Violent International Relations

Can International Relations (IR) be studied without reproducing its violence? This is the central question of this article. To investigate this, the first step is to expose the violence that we argue remains at the heart of our discipline. The article thus begins by exploring the disciplinary practices firmly grounded in relations of coloniality that plague disciplines more broadly and IR in particular. An analysis of IR's epistemic violence is followed by an autoethnographic exploration of IR's violent practices, specifically the violent practices in which one of the article's authors knowingly and unknowingly engaged as part of an impact-related trip to the international compound of Mogadishu International Airport in Somalia. Here the article lays bare how increasing demands on IR scholars to become ‘international experts’ having impact on the policy world is pushing them more and more into spaces governed by colonial violence they are unable to escape. The final section of this article puts forward a tentative path toward a less violent IR that advocates almost insignificant acts of subversion in our disciplinary approach and practices aimed at exposing and challenging this epistemic and structural violence. The article concludes that IR does not need to be abandoned, but rather, by taking on a position of discomfort, needs to acknowledge its violence and attempt to mitigate it - one almost insignificant step at a time

Introduction: Why Should Political Theorists Care About Work?

Even though the future of work has become a significant public concern, political theory has not yet considered work to be a central concept within the discipline. The five papers in this symposium provide a range of perspectives on what it means to take work seriously within political thought. This introduction will give an account of why work should be considered as important by political theorists, contextualize the broader landscape into which these papers intervene (characterized by the issues of automation, precarity, and social reproduction), and situate them within existing writing on work within political theory

Interpretation, judgement and dialogue: a hermeneutical recollection of causal analysis in critical terrorism studies

This article problematises Critical Terrorism Studies’s (CTS) seem- ing reluctance to engage in causal explanation. An analysis of the meta-theoretical assumptions on causation in both orthodox and critical terrorism studies reveals that the latter’s refusal to incor- porate causal analysis in its broader research agenda reproduces – despite its commitment to epistemological pluralism – the for- mer’s understanding of causation as the only sustainable one. Elemental to this understanding is the idea that causation refers to the regular observation of constant conjunction. Due to the positivist leanings of such a conception, CTS is quick to dismiss it as consolidating Orthodox Terrorism Studies’s lack of critical self- reflexivity, responsibility of the researcher, and dedication towards informing state-led policies of counterterrorism. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of science and International Relations, this article advances an alternative understanding of causation that emphasises its interpretative, normative and dialo- gical fabric. It is therefore argued that CTS should reclaim causal analysis as an essential element of its research agenda. This not only facilitates a more robust challenge against Orthodox Terrorism Studies’ conventional understanding of causation but also consolidates CTS’s endeavour of deepening and broadening our understanding that (re)embeds terrorist violence in its histor- ical and social context

Book review: Rwanda and the moral obligation of humanitarian intervention

"Rwanda and The Moral Obligation of Humanitarian Intervention." Joshua James Kassner. Edinburgh University Press. November 2012.--- The 1994 Rwandan Genocide that took the lives of approximately 800,000 men, women and children is etched into our memories as one of the most acute failures of intervening in human rights violations. In Rwanda and The Moral Obligation of Humanitarian intervention, Joshua James Kassner contends that the international community had a moral obligation to intervene and therefore unrolls a convincing argument for a significant reform of the normative framework governing international relations. This argument bears unquestionable urgency but regrettably fails to move beyond the oft-debated Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework. Reviewed by Lucas Van Milders

White Hallucinations

In this paper, the concept of white hallucination is developed through the prism of a recent debate about the permissibility of defending colonialism. The latter is, unsurprisingly, steeped in colonial nostalgia and a defence of free speech. These arguments, however, have to be related to the operation of whiteness itself. White hallucinations concern the psychopathological tendency of whiteness to incessantly reinscribe its mastery of the world. Cases for defending colonialism expose whiteness as a delusion that is reasserted by demanding ‘proof’ against its normativity while simultaneously discarding alternative knowledge claims made by testimonial epistemologies of colonial subjugation and dehumanization. The argument further unravels whiteness as a position-without-positionality that seeks to maintain its normativity and supremacy by aligning itself with rationality, objectivity and humanity as such and subjugating non-white perspectives, experiences and knowledges to the spectre of nonexistence