The Secularity of Empire, the Violence of Critique: Muslims, Race, and Sexuality in the Politics of Knowledge‐Production

Hypatia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 715-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunera Thobani
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Epistemological Tradition ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
Queer Politics ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
Rare Opportunity

In the volatile conflicts that inaugurated the twenty‐first century, secularism, democracy, and freedom were identified by Western nation‐states as symbolizing their civilizational values, in contrast to the fanaticism, misogyny, and homophobia they attributed to “Islam.” The figure of the Muslim was thus transformed into an existential threat. This paper analyzes an exchange among scholars—Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech—that engages these highly contested issues. As such, the text provides a rare opportunity to study how particular significations of the West, its epistemological tradition, and its relation with Islam are contested and negotiated in a critically engaged site during a moment of global crisis. My reading of the text leads me to argue that the stabilization of the epistemic power of the West is presently reliant on a new iteration of its foundational philosophical concepts to suppress counter‐hegemonic narratives that foreground its forms of violence. Further, the terrain for this reshaping of the dominance of this tradition is gender/sexuality, such that queer politics are located at the forefront of the Western politico‐philosophical project. As such, the advancement of this tradition is co‐constitutive with that of the gendered‐sexual subject as emblematic of its highest civilizational values.

Slavery and the Trumpocene: It's Not the End of the World

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Claire Colebrook
Keyword(s):  
Living System ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Geological Period

There is something more catastrophic than the end of the world, especially when ‘world’ is understood as the horizon of meaning and expectation that has composed the West. If the Anthropocene is the geological period marking the point at which the earth as a living system has been altered by ‘anthropos,’ the Trumpocene marks the twenty-first-century recognition that the destruction of the planet has occurred by way of racial violence, slavery and annihilation. Rather than saving the world, recognizing the Trumpocene demands that we think about destroying the barbarism that has marked the earth.

The Rise and Return of the Indo-Pacific

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Doyle ◽  
Dennis Rumley
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
First Century ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Pacific Region ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Hegemony ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Under Construction ◽  
Political Realities

In the twenty-first century, the Indo-Pacific region has become the new centre of the world. The concept of the ‘Indo-Pacific’’, though still under construction, is a potentially pivotal site, where various institutions and intellectuals of statecraft are seeking common ground on which to anchor new regional coalitions, alliances, and allies to better serve their respective national agendas. This book explores the Indo-Pacific as an ambiguous and hotly contested regional security construction. It critically examines the major drivers behind the revival of classical geopolitical concepts and their deployment through different national lenses. The book also analyses the presence of India and the US in the Indo-Pacific, and the manner in which China has reacted to their positions in the Indo-Pacific to date. It suggests that national constructions of the Indo-Pacific region are more informed by domestic political realities, anti-Chinese bigotries, distinctive properties of twenty-first century US hegemony, and narrow nation-statist sentiments rather than genuine pan-regional aspirations. The book argues that the spouting of contested depictions of the Indo-Pacific region depend on the fixed geostrategic lenses of nation-states, but what is also important is the re-emergence of older ideas—a classical conceptual revival—based on early to mid-twentieth century geopolitical ideas in many of these countries. The book deliberately raises the issue of the sea and constructions of ‘nature’, as these symbols are indispensable parts of many of these Indo-Pacific regional narratives.

The European Union and Diplomatic Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Butler
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
External Action ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Second World War ◽  
First Century ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Supranational Institutions ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Eu

Not long after the establishment of supranational institutions in the aftermath of the Second World War, the early incarnations of the European Union (EU) began conducting diplomacy. Today, EU Delegations (EUDs) exist throughout the world, operating similar to full-scale diplomatic missions. The Treaty of Lisbon established the legal underpinnings for the European External Action Service (EEAS) as the diplomatic arm of the EU. Yet within the international legal framework, EUDs remain second-class to the missions of nation States. The EU thus has to use alternative legal means to form diplomatic missions. This chapter explores the legal framework of EU diplomatic relations, but also asks whether traditional missions to which the VCDR regime applies, can still be said to serve the needs of diplomacy in the twenty-first century, when States are no longer the ultimate holders of sovereignty, or the only actors in international relations.

Trafficking

2018 ◽  
pp. 344-358
Author(s):  
Paul Amar
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
First Century ◽  
Global Studies ◽  
Global History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Forms Of Violence

This chapter offers a global history, as well as cultural, legal, and political–economic analysis, of “trafficking,” a set of relationships and processes often constituted as the dark mirror of globalization. First, the chapter traces how the term “trafficking” emerged. Second, it examines the evolution of “trafficking” in the context of “drug wars,” from the imperial Opium Wars in China in the early nineteenth century to the twenty-first-century “narco” battlegrounds of Mexico. Third, it surveys how global studies-related research has developed critical lenses for analyzing the politics of “sex trafficking” and “human trafficking.” Finally, it examines the term “trafficker” as selectively deployed along racial and social lines in ways that produce obscuring pseudo-analyses of the violence of global capitalism that preserve the impunity of certain powerful actors, create monstrous misrepresentations of globalizing forms of violence, and stir moral and racial panics on a global scale.

Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
City Life ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Point Of Departure

What does it mean to be a good citizen today? What are practices of citizenship? And what can we learn from the past about these practices to better engage in city life in the twenty-first century? Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self is a collection of papers that examine these questions. The contributors come from a variety of different disciplines, including architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and history, and their essays make comparative examinations of the practices of citizenship from the ancient world to the present day in both the East and the West. The papers’ comparative approaches, between East and West, and ancient and modern, leads to a greater understanding of the challenges facing citizens in the urbanized twenty-first century, and by looking at past examples, suggests ways of addressing them. While the book’s point of departure is philosophical, its key aim is to examine how philosophy can be applied to everyday life for the betterment of citizens in cities not just in Asia and the West but everywhere.

Multisituated

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
First Century ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Political Intervention ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The University

In Multisituated Kaushik Sunder Rajan evaluates the promises and potentials of multisited ethnography with regard to contemporary debates around decolonizing anthropology and the university. He observes that at the current moment, anthropology is increasingly peopled by diasporic students and researchers, all of whom are accountable to multiple communities beyond the discipline. In this light, Sunder Rajan draws on his pedagogical experience and dialogues to reconceptualize ethnography as a multisituated practice of knowledge production, ethical interlocution, and political intervention. Such a multisituated ethnography responds to contemporary anthropology’s myriad commitments as it privileges attention to questions of scale, comparison, and the politics of ethnographic encounters. Foregrounding the conditions of possibility and difficulty for those doing and teaching ethnography in the twenty-first-century, Sunder Rajan gestures toward an ethos and praxis of ethnography that would open new forms of engagement and research.

Asian Scientists on the Move

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anju Mary Paul
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Research Output ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Migration System ◽  
Science Story ◽  
Scientific Research Output ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Set Up

The growing scientific research output from Asia has been making headlines since the start of the twenty-first century. But behind this science story, there is a migration story. The elite scientists who are pursuing cutting-edge research in Asia are rarely 'homegrown' talent but were typically born in Asia, trained in the West, and then returned to work in Asia. Asian Scientists on the Move explores why more and more Asian scientists are choosing to return to Asia, and what happens after their return, when these scientists set up labs in Asia and start training the next generation of Asian scientists. Drawing on evocative firsthand accounts from 119 Western-trained Asian scientists about their migration decisions and experiences, and in-depth analysis of the scientific field in four country case studies - China, India, Singapore and Taiwan - the book reveals the growing complexity of the Asian scientist migration system.

scholarly journals After Liberal Hegemony: The Advent of a Multiplex World Order

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amitav Acharya
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
World Order ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The West ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
China And India ◽  
International Stability

While the West woke up to the threat to the liberal international order when Donald Trump was elected U.S. president, its decline was apparent even at the height of the Obama-Clinton era. What follows the end of the U.S.-dominated world order is not a return to multipolarity as many pundits assume. The twenty-first-century world—politically and culturally diverse but economically and institutionally interlinked—is vastly different from the multipolar world that existed prior to World War II. China and India are major powers now; and globalization will not end, but will take on a new form, driven more by the East than the West and more by South-South linkages than North-North ones. The system of global governance will fragment, with new actors and institutions chipping away at the old UN-based system. Liberal values and institutions will not disappear, but will have to coexist and enmesh with the ideas and institutions of others, especially those initiated by China. This “multiplex world” carries both risks and opportunities for managing international stability. Instead of bemoaning the passing of the old liberal order, the West should accept the new realities and search for new ways to ensure peace and stability in partnership with the rising powers.

scholarly journals BASIC KNOWLEDGE FIRST

Episteme ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic States ◽  
Specific Category ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Philosophical Project

ABSTRACTAn influential twenty-first century philosophical project posits a central role for knowledge: knowledge is more fundamental than epistemic states like belief and justification. So-called “knowledge first” theorists find support for this thought in identifying central theoretical roles for knowledge. I argue that a similar methodology supports a privileged role for a more specific category of basic knowledge. Some of the roles that knowledge first theorists have posited for knowledge generally are better suited for basic knowledge.

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