Suchergebnisse

Despite renewed interest in the Schmittian problematic of the exception as the constitutive principle of the political, the full significance of Schmitt's political philosophy remains underestimated. Starting from Schmitt's account of the relation between the constituted order and its constitutive principle, the decision on exception, this article outlines a broader discursive space that is here called the political ontology of exceptionalism and articulates three theses that describe the ways in which all forms of order are constituted, sustained, and undermined by various functions of the exception.

Political Pedagogy of Technical Assistance is a study of the effects of EU technical assistance to socioeconomic reforms in contemporary Russia on the formation of postcommunist forms of government. Taking its point of departure in the work of Michel Foucault and the contemporary studies in governmentality, the study poses the question of how the new social order is instituted in local and mundane processes of the transfer of European professional and managerial practices to the Russian counterparts. The empirical focus of the book is on three EU Tacis projects undertaken in the Russian Republic of Karelia during 1997-2002. The analysis of these EU practices comprises three dimensions that correspond to Foucauldian axes of historical ontology: archaeology, genealogy and ethics. Firstly, the author undertakes an archaeological analysis of the discourse of technical assistance in order to reconstitute the structure of the mode of governmentality, actualized in these practices. The second part of the study features a genealogical interpretation of the historical conditions of the emergence of this mode of governmentality and discusses its integration into the overall field of socioeconomic reforms implemented in contemporary Russia. Finally, the study ventures an ethical critique of technical assistance as a governmental practice and raises the question of the possibility of a concept and practice of freedom that is not tied to governmental subjectification. These three analytical strategies serve to enhance the understanding of the role of EU technical assistance in the Russian politics of the emergence of postcommunist forms of state-society relations. ; Political Pedagogy of Technical Assistance is a study of the effects of EU technical assistance to socioeconomic reforms in contemporary Russia on the formation of postcommunist forms of government. Taking its point of departure in the work of Michel Foucault and the contemporary studies in governmentality, the study poses the question of how the new social order is instituted in local and mundane processes of the transfer of European professional and managerial practices to the Russian counterparts. The empirical focus of the book is on three EU Tacis projects undertaken in the Russian Republic of Karelia during 1997-2002. The analysis of these EU practices comprises three dimensions that correspond to Foucauldian axes of historical ontology: archaeology, genealogy and ethics. Firstly, the author undertakes an archaeological analysis of the discourse of technical assistance in order to reconstitute the structure of the mode of governmentality, actualized in these practices. The second part of the study features a genealogical interpretation of the historical conditions of the emergence of this mode of governmentality and discusses its integration into the overall field of socioeconomic reforms implemented in contemporary Russia. Finally, the study ventures an ethical critique of technical assistance as a governmental practice and raises the question of the possibility of a concept and practice of freedom that is not tied to governmental subjectification. These three analytical strategies serve to enhance the understanding of the role of EU technical assistance in the Russian politics of the emergence of postcommunist forms of state-society relations.

The Northwestern Federal District of the Russian Federation has been particularly active in asserting itself as a macro-regional political subject, transcending the administrative borders of the subjects of the Russian Federation. This affirmation of the Northwest as a macro-region is also characterised by the explicit location of the Federal District within the international regional context and the linkage of the newly elaborated strategic development plans with EU policies in the region, particularly the Northern Dimension. This strategic policy discourse is grounded in the problematisation of the existing format of EU-Russian cooperation on the regional level as marked by the passivity of Russian regions vis-à-vis EU policies. The district-level strategies proceed, on the contrary, from the need to assume a more active and assertive position towards the EU that would allow to integrate the policies of the Northern Dimension with the domestic reform vision in Russia. The paper seeks to analyse the international dimensions of the strategic discourse of the Northwestern 'macro-region', elucidate the conflict episodes and conflict issues that are articulated in this discourse and address the wider implications of the emergence of the Northwestern Federal District for the EU-Russian regional cooperation in the border regions.

The article seeks to map the emergent discursive field of conservatism in Russian politics in the context of the reshapement of the political space in the Putin presidency. In the course of Putin's first presidential term 'conservatism' became a privileged mode of political selfidentification in the Russian discourse, functioning as the nodal point of the hegemonic project of the Presidency. Yet, in accordance with the Foucauldian understanding of discourse as a system of dispersion, the article demonstrates the way the conservative discourse is internally fractured into two antagonistic strands, identified by their practitioners as liberal and left conservatisms. While the liberal-conservative orientation supports and sustains the depoliticising project of the Putin presidency, which orders and stabilises the effects of the anti-communist revolution, left conservatism functions in the modality of radical opposition to the Putinian hegemony, thereby contributing to the pluralisation of political space in contemporary Russia. In the present Russian political constellation 'conservatism' is therefore less a name for a stable hegemonic configuration than a designator of the field of political struggle over the very identity of postcommunist Russia. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the relation the two strands of Russian conservatism establish to the period of the 1990s as the 'moment of the political' in the Russian postcommunist transformation.

Bringing together an international group of philosophers as well as political and IR international relations theorists, this collection mobilizes the insights of modern philosophy and the lessons of contemporary politics to develop a new concept of universalism that would be adequate to European politics in the context of globalization and multiculturalism. Europe is reinterpreted as a 'singular universal', not a model that could be a source of identification, but rather a hypothetical, regulative, or virtual principle that consists in perpetual self-transgression and openness towards the other. The chapters in this volume elaborate this principle by critically re-engaging with the history of European universalism and addressing its contemporary functioning in the politics of European integration and European foreign policy. As a study in the conceptual foundations of contemporary European politics, this book will be of interest to a wide readership interested in global politics and international relations.

This Critical Exchange is the result of two workshops held at the University of Edinburgh and the University of St. Andrews in November 2016. We thank the commentators at these events – Nathan Coombs, Patrick Hayden, Tony Lang and Nick Rengger – for their helpful feedback on the presentations. For institutional support, we owe gratitude to our home universities and Edinburgh University Press. Finally, we are grateful to Andrew Schaap for inviting us to edit the papers as a Critical Exchange for Contemporary Political Theory. ; Peer reviewed

A collection of several critiques of R. B. J Walker's book After the Globe, Before the World (2010) are presented. Adapted from the source document.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Agamben and Radical Politics -- 1. Capitalism as Religion -- 2. Glory, Spectacle and Inoperativity: Agamben's Praxis of Theoria -- 3. On Property and the Philosophy of Poverty: Agamben and Anarchism -- 4. 'Man Produces Universally': Praxis and Production in Agamben and Marx -- 5. Liturgical Labour: Agamben on the Post-Fordist Spectacle -- 6. An Alogical Space of Genetic Reintrication: Notes on an Element of Giorgio Agamben's Method -- 7. Zoē aiōniōs: Giorgio Agamben and the Critique of Katechontic Time -- Agamben and the Critique of Katechontic Time 141 Nicholas Heron -- 9. Form-of-Life and Antagonism: On Homo Sacer and Operaismo -- 10. What Is a Form-of-Life?: Giorgio Agamben and the Practice of Poverty -- 11. Law and Life beyond Incorporation: Agamben, Highest Poverty and the Papal Legal Revolution -- Notes on Contributors -- Index

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Agamben and Colonialism -- I. Colonial States of Exception -- 1. Imperialism, Exceptionalism and the Contemporary World -- 2. The Management of Anomie: The State of Exception in Postcommunist Russia -- 3. The Cultural Politics of Exception -- II. Colonial Sovereignty -- 4. Indigenising Agamben: Rethinking Sovereignty in Light of the 'Peculiar' Status of Native Peoples -- 5. Reading Kenya's Colonial State of Emergency after Agamben -- 6. Colonial Sovereignty, Forms of Life and Liminal Beings in South Africa -- III. Biopolitics and Bare Life -- 7. Encountering Bare Life in Italian Libya and Colonial Amnesia in Agamben -- 8. Abandoning Gaza -- 9. Colonial Histories: Biopolitics and Shantytowns in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area -- IV. Method, History, Potentiality -- 10. The Paradigm of Colonialism -- 11. 'The work of men is not durable': History, Haiti and the Rights of Man -- 12. Potential Postcoloniality: Sacred Life, Profanation and the Coming Community -- Notes on Contributors -- Index