scholarly journals Aesthetic and World Politics by Roland Bleiker. Basingtoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Hardcover: 271 pp.

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Siti Aliyuna Pratisti ◽  
Junita Budi Rachman

Aesthetic approach to politics is not really something considered as a novelty. Immanuel Kant has described the aesthetic relationship with rationality way back in the 17th century, as well as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jaques Rancier as a more contemporary counterpart. In the field of international relations, the study of aesthetics has been raised by a number of reviewers – from James Der Derian, Costas Constantinou, David Campbell, to Anthony Burke – who began to lay aesthetics as a foothold in approaching various phenomena. Roland Bleiker is one of the most consistent among them. In an essay entitled "The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory", Bleiker opened the discourse to establish aesthetics as one of the paradigms in international political theory. His essay is published in 2001, contrasts with the majority of international political theories that always try to "catch the world as it is". Bleiker assumes that there is always a distance between representation and what it represents. Through aesthetics, he criticizes approaches that fill this theoretical gap with mimetic ideas. He emphasizes that aesthetic studies do not try to mimic the reality, but it is trying to recognize the various emotions and sensibilities in the formation of a certain representation. The great role of "emotion" in politics is further explained by Bleiker through an essay entitled “Fear No More: Emotions and World Politics”, published seven years after.

Author(s):  
I. V. SLEDZEVSKIY

Article is devoted to a role of world religions in the modern international relations and world politics. The phenomenon of world religious revival, his connection with globalization processes, formation of the multi-polar, polycivilization world is investigated. A research objective is the analysis of tendencies of a desecularization of the world community, the reasons and possible consequences of this process in global measurement. Article includes Introduction, three analytical sections and the Conclusion. In Introduction the phenomenon of world religious revival and approaches to his studying is presented. It is asked about a desecularization of the world community as a possible subject of the new direction of the international political researches – the international religious studies. The thesis about crisis of secular bases of modern political system of the world is proved in the first section. Revision of bases of a world order and standards of belonging to the world community from positions of the reviving religious fundamentalism, the cultural and political and social and economic bases of this process are considered. In the second section the role in a desecularization of the world community of political Islam (Islamism) is analyzed. It is noted that the greatest danger of politicization of Islam consists in emergence of difficult surmountable civilization break in the world community between the Western world (still confident in universality of the values) and the world of Islam. In the third section the possibilities of prevention of disintegration of the existing system of the international relations and collision of the cultural worlds are considered. The main attention is paid to processes of a global political institutionalization of such dialogue and its justification in the concept of global ethics – purposeful coordination and gradual connection of the basic moral and ethical values concluded in great religious and cultural traditions of the world. In the final section of article the conclusion is drawn that process of an institutionalization of civilization dialogue (civilization communication) it isn’t finished yet and didn’t become irreversible.


Author(s):  
Janina Dill

Just war theory (JWT) has undergone a radical revision over the last two decades. This chapter discusses the implications of this reformulation for the role of JWT in International Political Theory (IPT) and for JWT’s strategic usefulness. Revisionists’ consistent prioritization of individual rights means JWT now follows the strictures of justified violence according to contemporary IPT. At the same time, the collective nature of war makes it impossible for anyone but the omniscient attacker to properly protect individual rights and thus to directly implement revisionist prescriptions. I argue that revisionism is strategically relevant not in spite of, but because of this lack of practicability on the battlefield. It highlights the impossibility of waging war in accordance with widespread expectations of moral appropriateness, which largely follow the strictures of justified violence according to contemporary IPT. This is a crucial limitation to the political utility of force in twenty-first-century international relations.


Author(s):  
Gerry Simpson

This chapter probes the way in which description, prescription, and critique form a congeries of approaches that together, in turn, produce an intellectual field that might be described as the political theory of international law (though it is hardly one thing, and some of it refuses altogether the injunctions of traditional political theory). All of this will lead to an examination of two particular problems of international diplomacy to which political theories of international law appear to have responded: namely, intervention and war crimes trials, and an engagement with two interdisciplinary turns (to History and to International Relations) through which international law has enlivened its habits of thought and theoretical inclinations.


1995 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly Cochran

A group of writers have taken up Nietzsche's hammer against the constructions of contemporary international theory. Postmodern approaches problematize the dominant understanding of international relations as a world of sovereign states which demarcate inside from outside, order from anarchy, identity from difference. More generally, they challenge the notion of sovereignty as an ahistorical, universal, transcendent concept, be it applied to the sovereign state, the sovereign individual or a sovereign truth. Sovereignty and the dichotomies regulated by its power are mechanisms of domination and closure which limit the play of political practice. It is the aim of these writers to hammer away at these limitations, opening space for plural and diverse practices in world politics.


Author(s):  
Tripuresh Pathak

The Independence of Bangladesh was one of the most important event to have occurred in the World Politics of 20th Century. It was not just dismemberment of the then biggest Muslim State in terms of Population, but was also a great question mark on the survival of the state that was founded only on the basis of Religion. Constructivism is an approach in International Relations that contends that Reality is inter-subjective and is constructed through the interaction of different players and institutions. This Research Paper makes an in-depth analysis of different factors that played important role in creation of Bangladesh. The two Nation theory on which Pakistan was founded has been dealt in this paper. The value of given identity depends upon its number and the binding potential of an identity is more in case of identity being in substantive minority than when the identity is in majority. The colonial construct of labelling the entire community as either martial or coward was also responsible for the crisis. The lack of democratic development has also been highlighted as it reduced the capability of Pakistani state in dealing with aspirations of people of East Pakistan. The paper also seeks to critically analyze the role of India in formation of Bangladesh.


Author(s):  
Chris Brown ◽  
Robyn Eckersley

This chapter introduces and defends the themes around which the Handbook has been constructed: the importance of an engagement between International Political Theory (IPT) and “real-world” politics, and the need to establish links between IPT and the empirical findings of International Relations scholars. The “new realist” critique of “moralism” is examined along with the more general critique of ideal theory, and both are found to hit a very narrow target. The conventional distinction between “critical theory” and “problem-solving theory” is also challenged, and each is defended as an equally important, albeit different, stage in the life of a theory. The second half of this chapter sets out the principles upon which the Handbook is organized, and provides a guide to each section and chapter.


1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
M. A. Muqtedar Khan

This paper seeks to understand the impact of current global politicaland socioeconomic conditions on the construction of identity. I advancean argument based on a two-step logic. First, I challenge the characterizationof current socioeconomic conditions as one of globalization bymarshaling arguments and evidence that strongly suggest that along withglobalization, there are simultaneous processes of localization proliferatingin the world today. I contend that current conditions are indicative ofthings far exceeding the scope of globalization and that they can bedescribed more accurately as ccglocalization.~H’2a ving established thisclaim, I show how the processes of glocalization affect the constructionof Muslim identity.Why do I explore the relationship between glocalization and identityconstruction? Because it is significant. Those conversant with current theoreticaldebates within the discipline of international relations’ are awarethat identity has emerged as a significant explanatory construct in internationalrelations theory in the post-Cold War era.4 In this article, I discussthe emergence of identity as an important concept in world politics.The contemporary field of international relations is defined by threephilosophically distinct research programs? rationalists: constructivists,’and interpretivists.’ The moot issue is essentially a search for the mostimportant variable that can help explain or understand the behavior ofinternational actors and subsequently explain the nature of world politicsin order to minimize war and maximize peace.Rationalists contend that actors are basically rational actors who seekthe maximization of their interests, interests being understood primarilyin material terms and often calculated by utility functions maximizinggiven preferences? Interpretivists include postmodernists, critical theorists,and feminists, all of whom argue that basically the extant worldpolitical praxis or discourses “constitute” international agents and therebydetermine their actions, even as they reproduce world politics by ...


Author(s):  
Yu.V. IRKHIN

The article analyzes the problems, achievements and contradictions in the genesis of the contemporary postmodern discourse. The author has carried out complex research, systematized and showed the main features and differences of postmodernism and metamodernism, as well as the role of neoliberal values in their development. The author has considered a new approach to the study of society and politics: neomodernist discourse with the dominant conservative values, opposing postmodern theory, methodology and practice he has identified the features of neomodernism: historicism, patriotism and healthy nationalism, populism, transactionalismn and realism in the world politics.


Author(s):  
Michael Goodhart

Chapter 3 engages with realist political theory throughcritical dialogues with leading realist theorists. It argues that realist political theories are much more susceptible to conservatism, distortion, and idealization than their proponents typically acknowledge. Realism is often not very realistic either in its descriptions of the world or in its political analysis. While realism enables the critical analysis of political norms (the analysis of power and unmasking of ideology), it cannot support substantive normative critique of existing social relations or enable prescriptive theorizing. These two types of critique must be integrated into a single theoretical framework to facilitate emancipatory social transformation.


Author(s):  
Bart Vandenabeele

Schopenhauer explores the paradoxical nature of the aesthetic experience of the sublime in a richer way than his predecessors did by rightfully emphasizing the prominent role of the aesthetic object and the ultimately affirmative character of the pleasurable experience it offers. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the sublime does not appeal to the superiority of human reason over nature but affirms the ultimately “superhuman” unity of the world, of which the human being is merely a puny fragment. The author focuses on Schopenhauer’s treatment of the experience of the sublime in nature and argues that Schopenhauer makes two distinct attempts to resolve the paradox of the sublime and that Schopenhauer’s second attempt, which has been neglected in the literature, establishes the sublime as a viable aesthetic concept with profound significance.


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