scholarly journals The world is a garden:Nomos, sovereignty, and the (contested) ordering of life

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 870-890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Mabon
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
Normative Values ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The World ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Us Hegemony ◽  
Fundamental Tension ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Spatial Area

AbstractTraditional approaches to questions aboutnomosin IR typically focus upon either its establishment and the formal structures that emerge through interaction within a clearly delineated spatial area, or an exploration of US hegemony in the post-2003 world. In this article I posit a different approach, building on the ideas of Giorgio Agamben, which groundsnomosas a spatialisation of the exception within conditions of neoliberal modernity. I suggest that within the globalnomosare more localisednomoi. These localisednomoiare a consequence of the spatialisation of the exception and a fundamental tension between localisation and ordering. I argue that while sovereign power has been a source of contemporary scholarship, such explorations have paid scant attention to the regulatory power of normative values and their capacity to create order within space. Such norms allow for a greater awareness of how sovereign power can be mobilised in and of itself as a form of contestation. Locating such debates in the Middle East, I explore the concept ofnomosto understand how struggle over the localisation and ordering of space helps us to better understand contemporary political life.

The generalised bio-political border? Re-conceptualising the limits of sovereign power

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICK VAUGHAN-WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Relative Simplicity ◽  
Political Border ◽  
The One

AbstractThis article is a response to calls from a number of theorists in International Relations and related disciplines for the need to develop alternative ways of thinking ‘the border’ in contemporary political life. These calls stem from an apparent tension between the increasing complexity of the nature and location of bordering practices on the one hand and yet the relative simplicity with which borders often continue to be treated on the other. One of the intellectual challenges, however, is that many of the resources in political thought to which we might turn for new border vocabularies already rely on unproblematised conceptions of what and where borders are. It is argued that some promise can be found in the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, whose diagnosis of the operation of sovereign power in terms of the production of bare life offers significant, yet largely untapped, implications for analysing borders and the politics of space across a global bio-political terrain.

scholarly journals Sectarian Games: Sovereign Power, War Machines and Regional Order in the Middle East

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Mabon
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The Past ◽  
Governance Strategies ◽  
Regional Order

Abstract Amidst violent contestation across the Middle East leaving regimes facing – or fearing – popular protests, the regulation of political life became increasingly important. Across the past century, the development of political projects has been driven by regime efforts to maintain power, constructing regime-society relations in such a way to ensure their survival. As a consequence, security is not given; rather, it reflects the concerns of elites and embeds their concerns within society, using a range of domestic, regional and geopolitical strategies to meet their needs. These strategies play on a range of different fears and currents to locate regime interests within broader concerns. A key part of such efforts involves the cultivation and suppression of particular identities, often resulting in contestation and uncertainty within and between states. Drawing on the ideas of Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the article argues that the regulation of sect-based identities – and difference – has been a key part of governance strategies in divided societies across the Middle East, albeit varying across time and space.

scholarly journals Violence and the Biopolitics of Modernity

2010 ◽  
pp. 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Oksala
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Effective Strategies ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
The Relationship

The paper studies the relationship between political violence and biological life in the thought of Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault. I follow Foucault in arguing that understanding political violence in modernity means rethinking the ontological boundary between biological and political life that has fundamentally ordered the Western tradition of political thought. I show that while Arendt, Agamben and Foucault all see the merging of the categories of life and politics as the key problem of Modernity, they understand this problem in crucially different terms and suggest different solutions to it. This results in different understandings of the relationship between violence and the political. It is my contention that the violence of modern biopolitical societies is not due to originary ties between sovereign power and biopower, as Agamben claims. Sovereign states use biopolitical methods of violence, but this violence is not an originary or necessary aspect of political power. In order to criticise the forms of violence specific to modern biopolitical societies we must expose the points of tension, as well as of overlap between two types of power – biopower and sovereign power. Understanding their distinctive rationalities is crucial for developing effective strategies against current forms of political violence.

scholarly journals Recovered and Restored? Abducted Women in 1947 Partition Narratives

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-64
Author(s):  
Saiyma Aslam
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Communal Violence ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Partition Of India ◽  
Communal Riots

During the Partition of India in 1947, communal riots triggered unspeakable acts of horror against women of rival communities. A large number of women were abducted; some were later recovered and returned to their families. The trauma suffered by these abducted women and survivors extends all proportions. This paper analyses the dislocation, pain and trauma of abducted women, as depicted in two short stories: The Lost Ribbon by Shobha Rao (2016) and Banished (1998) by Jamila Hashmi originally published in Urdu as Banbas (exile) in Aap-Beeti, Jag-Beeti (1969). I consider the abducted women’s plight in view of the distinction Giorgio Agamben made of zoè (bare life) and bios (political life as a citizen) in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998) and The Use of Bodies (2015). I analyse how Partition reduced women to bare life, despite offering them hopes of life as a citizen of their respective independent countries. In this regard, I discuss their sufferings and trauma due to double dislocation, first stemming from rape, abduction and captivity in the wake of communal violence, and second due to the nature of the states’ intervention in their recovery and rehabilitation.  My analysis also shows that recovery of abducted women should not be taken as synonymous with restoration because restoration of a traumatised human being to her pre-abduction state of mind and life is not possible.

9/11 and Armageddon: the Christian Right and George W. Bush

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Göran Gunner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Religious Leader ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Mega Church ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Jerry Falwell ◽  
High Degree

Authors from the Christian Right in the USA situate the September 11 attack on New York and Washington within God's intentions to bring America into the divine schedule for the end of the world. This is true of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and other leading figures in the ‘Christian Coalition’. This article analyses how Christian fundamentalists assess the roles of the USA, the State of Israel, Islam, Iraq, the European Union and Russia within what they perceive to be the divine plan for the future of the world, especially against the background of ‘9/11’. It argues that the ideas of the Christian Right and of President George W. Bush coalesce to a high degree. Whereas before 9/11 many American mega-church preachers had aspirations to direct political life, after the events of that day the President assumes some of the roles of a mega-religious leader.

Princes and Parliaments in the Arab World

2004 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Herb
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World

Several Arab monarchies have held reasonably free elections to parliaments, though all remain authoritarian. This article compares the Arab monarchies with parliaments in other parts of the world, including both those that became democracies, and those that did not. From this I derive a set of prerequisites, potential pitfalls, and expected stages in the monarchical path toward democracy. This helps us to understand not only the democratic potential of the parliamentary experiments in the Arab monarchies, but also the role these parliaments play in the political life of these authoritarian regimes.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Nisenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The World ◽  
Fundamental Tension

The concluding chapter draws on the story of Rosenzweig’s near conversion to Christianity and return to Judaism to explain why, for Kant and his heirs, what is at issue in reason’s conflict with itself is our ability to affirm both the value of the world and of human action in the world. The chapter explains why Rosenzweig came to view the conflict of reason as the manifestation of a more fundamental tension between one’s selfhood and one’s worldliness, which could only be dissolved by understanding human action in the world as the means by which God is both cognized and partly realized. To make Rosenzweig’s ideas more accessible, the chapter compares them with contemporary interpretations of Kant’s views on the nature of practical knowledge and (intentional) action. It also shows how the book’s take on the issues that shaped the contours of post-Kantian German Idealism can help us see that the conflict of reason can be regarded as the underlying concern that recent competing interpretations of this period share.

Church and State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

Chapter 3’s discussion of kingdoms and orders in the context of political life leads naturally into the topic of this chapter: the church, the state, and their relationship. The present chapter locates the state (or, better, political authority in general) in relationship to Chapter 3’s categories by presenting it as one of the orders by which God’s structures the world. It is an important actor in the temporal kingdom, where God has ordained it to preserve the world through law. The church in its essence is an agent of the spiritual kingdom, bearing God’s redemptive word to the world. The themes of preservation and redemption, the kingdoms, and the orders find many of their concrete expressions in themes of the church, the state, and their relationship.

Polish Elections 1919-1928

Slavic Review ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Groth
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Life ◽  
National Elections ◽  
The World ◽  
Cast Doubt

Much valuable information on the dynamics of Poland's political life between the world wars is still to be uncovered in the records of national elections. Of particular interest are the contests of 1919, 1922, and 1928, since in all of these elections political parties were still allowed to participate directly (as they were not in 1935 and 1938), and governmental restraint and manipulation were not yet so massive as to cast doubt on the entire result (as in 1930).

The ’68 Movements around the World and in Turkey: One Movement or Many?

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 131-156
Author(s):  
Ömer Turan
Keyword(s):  
System Theory ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Student Activism ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Old Left ◽  
The World ◽  
Counter Culture ◽  
Global Movement ◽  
Us Hegemony

Abstract The student movement of ’68 was both a major source of inspiration and subject of research for the social movement scholars. One persistent disagreement about studying ’68 lies between the world-system theory—Wallerstein views the movement as “a single revolution”—and the contentious politics approach—McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly refuse to consider ’68 “one grand movement.” Expanding this theoretical debate, this article overviews Turkey’s ’68 movement and discusses its divergence from the global movement. Wallerstein summarizes “the single revolution” of ’68 with five points: challenging US hegemony, working-class solidarity, demanding education reform, counter-culture, and challenging the old left. This article revisits these points and cross-reads them with insights of the contentious politics approach to evaluate Turkey’s ’68 movement. It then focuses on mobilizing structures, framing processes, and repertoires of contention that have shaped student activism.

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