constituent power, porous sovereignty, and the ethics of anarchism Pfenninger, C.

260 Pages·2012·1.91 MB·English

WestminsterResearch
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Capillaries of force: constituent power, porous sovereignty, and
the ethics of anarchism
Pfenninger, C.

This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster.
© Mr Christian Pfenninger, 2017.
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A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
C F
APILLARIES OF ORCE
CONSTITUENT POWER, POROUS SOVEREIGNTY,
AND THE ETHICS OF ANARCHISM
CHRISTIAN PFENNINGER
LONDON, FEBRUARY 2017
“Ich hab’ Mein’ Sach auf Nichts gestellt”
Max Stirner,
Der Einzige und sein Eigentum
TABLE OF CONTENTS
i - Abstract .................................................................................................................................5
ii - Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................6
iii - Declaration of Academic Integrity ................................................................................7
I | Introduction: The Virtues of Anarchy ..........................................................8
1. Anarchy in inter-state politics ..................................................................................8
1.1 Kenneth Waltz, the reluctant anarchist ....................................................8
1.2 The willingness to cooperate, and the fear to do so .............................10
1.3 The virtues of anarchy. Or: why anarchy has its perks too .................11
2. Anarchy without anarchism ...................................................................................13
2.1 Research question: the anarchist contribution to IR-theory ...............16
2.2 Methodological approach and plan of work .........................................18
II | The Power-Trap .........................................................................................19
1. Introduction: power discourses ............................................................................19
1.1 Power and epistemology ...........................................................................21
1.2 IR’s underlying epistemic assumptions (I): the territorial trap ............22
1.3 IR’s underlying epistemic assumptions (II): the power-trap. ...............24
1.4 A taxonomy of power ...............................................................................25
2. Power and the making of political space ............................................................28
2.1 Friedrich Ratzel: Anthropogeographie ...................................................29
2.2 Rudolf Kjellen: Der Staat als Lebensform ............................................31
2.3 Thomas Barnett: The Pentagon’s New Map .........................................34
2.4 Zbigniew Brzezinski: Strategic Vision ....................................................37
3. Conclusion: the power-trap and the ontology of political space ....................39
III | The Early Anarchists ................................................................................42
1. Introduction: the anarchist tradition of political thought ................................42
2. Anarchist key-authors: surveying 19th-century anarchism ...............................43
2.1 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ...........................................................................43
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2.2 Michael Bakunin .........................................................................................46
2.3 Peter Kropotkin .........................................................................................49
2.4 William Godwin .........................................................................................52
2.5 Max Stirner .................................................................................................54
2.6 Gustav Landauer ........................................................................................58
IV | Constituent Anarchy .................................................................................62
1. Introduction: anarchism and constituent power ................................................62
2. Approaching constituent power ...........................................................................63
3. Constituent power and the question of agency .................................................70
3.1 Multitude and living labour ......................................................................71
3.2 Sovereignty, decisionism, and the state ...................................................74
4. Constituent power and the anarchist tradition of political thought ...............76
4.1 Mutualist politics: Justice in the Revolution and the Church ..............78
4.2 Collective reason: Political Capacity of the Working Class .................81
4.3 Collective force: What is Property? .........................................................84
4.4 Revolutionary ontologies: The Philosophy of Progress ......................87
4.5 Constituted and constituent power in other works ..............................90
5. Conclusion: constituent anarchy ...........................................................................93
V | From Power to Force ..................................................................................96
1. Introduction: power in International Relations theory .....................................96
2. Capabilities, discourses, and the power of persuasion ......................................97
2.1 Capability-based models: classical and structural realism ....................98
2.2 Discursive approaches: post-structural takes on power ....................102
2.3 Soft power: the power of persuasion ...................................................104
3. Common grounds and insurmountable divides ..............................................107
4. From power to force: anarchist contributions to IR’s power-discourse ......109
4.1 Power as collective force .........................................................................109
4.2 From aggregation to agglomeration .....................................................111
4.3 From cooperation to commutation ......................................................114
5. Conclusion: anarchist ‘force’ and IR theory .....................................................117
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VI | Capillaries of Force .................................................................................123
1. Introduction: framing ‘the international’ ..........................................................123
1.1 The international beyond the state. .......................................................124
1.2 The new normal: the international in transformation .......................127
1.3 From substance to process .....................................................................130
1.4 Anarchic ontologies and ontological anarchy ......................................133
2. Capillaries of force: towards an anarchist account of ‘the international’ ....134
2.1 Ontological anarchy in the ‘Philosophy of Progress’ ........................135
2.2 Anarchic ontologies: groups, all the way down ...................................139
2.3 Capillaries of force: a different type of power politics ......................143
3. Conclusion: from international to global .........................................................147
3.1 Multi-polity-perspectives and the topography of world politics ......147
3.2 Natural groups, ‘the other’, and the virtues of micro-politics ..........150
VII | Reclaiming Sovereignty .........................................................................153
1. Introduction: anarchic ontologies and the future of sovereignty .................153
2. Challenges to Westphalian governance .............................................................154
3. Crisis and genesis: the rise of state sovereignty ...............................................157
3.1 Political sovereignty as hypothetical authority ....................................158
3.2 The right to death: state-based sovereignty, coercion, legalism ........160
4. Reclaiming sovereignty ........................................................................................161
4.1 Force and genesis: sovereignty as constituent power .........................161
4.2 The generative momentum of immanence .........................................165
5. Elements of porous sovereignty ........................................................................170
5.1 Constituent power and the centrality of anarchist thought ..............171
5.2 Porous sovereignty: empirical, partial, synthetic .................................174
6. Conclusion: porous sovereignty in global politics ...........................................177
6.1 Porous sovereignty in relation to Westphalia ......................................177
6.2 Porous sovereignty and the multitude ..................................................178
6.3 Porous sovereignty and the exercise of structural control. ...............180
VIII | Anarchist Ethics: Scrutinizing Agonistic Spatiality .............................185
1. Introduction: agonistic spatiality ........................................................................185
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2. Locating responsibility: institutional architecture and the ethics of space ..187
3. Agonism and anarchism: fundamental overlaps ..............................................195
3.1 The freedom of the ancient and the freedom of the modern .........195
3.2 The critique of rationalism and liberal neutrality ...............................199
3.3 The constitutive function of power ......................................................201
4. Agonistic international politics ...........................................................................203
4.1 Transnational order in the pluriverse ....................................................203
4.2 Scrutinizing agonistic spatiality: reproducing the ‘territorial trap’ ...204
4.3 Forget Schmitt: the dilemma of sovereignty .......................................214
5. Conclusion: the pluriverse and the omniverse .................................................219
IX | Conclusion: The Virtues of Anarchism ..................................................228
1. Anarchism in the context of International Relations Theory .......................228
2. The virtues of anarchism in IR: five proposals ...............................................230
2.1 Towards a theory of constituent power in global politics .................230
2.2 Complex ontologies: the deep anarchy of the global ........................232
2.3 Beyond Westphalia: sovereignty and constituent power ....................233
2.4 The politics of space: geopolitics and anarchism ...............................235
2.5 Geopolitical spaces and the ethics of porous sovereignty ................237
iv - Bibliography ...................................................................................................................239
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I - ABSTRACT
Despite the omnipresence of anarchy in IR, anarchist political thought is
only partly mobilized by the discipline. IR has been paying a great deal of
attention to anarchy, but it failed so far to consistently incorporate anarchism into
its conceptual repertoire. Conversely, anarchist theorists have demonstrated only a
limited interest in joining debates about international politics. This research-
project addresses the incomplete and partial mobilization of anarchist political
philosophy in IR, and offers a more holistic approach to the discipline’s grand
themes.
Towards this particular end the thesis deploys a series of key-concepts
central to classical anarchist thought, and inserts them into the context of
contemporary IR-theory. The research departs from the hypothesis that an
engagement of anarchism with IR must run through a mobilization of
constituent power. Anarchist political theory is somewhat neglected by the
discipline of IR. Yet, apart from the evident lack of anarchism in IR there exists
another gap in the literature, namely the inconsistent application of constituent
power to the study of global politics. While the thesis focuses chiefly on the
anarchist contribution to IR-theory, it also argues that this double-lacuna must be
addressed jointly.
The project hence offers a critical narration of IR key-concepts along the
lines of philosophical anarchism - a reading which is supported by the
deployment of constituent power. Within this context the centrality of power to
the study of IR is discussed, and the discipline’s underlying methodological
assumptions are systematically evaluated. The project furthermore assesses
anarchist philosophy against the backdrop of constituent force, and establishes a
firm connection between the two traditions of political thought. The conceptual
implications of an amalgamation of constituent power and anarchist political
theory are eventually explored by means of an engagement with a series of IR’s
grand themes, most notably ontology, sovereignty, agency, spatiality, and global
ethics.
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II - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my Director of Studies, Dr. Thomas Moore, for his
continuous intellectual support during the last four years, and for helping me to
bring this project to fruition. The research process was not always linear, and I
wandered off more than once, but his patience never waned.
My gratitude goes also to Prof. David Chandler, the Second Supervisor to
this thesis, for a series of intellectually stimulating conversations, especially during
the final phase of the research.
The realization of this project would have been much more difficult
without the material and institutional support of the University of Westminster. I
would like to thank the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, the Graduate
School, and in particular the Department of Politics and International Relations,
for scholarships, travel grants, teaching opportunities, and academic guidance.
I am also grateful for having the privilege of knowing, and being part of
the SSH-PhD-community. Thank you for being both colleagues and friends.
My family supported me unconditionally and without any hesitation, not
only during my doctoral studies, but also well before. They have made this
endeavor possible, and to them I dedicate this thesis.
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III - DECLARATION OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
I declare that Capillaries of Force: Constituent Power, Porous Sovereignty, and the
Ethics of Anarchism is my own work and that all the source that I have used or
quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete reference.
I further promise that in the attached submission I have not presented
anyone else’s work as my own and I have not colluded with others in the
preparation of this work. Where I have taken advantage of the work of others, I
have given full acknowledgement.
Christian Pfenninger
London, February 2017
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