used to create imaginaries of colonisable land. To do so, we trace two episodes from nineteenth-century German colonial discourse. The first episode analyses imaginaries of exploration in the Humboldtian tradition and how these imaginaries depict spaces outside of Europe, namely in Africa, as blank spaces. The second episode reconstructs the cartographic work of Paul Langhans, who focused on mapping ‘Germandom’ (Deutschtum) in Central and Eastern Europe. Juxtaposing these two episodes shows the interconnectedness between these spaces (Africa and the European East) and how techniques such as blank spaces were applied to create colonisable land.","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48202388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-20DOI: 10.1017/s0260210523000086
Benjamin Zala
The Nuclear Age is said to be defined by the notion of existential threat. The ability to destroy human societies in their entirety with a single class of weaponry raises profound questions about human existence. It even gives us a new form of species extinction – ‘thermonuclear omnicide’. Unsurprisingly, existentialism was a philosophy that found its feet in the shadow of the bomb. This article explores the possibilities and limits of an existentialist approach to nuclear dangers. It contrasts the views of two figures central to early existentialism: Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Aron. Sartre responded to the existential threat of nuclear war with moral outrage about the ‘unreality’ of the Cold War politics driving the arms race and an existentialist call to reject militaristic social norms. Aron, a key figure in early IR realism, famously rejected existentialism and turned instead to outlining norms for an international society that might better restrain nuclear-armed decision-makers. Bringing Sartre’s and Aron’s post-Second World War discussions into the new century, this article argues that the ongoing, and even growing, threats posed by nuclear weapons highlight the limits of Sartre’s approach as a guide to authentic existence in modern life. Instead, it supports Aron’s more conservative approach but also draws on Existentialism to extend it, strengthening the nuclear taboo for the sake of human survival as a persistent but urgent political project. At a moment in IR when scholars and other analysts are once again critiquing the fragile norms of global order and speculating about the dawn of a ‘Third Nuclear Age’, theoretical reflection on the politics of existential threats and the hard choices they entail remain indispensable aspects of IR’s theoretical toolkit. While Sartre and other existentialists argued convincingly that existence precedes essence, Aron reminds us that survival remains a precondition for both.
{"title":"‘No one around to shut the dead eyes of the human race’: Sartre, Aron, and the limits of existentialism in the Nuclear Age","authors":"Benjamin Zala","doi":"10.1017/s0260210523000086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210523000086","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The Nuclear Age is said to be defined by the notion of existential threat. The ability to destroy human societies in their entirety with a single class of weaponry raises profound questions about human existence. It even gives us a new form of species extinction – ‘thermonuclear omnicide’. Unsurprisingly, existentialism was a philosophy that found its feet in the shadow of the bomb. This article explores the possibilities and limits of an existentialist approach to nuclear dangers. It contrasts the views of two figures central to early existentialism: Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Aron. Sartre responded to the existential threat of nuclear war with moral outrage about the ‘unreality’ of the Cold War politics driving the arms race and an existentialist call to reject militaristic social norms. Aron, a key figure in early IR realism, famously rejected existentialism and turned instead to outlining norms for an international society that might better restrain nuclear-armed decision-makers. Bringing Sartre’s and Aron’s post-Second World War discussions into the new century, this article argues that the ongoing, and even growing, threats posed by nuclear weapons highlight the limits of Sartre’s approach as a guide to authentic existence in modern life. Instead, it supports Aron’s more conservative approach but also draws on Existentialism to extend it, strengthening the nuclear taboo for the sake of human survival as a persistent but urgent political project. At a moment in IR when scholars and other analysts are once again critiquing the fragile norms of global order and speculating about the dawn of a ‘Third Nuclear Age’, theoretical reflection on the politics of existential threats and the hard choices they entail remain indispensable aspects of IR’s theoretical toolkit. While Sartre and other existentialists argued convincingly that existence precedes essence, Aron reminds us that survival remains a precondition for both.","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46826795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-16DOI: 10.1017/S0260210523000037
Béatrice Châteauvert-Gagnon
Abstract ‘I feel like a monster’, typed Chelsea Manning, referring partly to her gender identity but mostly to her job in the US military. Morally conflicted by what she saw and read while serving in Iraq, extremely isolated from her unit and experiencing emotional distress in relation to her gender identity, Manning would act on these stressors by leaking hundreds of documents to Wikileaks, and coming out as a (trans) woman. While she was quick to be classified as either a hero or a traitor, her case evades such dichotomisation and calls for more sophisticated readings. While a lot has been written on Manning in queer and transgender studies, surprisingly little has been published on this case in International Relations, not even in the quickly growing field of Queer IR. Yet Manning’s case helps highlight many of its core concerns in relation to issues of power, security, and sovereignty. In fact, what is often lost when reading the Manning case are the queer and trans logics of protection that were disrupted by Manning’s disclosures and that made such disruption possible. These dominant logics rely upon a culture of secrecy that must be preserved for performances of national security to hold true.
{"title":"Chelsea Manning, national security, and the cishetero/homonormative logics of protection","authors":"Béatrice Châteauvert-Gagnon","doi":"10.1017/S0260210523000037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210523000037","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract ‘I feel like a monster’, typed Chelsea Manning, referring partly to her gender identity but mostly to her job in the US military. Morally conflicted by what she saw and read while serving in Iraq, extremely isolated from her unit and experiencing emotional distress in relation to her gender identity, Manning would act on these stressors by leaking hundreds of documents to Wikileaks, and coming out as a (trans) woman. While she was quick to be classified as either a hero or a traitor, her case evades such dichotomisation and calls for more sophisticated readings. While a lot has been written on Manning in queer and transgender studies, surprisingly little has been published on this case in International Relations, not even in the quickly growing field of Queer IR. Yet Manning’s case helps highlight many of its core concerns in relation to issues of power, security, and sovereignty. In fact, what is often lost when reading the Manning case are the queer and trans logics of protection that were disrupted by Manning’s disclosures and that made such disruption possible. These dominant logics rely upon a culture of secrecy that must be preserved for performances of national security to hold true.","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":"49 1","pages":"676 - 693"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47760600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Despite its common usage, the meaning of ‘democratic’ in democratic intelligence oversight has rarely been spelled out. In this article, we situate questions regarding intelligence oversight within broader debates about the meanings and practices of democracy. We argue that the literature on intelligence oversight has tended to implicitly or explicitly follow liberal and technocratic ideas of democracy, which have limited the understanding of oversight both in academia and in practice. Thus, oversight is mostly understood as an expert, institutional and partially exclusive arrangement that is supposed to strike a balance between individual freedom and collective security, with the goal of establishing the legitimacy of and trust in intelligence work in a national setting. ‘Healthy’ or ‘efficient’ democratic oversight then becomes a matter of technical expertise, non-partisanship, and the ability to guard secrets. By analysing three moments of struggle around what counts as intelligence oversight across Germany, the UK, and the US, this article elucidates their democratic stakes. Through a practice-based approach, we argue that oversight takes much more agonistic, contentious, transnational, and public forms. However, these democratic practices reconfiguring oversight remain contested or contained by dominant views on what constitutes legitimate and effective intelligence oversight.
{"title":"Towards democratic intelligence oversight: Limits, practices, struggles","authors":"Ronja Kniep, Lina Ewert, Bernardino Léon Reyes, Félix Tréguer, E. Cluskey, Claudia Aradau","doi":"10.1017/s0260210523000013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210523000013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Despite its common usage, the meaning of ‘democratic’ in democratic intelligence oversight has rarely been spelled out. In this article, we situate questions regarding intelligence oversight within broader debates about the meanings and practices of democracy. We argue that the literature on intelligence oversight has tended to implicitly or explicitly follow liberal and technocratic ideas of democracy, which have limited the understanding of oversight both in academia and in practice. Thus, oversight is mostly understood as an expert, institutional and partially exclusive arrangement that is supposed to strike a balance between individual freedom and collective security, with the goal of establishing the legitimacy of and trust in intelligence work in a national setting. ‘Healthy’ or ‘efficient’ democratic oversight then becomes a matter of technical expertise, non-partisanship, and the ability to guard secrets. By analysing three moments of struggle around what counts as intelligence oversight across Germany, the UK, and the US, this article elucidates their democratic stakes. Through a practice-based approach, we argue that oversight takes much more agonistic, contentious, transnational, and public forms. However, these democratic practices reconfiguring oversight remain contested or contained by dominant views on what constitutes legitimate and effective intelligence oversight.","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43881683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-10DOI: 10.1017/s0260210523000062
{"title":"RIS volume 49 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0260210523000062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210523000062","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":"49 1","pages":"f1 - f3"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47357916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-10DOI: 10.1017/s0260210523000074
{"title":"RIS volume 49 issue 2 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0260210523000074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210523000074","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":"49 1","pages":"b1 - b2"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45104759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-08DOI: 10.1017/s0260210523000049
Uygar Baspehlivan
Despite the increasing centrality of Internet memes for everyday political circulations and practices, their emergent implications as low-cultural artefacts of global politics have received little theoretical attention. In this article, I develop a critical theory of memes to provide a conceptual apparatus to understand the global political implications and possibilities of this pop-cultural phenomenon. I argue that, in order to attend to the emergent implications of memes and consider their differentiations from other pop-cultural phenomena, we need to unpack the spatial logic through which memes emerge and circulate. Analysing this spatial logic through the concept of the ‘memescape’ and deploying Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s notions of striated and smooth spaces, this article articulates the spatial logic of the memescape as comprising rhizomatic, decentralised circulations of digital content; nomadic, playful, and humorous disruptions of once-stable signs; and affective congregations of a multiplicity of subjects. Through two examples exploring how these smooth spatial tendencies produce divergent political potentials in the resistant memes of Indigenous digital communities and reactionary memes of the Alt-Right, I conclude that the global politics of the memescape is open-ended and undetermined which requires careful and nuanced political and ethical attention to actualise its futures for emancipatory horizons.
{"title":"Theorising the memescape: The spatial politics of Internet memes","authors":"Uygar Baspehlivan","doi":"10.1017/s0260210523000049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210523000049","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Despite the increasing centrality of Internet memes for everyday political circulations and practices, their emergent implications as low-cultural artefacts of global politics have received little theoretical attention. In this article, I develop a critical theory of memes to provide a conceptual apparatus to understand the global political implications and possibilities of this pop-cultural phenomenon. I argue that, in order to attend to the emergent implications of memes and consider their differentiations from other pop-cultural phenomena, we need to unpack the spatial logic through which memes emerge and circulate. Analysing this spatial logic through the concept of the ‘memescape’ and deploying Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s notions of striated and smooth spaces, this article articulates the spatial logic of the memescape as comprising rhizomatic, decentralised circulations of digital content; nomadic, playful, and humorous disruptions of once-stable signs; and affective congregations of a multiplicity of subjects. Through two examples exploring how these smooth spatial tendencies produce divergent political potentials in the resistant memes of Indigenous digital communities and reactionary memes of the Alt-Right, I conclude that the global politics of the memescape is open-ended and undetermined which requires careful and nuanced political and ethical attention to actualise its futures for emancipatory horizons.","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42347283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-02DOI: 10.1017/s0260210523000025
Ann-Kathrin Benner, Delf Rothe
Proposals for large-scale technical interventions into the Earth system to mitigate global warming – or climate engineering – have sparked considerable debate about their potential implications for international security and global governance. The article furthers this debate by bringing it into dialogue with the literature on visual global politics to develop a more ‘imagistic’ concept of climate engineering imaginaries. Based on a novel visual dataset, three major visual clusters in the public discourse on climate engineering are identified: images of the human–nature relationship, of climate engineering as tangible infrastructure, and of the actors involved in climate engineering projects. The analysis shows how images and other visuals do not only shape the dominant understanding of climate engineering but also competing imaginaries of future political orders in which such approaches might be deployed. Three main results of this analysis stand out. First, dominant ways of seeing climate engineering can further reinforce already dominant discursive frames by adding ‘visual proof’ to their underlying claims. Second, climate engineering visuality can also enable the politicisation of climate engineering by rendering concrete projects visible and hence contestable. Third, climate engineering images can paradoxically limit the scope of imagination as they often revolve around powerful visual icons and symbols of the past and present.
{"title":"World in the making: On the global visual politics of climate engineering","authors":"Ann-Kathrin Benner, Delf Rothe","doi":"10.1017/s0260210523000025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210523000025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Proposals for large-scale technical interventions into the Earth system to mitigate global warming – or climate engineering – have sparked considerable debate about their potential implications for international security and global governance. The article furthers this debate by bringing it into dialogue with the literature on visual global politics to develop a more ‘imagistic’ concept of climate engineering imaginaries. Based on a novel visual dataset, three major visual clusters in the public discourse on climate engineering are identified: images of the human–nature relationship, of climate engineering as tangible infrastructure, and of the actors involved in climate engineering projects. The analysis shows how images and other visuals do not only shape the dominant understanding of climate engineering but also competing imaginaries of future political orders in which such approaches might be deployed. Three main results of this analysis stand out. First, dominant ways of seeing climate engineering can further reinforce already dominant discursive frames by adding ‘visual proof’ to their underlying claims. Second, climate engineering visuality can also enable the politicisation of climate engineering by rendering concrete projects visible and hence contestable. Third, climate engineering images can paradoxically limit the scope of imagination as they often revolve around powerful visual icons and symbols of the past and present.","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42188141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-08DOI: 10.1017/s026021052200064x
Andrew R. Hom
For a discipline as philosophically and temporally sensitive as International Relations, it is curious that Martin Heidegger, widely considered the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, has only recently begun to receive disciplinary attention. It is also noteworthy that as IR begins to grapple with right-wing extremism, it has not addressed Heidegger’s fascist politics. Conducting a close reading of his account of existence in time, this article argues that from his magnum opus to his final diaries, Heidegger prefigured many existentialist discussions, but his particular conceptualisations of time, temporality, and authentic Being lent political life a dangerous edge. Scrutinising both the conceptual and practical consequences of Heidegger’s thought, this article traces key tensions in his claims that, to realise true Selfhood, we must overcome social time on the road to death. This antagonism encourages overly individuated and aggressive habits of thought and action that reject the possibilities of co-existence. We can see this in how Heidegger’s obsession with authenticity over time pushed him deeper into Nazism, and in the ways that his existential vernacular resounds through today’s right-wing renaissance. Juxtaposing authenticity, then and now, helps draw out the distinctively temporal dynamics of Heidegger’s existentialism as well as the existential politics of our time.
{"title":"Heidegger’s heritage: The temporal politics of authenticity, then and now","authors":"Andrew R. Hom","doi":"10.1017/s026021052200064x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s026021052200064x","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 For a discipline as philosophically and temporally sensitive as International Relations, it is curious that Martin Heidegger, widely considered the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, has only recently begun to receive disciplinary attention. It is also noteworthy that as IR begins to grapple with right-wing extremism, it has not addressed Heidegger’s fascist politics. Conducting a close reading of his account of existence in time, this article argues that from his magnum opus to his final diaries, Heidegger prefigured many existentialist discussions, but his particular conceptualisations of time, temporality, and authentic Being lent political life a dangerous edge. Scrutinising both the conceptual and practical consequences of Heidegger’s thought, this article traces key tensions in his claims that, to realise true Selfhood, we must overcome social time on the road to death. This antagonism encourages overly individuated and aggressive habits of thought and action that reject the possibilities of co-existence. We can see this in how Heidegger’s obsession with authenticity over time pushed him deeper into Nazism, and in the ways that his existential vernacular resounds through today’s right-wing renaissance. Juxtaposing authenticity, then and now, helps draw out the distinctively temporal dynamics of Heidegger’s existentialism as well as the existential politics of our time.","PeriodicalId":48017,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46034583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}