Table Of ContentPSIR · PALGRAVE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Pessimism in
International Relations
Provocations, Possibilities, Politics
Edited by
Tim Stevens
Nicholas Michelsen
Palgrave Studies in International Relations
Series Editors
Mai’a K. Davis Cross
Northeastern University
Boston, MA, USA
Benjamin de Carvalho
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Oslo, Norway
Shahar Hameiri
University of Queensland
St. Lucia, QLD, Australia
Knud Erik Jørgensen
University of Aarhus
Aarhus, Denmark
Ole Jacob Sending
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Oslo, Norway
Ayşe Zarakol
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
Palgrave Studies in International Relations (the EISA book series), pub-
lished in association with European International Studies Association,
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bers can access a 50% discount to PSIR, the EISA book series, here
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tions/eisa/login/landing.aspx. Mai’a K. Davis Cross is the Edward
W. Brooke Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University,
USA, and Senior Researcher at the ARENA Centre for European
Studies, University of Oslo, Norway. Benjamin de Carvalho is a Senior
Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
(NUPI), Norway. Shahar Hameiri is Associate Professor of International
Politics and Associate Director of the Graduate Centre in Governance
and International Affairs, School of Political Science and International
Studies, University of Queensland, Australia. Knud Erik Jørgensen is
Professor of International Relations at Aarhus University, Denmark, and
at Yaşar University, Izmir, Turkey. Ole Jacob Sending is the Research
Director at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI),
Norway. Ayşe Zarakol is Reader in International Relations at the
University of Cambridge and a fellow at Emmanuel College, UK.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14619
Tim Stevens · Nicholas Michelsen
Editors
Pessimism
in International
Relations
Provocations, Possibilities, Politics
Editors
Tim Stevens Nicholas Michelsen
Department of War Studies Department of War Studies
King’s College London King’s College London
London, UK London, UK
Palgrave Studies in International Relations
ISBN 978-3-030-21779-2 ISBN 978-3-030-21780-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8
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A
cknowledgements
The editors would like to thank all the contributors for their hard
work and enthusiasm for the project. Many were attendees at a work-
shop, ‘Pessimism in International Relations’, held in September 2017
at King’s College London, sponsored by the British International
Studies Association (BISA) Poststructural Politics Working Group. We
thank Aggie Hirst, Tahseen Kazi and Christina Oelgemoller for facili-
tating the workshop and Bisi Olulode for logistics. Also in attendance
at the workshop were Antoine Bousquet, Lara Montesinos Coleman,
Stephan Engelkamp, Evren Eken, Alvina Hoffmann, Shir Ben-Naftali
and Seán Molloy, all of whom contributed ideas that have helped shape
this volume in various ways. We also thank the participants of the
European International Studies Association section on ‘Pessimism and
International Relations’ held in Prague in September 2018, whose pres-
entations, contributions and vibrant debates greatly helped the project.
In particular, we thank Beate Jahn, Jeff Huysmans, Felix Berenskoetter
and Vassilios Paipais for their contributions. We also sincerely thank
Sarah Roughley, Mary Fata and the team at Palgrave Macmillan for their
support and advice and Josh Bryson for the index.
v
c
ontents
1 Introduction: The Problems of Pessimism 1
Tim Stevens and Nicholas Michelsen
Part I Histories of Pessimism
2 Pessimism in International Relations 13
Richard Ned Lebow
3 The Romance of Realism: Pessimism as Tragedy 37
Ronnie Hjorth
4 Cassirer, Fatalism and Political Myth: Historical
Lessons in the Consequences of Pessimism
for International Relations 53
Mark Bailey
5 Liberal Pessimism: An Intellectual History of Suspicion
in the Cold War 67
Dillon Stone Tatum
vii
viii CONTENTS
6 Productive Pessimism: Rehabilitating John Herz’s
Survival Research for the Anthropocene 83
Tim Stevens
Part II Pessimisms Today
7 The Global Politics of Ugly Feelings: Pessimism
and Resentment in a Mimetic World 101
Elisabetta Brighi
8 Pessimism and the Alt-Right: Knowledge, Power, Race
and Time 119
Nicholas Michelsen and Pablo de Orellana
9 The Pessimism of the Shipwreck: Theorising Μigration
in International Relations 137
Myriam Fotou
10 The Pessimism Traps of Indigenous Resurgence 155
Sheryl R. Lightfoot
11 After Pessimism? Affirmative Approaches
to the Anthropocene 173
David Chandler
12 Afterword: The New Pessimism in Twenty-First-
Century World Politics 191
Philip G. Cerny
Index 205
n c
otes on ontributors
Mark Bailey is Assistant Professor in Politics in the School of
International Studies at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo,
China. Before joining UNNC he worked in a series of teaching posi-
tions at Nottingham, Sheffield, UCL and Lancaster universities in the
UK, specialising in the fields of International Political Economy and
International Relations. His research interests revolve around the use
of political myth in discourses of globalisation; the ‘anti-globalisation’
movement (especially the mythologising of the movement from within);
US foreign policy in the post-1945 period; and the political philosophies
of Ernst Cassirer, Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin.
Elisabetta Brighi is Lecturer in International Relations at the University
of Westminster, London, UK. Her research looks at international security,
international political theory and foreign policy, on which she has published
widely. Her latest book is Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics and International
Relations: The Case of Italy (Routledge, 2013). She is currently working on
a monograph, ‘Security, Aesthetic and Camouflage in the City’.
Philip G. Cerny is Professor Emeritus of Politics and Global Affairs at
the University of Manchester and Rutgers University-Newark. He pre-
viously taught at the University of York and the University of Leeds. He
has been a visiting fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard
University, Sciences Po and the University of Tasmania, and a visiting
professor at Dartmouth College and New York University. His books
include, The Politics of Grandeur: Ideological Aspects of de Gaulle’s Foreign
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Policy (Cambridge University Press, 1980), The Changing Architecture
of Politics: Structure, Agency and the Future of the State (Sage, 1990)
and Rethinking World Politics: A Theory of Transnational Neopluralism
(Oxford University Press, 2010).
David Chandler is Professor of International Relations at the University
of Westminster, London, UK. His recent monographs include: Becoming
Indigenous: Governing Imaginaries in the Anthropocene (Rowman and
Littlefield, 2019, with Julian Reid); Ontopolitics in the Anthropocene:
An Introduction to Mapping, Sensing and Hacking (Routledge, 2018);
International Peacebuilding: The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1997–2017
(Palgrave, 2017); The Neoliberal Subject: Resilience, Adaptation and
Vulnerability (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016, with Julian Reid); and,
Resilience: The Governance of Complexity (Routledge, 2014).
Pablo de Orellana is a Lecturer in International Relations in the
Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK. His research
focuses on the role of identity in diplomacy, nationalism, International
Relations theory and art history. His Ph.D. looked at how diplomacy
constructs knowledge about political subjects. He has published articles
on the history and mechanics of nationalist ideas, diplomatic communi-
cation, the role of identity in diplomacy and an upcoming monograph
on the diplomacy of the First Vietnam War. He is currently researching
the latest evolutions in nationalist thought and movements in Europe
and America.
Myriam Fotou is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of
Leicester, UK. Her research aims to create a distinctive ethics of hospital-
ity, which functions as a way of thinking about the relationship between
representation and humanisation, of being alert to precarious life, and of
responding to the ‘missing’ Other or the ‘unmissed’ Other, that is, an
Other who may be present in the Western imaginary, but who, nonethe-
less, does not possess any clear status or agency; who is ‘illegal’ in her pres-
ence, exists in a legal vacuum, or is a figure of destitution or liminality.
Ronnie Hjorth is Professor of Political Science at the Swedish National
Defence College, Stockholm, Sweden. He specialises in international polit-
ical theory, political theory, international ethics and international society.
He has published recently in Journal of International Political Theory, De
Ethica and Review of International Studies, and his latest book is Equality
in International Society: A Reappraisal (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
