This episode is about the biggest story of the decade so far, COVID-19, or the coronavirus. But its also an episode with someone I’ve been wanting to have on the show for a long time, Garnet Kindervater.
Before we get started, just a few observations about the politics of the coronavirus itself. I don’t know if its fair to say viruses have a politics, but their human victims certainly do. And, as some of you may have been following, we’ve seen a big debate break out this week over a piece on the virus by Giorgio Agamben. Garnet and I don’t talk about Agamben in this interview. At the time of recording, we were only just becoming aware of this debate. But I want to talk a little bit about it before we get started, as I think its relevant to the interview you’re about to hear. Continue reading Episode 23: Coronavirus, Catastrophe & Agamben, with Garnet Kindervater→
Brexit & Beer, with Philip Cunliffe & Luke Ashworth
Welcome back, listeners, to what I hope you’ll agree is a very special episode of Fully Automated. As you know, the last two episodes have been focused on the Brexit debate, and whether or not the cause of the British left is best served by a departure from the European Union (EU), or by “remaining and rebelling” within the EU, in the hope of reforming it.
Two episodes ago, our guest was Lee Jones — an advocate of ’The Full Brexit.’ During the show, Jones advanced the idea that the ideals of the Left cannot be satisfied within the EU, whereas the most meaningful historic victories of the left have been achieved only by wielding the power of the state. Then, in our last episode, we heard a rebuttal of this idea from Luke Ashworth, who suggested that while the political entity we know as the modern state has played an important historical role for the Left, its time has been fleeting, and the forces of globalization are today of such power that any project of returning to sovereignty will prove inevitably fruitless.
Recorded late in the afternoon on Friday, March 29, in the lobby bar of the Toronto Sheraton, during the 60th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, this episode brings Jones and Ashworth back to the microphone, this time for a live, in person debate. To keep things cordial, we bought them a brace of beers. And they appreciated the gesture it would seem, as the exchange proved to be probably the most collegial airing of political grievances in podcast history.
A quick note for listeners: with the Parliamentary dynamics surrounding Brexit now in a state of rapid flux, we’ve here largely avoided the topic of whether or how Theresa May can at this stage secure her deal, and avoid a ‘drop out’ Brexit. That said, for listeners who are interested in a play-by-play analysis of what’s going on in the House of Commons, we can recommend staying tunes to Novara Media’s Tyske Sour. Today’s show featured Sienna Rodgers and Owen Jones, and looked at a number of important questions, including whether Theresa May is prepared to sacrifice the Conservative Party, in order to cede meaningful ground the Labour Party’s demands for a Common Market deal, and the various divisions within Labour on question of a second referendum.
Finally, the bar we were in was starting to get pretty noisy by the end of the session. We’ve done our best to clear up the sound, but we ask your patience all the same.
(PS: listeners coming to this page may be curious if Molloy has plans to release any t-shirts bearing his “Tortuga on Thames” slogan. He has not responded to our queries).
This section seeks to advance discussion at the intersection of speculation on future trajectories of International Relations as a discipline, and the increasing focus on utopian and/or dystopian visions and imaginaries in the domain of popular culture. We invite contributions that navigate and challenge the horizon of the possible within and beyond the discipline. Specifically, we seek papers that have an explicit forward-looking dimension in their method and/or approach, on the spectrum between scenario-based analysis or forecasting, and storytelling or speculative academic fiction.
Not to be confused with a call for works in the genre of futurism (i.e., prediction-making), contributors to these panels are invited instead to investigate their own disciplinary perspectives to assess possible times ahead. Panels may, for example, want to examine possible trends based on the confluence of a number of issues pertaining to technological change: How are current anxieties over automation and universal basic income reflected in IR, or affiliated literatures? Conversely, what role might IR have in narrating the complexities of a global order where ‘fully-automated luxury communism’ is not only possible but actively demanded? Or, equally, in reaction to such demands, to what extent might current trends in digitalization and media bespeak a re-modulation of social order around novel modes of control, and securitization? Finally, what can we say of the multitude-style content of the hashtags, memes, and aesthetics of newly invigorated ‘millennial’ leftist movements as they embrace and reorient, for example, the iconography of Soviet-era space exploration, in a politics of race- and gender-based liberation?
Panels should advertise in advance that they are actively soliciting audience involvement in their proceedings. We invite papers that address the themes indicated in the suggested panel titles below, but will consider alternative full panel proposals:
1. Back to the future? Engaging the techno-utopian visions of IRs past
2. A phantom menace? Emancipation and the specter of luxury communism
3. Battle at the binary stars? The politics of race, gender, and millennial singularity
4. Elysium? Fully-automated consumption vs the speculative limits of ecology
5. Age of Ultron? Artificial Intelligence and our possible global ethical futures
6. Orphan Black? Post-scarcity and intellectual property law
Details:
Venue: University of Economics (VSE) and Institute of International Relations (IIR), Prague
Dates: September 12-15, 2018
Conference Theme: ‘A New Hope’: Back to The Future of International Relations Section
Section Title: Technological Change and the Shape of an IR to Come (S43)
Closing date for submissions: February 1, 2018
Official conference hashtag: #EISAPEC18
For more details, and the submission form, see the Conference website: www.eisapec18.org
Sincerely,
Nicholas Kiersey (Ohio University): kiersey@ohio.edu
Laura Horn (University of Roskilde): lhorn@RUC.DK
– Section Chairs
Following Cynthia Weber’s recent post over at Duck of Minerva, there has been a lot of debate about the International Studies Association’s planned ‘Saphire Series’ for the upcoming annual conference in New Orleans. Some of that debate has been taking place at the #occupyirtheory/ipe Facebook group. With now over 175 comments, there have been a wide ranging set of proposals and ideas about the issues raised by the Series, and how to respond to them. Many will be using the #Ruby hashtag on Twitter to maintain communications on these issues as the conference proceeds. Another idea has been for people to list any panels they feel might offer the possibility of institutionally balancing the dominant ‘white, male and tenured’ voices the Series is showcasing. Interested readers can also follow the Twitter hashtag #RubySeries for updates on these panels.
Disclaimer: this list is based on suggestions made in context of an open and ongoing discussion at the OccupyIR group on Facebook, among other places, about ISA’s Sapphire Series. It is not intended as a way of ‘promoting’ select panels. It is merely a way for people to link their panels together in an expression of solidarity in response to the perceived elitism of the Sapphire series. If you are part of a panel that you do want listed, let me know. Similarly, if you do not want your panel listed, I am happy to remove it for you.
Ruby Series: Celebrating Multiple Voices in Conversation
Current as of 02/17/15 — 71 Panels!
Wednesday
WA10: Presidential Theme Panel: Advancing Global IR (I): Challenges And Prospects
WA11: Rethinking Silence, Voice and Agency in Feminist Approaches to Security
WA21: Local Actors and the Diffusion of Gender Norms in Developing Regions
WA41: Decolonizing Methods: New Tools for Global IR
WA52: Anti-Colonial Poetics and the Lived Experience of Politics
WA 56: Presidential Theme Panel – Indigenous Peoples, Values And Sovereignty, In The Study Of Global Politics
WB30: Presidential Theme Panel: Bandung+60: Legacies and Contradictions
WB31: Postcolonialism, Feminism And Global International Relations: Remembering The Legacy Of Geeta Chowdhry
WB78: Women’s Activism in Revolutions and Crises
WC18: Embodiment, Experience and War: Methodological Challenges and Reflections
WC19: Do We Know Gender in Peacebuilding? (I) Gender Mainstreaming and UNSCR 1325
WC40: Girls, Gender and the Post-2015 Global Development Agenda
WC60: Women in Conflict: Perspectives
WD02: FTGS Eminent Scholar Panel Honoring Shirin M. Rai
WD08: New Thinking on Religions and Civilizations in World Politics
WD52: Representation and Practice: Bodies, Borders and Orders of Security
WD58: Living Globalisation: Female Academics at Home and Abroad
Thursday
TA10: What’s Wrong with a Singular World?
TA11: Gendering International Organisations
TA 22: Race And International Relaons: A Debate Around John Hobson’s “The Eurocentric Conception Of World Politics”
TA30: Borders and Belonging: Gender, Nation, Ethnicity in Transnational Relations
TA29: roundtable on “(Everyday) Sexism in the Academy: Stories & Strategies”
TA38: roundtable: Does Russell Brand Have A Point, Or Does Being Cheeky Count As Revolution?
TA50: The End of Militarized Masculinity? Global Perspectives on Gender and Traveling Concepts
TA51: Is the Personal-National Globally Political? Theorizing the International Diffusion of LGBTQ Rights
TA69 Claiming a Voice: Politics in a World of Inequality.
TB30 Presidential Theme Panel – Feminist International Relations Today: A Discipline Transformed?
TB50: Global Feminist IR
TC02 Race and Racism in International Relations
TC06: Presidential Theme Panel – How The Search For ‘Non-Western IR’ Led To A Reflection Of The ‘Self’: (Un)Learning IR In And Beyond The Classroom
TC07: Globalizing International Studies Pedagogies
TC16: Gender and Human Rights, 1:45pm
TC21: Art as Subject, Art as Method
TC56: Decolonial Methodologies: Critiques and Experiences from the Fieldwork
TC72: Critical Friends and De(Con)Structure Critics: How Should Feminist Academics Engage with Global Institutions?
TD09: IR’s Eurocentric Limitations TD21: roundtable on “After Deepwater Horizon: Rebuilding Indigenous Communities After the BP Gulf Oil Disaster”
TD14: Colonial Legacies and Decolonizing Trajectories
TD33: Making Sense of Emotions, Politics and War
TD52: Global Human Trafficking and Gender
TD57: Global Masculinities in a Transnational World
Friday
FA13: Conceptualising the Use of Sexual Violence and Rape in War
FA22: Do Something: Activism, Responsibility and the Politics of ‘Helping’
FA47: Gendering the Global Political Economy
FB10: Presidential Theme Panel: Decolonizing the Western Academy: Postcolonial Challenges to Global IR
FB27: LGBT Issues and Diffusion
FB34: Queering/Querying Global Political Economy
FC01: Angela Davis honored as IPE section’s 2015 Outstanding Activist Scholar in New Orleans. (co-chaired by J. Ann Tickner and Hasmet M. Uluorta. More information will be coming shortly. If you have any questions please contact Hasmet — huluorta@trentu.ca )
FC19: Deconstructing Silence and Agency in Sites of Insecurity
FC26: Political Engagement and Political Alternatives in The Age of Austerity In Europe
FC27: Queering Global Politics: Destabilization or Disciplinarity
FC39 Presidential Theme Panel: Three Decades of Worlding IR: A roundtable Retrospective
FC55: Addressing Gender-Based Violence: Issues and Responses
FC57: Presidential Theme Panel “Postcolonialism, Race And IR: War, Capitalism, Segregation, Tribes, Literature”
FC72: Women in Conflict: Agency and Human Security
FC74: Sex Gender Violence Desire?
FD36: Queering IR Theory
FD37 Presidential Theme Panel/Global Development Distinguished Scholar Panel in Honors of Prof. Pal Ahluwalia
FD56: Presidential Theme Panel – W.E.B. Du Bois: The Global Color Line And North American IR
FD57: Making Bodies International
FD59: Gender-Based Violence in ‘War’ and ‘Peace’
Saturday
SA07: Regional Institution Building In Comparative Perspective
SA25: The Global Dead (II): Mourning, Suffering, Witnessing
SA31: Economic Development and Women’s (Dis)Empowerment
SA41: Art Matters: On the Aesthetics of Violence, Death and Memory
SA61: Queer Theory and the International
SA72: International Relations as the Crossroads of the Global and the Local
SB17: Beyond Biopolitics and Risk in Post 9/11 Critical Scholarship: The Affective Politics of the War on Terror and Beyond
SB47: Masculinities, Militarism and Feminist Security Studies
SB43: Bodies In/And/Of/For Global Health
SB54: Sexualised Violence, Surveillance and New Security Technologies
SB57: Presidential Theme Panel – 34 Ways To Say “International Relations”: The Teaching, Research And Interna
This episode is about the biggest story of the decade so far, COVID-19, or the coronavirus. But its also an episode with someone I’ve been wanting to have on the show for a long time, Garnet Kindervater.
The below is a call for papers for the section, Technological Change and the Shape of an IR to Come, at the 
You must be logged in to post a comment.