The Paradox of Crisis and the Importance of Being Disinterested
Geoffrey Whitehall,
Acadia University
I find it difficult to write this chapter on the Discipline of International Relations
(IR) because I rarely think about the Discipline any more. I am sorry, but I donʼt
find it interesting. If I had written this chapter a mere five years ago, however, it
would have been structured as follows: First, I would have argued that world
politics are nothing but, to use Salman Rushdie's phrase “a sea of stories
(Rushdie 1990)” and the IR Discipline is a story about a sea of stories. Using the
work of Deleuze and Guattari, I would have played the tension between major
and minor literatures (Deleuze 1986). On the one hand, I would have talked
about sovereignty as a major literature that spatially and temporally answers the
modern paradoxes of being, knowledge, and value (only for the question to be reissued anew). On the other hand, I would have celebrated those dissident minor
literatures that make the major literatures stutter and stumble into crisis and
therefore open new possibilities and new voices. I might have concluded that
dissidents should become better storytellers.
Not so anymore, now I am disinterested. It is not that I have become disillusioned
with the major - minor distinction that Deleuze and Guattari offer; the
disillusionment instead resides in the way that the distinctionʼs usage has been
pre-empted and captured by a particular critical patrimony. My argument is
simple: arguments organized around a crisis of the discipline, in general, and the
paradox of sovereignty, in particular, function to centre the discipline and preempt creative affirmations of indifference that assert that everything is actual.
A Letter to Non-Princes
It might have been attractive to write a chapter that celebrates the dissident
elements in the discipline while charting the dominant maps of modernity a mere
five years ago. However, it would have been unnecessary. An excellent paper
was written in 1990 by Richard Ashley and Rob Walker (Ashley and Walker
1990). So, unless the intention was to replicate and disseminate the force of
Reading Dissidence/Writing the Discipline: Crisis and the Question of
Sovereignty, it would have been odd to rehearse what appears to be, at best, a
celebrated letter to non-princes. Their text, like Machiavelliʼs Prince, explores
how difficult, but important, it is to make political decisions amidst contingent
foundations. What is troubling, however, is how difficult it has been since 1990 to
write anything but a reiteration and dissemination of that argumentʼs document.
Why have the youth not rebelled?
While it is arguably their most impressive contribution, it is not clear that Ashley
and Walkerʼs text ever functioned as a minor or dissident literature. It claimed to
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be pessimistically celebratory of dissident contributions to the discipline. It
chronicled tactics, essences, dispositions, attitudes, conundrums and aesthetics
of dissidence. It showcased the political fields that dissidents traverse, the
temporal lines that they disrupt and the axiological drives that they inspire. In all
these ways, it appeared that, although a complicated text, Ashley and Walker
wrote a definitive text for the critical school of international relations. Yet the text
remains unsettling, in large part, because it remains so definitive. It was as if
other dissidents of the day, while greatly esteemed, celebrated and supported in
the text, were relegated to the role of exemplars, soldiers and wanderers. Other
endeavours were only important in so far as they related to the central target of
disciplinary crisis and the question of sovereignty. I suggest that, despite its
kinship, the article functions as a major literature, in general, and as an
apparatus of capture, in particular.
A major literature, Deleuze and Guattari argue, “implies a constant, of expression
or content, serving as a standard measure by which to evaluate…it assumes a
state of power and domination…. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 105)” Since we
are all critics here, we can imagine that the discourse of international relations
functions as a kind of exemplary major literature. It spatially and temporally
locates human being within specific literary measures of the sovereign, the
nation, the state, the individual, and the world. A major literature cuts for itself a
past and unfolds its own future (from Thucydides onward). Such a literature
treats itself as the centre against which all other things might be measured,
evaluated and judged (i.e., youʼre not doing IR or youʼre not doing critical IR). It
relies on those, paraphrasing Rousseau, gullible enough to believe these literary
measures for them to become unquestionably accepted, reproduced and even
defended.
To apply a majoritarian charge to Ashley and Walker seems unwarranted since
they offered one of the most romantic images of dissident academic life available
(worth quoting at length):
For most scholars of international studies today, the sovereign “state of the discipline” is
something whose imaginary centre is remote, other-worldly, insular, and powerless –
nothing but a site of density in the circuits of desire – and which intrudes upon the
productive life of scholarship only in the manner of so many flag-draped check points
thinly scattered across a boundless disciplinary landscape. Upon reaching any such
checkpoint, one nods to the flag, acknowledges the uniformed officialʼs stern
judgemental gaze, exchanges a few pleasantries, and waits for the gate to open. If,
before opening the gate, the official inquires into oneʼs identity, point of origin, or
destination, one takes note of the double-bind, exploits the ambiguities of the situation,
and gives a token answer that will elicit an approving smile. But upon heading off across
an unmappable, ambiguous terrain, one does not feel bound by the answer one gives.
The image of the uniformed figure, so stiffly proud of his supposed power, quickly
recedes into a tiny speck over oneʼs shoulder. And one knows that where one will really
go and what one will really do are beyond the control of the sovereign state of the
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discipline represented by the lonely outpost of officialdom left behind. This, one knows,
can only be determined through patient, disciplined and never finished involvements in
the testing of limitations to expand the spaces and resources of thought in reply to
paradoxical happenings in the world (Ashley and Walker 1990:412).”
It would have been easy (and perhaps insufficient) to have simply celebrated
those dissidents who question the taken for granted norms of the discipline, who
problematize the discursive performances of the discipline and who inspire new
readings and interpretations of canonical work. As such, Ashley and Walker had
already complicated matters in the text that preceded their concluding image.
The image of a dissident walking off into the sunset was already made
impossible. Their dissidents are more likely to stick close to the border, take a
picture, describe its (dis)function and buy a t-shirt. As a major literature, reading
dissent/writing the discipline is not a choice between reading dissent, on the one
hand, and writing the discipline, on the other. Instead, as dissidence is read by
Ashley and Walker they (re)write the discipline. They do not write it according to
the romantic image described above. On the contrary, paraphrasing Samuel
Becket, they chain the dog to its vomit (Beckett 1970). The new discipline they
describe is defined by crisis and the question of sovereignty. To speak about
contemporary stakes through any other image, as such, is not asking the right
questions.
For Ashley and Walker disciplinary crisis and the question of sovereignty become
the constants that serve as the measure against which to evaluate all other
things. By disciplinary crisis they mean that 1) the discipline becomes a question
(Ashley and Walker 1990: 376) because 2) the crisis involves the disciplineʼs
opening out into a region of intrinsically ambiguous, intrinsically indeterminate
activity that knows no necessary bounds and unsettles every attempt to produce
an enclosing representation of what the discipline is and does (Ashley and
Walker 1990: 376).” Furthermore, that which the Disciplinarians presume to be
antithetical to this crisis (i.e., sovereignty as a guarantor of truth), Walker and
Ashley contend is also a question that, “as a practical problem, is an intrinsically
paradoxical problem that can never be named, rationally debated and solved
(Ashley and Walker 1990: 375).” This is the case because of the way in which
knowledge is produced and organized in modernity (as an open limit) and is
therefore itself incapable of producing solid eternal foundations (Foucault 1973).
Forgetting this aporia is an enabling act of disciplining and the performative
puzzle of sovereignty.
Given that disciplinary crisis is “as old as modernity itself (Ashley and Walker
1990: 377) and sovereignty has always failed to produce stability(Ashley and
Walker 1990: 383), all contemporary questions are bound to be evaluated
against this measure. I wonder whether it would be possible to discuss the
political (a slow pitch?) without recourse to thinking about disciplinary crisis and
the question of sovereignty? How about migration, culture or gender? Should
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conversations about biopolitics, aesthetics, pre-emption always begin with a
preamble about disciplinary insufficiency and the question of sovereignty or
would it be sufficient to hint at them in a conclusion? Why did Agambenʼs
ahistorical celebration of Schmittian sovereignty prove so seductive to those on
the margin of the discipline? Surely it wasnʼt simply because G.W. Bush was
suddenly deciding to act like a tyrant; hadnʼt we waited for this nightmare?
Employing sovereignty creates disciplinary crisis by presupposing that it ends
crisis. Sovereignty is a mark of crisis. Fine, but does this semiotic deception
make sovereignty the condition of possibility for all thought and action? If so, how
would one think and act beyond the conditions of possibility for thinking and
acting? If you accept the terms you cannot think and act and if you do not accept
the terms then youʼre asking the wrong questions. Here, either dissidence will be
defeated by sovereignty or it will defeat itself by being reduced to only that which
opposes sovereignty.
Ashley and Walkerʼs text is so attractive and worthy because they have identified
an event horizon: everything changes. That which is changing can only be
treated as if it were stable if one forgets that movement is the norm and not the
exception. So far, so good. However, Ashley and Walkerʼs document tethers
dissidence to a particular vocation. They argue that the role and/or effect of
dissidence has been to illuminate or accentuate this event horizon (Ashley and
Walker 1990: 376). Whether done in a celebratory (yahoo!) or religious (uh oh!)
register, “both understand that here and now no stable position might be
appealed to as a source of truth and power fixing limitations anew(Ashley and
Walker 1990: 380).” Although dissidentʼs practical orientations and aesthetic
choices may differ (i.e., how do you get the job done?) their goal remains the
same: treat disciplinary crisis and the question of sovereignty as the constant
measure against which all other actions are to be judged.
Whether they were forwarding some counter hegemonic strategy or employing
some tactical reasons of the day (i.e. 1990), Reading Dissidence/Writing the
Discipline is a major and a not minor literature. It corrects a misidentification
within the discipline and commands that its disciples diligently attest to that error.
Instead of treating this as an encounter between minor and major literatures (as I
would have wanted to do in such a chapter five years ago), it binds them into
what they call a “double bind” (Ashley and Walker 1990: 372) . A double bind
secures the encounter and offers one option that appears in the guise of two (i.e.,
religious/celebratory (Ashley and Walker 1990: 380) and memorializing/countermemorializing (Ashley and Walker 1990: 399) or pessimistic/optimistic (Ashley
and Walker 1990: 410)).
The underlying lesson Ashley and Walker offer dissidents is that they are free but
they are bound by the tools the enable their freedom (language, society, history
etc…). As such, any enactment of freedom (i.e., choosing between binary
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options) is like vainly wiggling a loose tooth or scratching a bug bite. It is hard to
stop because it feels productive. Set up in this way, the document constitutes a
kind of apparatus of capture.
An apparatus of capture is now well-rehearsed concept: it is a mechanism of
appropriation. Deleuze and Guattari famously introduce the concept in the
encounter between two enemies the state and the nomad. As the story goes, the
state appropriates the nomadʼs war machine and turns it towards its own ends.
Since the state has no war machine of its own, it must appropriate the war
machine of the nomads in order to engage and defeat them. The odd
historiography attached to their discussion should not overwhelm the simple
explanation of how capture works: it separates something from what it can do
(Deleuze,G. 1983). It does so by directing a force against itself. In this way, the
state does nothing to the nomad, per say. The war machine is separated from
what it can do by the very fact that it treats itself as the object of action. Within an
apparatus of capture, every attempt to escape makes the noose tighter; every
effort to evade extends the area of jurisdiction; and every struggle to resist makes
the desire more refined. Therefore it is not only the tethering of dissidence to a
particular vocation and logic of argumentation that Reading Dissidence/Writing
the Discipline has to offer. It also has the effect of minimizing what the creative
joy of dissidence can do.
When taking on the conceptual personae of activists, Ashley and Walker
introduce a kind of “ethics of marginal conduct (Ashley and Walker 1990: 388).”
Such an ethos would “encourage a patient labor of listening and questioning that
seeks to explore possible connections between the strategic situation of others
and oneʼs own, always sensitive to the problem, of expanding the space and
resources by which the ongoing struggle for freedom may be undertaken there as
well as here (Ashley and Walker 1990: 394).” However agreeable and attractive
this may sound, it chastises and patronizes those who are in midst of a particular
political struggle. It encourages patient learned eye rolling and head shaking. It
operates as a kind of categorical imperative - act only on those maxims that
accentuate disciplinary crisis and pose sovereignty as a question. The last line of
the romantic image quoted earlier, establishes a kind of moral code:
This, one knows, can only be determined through patient, disciplined and never finished
involvements in the testing of limitations to expand the spaces and resources of thought
in reply to paradoxical happenings in the world (Ashley and Walker 1990: 412) .
In light of the anxiety generated by this code, Reading dissent/writing the
discipline speaks as a kind of dissident therapy. What is a dissident to do in the
midst of contemporary crisis? Although lessons and wisdom are offered the
structure of the session are organized around empowering the therapist at the
cost of the patient. It binds dissidence to a central and ever widening crisis. The
crisis constitutes a lack that cannot or must not be solved only rehearsed and
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disseminated. This Lacanian twist repackages dissidence into a kind of pathology
(i.e., discipline, sovereignty and me). The structure of the argument empowers
the pathology at the cost of empowering the dissident. As a result, dissidence
offers no alternatives (as advised), it finds calm comfort in reproducing crisis (as
counselled) and worships the majestic paradox of sovereignty (as ordered).
In sum, Reading dissent/writing the discipline appears as a Machiavellian letter to
non-princes. As they state “the problem is precisely one of how, here and now, in
immediate and concrete circumstances, to engage in critical labours that not only
work on institutional limitations but also further enable such critical labours
(Ashley and Walker 1990: 392).” Aesthetically the document does the same as it
takes back every proposition that it serves and offers crisis in return. To be fair,
what else could it do? Dissidence took dissidence as its object. However, their
audience is in not dissidence but the discipline. Ashley and Walker might protest
their innocence, but their interest is not in non-princes. It is a letter that time and
time again addresses the canon, while separating the dissident from what they
can do. Like Machiavelli they curry favour in the prevailing disciplinary court.
The Importance of Being Disinterested
The most exciting thing about Deleuze and Guattariʼs treatment of major and
minor literatures (as I read it) is that major and minor do not necessarily relate to
each other. While a major literature is by definition interested in a minor literature,
a minor literature is indifferent or disinterested in the major literature. Sure a
minor dissident literature tramples all over the major literatureʼs guarded terms,
tropes and spaces, but it does so for its own joyful ends and creations. The two
are not caught in a binary death dance. Yet it is the minor literatureʼs indifference
and disinterest that so infuriates the major literature. One could imagine a similar
reaction to this chapter.
Deleuze and Guattari present minor literatures “as seeds, crystals of becoming
whose value is to trigger uncontrollable movements and deterritorializations of
the mean or majority (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 105-6).” The relationship
between major and minor languages does not form a dichotomy; they are not
opposed in the way that the major literature links terms like here/there, self/other,
and universal/particular. They do not constitute an opposition because they are
not different in language; instead, they use languages differently. In this sense,
minor literatures do not construct themselves as the negative or opposite of the
major literature. For Deleuze and Guattari minor literatures do not aspire to
become major literatures - there is no becoming majoritarian, there is only
becoming minoritarian (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:106). Minor literatures are
disinterested.
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This characterization (or observation) of a disinterested attitude is rooted in
Deleuzeʼs treatment of difference (Deleuze,G. 1994) and his reverse Platonism
(Brusseau 1998). To put it as simply as possible: difference is not opposed to
sameness. This is a novel stance because, from the standpoint of a major
literature, the two are usually depicted as being caught in a constitutive dualism
(i.e. same/different). For Deleuze, difference is better understood as a
dissinterested term in such a chain (i.e. same/different * difference). Difference is
an open horizon of which the same/different coupling is only one of many infinite
possible lines of flight. Difference, in other words, is not tethered to sameness.
Difference exceeds the univocality of being (whereby all things are the same
before they are different), and instead posits the actuality of difference in itself
(Deleuze 1994).
It is this indifference that is critical. The same basic indifference applies to the
other constitute dualisms of modernity self/other, universal/particular,
transcendence/immanence, sovereignty/anarchy that acts as an apparatus of
capture. The “double bind” that Ashley and Walker mobilize, like the prisonerʼs
dilemma, the tragedy of the commons, Hobbesʼ Leviathan, Rousseauʼs social
contract and other apparatuses of capture, does not hold if the basic premise is
treated with disinterest. In Ashley and Walkerʼs case the basic premise is that
two terms are related by the line that separates them. It neednʼt be. When the
pretention of major literatures (and perhaps the ambition to become one) is
released, the political terrain changes. The promises that these “double binds”
offer (i.e., peace, security, prosperity and critique) are dreary when they are
unhinged from their opposites (i.e., war, terror, poverty and resentiment). The
primary goal of critical projects ceases to be tethered to accentuating disciplinary
crisis and problematizing sovereignty. Instead, the cascading point of resistance
resides in and through a performance of indifference. It constitutes a kind of
“unburden (Deleuze 1983:184).” Unburdened and through indifference, the
promise becomes that other worlds are always already populated with vibrant
and creative difference.
To be sure, this indifference need not mean uncaring, apathy, cynicism which
belong entirely to a kind of becoming reactive of the apparatus of capture.
Instead, a softening of the gaze excites the abundance of already existing
possibilities. Specifically, instead of fixing oneʼs attention to a false dichotomy
(and therefore becoming reactive and separating force from what it can do)
indifference attends to the multiplicity of ways in which difference is always
already emerging. In this spirit, the emphasis switches from critique and negation
to what Deleuzeʼs Nietzsche calls “affirmation (Deleuze 1983).” Affirmation “is
becoming active personified (Deleuze 1983:54).” To affirm means to attend to
those forces that are active in a specific kind of way - those actions that affirm
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difference and amplify what something can do. The engine of affirmation has as
two parts:
Difference is reflected in the affirmation of affirmation: the moment of reflection where a
second affirmation takes the first as its object. But in this way affirmation is redoubled: as
object of the second affirmation it is affirmation itself affirmed, redoubled affirmation,
difference raised to its highest power (Deleuze1983:189).
Deleuzeʼs Nietzsche calls this engine “the eternal return” or “being of becoming”
(Deleuze1983:189) and offers, to my mind, a kind of uncategorical unimperative
– act only in those ways that return differently and create something new. To
affirm, in sum, “is to create, not to bear, put up with or accept
(Deleuze1983:186).”
Disinterest may seem difficult to operationalize and organize. However, the
promise of Ashley and Walkerʼs argument is that the discipline, in general, and
sovereignty, in particular, is always already in crisis. I propose we leave the
discipline alone and focus energies on creating more effective movements.
Amplifying what different kinds of movements do becomes political. The
opportunity to affirm affirmation becomes abundant - World making is
everywhere.
Jose Saramagoʼs novel Seeing (Saramago 2006) serves to illustrate the
argument that disinterest is a creative political force. In a fictitious election in a
fictitious Portugal a strange event occurred. No one voted. However, this nonvoting was not a sign of inactivity, apathy or uncaring. On the contrary, on voting
day people lined up, took their ballot, went into the booths and voted. The
unusual thing was that upon counting the ballots, it was discovered that everyone
had left their ballot blank. Now Saramago has used the metaphor of whiteness
before (in the novel Blindness, for instance) to signal that nothing is more, not
less, than something. Here too, the metaphor holds. It was not that the fine
people of fictitious Portugal did nothing, on the contrary, they did something that
was considered nothing but had the effect, like the colour white, of a combined
everything. They affirmed a difference that was beyond or in excess of the
options represented to them on the ballot. Instead, they carried on with life and
caused the fictitious Portuguese government to tumble.
For those who worry that this is only literature: 1) whatever and 2) such a
Saramagian Event has also occurred twice by the fine people of fictitious
Canada. The first occurred around the Meech Lake Accord (an act to amend the
Constitution to appease Quebec). Womenʼs Organizations, like the National
Action Committee on the status of Women (NAC), First Nations groups like the
Native Womenʼs Association of Canada (NWAC) and anti-capitalist organizations
offered many reasons to oppose the document. Many were in a bind: they
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wanted to support Quebec but found that the concerns raised by dissidents
compelling. As such, a spoil your ballot campaign emerged. It is true, a spoil your
ballot campaign (although some estimates said 30% voted this way) does
nothing officially. However, it says generally we do not recognize your authority to
govern or to even ask the question in the first place.
A similar example occurred when the equally fictitious British Columbia
government held a referendum on First Nations treaty rights. One of the crucial
concerns was whether the government as a “non-sovereign entity” had any right
to hold a referendum on First Nationʼs treaties that is reserved for “intersovereign” relations. Details aside, the referendum acted like an apparatus of
capture. If you voted yes, your vote counted as a yes. If did not vote (i.e.,
abstained or spoilt your ballot) your vote was counted as a yes. If you voted no,
you (and here is the ultimate capture) you acknowledged that the fictitious BC
government had the right hold the referendum in the first place. What to do? An
affirmation emerged from Chief Judith Sayers of the Hesquiah First Nation. She
asked fictitious Canadians to send her their ballots to be ceremonially stuffed into
a canoe on the shores of Songhees First Nation and set on fire. The affirmation
did not negate the referendum; instead it affirmed a different horizon of solidarity
on the west coast.
What these two examples affirm is that even in the heart of a sovereign capture
of difference (i.e., voting) there are options that exceed the authorized actions
and instead celebrate indifferent ways of being together in the world. Are there
others? Abundantly so! From Seattle 1999 to Greece 2010, from Code Pink to
Red Shirts, from G20 Black Block to Gaza Blockade etc… The question is not
“whither sovereignty?” It should be how to appreciate the abundance of daily
protests through the world in such a way as to affirm what they can do.
To dwell on just one final example - the recent English translation of the text The
Coming Insurrection written by (?) nine activists in France that were charged in
2008 with "criminal association for the purpose of terrorist activity." The text is
amazing, in part, because it is simultaneously so bleak and yet so active. For the
authorsʼ self-named “the invisible committee” everything is implicated, everything
has been captured, and everything is written within a major literature of a dying
civilization. There is no escape: “to go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is
not coming; it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of civilization
(Comité invisible 2009:96).” And yet what jumps from the pages of this beautiful
failure is a sense of possibility, an incitement to action and a sense that you
havenʼt been paying attention to what is right in front of you.
This affirmation does not emerge despite the difficulties we experience in the
world (in our different and differing ways); it emerges because of the difficulties
that define the contemporary era. For The Coming Insurrection “certain
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questions have been revived that only yesterday may have seemed grotesque or
outmoded; they need to be seized upon, not in order to respond to them
definitively, but to make them live (Comité invisible 2009:19).” The problem is not
an absence of a schematic or logical plan. Instead, they assert, “if one knows
how to move, the absence of a schema is not an obstacle but an opportunity
(Comité invisible 2009:19).” Why? It is simple; “there is no gap between what we
are, what we do, and what we are becoming (Comité invisible 2009:15).” This
monkey wrench gangʼs broad declaration of “the eternal return” and “being of
becoming” affirms an immediacy that is not limited and a present that is not
singular. “Letʼs stop denouncing repression,” they announce, “letʼs prepare to
confront it (Comité invisible 2009:115).” As they joyfully proclaim: “the future has
no future (Comité invisible 2009:23.”
What has become clear is that crisis is not enough. In a world governed by risk
management, “crisis is a means of governing (Comité invisible 2009:14).” Crisis,
emergency, exceptionalism, urgency define the contemporary mode of
governance that circulates the question of sovereignty with a certain confidence
that it will remain current. Pre-emption, preparedness, and prudence continue to
define the best way of managing dissidence. The crisis of 1990 is less different
than the crisis of 2010 than one might initially assume – they separate us from
what we can do.
The future has no Future
There have been at least three recent creative turns in dissident literatures. The
first exceeds the proliferating map of biopolitics suggesting that political battles
are no longer reserved for the global, the local or even the glocal – they are
everywhere in the micro-political fabrics of quotidian life. The second amplifies
the aesthetic resources of contemporary life and seeks neither ideal nor
pedagogical, purpose but instead redistributes what political action can mean
(Rancière 2004). Moreover, the third affirms the affective dimensions of human
becoming by affirming that the boundaries of lived experience do not conform to
metaphysical constraint. These three great turns confront the human sciences
so that it becomes possible, with Foucault, to imagine that it could always be
otherwise (Foucault 1996). Surely the world is not a matter of black/white, nor
even a question washed in shades of grey – a war of colours awaits.
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References
Ashley, R. K., and R. B. J. Walker. 1990. Reading Dissidence/Writing the
discipline: Crisis and the question of sovereignty in international studies.
International Studies Quarterly 34, (3).
Beckett, Samuel. 1970. Proust. Evergreen book. Vol. E-50. New York: Grove Press.
Brusseau, J. 1998. Isolated experiences: Gilles deleuze and the solitudes of reversed
platonism. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.
Comité invisible. 2009. The coming insurrection. Semiotext(e) intervention series.
[Insurrection qui vient.]. Vol. 1. Los Angeles, CA; Cambridge, Mass.:
Semiotexte; distributed by The MIT Press.
Deleuze, G. 1994. Difference and repetition. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 1983. Nietzsche and philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1987. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and
schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———. 1986. Kafka: Toward a minor literature. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Foucault, M. 1996. Foucault live: (interviews, 1961-1984), ed. S. Lotringer. New
York: Semiotext(e).
Rancière, J. 2004. The politics of aesthetics: The distribution of the sensible. London ;
New York: Continuum.
Rushdie, Salman. 1990. Haroun and the sea of stories. New York: Granta Books in
association with Viking.
Saramago, José, and Margaret Jull Costa. 2006. Seeing [Ensaio sobre a lucidez.]. 1
US ed. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt.
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Abstract:
The Paradox of Crisis and the Importance of Being Disinterested
In this paper I argue that projects organized around a crisis in the discipline of
International Relations, in general, and the paradox of sovereignty, in particular,
function to centre the discipline and pre-empt creative dissident endeavors.
Specifically, I challenge the critically acclaimed article Reading
Dissidence/Writing the Discipline: Crisis and the Question of Sovereignty by
Richard Ashley and Rob Walker to show how such projects function as
apparatuses of capture. Their project separates dissidence from what it can do
since crisis is a means of governing dissent. Countering their categorical
imperative to act only on those maxims that accentuate disciplinary crisis and
pose sovereignty as a question, I theorize the importance of being disinterested.
In particular, I use Deleuzeʼs treatment of difference and affirmation to suggest
that creative political possibilities are neither tethered to crisis nor sovereignty.
Instead of memorializing Ashley and Walkeʼs critical turn, I argue that affirmation
means to attend to those forces that amplify what something can do. I offer
concrete examples that from the document The Coming Insurrection that was
published by dissidents in France and lead to their 2008 arrest for "criminal
association for the purpose of terrorist activity."
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