scholarly journals Sovereign Power, Government and Global Liberalism’s Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-459
Author(s):  
Mariela Cuadro
Keyword(s):  
International Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Governmental Power ◽  
Practices Of Freedom

Abstract Abstract: For some time now a leading cause of debate among IR scholars has been the so-called Liberal International Order (LIO) and its assumed crisis. This article pierces this debate from a critical perspective asserting that different conceptions and analytics of power allow diverse questions on and diagnoses of liberalism in the global realm. With this objective, it confronts Ikenberry’s conception of LIO with the Foucauldian notion of liberalism. This is done by identifying the conception of power that underlies each notion of liberalism, assuming the former as performative. This way, it first defines two different conceptions of power: sovereign and governmental. Second, it links Ikenberry’s conception of LIO with the sovereign conception of power and points out the political and analytical effects of this relation, mainly, the hierarchical character of LIO and the consequent desire for a West-led world. Third, it develops Foucault’s conception of liberalism linked to governmental power and establishes some of its political and analytical effects: the importance of a heterarchical notion of power focused on the dimension of subject and subjectivity for the analysis of the present, and the political need to reflect on our practices of freedom.

scholarly journals THE SUBJECT OF SOVEREIGNTY: LAW, POLITICS AND MORAL REASONING IN HUGO GROTIUS

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 619-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNABEL BRETT
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
International Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Moral Science ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Legal Arguments

AbstractHugo Grotius’s account of sovereign power in De iure belli ac pacis occupies a contested place in recent genealogies of modern sovereignty. This article takes a fresh approach by arguing that Grotius’s legal arguments do not do their work alone. They function within a broader horizon of what he calls “morals,” a field of reasoning that has debts to scholastic moral theology and Aristotelian moral science. Grotius's conception of sovereignty represents a modulation between law and “morals,” which allows him both to separate his scientific jurisprudence from the science of politics and nevertheless to reply to the political scientists on their own ground. The context of “morals,” however, is not narrowly political but inter-political, generating a potential tension between popular aspirations to sovereignty and the international order. Grotius’s “moral” handling of the issue offers an invitation to reflect on our current preoccupation with much the same concerns.

Simone Weil

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Marovich
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Creation Theology ◽  
Simone Weil

Few of Giorgio Agamben’s works are as mysterious as his unpublished dissertation, reportedly on the political thought of the French philosopher Simone Weil. If Weil was an early subject of Agamben’s intellectual curiosity, it would appear – judging from his published works – that her influence upon him has been neither central nor lasting.1 Leland de la Durantaye argues that Weil’s work has left a mark on Agamben’s philosophy of potentiality, largely in his discussion of the concept of decreation; but de la Durantaye does not make much of Weil’s influence here, determining that her theory of decreation is ‘essentially dialectical’ and still too bound up with creation theology. 2 Alessia Ricciardi, however, argues that de la Durantaye’s dismissal of Weil’s influence is hasty.3 Ricciardi analyses deeper resonances between Weil’s and Agamben’s philosophies, ultimately claiming that Agamben ‘seems to extend many of the implications and claims of Weil’s idea of force’,4 arguably spreading Weil’s influence into Agamben’s reflections on sovereign power and bare life.

scholarly journals (In)coherent subjects? The politics of conceptualising resistance in the UK asylum system

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
Sarah M Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
Grounding Resistance ◽  
Migration Control ◽  
The Uk

Many accounts of resistance within systems of migration control pivot upon a coherent migrant subject, one that is imbued with political agency and posited as oppositional to particular forms of sovereign power. Drawing upon ethnographic research into the role of creativity within the UK asylum system, I argue that grounding resistance with a stable, coherent and agentic subject, aligns with oppositional narratives (of power vs resistance), and thereby risks negating the entangled politics of the (in)coherence of subject formation, and how this can contain the potential to disrupt, disturb or interrupt the practices and premise of the UK asylum system. I suggest that charity groups and subjects should not be written out of narratives of resistance apriori because they engage with ‘the state’: firstly, because to argue that there is a particular form that resistance should take is to place limits around what counts as the political; and secondly, because to ‘remain oppositional’ is at odds with an (in)coherent subject. I show how accounts which highlight a messy and ambiguous subjectivity, could be bought into understandings of resistance. This is important because as academics, we too participate in the delineation of the political and what counts as resistance. In predetermining what subjects, and forms of political action count as resistance we risk denying recognition to those within this system.

Minority Rights

2018 ◽  
pp. 165-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kymlicka
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
International Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Level ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Rights Issues

It has often been noted that the political claims of minorities and indigenous peoples are marginalized within traditional state-centric international political theory; but perhaps more surprisingly, they are also marginalized within much contemporary cosmopolitan political theory. In this chapter, I will argue that neither cosmopolitanism nor statism as currently theorized is well equipped to evaluate the normative claims at stake in many minority rights issues. I begin by discussing how the “minority question” arose as an issue within international relations—that is, why minorities have been seen as a problem and a threat to international order—and how international actors have historically attempted to contain the problem, often in ways that were deeply unjust to minorities. I will then consider recent efforts to advance a pro-minority agenda at the international level, and how this agenda helps reveal some of the limits of both cosmopolitan and statist approaches to IPT.

scholarly journals Homo Sacer sebagai Figur Politis dan Kaitannya dengan Dunia Pendidikan Tinggi

Humaniora ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 335
Author(s):  
Ferdinand Indrajaya
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
General View ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
The Third

Article is an outcome from writer’s reflection from his reading on Homo Sacer, Sovereign Power and Bare Life, a book by Giorgio Agamben, an Italian 20th century philosopher. The reading concerns with the three chapters which are Homo Sacer, The Ambivalence of The Sacred, and The Sacred Life, and also the preface of chapters. Generally, this article proposes two main things. First, Agamben’s description on Western modern political practice, developed from the Greek until today. Second, writer’s reflection on educational system in Indonesia, especially the higher education level in nowadays, through Agamben’s perspective. Structurally, article is divided into three parts. First, the Preface, is a general view to Agamben’s political thought which will stand as a background to the second part from this article, Homo Sacer. On the third part, Education as Bare Life, is writer’s reflection on higher education system in Indonesia borrowing the political perspectives from Agamben.    

scholarly journals The War Against Public Forgetfulness:Commemorating 1812 in Canada

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Eamon
Keyword(s):  
War Of 1812 ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
Government Of Canada ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Political Battle

In October 2011, the Government of Canada began a two-year, nation-wide celebration of the bicentenary of the War of 1812. The widely-criticized initiative returned the public eye to a traditional ‘interpretive tableau’ of war heroes, namely Isaac Brock, Tecumseh, Charles de Salaberry and Laura Secord. While the scope and expense of the federal government’s efforts have been unprecedented, the political battle to maintain certain memories of the War is one that is not new. A struggle against the forgetfulness of Canadians, and particularly young Canadians, has animated commemorations of the War for almost two centuries. Looking at a selection of past commemorative efforts this essay explores how the inertia of a traditional tableau of heroes has tended to overshadow other narratives and newer interpretations. Yet all is not lost. Using the example of the author’s exhibition, Faces of 1812, it is suggested that publicly-constructed histories can be employed as a useful departure point for the public historian and provide a foundation from which the public can obtain a broader, more critical perspective on both the commemorated events and history writ large.

A Political Theory of Decolonization

2019 ◽  
pp. 14-36
Author(s):  
Adom Getachew
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
International Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Integration ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Anticolonial Nationalism

This chapter sketches a political theory of decolonization that rethinks how anticolonial nationalism posed the problem of empire to expand our sense of its aims and trajectories. Drawing on recent histories of international law as well as the political thought of Black Atlantic worldmakers, it reconceives empire as processes of unequal international integration that took an increasingly racialized form in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Confronted with a racialized international order, anticolonial nationalists turned to projects of worldmaking that would secure the conditions of international nondomination. It argues that attention to the specificity of political projects that emerged out of the legacy of imperialism provides a postcolonial approach to contemporary cosmopolitanism. A postcolonial cosmopolitanism entails a critical diagnosis of the persistence of empire and a normative orientation that retains the anti-imperial aspiration for a domination-free international order.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Feisal G. Mohamed
Keyword(s):  
John Milton ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Andrew Marvell ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Political Settlement

A modern politics attaching itself to the state must adopt a position sovereignty, by which is meant the political settlement in which potestas and auctoritas are aligned. Three competing forms are identified: unitary sovereignty, divided and balanced sovereignty, and the view that sovereign power must be limited by universal principles. Each of these forms can be divided into “red” and “black” varieties, depending on the imagined relationship between sovereign power and modern conditions of flux. A chapter outline introduces the figures who will be explored in the book as a whole: Thomas Hobbes; William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele; John Barclay and the romance writers of the 1650s whom he influences; John Milton; and Andrew Marvell. Also described is the book’s sustained engagement of Carl Schmitt, and the ways in which his thought on sovereignty is an example of the competition amongst the concept’s three competing forms.

International Relations

Beyond Reason ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 145-174
Author(s):  
Sanjay Seth
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Order ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Distinct Object

This chapter offers a postcolonial critique of the discipline of international relations, which constitutes itself as a discipline by defining a unique and distinct object: the “anarchy” that prevails in the international realm, where unlike the “domestic” realm, there is no sovereign power. In defining its object thus, it also assumes that the international order is composed of sovereign states. But until a few decades ago empires covered the larger surface of the globe and included the majority of its people. The discipline manages the extraordinary feat of either forgetting this altogether or accounting for it by dismissing it as a “survival” of an earlier era, destined to be surpassed in the inexorable teleological march toward state sovereignty that is thought to have begun with the Peace of Westphalia. The “amnesia” regarding empire that characterizes the discipline is disabling, because the imperial past shadows and shapes the contemporary international order.

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