Pessimism in International Relations: Provocations, Possibilities, Politics

ISBN-13: 9783030217822 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 215 str.

Tim Stevens; Nicholas Michelsen

Spis treści

1. Introduction: The Problems of Pessimism

Tim Stevens and Nicholas Michelsen

Part I: Histories of Pessimism

2. Pessimism in International Relations

Richard Ned Lebow

3. The Romance of Realism: Pessimism as Tragedy

Ronnie Hjorth

4. Cassirer, Fatalism and Political Myth: Historical Lessons in the Consequences of Pessimism for International Relations

Mark Bailey

5. Liberal Pessimism: An Intellectual History of Suspicion in the Cold War

Dillon S. Tatum

6. Productive Pessimism: Rehabilitating John Herz’s Survival Research for the Anthropocene

Tim Stevens

Part II: Pessimisms Today

7. The Global Politics of Ugly Feelings: Pessimism and Resentment in a Mimetic World

Elisabetta Brighi

8. Pessimism and the US Alt-Right: Knowledge, Power, Race and Time

Nicholas Michelsen and Pablo de Orellana

9. The Pessimism of the Shipwreck: Theorising Migration in International Relations

Myriam Fotou

10. The Pessimism Traps of Indigenous Resurgence

Sheryl R. Lightfoot

11. After Pessimism? Affirmative Approaches to the Anthropocene

David Chandler

12. Afterword: The New Pessimism in Twenty-First Century World Politics

Philip G. Cerny

O autorze

Tim Stevens is Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK. He is the author of Cyber Security and the Politics of Time and co-author of Cyberspace and the State.

Nicholas Michelsen is Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK. He is the author of Politics and Suicide: The Philosophy of Political Self-Destruction.

Blurb

This volume explores the past, present and future of pessimism in International Relations. It seeks to differentiate pessimism from cynicism and fatalism and assess its possibilities as a respectable perspective on national and international politics. The book traces the origins of pessimism in political thought from antiquity through to the present day, illuminating its role in key schools of International Relations and in the work of important international political theorists. The authors analyse the resurgence of pessimism in contemporary politics, such as in the new populism, attitudes to migration, indigenous politics, and the Anthropocene. This edited volume provides the first collection of scholarly work on pessimism in International Relations theory and practice and offers fresh perspectives on an intellectual position often considered as disreputable as it is venerable.

Tim Stevens is Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK. He is the author of Cyber Security and the Politics of Time and co-author of Cyberspace and the State.

Nicholas Michelsen is Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK. He is the author of Politics and Suicide: The Philosophy of Political Self-Destruction.