Seductions of Imperialism: Incapacitating Life, Fetishizing Death and Catastrophizing Ecologies

“China’s Olympic Delusion” is a great piece which gestures to the ironies and/or contradictions of political systems in bed with imperialist-capitalism as we know it at this time: the tensions between a dominant idea that liberal democracy is the best political system to pay attention to and address human rights, and capitalism with no limits, can go hand-in-hand. This is merely the delusion, and also the fantasy, that keeps “us” (i.e., citizens, intellectuals etc) put, and from thinking critically

The White But Not Quite Man\u27s Burden : Disrupting the Apogee of Imperial Hegemony?

The victory of late capitalism and its supreme reign through intensified war have been triumphantly trumpeted in popular media, especially since 1989 after the fall of the former Soviet Union. These aspects do indeed need to be understood and explained and Khanna attempts, in the tradition of realism/pragmatism, to do so

Forget Me Not: Bodies as Last Colonies of Capitalism?

Slavery is one technology of imperialism that serves to generate more profits worldwide. Skinner brings this issue to our attention, arguing that many people think that slavery ended in the 19th century, but the current turning of peoples into slaves proves otherwise. Skinner points out that since 1817, there have been more than a dozen international conventions signed banning the slave trade and yet, the number of people sold as slaves is in the millions. He calls modern day slavery a “monstrous crime” and proceeds to provide us with insights from his research. He begins making his point through what is supposed to be a “fictional” story about the negotiation to sell a child in Haiti into slavery for fifty dollars. He later reveals that the story is not fictional but was recorded during his four-year research into slavery on five continents

Violence against Asians: When Is Racial Hate a Crime?

In this article we focus on the mass shootings of Asian women at Atlanta spas. After the perpetrator killed six Asian women, he told the police that he wanted to eliminate “all Asians” and spoke of the “temptation” of the massage parlors and spas. We ask at what point will these forms of anti-Asian violence first be acknowledged, and then seen as a clear and present danger? To answer these questions we trace the historical roots in US history, and domestic and foreign policies of such violence. We reflect on a history of imperial politics, the means and methods of writing global power, including armed conflicts with and in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and the more recent US-China rivalry and antagonism. Second, we argue that divisions and hierarchizations as articulated through these policies are political technologies of control of subjects and territories which are bounded for capture and for experimentation toward the reproduction of a global order of the West and the Rest. In sum, we suggest that the asymmetrical and unequal sexualized landscapes and Othering that produce such violences ought to be critiqued, disrupted, and publicly challenged

Outbreaks of cholera, capitalism and humanitarianism: Power grabs and the unmaking of corporeality in Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Το ξέσπασμα της επιδημίας χολέρας στη Δομινικανή Δημοκρατία και στην Αϊτή, μετά από το σεισμό του 2010 στην τελευταία, οδήγησε στην εφαρμογή καθεστώτων εθνικής ασφάλειας και στην τοποθέτηση του αϊτινού μαύρου σώματος και των αϊτινών γαιών κάτω από τον εντατικό έλεγχο των γεωπολιτικών αντιδικιών σχετικά με την ανθρωπιστική επέμβαση και την ανασυγκρότηση. Οι λόγοι (discourses) της ανασυγκρότησης και της βιο-ασφάλειας, που έθεταν ζητήματα υγειονομικήςδιακινδύνευσης και περιορισμού της μολυσματικότητας, επισκίασαν τις διάφορες μορφές εξόντωσης, θανάτωσης και οικονομικής εκμετάλλευσης εκ μέρους ξένων κρατών και οργανισμών που επιχείρησαν να εξασφαλίσουν μια αυτοκρατορική θέση στον κόσμο μέσω μιας πολιτικής υποδούλωσης και εκκαθάρισης των αϊτινών γαιών. Οι αγώνες των Αϊτινών αναδεικνύουν πώς το φαντασιακό και οι πρακτικές της νεοφιλελεύθερης διακυβέρνησης εξαρτώνται από τον τρόμο και τη μετατροπή ολόκληρων πληθυσμών σε νεκροζώντανους.The outbreak of cholera in Dominican Republic and Haiti following the 2010 Haitian earthquake led to shoring up national security regimes and placing the Haitianblack body and Haitian lands under intense scrutiny of geopolitical debates about humanitarianism and reconstruction. Reconstruction and biosecurity discourses,engaging with disease risks and minimizing contagion, deemphasized the various forms of slaughtering, death and profit making endeavors by foreign sovereignstates and organizations desiring to secure an imperial position in the world through a politics of slavery and wiping clean Haitian landscapes. The struggles of Haitians highlight how the imaginary and practices of neoliberal governancedepend on terror and rendering vast populations as living dead

A picture of medically assisted reproduction activities during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe

STUDY QUESTION: How did coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) impact on medically assisted reproduction (MAR) services in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic (March to May 2020)? SUMMARY ANSWER: MAR services, and hence treatments for infertile couples, were stopped in most European countries for a mean of 7 weeks. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: With the outbreak of COVID-19 in Europe, non-urgent medical care was reduced by local authorities to preserve health resources and maintain social distancing. Furthermore, ESHRE and other societies recommended to postpone ART pregnancies as of 14 March 2020. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION: A structured questionnaire was distributed in April among the ESHRE Committee of National Representatives, followed by further information collection through email. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS: The information was collected through the questionnaire and afterwards summarised and aligned with data from the European Centre for Disease Control on the number of COVID-19 cases per country. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE: By aligning the data for each country with respective epidemiological data, we show a large variation in the time and the phase in the epidemic in the curve when MAR/ART treatments were suspended and restarted. Similarly, the duration of interruption varied. Fertility preservation treatments and patient supportive care for patients remained available during the pandemic. LARGE SCALE DATA: N/A. LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION: Data collection was prone to misinterpretation of the questions and replies, and required further follow-up to check the accuracy. Some representatives reported that they, themselves, were not always aware of the situation throughout the country or reported difficulties with providing single generalised replies, for instance when there were regional differences within their country. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS: The current article provides a basis for further research of the different strategies developed in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Such conclusions will be invaluable for health authorities and healthcare professionals with respect to future similar situations.peer-reviewe

Shackled Democratically? Global Raciality, Terror, and the Black Body

After a series of black youth deaths protesters have taken to the streets challenging the idea that black bodies do not matter in a democracy that promises the world to the world. The protests in several cities in the US have increased along with other protests in other parts of the world. Emerging revolutionary racialized and sexual poetics, I argue, ride the transformative power of the erotic while resisting and interrupting tired gendered and universal portrayals of a democracy of potentiality with a masculine rational forward West-subject as its global agent. The practical and conceptual shifts of the protests in New York City and Ferguson present an energy that disrupts business as usual global raciality and substantively transforms racialized relations. The protester\u27s poetry (poems, slogans, songs) is an essential driver of this energy which contests fetishized syndromes of democratic transformation challenging the ways such democracy shackles and kills black bodies. In fact, these protests speak of the black body and of a democracy otherwise. About the Lecturer: Anna M. Agathangelou, Associate Professor of York University and Fellow Science, Technology and Society at John F. Kennedy School, Harvar

The Cypriot \u27ethnic\u27 conflict in the production of global power

This study explores the Cypriot \u27ethnic conflict\u27 as a social relation in the production of global power. Materialist feminist theory, which claims that there is a link between the agents of knowledge and agents in society, was utilized to analyze the \u27ethnic\u27 conflict. Viewed through this theoretical lens, \u27ethnic\u27 conflicts are not merely about ethnicity but also the ways patriarchy, racial relations, and capitalist structures work together in dynamic and contradictory ways to produce global power. Hence, \u27ethnic\u27 conflicts are both effects and social formations of resistance against hegemonic social processes and relations. A multimethod approach which integrated theoretical argument, historical interpretation of empirical data, and descriptive data from interviews brought to light mediations between local and global sites. An analysis of the policy statements of leaders within Cyprus, the United States, Greece, Turkey, and the United Nations makes explicit the contestations surrounding the (re)production of global power. A reading of elementary and high school Cypriot history textbooks demonstrates the contestations of the state and its citizens in their attempts to carve out a space globally as a legitimate agent of the international system and also to resist the complicit assimilation of its citizens. Interviewing people from different \u27ethnicities\u27, genders, and class backgrounds brought to the fore contradictions among sociopolitical processes which are informed by participants\u27 locations on the axes of power of gender, sexuality, race and class. Lower class men and women from both ethnic groups challenged the preoccupation of the leaders with \u27resolving\u27 the conflict. They argued that this formal history of \u27ethnic\u27 conflict is obscuring drastic global changes and their impacts on their lives and the lives of immigrants. Implications of this study include the recommendation that other protracted conflicts be explored to better understand the (re)production of patriarchal, racial and capitalist structures, social relations, and systems of meanings. Additionally, histories of knowledge production and their conflicts in relation to global history can be examined to help us understand the interconnections between patriarchy and capitalism