Constructing Global Enemies asks how and why specific interpretations of international terrorism and drug abuse have become hegemonic at the global level. The book analyses the international discourses on terrorism and drug prohibition and compares efforts to counter both, not only from a contemporary but also from a historical perspective. Utilising poststructuralist theory of the relationship between hegemony and identity, Herschinger argues that hegemony is much more than just the dominance of a single country in international life; rather it is (...) the emergence of a hegemonic order that can best be understood as the production of a new collective identity. Offering an in-depth discussion of the methodology of discourse analysis, the book explores how such hegemonies emerge and persist in the field of security. This serves to explain the widespread disagreement regarding the fight against international terrorism as well as the successful suppression of counter-hegemonic projects in the field of international drug prohibition. Constructing Global Enemies will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations and security studies." from paperback back cover. (shrink)

Foreword -- 1. The War Within -- 2. The Cult of Experience -- 3. The Long March -- 4. America's Transformers -- 5. American Restoration -- 6. Twenty-twenty Vision -- Acknowledgments.

Drug-trafficking in Colombia has been a widely researched phenomenon, especially now, as the country undergoes a transition process with its older guerrilla. Now more than ever it is fundamental to examine how drug-trafficking organizations violent activities affect the consolidation of peace. This article considers different approaches to study violence derived from drug-trafficking, in order to advance towards the objectives of transitional justice. For that matter, this work is based on the idea that drug-trafficking directly generates and reproduces violence which is (...) fueled by the structural violence present in the Colombian context. My thesis is that this phenomenon deters non-repetition guarantees and weakens democracy, which is why there will be three main arguments presented that will revolve around the lack of consensus and the implications of considering drug wars as civil wars, how decisions related to the conceptual apprehension limit the competence of international humanitarian law, and the need for holistic strategies capable of facing drug-trafficking’s political and violent power. Later, alternatives will be explored around the possibilities that each argument offers, as well as which aspects could contribute to a more appropriate approach to combat drug-trafficking. Lastly, I will defend why implementing bottom-up oriented actions can advance towards transitional justice’s intermediate and final objectives, as it is the only alternative that escapes fatalist, utopian or interventionist scenarios. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper considers some aspects of the reception and development of contemporary mathematics in Spain during the first half of the twentieth century, more specifically between 1910 and 1950. It analyzes the possible influence of scientists’ mobility in the adoption of newer views or theories. A short overview of key points of the social and scientific background in nineteenth-century Spain locates the expounded facts in an appropriate context. Three leading threads are followed. First is the consideration of the mobility of (...) some Spanish mathematicians during a period including World War I and World War II – when Spain was a theoretically neutral country – and the Spanish Civil War. Second, the emergence and socio-political behavior of a dominant mathematical group gathered around Julio Rey Pastor between 1915 and 1936 is also accounted for, as well as its continuity after the Civil War into the 1940s. Third, attention is paid to the migration or interior exile of a number of mathematicians as a consequence of the Civil War. The paper is organized around nine Tables containing information on mobility of mathematicians, doctorates awarded in the mathematical sciences, and mathematical production in Spain during this period, accompanied by statistical résumés and comments on interesting entries. The main conclusions drawn are: 1) a number of integrants of the Rey group, himself included, officially traveled to Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland – usually after having obtained doctorates and fixed positions – imported mathematical knowledge into Spain; 2) the group also managed to dominate the mathematical panorama from both the scientific and the sociological viewpoint; 3) social usages in Spanish mathematical affairs established in Spain in the years prior to the Civil War present a clear continuity under the Franco regime once the war was over. (shrink)

We can no longer speak of a state of war in any traditional sense, yet there is currently no viable theory to account for the manifold internal conflicts, or civil wars, that increasingly afflict the world's populations. Meant as a first step toward such a theory, Giorgio Agamben's latest book looks at how civil war was conceived of at two crucial moments in the history of Western thought: in ancient Athens (from which the political concept of stasis (...) emerges) and later, in the work of Thomas Hobbes. It identifies civil war as the fundamental threshold of politicization in the West, an apparatus that over the course of history has alternately allowed for the de-politicization of citizenship and the mobilization of the unpolitical. The arguments herein, first conceived of in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, have become ever more relevant now that we have entered the age of planetary civil war. (shrink)

Violence -- Poliltical philosophy -- Critical theory -- Science and arts in international relations -- Psyche -- Aesthetics -- Tolstoi's War and peace.

Offers a careful analysis of how Aristotle understands civil war, partisanship, distrust in government, disagreement, and competition, and explores ways in which these views are relevant to contemporary political theory. Do only modern thinkers like Machiavelli and Hobbes accept that conflict plays a significant role in the origin and maintenance of political community? In this book, Steven Skultety argues that Aristotle not only took conflict to be an inevitable aspect of political life, but further recognized ways (...) in which conflict promotes the common good. While many scholars treat Aristotelian conflict as an absence of substantive communal ideals, Skultety argues that Aristotle articulated a view of politics that theorizes profoundly different kinds of conflict. Aristotle comprehended the subtle factors that can lead otherwise peaceful citizens to contemplate outright civil war, grasped the unique conditions that create hopelessly implacable partisans, and systematized tactics rulers could use to control regrettable, but still manageable, levels of civic distrust. Moreover, Aristotle conceived of debate, enduring disagreement, social rivalries, and competitions for leadership as an indispensable part of how human beings live well together in successful political life. By exploring the ways in which citizens can be at odds with one another, Conflict in Aristotle’s Political Philosophy presents a dimension of ancient Greek thought that is startlingly relevant to contemporary concerns about social divisions, constitutional crises, and the range of acceptable conflict in healthy democracies. “Through debate with other scholars, this book clarifies the meaning of stasis, a central term in Aristotle’s Politics; speculates about the limits of Aristotle’s notion of practical wisdom; and puts in dialogue Aristotle’s historical thought with contemporary debates about the nature of political conflict.” — Thornton Lockwood, Quinnipiac University. (shrink)

What are the ethical principles underpinning the idea of a just war and how should they be adapted to changing social and military circumstances? In this book, Steven P. Lee presents the basic principles of just war theory, showing how they evolved historically and how they are applied today in global relations. He examines the role of state sovereignty and individual human rights in the moral foundations of just war theory and discusses a wide range of topics including humanitarian intervention, (...) preventive war, the moral status of civilians and enemy combatants, civil war and terrorism. He shows how just war theory relates to both pacifism and realism. Finally, he considers the future of war and the prospects for its obsolescence. His clear and wide-ranging discussion, richly illustrated with examples, will be invaluable for students and other readers interested in the ethical challenges posed by the changing nature of war. (shrink)

A quarterback like Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers gambles with a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game when he has nothing to lose - the risky throw might turn defeat into victory, or end in a meaningless interception. Rodgers may not realize it, but he has much in common with figures such as George Washington, Rosa Parks, Woodrow Wilson, and Adolph Hitler, all of whom changed the modern world with their risk-loving decisions. In The Power of Nothing (...) to Lose, award-winning economist William Silber explores the phenomenon in politics, war, and business, where situations with a big upside and limited downside trigger gambling behavior like with a Hail Mary. Silber describes in colorful detail how the American Revolution turned on such a gamble. The famous scene of Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night to attack the enemy may not look like a Hail Mary, but it was. Washington said days before his risky decision, "If this fails I think the game will be pretty well up." Rosa Parks remained seated in the White section of an Alabama bus, defying local segregation laws, an act that sparked the modern civil rights movement in America. It was a life-threatening decision for her, but she said, "I was not frightened. I just made up my mind that as long as we accepted that kind of treatment it would continue, so I had nothing to lose. (shrink)

Few issues cause academics to disagree more than gender and race, especially when topics are addressed in terms of biological differences. To conduct research in these areas or comment favorably on research can subject one to scorn. When these topics are addressed, they generally take the form of philosophical debates. Anthony Walsh focuses upon such debates and supporting research. He divides parties into biologists and social constructionists, arguing that biologists remain focused on laboratory work, while constructionists are acutely aware of (...) the impact of biologists in contested territories. "Science Wars" introduces the ideas motivating the parties and examines social constructionism and its issues with science. He explores arguments over conceptual tools scientists love and constructionists abhor, and he provides a solid discussion of the co-evolution of genes and culture. Walsh then focuses his attention on gender, how constructionists view it, and the neuroscience explanation of gender differences. Moving to race, Walsh looks at how some have tried to bury the concept of race, while others emphasize it. He considers definitions of race--essentialist, taxonomic, population, and lineage--as they have evolved from the time of the Enlightenment to the present. And finally, he attempts to bring the opposing sides together by pointing out what each can bring to a meaningful discussion. (shrink)

The politics of Mary Kaldor -- Militarism and the state -- European nuclear disarmament -- Linking peace and human rights -- Politics "from below" -- Independent civil society -- Dealignment, Helsinki citizens, and Moscow -- The problem of intervention to stop war -- The politics of violence -- Safe havens and protectorates -- New wars -- Rethinking intervention -- Human security -- The future of security?

A highly original history, tracing civil war, the least understood and most intractable form of organized human aggression, from Ancient Rome through the centuries to present day.

The International Criminal Court's intervention into the ongoing civil war in northern Uganda evoked a chorus of confident predictions as to its capacity to bring peace and justice to the war-torn region. However, this optimism is unwarranted.

The latest discussions about civil society have been reconsidering the globalization processes, and the theoretical discourse has been broadened to include the notion of the global civil society. The notion and the practice of a civil society are being globalized in a way that reflects the empirical processes of inter-connecting societies and of shaping a world society. From the normative-mobilizing perspective, civil society activists and theoreticians stress the need to defend the world society from the global (...) threat of a nuclear war, environmental catastrophes, crime and violence, domination of world powers over the fate of individual countries and societies, i.e. the need to oppose the tendency of “power policy” on the world level, and to defend the autonomy of the society as one compatible primarily with the expansion of policies based on the rule of law worldwide, and incompatible with the policy of force, state reasons, and domination of world power-centers. The globalization processes result in a conflicting and/or assimilative crossing of civilizations and cultures, as well as controversial tendencies of, on one hand, attempts for the introduction of international political institutions and the adoption of international conventions for human rights’ protection, for the defense of democratic values, for combating terrorism and segregation on various grounds, thus leading to a global standardization of the human-rights culture and of democratic political and legal order, and on the other, of rising xenophobia, particularization and ethno nationalism, civil wars, ecological threats, global terrorism, threat of hunger problem, nuclear war, new disease, etc. Contemporary victory of liberal and democratic values is the positive reach, but followed by the contested issue of sovereignty, urban decay, racism, ethnic cleansing, xenophobia, failing political legitimacy , and followed at the world scale by: global injustice, poverty, environmental dangers, mass and deadly diseases, oppression of minority groups, relentless growth of population, political and economic power great asymmetries, terrorism at the global scale, threat of a nuclear disaster, etc. Global civil society has three dimensions: 1) empirical phenomena of globalized social relations, interconnections, 2) mobilizing, formative force of the project/vision, and 3) social actors at the global/transnational level. The anti-globalization movement is an effort to counter perceive negative aspects of the current process of globalization. Although adherents of the movement often work in concert, the movement itself is heterogeneous and includes diverse, sometimes opposing, understandings of this process, alternative visions, strategies and tactics. Thus, more nuanced terms include anti-capitalist/anti-corporate alternative globalization. Participants may use the positive terms such as ‘global justice’ or ‘fair trade movement’; or ‘Global Justice and Solidarity Movement’; or ‘Movement of Movements’; or simply ‘The Movement’; or ‘anticorporatist capitalism movement’. Generally speaking, anti-globalization movement is not so much an opposition to globalization as such than an opposition to the particular way it is taking place – like neoliberal process of globalization. In that sense, many representatives of the Movement prefer to be called altermondialism. (shrink)

The act of iudicare hostes (‘declare public enemy’) was a formal pronouncement of the Roman Senate, voted for the first time in 88 BCE following a proposal by L. Cornelius Sulla after his first march on Rome. Legal historians have generally interpreted it as an emergency measure intended to preserve legality in a situation of civil strife and viewed it as a consistently defined institutional framework throughout the final decades of the Republic. Through an analysis of Sulla’s performative (...) class='Hi'>political communication, before, during and in the immediate aftermath of the march, this paper argues that the act of judging (iudicare) someone a public enemy (hostis publicus) was first deployed as a political action, void of legal effects. Later instances of iudicare suggest that this act underwent a process of institutionalization after 63 BCE. (shrink)

Writing in the foreword to Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and speaking of his upbringing in Chicago between the wars Saul Bellow attests that …as a Midwesterner, the son of immigrant parents, I recognized at an early stage that I was called upon to decide for myself to what extent my Jewish origins, my surroundings [‘the accidental circumstances of Chicago’], my schooling, were to be allowed to determine the course of my life. I did not intend to (...) be wholly dependent upon history and culture. Full dependency must mean that I was done for. The commonest teaching of the civilized world in our time can be stated simply: ‘Tell me where you come from and I'll tell you what you are’. (shrink)

The discussion of the American Civil War as a bourgeois revolution, reopened by John Ashworth’s recent work, needs to be based on a more explicit conceptualisation of what the category does, and does not, involve. This essay offers one such conceptualisation. It then deals with two key issues raised by the process of bourgeois revolution in the United States: the relationship between the War of Independence and the Civil War, and whether the nature of the South made conflict (...) unavoidable. It then argues that the American Revolution is unique for two reasons: the non-feudal nature of Southern society and the fact that the Northern industrial bourgeoisie, unlike their European contemporaries, were still prepared to behave in a revolutionary way. (shrink)

A leading scholar of humanitarian intervention, Brown (2002) refers to British internal politics to satisfy the influential church and other non-conformist libertarian community leaders, and above all ?undermining Britain's competitors, such as Spain and Portugal, who were still reliant on slave labour to power their economies, as the principal motivation for calls to end the slave trade than any genuine humanitarian concerns of racial equality or global justice?. Drawing on an empirical exploration, this article seeks to draw a parallel between (...) this politics of humanitarian intervention which characterised the abolition movement, albeit rarely recognised in the academic literature, and the British intervention to end the almost 11 year civil war in Sierra Leone. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of this politics of humanitarian intervention in the reconstruction of post-conflict Sierra Leone. (shrink)

Plutarch’s exuberant writings reaped praise in both antique and modern times. Various aspects of his work have been amply studied and analysed, yet some remain less discussed. This paper therefore aims to contribute to the ongoing research of his works by examining Plutarch’s references to stasis in general, and more particularly to the Roman civil wars. Plutarch lived through the civil wars of 69 CE, and although he did not suffer by experiencing them directly, these events no doubt (...) contributed to his views on the role of stasis and civil war, especially in Roman history. While Plutarch does not openly express his convictions on these events, especially not on contemporary occurrences, civil unrest is nevertheless a deliberate and significant theme in all of his writings. This paper presents various examples from Plutarch’s work which illuminate his particular understanding of Roman civil dissension and the ways in which he cleverly and meticulously approached this issue, being aware of the threat it may have posed him during the principate. (shrink)

Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, 1640?1649. By David L. Smith (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xiv + 371 pp. Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660?1685. By Alan Marshall (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xvi + 334 pp. Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678?81. By Mark Knights (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xv + 424 pp.

continent. 2.1 (2012): 29–35. Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "Politieke Poëzie: Enige aantekeningen, Poëtica bij N30 (versie 2006)." In Weerstandbeleid: Nieuwe kritiek . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. L’égalité veut d’autres lois . —Eugène Pottier The modern poem does not have form but consistency (that is sensed), no content but a problem (that is developed). Consistency + problem = composition. The problem of modern poetry is capitalism. Capitalism—which has no (...) image: the unrepresentable Idea of “everything.” The problem is that a poem cannot be justified. There is no excuse for it. Political poetry— pure poetry—has to be problematic, though not in a mannerist way. Yes, its problem is first its own problem—poetry’s existence in the same world as the newspaper—but therefore also always everybody’s problem (the problem of any world at all). The cult of the sublime points at a suspect desire for transcendence, nostalgia for paradise lost (the womb?). Melancholia of the post-. But a problem neither sorrows nor mourns, it is alive, and the fact that it is alive is the problem—the problem for death (rigidity, the status quo). Our symbols and ideologies do not hide any god: symbolic = state; imaginary = human; real = money. Problem: the possibility of communal speech (poetry) in the absence of a “we.” Or: what is a “we” that is not a collective subject (or in any case is not a volonté générale )? What is a universal history that is not a History? This work was started in the shade of the anti-globalization protests at the end of November 1999. I considered N30 to be the closure of the nineties, of my adolescence, and of the a seemingly total extinction of social desire. From the beginning I was skeptical about the alterglobalization movement as the avant-garde of a new politics, but something was happening . Maybe this event did not show that, as the slogan would have it, “another world” is possible, but for me it indicated that such possibility was at least still possible. That naked possibility is carrying forward. And if the fundamental tone of this work sounds more desperate than utopian, this is not caused by the catastrophic sequence that since 1999 has plunged us ever deeper into the right-wing nightmare—a nightmare that this work also gives an account for—but because my hope as yet remains empty. Composition . Composition is no design, but the production of an autonomous block of affects (i.e. a POEM), rhythmically subtracted from the language of a community. A poem does something. Is something. New Sentence . Choosing the non sequitur as compositional unit has the advantage that an abstract composition is subjected to the stress of concrete, social references. Where there is a sentence, there is always a world. (This does not hold necessarily for words on their own.) And where sentences collide, something akin to a textual civil war takes place. It is not about “undermining” whatever, or de-scribing the raging global civil war, but about writing social (or even: ontological) antagonism -- including all its catastrophic and utopian possibilities. Minor resistance. Why would poetry be the no protest zone par excellence? It is nothing but protest, not simply qua “content,” but in its most fundamental essence: rhythm. Rhythm is resistance against language, time, and space, and the basis of (what we will continue to call) autonomy. Rhythm starts with the anti-rhythmic caesura as Hölderlin remarked about Sophocles, a disruption of the quotidian drone. The destruction of everything that is dead inside of us. The noise of the avant-garde has never been the representation of the noise of (post)modernity (from the television or shopping mall), but the sober noise of the systematic exchange of an unbearable worldview. The poet does not describe, but looks for a way out: There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, tis translucent & has many Angles But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven William Blake was not mad. And there has always been only one poetry: the poetry of paradise. The principle is that there is something in art (the essentially creative element) that is disgusted by that which, unlike art, does not aim for the supreme. Wonder is not supreme, tranquility is not supreme, beauty is not supreme. Even amusement is not supreme! The supreme is supremely open, “das Einfache,/ Das Schwer zu machen ist” 1 : paradise. That is abstract. Literally. For me it is not about a concrete imagination, an idyll or utopia. There is no doubt a need for that, but it is not so much the supposed lack of imagination or ideals (human rights are ideals), but a fundamental lack of desire (human rights are no desires) that we suffer from, and from which we do not need to remove Nietzsche’s label of “nihilism.” “We.” George Oppen: “ Of Being Numerous asks the question whether or not we can deal with humanity as something which actually exists.” What is less actual than humanity? Nowadays it appears as a lifeless ideology of cynical power politics. Or as what makes one think. It is a shame to be human. The event is the caesura that defines rhythm. Writing toward the event is not the description of the event, but marking an abstract and intense space in which the event may unfold and keep itself. It is a task. “Remember that thou blesseth the day on which I seized thee, because such is thy obligation.” The event is a contraction (or a series of contractions) with its own rhythm and unique qualities. It is more than an explosion or demonstration. But at the same time less. The endless repetition of images and stories in the media points to a fear for the indeterminate and indeterminable void of the event. In the end there is nothing to see. We do not live in disaster’s shade or miracle’s light, but rather in the rhythm, which is contracted time, having little to do with omnipresent representations. For this book I did not intend a rhythm of evental representations (a narrative rhythm), but a rhythm which would be an event itself , because it draws the border between artwork and history. My desire for a direct engagement with the “extra-textual reality” has nothing to do with the representation of “rumor in the streets.” (What has less street cred than representation?) Naturally, a poem is no historical event and does not change anything. But a poem is a part of history that wants to be repeated forever, constructed in such a way that it is worthy of repetition. It is a part of desire (composition) made consistent (durable). The “historical event” flares up and burns down, and has to burn down to be effective. The leftovers are images and stories (representations), History—no event. The artwork—that is the ambition— remains event (though monumental and inefficient/inoperable). (No wonder that a historical singularity, a revolution, reminds us of a work of art; the resurrection yearns for a judgment, an affirmation; everything depends on it.) Hence the title does not summarize the book, let alone contract its “content” into a quasi-transcendental signifier. The title is juxtaposed to the book, like everything else inside the book, and in that relation it precisely forms a part of it. The ideal work is an open whole, lacking nothing but to which everything may be added. I have been interested in this “everything,” the world, or as I said above: capitalism. “Everything” is not the space for “wonder”—a code word, a shibboleth for petty bourgeois imagination (I recognize myself in the strangest things, a speaking dog, a canal, a pond standing straight—oh my god). No. The world is a social world, not YOUR world, poet. Power is number one. I will call “Dutch,” or “shitty,” whatever denies this power. That hurts, but this pain is an expression of the desire in the world to write another world, or as Blanchot says, “the other of all worlds” 2 : the world. Not as what “is there,” but rather as that which urges for an escape from what “is.” This is a testament of how radical reality has become, for me—or rather, a writing body—in a having-been-written. I am not interested in the problem of “meaning” as misunderstood by literary scholarsi: “order” in “chaos,” “symbolization.” Bullshit. What is there, hop, hope, now: the meaning of the taste in my mouth. Bullshit. I am not interested in the frustration of interpretation; I am writing for readers who do not want to interpret. I do not know how many “professional readers” will hear the music of a paragraph like: Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I hope more than I would think. There is a suggestion (or rather, an actual production) of speed and infinitive owing to the absence of plosives, i.e. articulations such as /k/, /t/, or /p/. Can you hear the slick suaveness? Driving car dark, vocal chiaroscuro of the word “sushi.” The unstressed /i/ stands in the middle of dark vowels and thus acquires its own special out of focus , like a momentary flash or brilliance—an obscure light. It is not about recognizing a story, but about avoiding any story whatsoever: the car disappears in the glow, cars and raw fish have nothing in common except their articulation in a language that brings them together, blurring them. A world appears in its disappearance. For a moment, light is a metaphor for language, though it cannot be reduced to tenor. It is not necessary to be a linguist or philosopher to hear this—a “difficult” poem all too often becomes an allegory of its own impenetrable being-language. The only demand: leave your hermeneutical fetish at home. This was no interpretation. Most shit has been stolen etcetera. That is no longer interesting. You cannot shoot the body with information and let your lawyers reclaim the bullets. So every sentence has been stolen. Also the ones “out” “of” “my” “head.” Why would I be allowed to steal from myself and not from others? Man takes what he needs to move forward. Whatever he encounters, finds in front of him, “occurs” to him. The writer as text editor, or singing pirate. Nothing new here. Important difference with for example Sybren Polet’s 4 montage technique: anti-thematicism. Most of the time ferocious citation from whatever I was reading, listening to, ended up in, and so on. I wrote chapter 12 on my laptop while watching CNN. On the air instead of en plein air . I often employed search engines to generate material. Chapter 20 offers the purest example of this. Often I stop recognizing a particular citation after some time. It is not uncommon for a stolen sentence to conform itself to the paragraph in which it finds itself. Sometimes I nearly arbitrarily replace words. Arbitrariness as a guarantee for absolute democracy. It is a poetics of the non sequitur : a conclusion that does not follow from the premises, the strange element in the discourse. A discourse of strangers. No logical, narrative, thematic unity. There is unity in speed/flight. It has to be read linearly, but not necessarily (not preferably) from beginning to end. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but this line precedes every point. The middle, the acceleration, comes first. A point occurs where two lines cross. It has been written from up close, at the level of the tension between sentences. Nothing to be seen from a distance: no form except the exchange of form, no geometrical or mythical meaning. You have to get in, “groping toward a continuous present, a using everything a beginning again and again” (Stein). 5 In Dutch, experimental poetry has been mainly dense: a small rectangular form filled with a maximum amount of poetic possibility. But at the moment the poem starts to relax, the anecdotical content seems to increase. This is what is called “epic”: long, narrative. I believe that an epic is more than that, in fact something completely different. An epic is “a poem including history,” 6 a long poem tied up with the life of community, that as a whole does not need to be narrative. The American poets of the twentieth century (Pound, Williams, Zukofsky, Oppen, Olson, Silliman) have put the epic back on the map by interpreting the poem itself as a map, and writing it as navigation. They have invented the experimental epic, a genre that has generated little original following in “our” poetry. N30 is the middle part—“always start in the middle”—of a trilogy, the contours of which remain as of yet unclear, although each episode investigates one of the three “ecstasies of time”—past, present, future—concerning society X. N30 concerns itself with the PRESENT: not with the description of actual facts but of the rhythm and the intense depth in which facts appear to us. Where are we? We are camping in the desert. Sometimes we are looking at the stars. As opposed to maximum density and minimal tension (a characteristic of most (post-)experimental lyricism), I have sought a minimal density and maximum tension in this book, considered as a long non-narrative prose poem. On the one hand, the minimal density is obtained by the inherent formlessness of prose, on the other hand by the conscious refusal of any active (formal, non-rhythmic) synthesis: the poem tells nothing, shows nothing, has no theme. I did not seek maximum tension either by loading the quotidian with epiphanic radioactivity (“wonder,” confirmation from above), or by means of the intensity of the linguistic structure. I want an abstract tension, but social in its abstraction, in other words, not neutralized by and subjected to Form. Instead of form (transcendent): composition (immanent). The concept is series. Ideal: every unit is necessary for the efficacy of the others and the whole, their relation is purely linear, i.e. non-hierarchic, non-syllogistic, non-discursive, non-narrative. Sentence related to sentence like paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter; the whole means nothing and represents nothing. Inside the sentence: syntax (Chomsky’s tree, a type of parallel circuit), outside: parataxis (coordination, an asyntactic line through language and world). I consider duration—the energy of duration (rhythm)—to be the fundament of a poem, the temporal inclination to delimit a “space.” Being as consistency, its consistency. A spatial part of time is not merely a metaphor for an inevitable trajectory, an inescapable time, something like “our time.” Not merely—because rhythm comes from language and is not projected onto it; the poem derives from the world like a scent and a color and a life from a flower. A series, a sequence: nothing potential, but truly infinite—the movement of an infinitude. The infinite series = everything minus totality. That means that there is no container—no Form, no Self, no Image, no Structure, not even a Fragment—just “the prose of the world.” No representation, but also no staging of the impossibility of representation (the postmodern sublime). These are no fragments, no image of a fragmented world or personality, no cautious incantations around the Void. It does not exist. It is a movement. Buying bread, a flock of birds, a bomb falling—they do not depict or represent anything, not literally, not metaphorically. There is an Idea, which is however nothing more than a rhythm, in the same way that capitalism is nothing more than a pure function. Parataxis: the white space between two sentences stresses, which is nevertheless always there, also between words, even between letters: the out of focus of idle talk, the gutter, the irreducible Mallarméan mist which renders even the seemingly most transparent text legible. The white space suggests a neutral medium for free signification, a substance of language. A non sequitur is an element from a foreign discourse, which stresses the white space as space, and problematizes freedom for supra-sentential signification. I start by withdrawing material, leaving the initiative to the sentences. In general a word presupposes less often a discourse than a sentence. What discourse is presupposed by “dog”? We could think of several, but why would we? It is more probable that, when faced with the naked word, we think of its naked (dictionary) meaning, of its denotative signified. By means of two simple interventions we may also write the word as sentence: Dog. In no way this suggests the discourse from which this sentence originates, but in any case we’re presupposing one. This is shown by questions like: “Whose dog? Who’s a dog? What kind of dog?” Etc. (Sentences are question marks.) A sentence implies/is a microcosm—a subject, a verb, an object, and so on. Even an incomplete or ungrammatical sentence does so. My main fascination while writing this book is the worldly and social aspect of language, an aspect that often becomes invisible, or rather, transparent in narrativity—the stretching of sentences into stories. Narrativity organizes a new discourse and a new world, and places a sometimes all too dispersing relation of transparence in between. The conventional novel is the brothel of being. I do not intend to prohibit brothels, and I have certainly not intended to write an anti-novel (THIS IS A POEM), but I do consider narrativity (in general, in poetry, in the news, in daily life) to be ontologically secondary with regard to an immediate being in the world through sentences, also if the latter have been withdrawn from a narrative or otherwise externally structured discourse (which in that case would therefore be chronologically primary ). Naturally, two or more sentences are always in danger of telling stories or arguing, just like the world is always in danger of becoming an objective representation, facing us, strangers. That is why need to wage war—against representation and against the interface, against interaction. AGAINST THE “READER.” To the extent that a sentence is worldly, writing is a condensed global war, and in so far as there is ultimately only one world and one open continuum of languages, it is a global civil war. Nice subject for an epic. The elaboration of a singular problem—prose as the outside of poetry, the form of the novel as purely prosodic composition scheme—“expresses” the universal problem: capitalism as Idea of the world vs. poetry as language of an (im)possible community. The paragraphs are blocks of rhythmically contracted social material. By choosing the sentence as the basic compositional component, an abstract whole may contain social sounds, without telling a story or showing an image. Composition is subrepresentative —a rhythmic, passive synthesis, or rather: a synthesis of syntheses. I never write large blocks of prose in one sitting, because there is no obvious organizational vector —plot, theme, conscience—outside the inherent qualities of the material itself. Usually I write down one sentence, sometimes two, but rarely more than three. Those sentences are usually placed in the text which I am editing at the time. In fact, there is no original composition, new chapters split off from chapters which became too long during the editing process. (Revision mainly consists of adding and inserting, displacing and dividing; only during the last phase, when the text has gained enough consistency, there may be subtraction to tighten the composition; each chapter requires a season of daily revision). This constant revision, accompanied by a continuous influx of collective background noise (to speak with Van Bastelaere), 7 makes every chapter a block condensed (“historical” and “personal”) time. The block itself is a-personal and a-historic; it is ontologically autonomous. If there is such a thing as a spirit of the times, I do not try to offer an image of it, but rather to cancel something of it by erecting a monument of its own excrement within its own boundaries. Tuning and dis-tuning , “in de taal der neerslachtigen een eigen geluid doen klinken,” 8 in other words, desiring in an Elysian way. In this sense I have intended to be able to write a political poetry. The ultimate political poem is the epic, “the tale of the tribe.” I consider N30 to be a prolegomenon to a future epic (of which it in the end will form a part a structural moment, as introduction-in-the-middle), an extended pile on top of an epic as narrative, a question of the tribe and question of its history. I was burdened by too much satire, too much bullshit. But: satire willy-nilly = the only justifiable satire. Against the abstract universalism of the market (“globalism”): concrete disgust, a positive way of saying “No.” Moreover, disgust is a specifically total attitude, which ultimately concerns the world as a whole. I hate this or that, but I am disgusted by EVERYTHING (when I am disgusted), and so it appears that satire is in fact related to the epic, in so far as it concerns society, the cosmos, history. Maybe it is no coincidence that the Dutch literary canon knows no great poet of disgust; what could be more fearful to us than society, the cosmos, and history? The T-tendency (T from Tollens 9 ) clearly points into the direction of the small, friendly, ironic, melancholic, acquiescent, wondrous, and so on. The anti-political, anti-cosmic, anti-historical. (Why am I so philosophical? To scare away the Dutchies.) And most of all: the “poetical” (the pseudo-mysticism from the backyard). Yes, the N in N30 also stands for the Netherlands (just like 30 indicates the number of chapters). I was not in Seattle, I do not live in Iraq. But is not the whole world bleeding to death on Dutch paving stones? Let’s hope that we mowed away something with this total satire, also “in myself.” The arrogant stupidity that definitely thinks to know the essence of freedom (the free development of esthetic needs inside the void), that cannot take anything serious, only believes in the disciplined bestiality of the individual (“norms and values”) and the mere functioning of a social factory which finds no justification whatsoever outside its functioning (“get to work”)… Who knows. A certain aimed destruction leaves grooves and craters, mapping out a next adventure. Pound’s periplum : sailing while mapping the coasts. Immanent orientation. The terrain changes with the map, history changes with the poem. Maps never merely organize the chaos, transcendent schemes imposed on a formless Ding-an-sich . They organize from within, surfing. But they are most of all routes back into the chaos or forward to paradise (final identity of chaos and paradise; Schlegel: “ Nur diejenige Verworrenheit ist ein Chaos aus der eine Welt entspringen kann ”10). A poem is not only a piece of history, it is also a flight from history. Maps give chaos to the form of reality , open escape routes, break through representations, make us shivery and dazed. Paradise is immanent to a fleeting desire. History is the history of labor—this is Adam’s curse—and the poet works too: For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, school masters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world 11 But: the poet works in paradise. The paradox of the artwork, the work that is no work, the piece of history that cannot be reduced to History—this is explained by The Space of Literature , a virtual space, an autonomous rhythm, not outside, but in the midst of the noise, a piece of paradise in hell, a postcard from the vale of tears addressed to paradise, to X. Political poetry means: a poetry that dares to think about itself, about its language and about its world and about the problematic relation between both, which is this relation as problem. A poetry that thinks at all, articulates its problem. It has nothing to do with journalism or morality or debate, let alone the law or the state. It has nothing to do with “criticism” if this means the replacement of incorrect representations by other, more correct representations. It has something to do with ethics in the sense of learning to live. It has something to do with the community and the language of the community (whichever that may be) and the role of the poet regarding the community. It concerns justice without judgement or measure. In the end the just word is just a word , to paraphrase Godard: it is from a future that is unimaginable. It Is no rational engagement, but an aversion against everything that obstructs life, and love for everything what is worthy of having been loved. The world is engaged with me, not the other way round. First Exodus, then Sinai. A desire does not start with an agenda. To answer the question whether I am really so naive as to want to change the world: “We only want the world.” Justice is the world appealing to us to liberate it from all possible chains, from each organization and inequality, to be it, smooth, equal, under a clear sky—a desert and a people in a desert. That moment between Egypt and the Law. It is not a revolution, but the sky above the revolution. Poetry = the science of escape. There is no art that we already know. The weakness of modernistic epic poetry seems to me to be the unwillingness to completely abandon narrative as a structural principle, in favor of a composition “around” or from an event. The China Cantos and Adams Cantos are the low point, and the Pisan Cantos the high point of Pound’s poetry. Two types of research: archival representation of the past vs. ontology of the present (which virtually presupposes the entire history). Presupposing an event means that it is impossible for the poet to stage his own absence, but in no way makes the work personal. An event is the unknown, the new invading into the business as usual, so also the personal. The question heading this research is not: “Who am I?” but “What is happening?” The book is as little illegible as Mondrian’s work is invisible. Form is of interest only to the extent that it empowers liberation. Ron Silliman So no formalism, but what it means to live in this world and to have a future in it. I want something that holds together that’s not smooth. Bruce Andrews The past above, the future below and the present pouring down: the roar, the roar of the present, a speech— William Carlos Williams If my confreres wanted to write a work with all history in its maw, I wished, from the beginning to start all over again, attempting to know nothing but a will to create, and matter at hand. Ronald Johnson NOTES 1) “The easy thing/ that is difficult to make.” Bertold Brecht, Lob des Kommunismus . (All footnotes are the translator’s) 2) Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature , trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press (1989), 75. 3) Mettes uses the word “Neerlandicus,” which refers to scholars of Dutch language and literature. 4) Dutch poet. 5) Gertrude Stein. “Composition as Explanation.” A Stein Reader . Ed. Ulla E. Dydo. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1993), 495-503. 6) Ezra Pound. 7) Flemish poet. 8) “Resounding an original sound in the language of the despondent.” A. Roland Holst, De afspraak . 9) Dutch poet. 10) “Only such a confusion is a chaos which can give rise to a world.” 11) W.B. Yeats, “Adam’s Curse.&rdquo. (shrink)

What mental and physical distress do actors, camerapersons, and reporters experience when working on reenactments of traumatic moments in history? In Political Camerawork, D. Andy Rice theorizes that the intense feelings produced while creating these performed scenarios, called "simulation documentaries," connect difficult pasts to the present. Building on his background as a nonfiction film director, producer, editor, and cinematographer, Rice analyzes performance techniques to gain insight into the emotional toll of simulation documentaries, including those reliving the Vietnam War, the (...) US military's embodied training in California during the Iraq War, and an annual quadruple lynching reenactment organized by Black civil rights activists in Georgia. Investigating the lasting impact of these productions, Political Camerawork reveals that, by performing a simulation of a traumatic event they didn't directly experience, those involved become carriers of the trauma. (shrink)

Jacques Maritain is widely recognized as one of the foremost Catholic philosophers of modern times. He wrote groundbreaking works in all branches of philosophy. For a period of about 10 years, beginning in 1933, he discussed matters relating to war and ethics. Writing initially about Gandhi, whose strategy of non-violence he sought to incorporate within a Christian conception of political action, Maritain proceeded to comment more specifically on the religious aspects of armed force in “On Holy War,” an essay (...) about the civil war then ongoing in Spain. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Maritain penned a series of essays that sought to explain why the Anglo–French declarations of war were warranted on Christian just war principles. While the secondary literature on Maritain’s thought is extensive, thus far there has been little systematic exploration of his writings on war. In what follows I seek to remedy this lacuna, by examining how he conceptualized just war in the three phases outlined above. (shrink)

This book examines the concept of civility and the conditions of civil disagreement in politics and education. Although many assume that civility is merely polite behavior, it functions to aid rational discourse. Building on this basic assumption, the book offers multiple accounts of civility and its contribution to citizenship, deliberative democracy, and education from Eastern and Western as well as classic and modern perspectives. Given that civility is essential to all aspects of public life, it is important to address (...) how civility may be taught. While much of the book is theoretical, contributors also apply theory to practice, offering concrete methods for teaching civility at the high school and collegiate levels. (shrink)

Nearly four decades after a revolution, experiencing one of the longest wars in contemporary history, facing political and ideological threats by regional radicals such as ISIS and the Taliban, and having succeeded in negotiations with six world powers over her nuclear program, Iran appears as an experienced Muslim country seeking to build bridges with its Sunni neighbours as well as with the West. "Ethics of War and Peace in Iran and Shi'i Islam explores the wide spectrum of theoretical approaches (...) and practical attitudes concerning the justifications, causes and conduct of war in Iranian-Shi'i culture. By examining primary and secondary sources, and investigating longer lasting factors and questions over circumstantial ones, Mohammad Jafar Amir Mahallati seeks to understand modern Iranian responses to war and peace. His work is the first in its field to look into the ethics of war and peace in Iran and Shi'i Islam. It provides a prism through which the binary source of the Iranian national and religious identity informs Iranian responses to modernity. By doing so, the author reveals that a civilization-conscious soul in modern Iran is re-emerging. (shrink)

In this article I propose to do five things. First, I describe the present confusion disturbing the tranquility of the American polity. Next, I hypothesize that an important source of civil confusion is that American civildiscourse is generally conducted in two different moral languages. Neither of these is adequate to the reality of the human good, and their speakers are, perhaps increasingly, given to misunderstanding one another. Third, I propose some reasons why not only misunderstanding but even outright hostility (...) seems to be growing. Fourth, I suggest that if we Christians are to be of genuine service to our fellow citizens, we have to begin by emancipating ourselves from inadequate moral languages and renew our capacity to function in a more properly Christian language. Finally, I suggest a possible contribution Christians might make to the renewal of civil discourse. (shrink)

In a well-known 1964 essay on the “recovery” of American religious history, Henry F. May observed that some scholars had “revived” religious interpretations of the nation's greatest political crises, including the Civil War. But there was more work to be done. “A religious, or partly religious explanation of the Civil War,” May suggested, would “rest on two assertions: that serious and intractable moral conflicts were important in causing the war and that in nineteenth-century America such conflicts were (...) particularly difficult to avoid or compromise because of the dominance of evangelical Protestantism in both sections.” In fact, both the importance of the moral conflict over slavery and the role of evangelicalism in intensifying hostilities were already attracting attention as historians reexamined previous emphases on economic factors and political bungling as explanations of a tragically unnecessary war. (shrink)

Demystifying Black American slavery through Dr. Seuss' The 5,000 fingers of Dr. T -- Understanding our dysfunctional U.S. congress in Dr. Seuss' If I ran the circus: the end of civility and bipartisanship -- Analyzing U.S. presidential leadership in Dr. Seuss' The king's stilts -- Assessing the U.S. criminal justice system in Dr. Seuss' If I ran the zoo -- Dr. Seuss' I had trouble in getting to Solla Sollew and decoding the American bureaucracy -- Deciphering the U.S. illegal immigration (...) problem in Dr. Seuss' Horton hears a Who -- Condeming absolute power in Dr. Seuss' Yertle the turtle: A cry for freedom and democracy in China -- Implications of modern-day Cold-War in Dr. Seuss' The butter battle book -- Environmental politics in Dr. Seuss' The Lorax: The need for sustainability -- Explaining American spirituality and religious politics in Dr. Seuss' Horton hatches the egg -- American popular culture and the politics of race in Dr. Seuss' The sneetches -- The new realities and politics of aging in Dr. Seuss' You're only old once: A book for obsolete children -- Conclusion -- Bibliography. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt is the most important anti-liberal political theorist of the European interwar period (1918-1939). His theories on the state of exception, dictatorship, and his criticism of parliamentary democracy are very well known. However, what remains unknown to this day is how his ideas had a remarkable influence on the ideologues of the Francoist state between 1939 and 1942. During these years, a debate developed among Francoist jurists about whether Francisco Franco was a “sovereign dictator,” that is, a dictator (...) legitimized by popular consent, or rather a new kind of “monarch” that emerged in the context of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). This paper aims to explain how two ideological factions formed in Francoist Spain. The “Decisionist Francoism” of Juan Beneyto Pérez, Francisco Elías de Tejada, and Luis Legaz Lacambra held that Franco emerged as a reaction to the process of “legalization” triggered by liberalism in Spain. The “Weberian Francoism” of Francisco Javier Conde held that Franco was a charismatic and traditional leader whose position emerged in response to the Civil War. I explain how three concepts of Schmitt's anti-iberalism inspired Francoist theorists: political theology, dictatorship, and the rejection of parliamentary democracy. (shrink)

_Simone Weil and the Politics of Self-Denial_ delivers what no other book on Weil has—a comprehensive study of her political thought. In this examination of the development of her thought, Athanasios Moulakis offers a philosophical understanding of politics that reaches beyond current affairs and ideological advocacy. Simone Weil—philosopher, activist, mystic—unites a profound reflection on the human condition with a consistent and courageous existential and intellectual honesty manifest in the moving testimony of her life and her death. Moulakis examines Weil's (...) political thought as an integral part of a lived philosophy, in which analysis and doctrine are inseparable from the articulation of an intensely personal, ultimately religious experience. Because it is impossible to distinguish Weil's life from her thought, her writings cannot be understood properly without linking them to her life and character. By situating Weil's political thought within the context of the intellectual climate of her time, Moulakis connects it also to her epistemology, her cosmology, and her personal experience. _Simone Weil and the Politics of Self-Denial_ presents the unfolding of Weil's philosophical life against the backdrop of the political and social conditions of the last days of the Third French Republic, the Spanish Civil War, and the rise and clash of totalitarian ideologies. The ideological climate of the age—of which Weil herself was not quite free—was indeed the major "obstacle" in the struggle against which she fashioned her critical, intellectual, and moral tools. Weil has been categorized a number of ways: as a saint and a near convert to Roman Catholicism, as a social critic, or as an analytic philosopher. Moulakis examines _all_ aspects of Weil's thought in the indissoluble unity in which she lived them. This thorough investigation pursues the particular intellectual affiliations and the social and political experiential stimuli of Weil's work while simultaneously teasing out the timeless themes that her own timely analysis was intended to reveal. (shrink)

A great deal of violence in civil wars is informed by the logic of terrorism: violence tends to be used by political actors against civilians in order to shape their political behavior. I focus on indiscriminate violence in the context of civil war: this is a type of violence that selects its victims on the basis of their membership in some group and irrespective of their individual actions. Extensive empirical evidence suggests that indiscriminate violence in (...) class='Hi'>civil war is informed by the logic of terrorism. I argue that under certain conditions, that tend to be quite common, such violence is counter productive. I specify these conditions and address the following paradox: why do we sometimes observe instances of indiscriminate violence evenunder conditions that make this strategy counterproductive? I review four possible reasons: truncated data, ignorance, cost, and institutional constraints. I argue that indiscriminate violence emerges because it is much cheaper than its main alternative – selective violence. It is more likely under a steep imbalance of power between the competing actors, and where and when resources and information are low; however, most political actors eventually switch to selective violence. Thus, given a balance of power between competing actors, indiscriminate violence is more likely at early rather than late stages of the conflict. Overall, the paper suggests that even extreme forms of violence are used strategically. (shrink)