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How did the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement of 2020 resonate at a global level? And how did the ritual practices of the movement spread internationally? International Relations (IR) has seen increasing interest in the role of rituals in global politics, and the wider literature on rituals often explores their stabilizing effects while noting how rituals function by working on the collective emotions of participants. Yet what particular kinds of emotional processes lend rituals their power? And how do these ritual emotions disrupt prevailing power structures? This article proposes that conceptualizing these experiences as ritualized atmospheres opens up at least two new avenues for research on rituals, emotions, and global social movements in IR. First, ritualized atmospheres are characterized by their viscerally felt yet also intangible and diffuse features. These tensions offer an affective account of rituals' often-noted constitutive dual pull between the materialization of political communities while also constructing them as emotionally charged abstractions. Second, the tensions and ambiguities of ritualized atmospheres can generate new horizons for thoughts and actions. Ambient shifts in collective mood can change what may be thought, said, and practiced within ritual contexts, allowing for new discourses and new forms of political action. The article pursues the question of BLM's global resonance by way of developing these conceptual and empirical arguments.

AbstractInternational Relations (IR) has rarely considered rhythm as a topic of analytical attention. Yet rhythms permeate many social and political phenomena, and their study contributes to core debates and empirical insights in contemporary IR. Rhythms are similar to but distinct from other forms of repetitive, iterative social action that have garnered increasing interest in IR, such as practices, habits, and routines. Each of these phenomena has rhythmic elements, but not all rhythmic phenomena are practical, habitual, or routine. Rhythm, then, is a distinct category of iterative action that is effectively positioned to unpack a wider array of practices in a broader range of cases. Moreover, contrary to common conceptions as simple repetition, the multiplicity and dynamism of social rhythms hold the potential to produce novel political formations. This article outlines a framework for the study of rhythms in IR by delineating some key features of social rhythms and three kinds of sociopolitical effects that they have in collective contexts. These theoretical developments are empirically applied to understand neglected aspects of mass mobilization during the Arab uprisings of 2011.

The concept of soft power occupies a prominent place in International Relations, foreign policy, and security studies. Primarily developed by Joseph S. Nye, the concept is typically drawn upon to emphasize the more intangible dimensions of power in a field long dominated by overtly material (i.e. military) power. Recently, some scholars have reframed soft power — specifically the key notion of attraction — as a narrative and linguistic process. This literature, however, has downplayed some of the other deep-seated underpinnings of soft power, which this article argues lie in the dynamics of affect. Building upon the International Relations affect and aesthetics literatures, this article develops the concept of soft power as rooted in the political dynamics of emotion and introduces the concept of affective investment. The attraction of soft power stems not only from its cultural influence or narrative construction, but more fundamentally from audiences' affective investments in the images of identity that it produces. The empirical import of these ideas is offered in an analysis of the construction of American attraction in the war on terror.

Critically inclined International Relations (IR) scholars have recently turned to examining the issue of time and its implications for world politics. However, there has yet to be a thorough account of how a focus on temporality deepens our understanding of one of the field's core concepts: subjectivity. Drawing upon insights from psychoanalytic theory, this paper argues that the discursive decentering of subjectivity (long a focus in poststructuralist IR) is bound to the subject's temporal decentering. Moreover, conceptualizing these together helps to account for the underexplored role of desire in subject formation. The paper thus draws together insights regarding discourse, desire, and identity to offer a more comprehensive theory of the subject in IR and a richer account of the social construction process in general. The empirical import of these ideas is illustrated with regard to the function of temporality and desire in the politics of the US-led war on terror. Adapted from the source document.

Since 2003, scholars and pundits alike have vigorously debated the role of neoconservatism in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. Few, however, have examined the power of neoconservatism in terms of its resonance on an affective level. To more fully understand the influence that neoconservatism has had in recent US foreign policy debates, this article argues that scholarly analyses should also examine what could be termed its discursive efficacy. Neoconservatism incorporates many images and symbols of what many Americans would consider as being 'American', and the affective force of this discourse is vital in understanding its resonance with audiences. Employing insights from psychoanalytic theory, this article argues that a critically under-examined aspect of neoconservatism's varying influence on US foreign policy debates is found in the kinds of identifications that it offers audiences. The article, in this sense, contributes to the growing literature on neoconservatism, and raises the under-explored issue of resonance for the study of security discourses.