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Unsettling the World is the first book-length treatment of Edward Said’s influential cultural criticism from the perspective of a political theorist. Arguing that the generative power of Said’s thought extends well beyond Orientalism, the book explores Said’s writings on the experience of exile, the practice of “contrapuntal” criticism, and the illuminating potential of worldly humanism. Said’s critical vision, Morefield argues, provides a fresh perspective on debates in political theory about subjectivity, global justice, identity, and the history of political thought. Most importantly, she maintains, Said’s approach offers theorists a model of how to bring the insights developed through historical analyses of imperialism and anti-colonialism to bear on critiques of contemporary global crises and the politics of American foreign policy.
For over two centuries, liberal apologists for empire in Britain and America have been plagued by the contradictions between political liberalism and the exclusive, anti-democratic, and violent practices of imperialism - contradictions that become particularly obvious during periods of perceived imperial crisis. This book interrogates the complicated rhetoric of several pro-imperial, public intellectuals from both the late British Empire and contemporary America, two eras marked by intense anxiety about decline.
Covenants without Swords examines an enduring tension within liberal theory: that between many liberals' professed commitment to universal equality on the one hand, and their historic support for the politics of hierarchy and empire on the other. It does so by examining the work of two extremely influential British liberals and internationalists, Gilbert Murray and Alfred Zimmern. Jeanne Morefield mounts a forceful challenge to disciplinary boundaries by arguing that this tension, on both the domestic and international levels, is best understood as frequently arising from the same, l.
This book is a comprehensive examination into the shifting international thought of Alfred Zimmern, a Grecophile intellectual, one of the most prominent liberal internationalists and the world’s first professor of IR. Identifying the writings of Burke and cultural Zionism as two important ideological sources that defined his project for empire and global order, this book argues that Zimmern can best be understood as an apostle of Commonwealth. It shows that while his proposals changed from cosmopolitan democracy to Euro-Atlanticism and to world federal government, they were constantly shaped by the organizing principles of a professedly universal British Commonwealth. It was the empire transhistorically chained to classical Athens.
The first volume to explore the role of race and empire in political theory debates over global justice.
The fatal embrace of human rights and neoliberalism Drawing on detailed archival research on the parallel histories of human rights and neoliberalism, Jessica Whyte uncovers the place of human rights in neoliberal attempts to develop a moral framework for a market society. In the wake of the Second World War, neoliberals saw demands for new rights to social welfare and self-determination as threats to “civilisation”. Yet, rather than rejecting rights, they developed a distinctive account of human rights as tools to depoliticise civil society, protect private investments and shape liberal subjects.
From the Cold War through today, the U.S. has quietly assisted dozens of regimes around the world in suppressing civil unrest and securing the conditions for the smooth operation of capitalism. Casting a new light on American empire, Badges Without Borders shows, for the first time, that the very same people charged with global counterinsurgency also militarized American policing at home. In this groundbreaking exposé, Stuart Schrader shows how the United States projected imperial power overseas through police training and technical assistance—and how this effort reverberated to shape the policing of city streets at home. Examining diverse records, from recently declassified national security and intelligence materials to police textbooks and professional magazines, Schrader reveals how U.S. police leaders envisioned the beat to be as wide as the globe and worked to put everyday policing at the core of the Cold War project of counterinsurgency. A “smoking gun” book, Badges without Borders offers a new account of the War on Crime, “law and order” politics, and global counterinsurgency, revealing the connections between foreign and domestic racial control.
In Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism, Onar Ulas Ince combines an analysis of political economy with normative political theory to examine the formative impact of colonial economic relations on the historical development of liberal thought in Britain. Focusing on the centrality of liberal economic principles to Britain's self-image as a peaceful commercial society, Ince investigates some of the key historical moments in which these principles were thrown into question by the processes of forcible expropriation and exploitation that typified the British imperial economy as a whole.
Examines how distinctive liberalisms respond to racial, cultural, gender-based and class-based forms of diversity and difference.
By the time of his death in 2003, Edward Said was one of the most famous literary critics of the twentieth century. Said's work has been hugely influential far beyond academia. As a prominent advocate for the Palestinian cause and noted cultural critic, Said redefined the role of the public intellectual. This volume explores the problems and opportunities afforded by Said's work: its productive and generative capacities as well as its in-built limitations. After Said captures the essence of Said's intellectual and political contribution and his extensive impact on postcolonial studies. It examines his legacy by critically elaborating his core concepts and arguments. Among the issues it tackles are humanism, Orientalism, culture and imperialism, exile and the contrapuntal, realism and postcolonial modernism, world literature, Islamophobia, and capitalism and the political economy of empire. It is an excellent resource for students, graduates and instructors studying postcolonial literary theory and the works of Said.