Taking Baudrillard to the fair:Exhibiting China in the world at Expo 2010

Scholars have recently paid increasing attention to China’s “mega events” as a form of image management striving to influence future world order. In this article, the author examines China’s recent world fair, Expo 2010 Shanghai China, and argues that we need to move beyond the reading of mega events as simple representation and ideology and read it also as simulation and simulacra. Reading the Chinese world fair as a simulacrum of world order can provide different ways of relating “the West” to its “other country” China. The author examines this relation through asking what it means to be the fair: Where is the world fair? When is the world fair? Who is the world fair? Reading the world/fair as simulacrum disrupts the fair’s notions of inside and outside, now and then, subject and object to the point where these terms are no longer workable

Futures beyond “the West”?:autoimmunity in China’s harmonious world

It has become fashionable amongst International Relations scholars to draw on the concept of “autoimmunity”, which some call “the ultimate horizon in which contemporary politics inscribes itself”. To these scholars, most of whom draw on the thought of Jacques Derrida, such logics open systems up to a future to come. At the same time, they tend to identify such logics with Europe, America, Western modernity and/or democracy. Implied, and sometimes explicit, in their accounts is the denial of autoimmune logics at work outside such an imagined configuration. This paper challenges that denial through arguing that the system of “harmony”, deployed in contemporary China, also works on an autoimmune logic. If autoimmunity opens up a system to the future, this is not only so for European democracy or its derivatives. Moreover, the expulsion of “non-Western” others from accounts of autoimmunity undermines their rethinking of difference by falling back on an immunitary logic, denying China an open future. This exclusion is their condition of possibility. At the same time, this exclusion is what keeps open their promise of its future to come. Paradoxically, the exclusion of the “non- West” is what keeps the idea of an autoimmune “Western” or European democracy alive

Targeting the ontology of war:from Clausewitz to Baudrillard

Against a surprising level of agreement between Clausewitz, contemporary military doctrines and critical war studies on an ontology of war as fighting, we suggest that the study of contemporary warfare needs to focus more on war as processing. Through Jean Baudrillard we argue that at least some of what is referred to as ‘war’ is no longer characterised by encounters through fighting. We exemplify our argument by how the repetitive battle-rhythm of military targeting strives for perfect war. What remains is not war as an object in itself, but a reified ‘war’ that obscures the disappearance of that very object. The debate on war contributes to the reification of such a war, as an imperative telling us: ‘we have a concept, you must learn to think through it’

Political healing in East Asian international relations: what, why and how

the opening article of this collection serves as an invitation to academics and practitioners of international relations to rethink and transform, not merely observe and contain, long-standing conflicts in East Asia and beyond. traditionally such conflicts, and the violence that has emerged around them, have been understood through the lens of dichotomous frameworks associated with Westphalian modernity. We need alternative paradigms in East Asian political discourse to think and do differently. Here, we contribute to this effort by examining how East Asian medical thought and practice can facilitate political healing in the region. The use of medical analogies and metaphors is not uncommon in academic and policy discussions, and our approach underscores terminologies and thought processes that resonate with many in the region. East Asian medicine (EAM) is rooted in daoist yin/yang dialectics and the concept of qi, both of which stress attention to balance, ontological parity and inter-connectedness. It offers inspiration for a creative analytical approach, metaphorical imagination and normative inspiration to diagnose ongoing confrontations. Despite apparent divisions, we propose that ongoing conflicts can be treated as ailments afflicting a shared political body

Relationality and rationality in Confucian and Western traditions of thought

This paper provides a theoretical sketch of relationality within the field of International Relations (IR). It argues, contrary to what many IR scholars hold, that representation is practice: academic representation reflects the background of a community of practice and highlights what is embodied therein. Therefore, different cultural communities have different practices and draw from different background knowledge. Rationality, which serves as the dominant foundation for background knowledge within many Western communities of practice, permeates mainstream IR theory. Relationality performs a similar role in traditionally Confucian communities of practice, where relations enjoy a distinct ontological status over individual rationality. A relational theory assumes (1) that self-existence coincides with other-existence and coexistence, and (2) that self-interest coincides with other-interest. Based on these assumptions, it argues that relations select, meaning that in a social situation actors base their action on relations in the first place and that rationality is and can only be defined in terms of relations. The article uses the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an example to elaborate its theoretical point

China’s Rise and “Responsibility” in the 21st Century

In recent decades ‘responsibility’ has become a prominent idea in international political discourse. Against this backdrop, international policy and scholarly communities contemplating China’s rise regularly as “whether, when, and how” China will become a “responsible” great power. This article reviews, unpacks and questions understandings of responsibility in the debates about China. One strand of these debates argue that China can become responsible by adopting and promoting the existing status quo; the other argues that China acts responsibly when it challenges the unfair hegemony of the status quo. This article argues that both of these debates operate with a remarkably similar understanding of responsibility. Whether China adopts existing rules and norms, or whether it establishes rules and norms of its own, responsibility is understood to be rule and norm compliance. The article explores the possibility of an alternative understanding of responsibility suggested by Derrida. It is argued that a Derridian approach does not dispense with rules and norms, but is conscious of the irresolvable dilemma when faced with the demands of multiple others. Such an understanding is helpful insofar as it reminds those who would call for responsibility that such responsibility, and politics itself, is more than simply following rules and maintenance of norms

The WASS Collective: Gender Transformations in Higher Education

This paper offers a critical perspective on issues around gender and sexual transformation within the context of UK Higher Education. Drawing on qualitative data carried out by undergraduate and postgraduate students, the analysis explores some of the diverse and often challenging ways in which young/er women and men are thinking and talking about gender, sexuality and feminism, as well as their strategies for turning ideas into political action. The research focuses on the activities and opinions of students belonging to an anti-sexist organisation within one UK university, who are engaged in campaigns to raise awareness about the damaging effects of gender and sexual inequalities, as well as promoting the popular appeal of contemporary feminisms. Locating the voices and research findings of the students themselves at the centre of the discussion, the paper is produced collaboratively between students and teachers who are involved in both the activist and research elements of this project. The paper also argues for (and provides evidence of) the transformative potential of alternative and critical forms of student engagement and student/ staff collaboration in relation to gender informed academic activism.Feminism, Post-Feminism, Anti-Sexism, Higher Education, Activism, Academic Activism, Praxis, Critical Pedagogy, Collaborative Methods

Friendship and Politics:Cross-Cultural Perspectives

This workshop brought into conversation some of the interlocutors from the Chinese and Western traditions who have argued for the study of politics to turn its focus from the prevalence of enmity to the possibility of friendship. There is a wealth of thinking about friendship in both the Chinese and Western traditions and even significant overlap between the two perspectives. Yet, to date, there has been little direct dialogue between these interlocutors, and little development of cross- cultural understandings of friendship and its importance for politics. The workshop contributed to the construction of a cross-cultural exploration of friendship and politics, moving ‘beyond the West’ through engagement with Chinese thought on the mainland and on Taiwan. Looking at models and practices of friendship in politics in both the Chinese and Western traditions, the workshop explored friendship in both its normative and analytical dimensions, and understood it have both theoretical and empirical manifestations. In so doing, the workshop formulated and discussed a number of questions about friendship and politics, including to raise questions about the possibilities and limitations of its own ‘cross- cultural’approach. Theworkshopwasalsoanimportantstepinbuildingglobalrelationsbetweenscholars with a view to establishing a wider network in the longer term. Although considered an important first step, the workshop also pointed to the need to move the study of friendship and politics beyond the Chinese and Western traditions to consider the much wider cultural and global perspectives on this topic

Relating self and other in Chinese and Western thought

Recent debates in International Relations seek to decolonise the discipline by focusing on relationality between self and other. This article examines the possibilities for preserving a particular type of otherness: ‘radical otherness’ or ‘alterity’. Such otherness can provide a bulwark against domination and colonialism: there is always something truly other which cannot be assimilated. However, two problems arise. First, if otherness is truly inaccessible, how can self relate to it? Does otherness undermine relationality? Second, can we talk about otherness without making it the same? Is the very naming of otherness a new form of domination? This article draws out and explores the possibilities for radical otherness in Sinophone and Anglophone relational theorising. It addresses the difficulties presented by the need for a sense of radical otherness on the one hand, and the seeming impossibility of either detecting it, or relating to it, on the other. By constructing a typology of four accounts of otherness, it finds that the identification and preservation of radical otherness poses significant problems for relationality. Radical otherness makes relationality between self and other impossible, but without radical otherness there is a danger of domination and assimilation. This is common to both Sinophone and Anglophone endeavours