Michael Hardt, ‘The Right to the Common’ – A Response

What, if anything, unifies the expressions of public protest that ‘kicked off everywhere’ in 2010-11, from Dataran to Tunis to Zuccotti Park? If such a unity exists, to what extent are those engaged in the struggles self-consciously aware of it? And, if such a self-consciousness exists, to what extent does it help further the cause of social justice in a world beset by financial crisis and elite corruption? In his talk at Ohio University’s campus in Athens, last week, Michael Hardt argued that the main stake in this most recent “cycle of struggles” was the pursuit of a sort of ‘right to the common.’ While those in the movements were engaged in struggles that were spatially and temporally specific, he suggested, they were unified by a desire to resolve a contradiction that has become increasingly apparent in the context of the current financial crisis. That contradiction inheres in the fact that the main ideological wellsprings for resolving the crisis have essentially run dry. The flaws of neoliberalism, on the one hand, or the idea that the optimal distributive solutions are to be found through a doubling-down on the rationalizing logic of the market, are by now well-known. Conversely, on the other, the notion that a philosophy of ‘public goods’ can somehow guarantee “shared open access” to the common, a notion which Hardt understands in quite an expansive sense, is increasingly suspect given the draconian statist policies such a position can sometimes underwrite. Hardt’s thesis then, briefly stated, is that the commitment of the movements to a form of organization and decision-making that is essentially horizontal (my term, not his) in nature attests to a sort of emerging awareness of the need for an alternative to these ‘zombie’ ideologies. This spirit of horizontalism, he appeared to say, distinguishes the movements as engaged in a kind of “double combat.” That is, in their efforts to engage in a kind of radically democratic form of allocative management – an attempt beset by flaws to be sure, but a meaningful attempt nevertheless – horizontalism appears to adopt the following posture: “We win the public, but then we have to fight it for the common.”

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My Review of Zanotti: ‘Governing Disorder’ – H-Net Reviews

My review of Laura Zanotti’s Governing Disorder: UN Peace Operations, International Security, and Democratization in the Post-Cold War Era has been published over at H-Net Reviews. As I note, the book constitutes a refreshing attempt to break with the recent ‘life determinism’ tendency among critical Security Studies types. As I conclude, however, the book moves perhaps a little too quickly in dismissing the explanatory potential of Marxism:

Situating the UN’s bio-narrative in discourses of liberal securitization, as merely a technical means to a moral end, seems to play down the extent to which that moral end might actually be imagined in fairly economic terms. Marxism is a helpful guide, says Zanotti, to the extent that it can explore questions of uneven development as a condition which peacebuilding must then encounter. Yet Hardt and Negri’s Empire (2000) is subjected to a very casual dismissal for its “structural/dialectical conceptualization of history” (p. 4). This kind of shoehorning is unfortunate given both that Hardt and Negri have sought repeatedly to distinguish themselves from such reductionist thinking and that their work at the very least broaches the possibility that the events with which Zanotti’s book is concerned might also be inflected by economic imperatives and rationalities.

Battlestar Galactica & International Relations


Battlestar Galactica & International Relations

Battlestar Galactica and International Relations (Hardback) – Routledge.

Just a brief note to let you know the book I co-edited with Iver Neumann, Battlestar Galactica & International Relations, is now available. You can buy it on Amazon in hardback and Kindle formats here. A cheaper, paperback version of the book will be coming later this year. This project has been over two years in the making, and started with a random encounter at the bar at an ISA convention in New York. As the convention was taking place, the cast and crew of the show were addressing the United Nations, just up the road, on the plight of child soldiers! We were pretty blown away by the idea that such an encounter was even possible. And we got talking… well, what WAS “BSG’s” political message, anyway? At the following year’s ISA in New Orleans, we held a panel wherein we discussed some ideas about the show and noticed that, well, some IR folk were *serious* fans of the show:

bsg panel

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Tidal 4 – Coming Soon!

Of interest, a new issue of Tidal (No. 4) is coming out on Friday. From the Facebook page:

Tidal 4 is being released this Friday evening. At this event, you can pick up your own free copy of Tidal 4. It will include original, commissioned contributions from many organizers of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Sandy and Strike Debt, such as Shyam Khanna, Pamela Brown, Sofia Gallisa, Ann Larson, Nastaran Mohit, Harrison Magee, among others, as well as known thinkers such as Michael Hardt, Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis, John Holloway, and Chantal Mouffe. Collective pieces from Tidal Team and friends (Nick Mirzoeff, Andrew Ross, Nicole Hala, Nathan Schneider, among others) and a Student Movement piece from Free University folks. At this beautiful event, we welcome you to great conversation and presentations by many of the contributors and friends.

Tidal is available from the Occupy Theory site.

Times Higher Education – High price of gold: How early career researchers will suffer

The kids done good! Ninja OpenIR theorists get mention in THE on open access publishing:

In an independent submission, Paul Kirby of the University of Sussex and Meera Sabaratnam of the University of Cambridge also list retired academics, independent scholars and non-governmental organisation researchers as among the academic “poor” who might suffer in a model where universities pay publishing costs.

via Times Higher Education – High price of gold: How early career researchers will suffer.