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AbstractIn the aftermath of the 7th July 2005 bombings in London, communication with those searching desperately for relatives and friends was one-way or non-existent. The authorities dealing with the processes of the identification of the bodies of those killed or the treatment of those injured adopted procedures and protocols derived from emergency or disaster planning that were framed in terms of an instrumentalisation or objectification of persons. This article traces how these procedures reflect biopolitical forms of global governance that involve the production of life as 'bare life' and details how inappropriate and brutal these forms of governance seemed both to those searching for the missing and to the London Assembly 7th July Review Committee. It concludes that attention needs to be paid to the proliferation of such forms of politics as administration and the objectification they entail before we reach a stage where all life becomes nothing more than bare life, life with no political voice as such.

In the aftermath of the 7th July 2005 bombings in London, communication with those searching desperately for relatives and friends was one-way or non-existent. The authorities dealing with the processes of the identification of the bodies of those killed or the treatment of those injured adopted procedures and protocols derived from emergency or disaster planning that were framed in terms of an instrumentalisation or objectification of persons. This article traces how these procedures reflect biopolitical forms of global governance that involve the production of life as 'bare life' and details how inappropriate and brutal these forms of governance seemed both to those searching for the missing and to the London Assembly 7th July Review Committee. It concludes that attention needs to be paid to the proliferation of such forms of politics as administration and the objectification they entail before we reach a stage where all life becomes nothing more than bare life, life with no political voice as such. Adapted from the source document.

In the current situation of the so-called 'war on terror' the question of political activism in the face of an oppressive hegemony becomes acutely important. The role of academics and intellectuals in this context is the particular focus of this forum. Questions of agency, subjectivity and activism more broadly are raised, but the specific location of the international relations scholar needs to be considered too. Are scholars inevitably already politically located, as everyone is, or is there a sense in which they have a particular responsibility to discharge? How might one begin to imagine a different, perhaps oppositional, form of engagement, and what can this lead to in practice? Contributions engage with questions of normative consciousness, the specificity of cosmopolitanism and its disregard of the postcolonial experience, and forms of activism and contestation that exist already, as well as considering in more theoretical terms what possibilities for a different and more thoroughly ethico-political mode of engagement there might be.