International Relations and States of Exception: Margins, Peripheries, and Excluded Bodies

273 Pages·2010·1.863 MB·English

by  Shampa Biswas (ed.), Sheila Nair (ed.)

International Relations and States
of Exception
Critically but sympathetically interrogating Italian philosopher Giorgio
Agamben’s analysis of the logic of sovereign power, this volume draws atten-
tion to the multiple zones of exclusion in and through which contemporary
international politics constitutes itself.
Beginning from the margins and peripheries of world politics, International
Relations and States of Exception emphasizes the colonial processes from
which contemporary “thirdworld” spaces of exception have been shaped and
particular bodies made susceptible to the conditions of “bare life.” The
authors contend that these bodies inhabit a variety of spaces or “zones of
indistinction” that enclose political detainees, refugees, asylum-seekers, poor
migrants, sweatshop workers, and unassimilated indigenous populations.
These arethe“expendablebodies”thattheterritorialand market-drivenlogic
of current international relations simultaneously produces, polices and
excludes. Focusing on the locally and socio-historically specific ways that
sovereign power works, the individual chapters provide the volume with a
wide geographical reach. Drawing on diverse approaches, this text constitutes
an important intervention in critical international relations, providing groun-
ded theory and sophisticated analyses of how contemporary international
relationsworks through the production of “exceptions.”
Bringing together a range of internationally-renowned scholars, Interna-
tionalRelationsandStatesofExceptionwillbeofvitalinteresttostudentsand
scholarsof InternationalRelations,CriticalTheoryand Postcolonial Studies.
Shampa Biswas is Associate Professor of Politics and Director of Global
Studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, U.S.A. Dr. Biswas
has worked and published extensively in the areas of postcolonial interna-
tional relations, critical security studies and the politics of development.
Sheila Nair is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Northern
Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, U.S.A. Dr. Nair has published on
postcolonial international relations, human rights movements and discourses,
nationalism,andMalaysianpoliticsSheisco-editorofPower,Post-colonialism
and International Relations: Reading Race, Gender and Class (2002).

International Relations and
States of Exception
Margins, peripheries, and excluded bodies
Edited by
Shampa Biswas and Sheila Nair
Firstpublished2010
byRoutledge
2ParkSquareMiltonParkAbingdonOxonOX144RN
SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada
byRoutledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business.
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
©2010ShampaBiswasandSheilaNairselectionandeditorialmatter;
individualcontributors,theircontributions
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor
utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orin
anyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwriting
fromthepublishers.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Internationalrelationsandstatesofexception:margins,peripheries,and
excludedbodies/editedbyShampaBiswasandSheilaNair.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
[etc.]
1.Internationalrelations.2.Sovereignty.3.Non-stateactors(International
relations)4.Refugeecamps.5.Politicalprisoners.I.Biswas,Shampa.II.
Nair,Sheila
JZ4034.I672009
327.1–dc22
2009014815
ISBN 0-203-86868-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 10: 0-415-77694-5 (hbk)
ISBN10:0-415-77695-3(pbk)
ISBN10:0-203-86868-4(ebk)
ISBN13:978-0-415-77694-5(hbk)
ISBN13:978-0-415-77695-0(pbk)
ISBN13:978-0-203-86868-3(ebk)
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: International Relations and
“states of exception” 1
SHAMPABISWASANDSHEILANAIR
1 Uncivil zones: terror and territoriality in the geopolitical
shadowlands 31
SUVENDRINIPERERA
2 Geopolitical articulations: global terrorism,
southern Thailand 48
CARLOBONURA
3 Dystopic geographies of empire 71
PREMKUMARRAJARAM
4 Sovereignty, security, and migrants: making bare life 95
SHEILANAIR
5 Imperceptible naked lives: constructing a theoretical space to
account for non-statist subjectivities 116
DECHATANGSEEFA
6 Marginal life: the production of the Undocumented and (il)legality
at the U.S.–Mexican border 140
MARIEWOODLING
7 Biopower as a supplement to sovereign power: prison camps, war,
and the production of excluded bodies 161
HALITMUSTAFATAGMA
vi Contents
8 Necro-(neo) colonizations and economies of blackness: of
slaughters, “accidents,” “disasters” and captive flesh 186
ANNAM.AGATHANGELOU
9 Ec(h)o-tourism and the whisper of the state: the “greening” of
indigenous politics 210
ELIZABETHSHANNONWHEATLEY
Bibliography 230
Index 258
Notes on contributors
Anna M. Agathangelou is Associate Professor of Political Science and
Women’s Studies at York University, Toronto, Canada, and is the co-
director of the Global Change Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus. Her work
includes the Global Political Economy of Sex: Desire, Violence and Inse-
curity in Mediterranean Nation-States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and
Transforming World Politics: From Empire to Multiple Worlds (London:
Routledge, forthcoming), co-authoredwith L.H.M. Ling (New School).
Shampa Biswas is Associate Professor of Politics and Director of Global
Studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, U.S.A. Her
research interests include issues of nationalism, globalization, global
development, security, postcolonial theory and South Asian politics. She
has published articles on postcolonial international relations, race in inter-
national relations, and the nation-state in the context of globalization.
Carlo Bonura is a researcher for the Comparative Political Thought Project
sponsored by the Centre for Political Ideologies in the Department of
Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, U.K. His
research interests include Muslim politics and Islamic political thought in
Southeast Asia, contemporary political theory, and comparison as a con-
cept within political theory.
Sheila Nair is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Northern
Arizona University, U.S.A. Her publications and research include the
politicaleconomyofhumanrightsandmigration,SoutheastAsianpolitics,
postcolonial studies, and international relations theory. She is co-editor
(withGeetaChowdhry)ofPower,PostcolonialismandInternationalRelations:
Reading Race, Gender and Class (London: Routledge 2002).
Suvendrini Perera is a Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University of Tech-
nology, Australia. She completed her BA at the University of Sri Lanka
and her PhD at Columbia University, New York. Her publications include
Reaches of Empire and the edited volume Our Patch: Enacting Australian
Sovereignty Post-2001. Her most recent book Australia and the Insular
Imagination is forthcoming from Palgrave.
viii Notes on contributors
Prem Kumar Rajaram is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology
and Social Anthropology at the Central European University, Hungary.
He is the co-editor (with Carl Grundy-Warr) of Borderscapes: Hidden
Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge and works on colonial his-
tories and migration in Europe, Malaysia and Australia.
Halit Mustafa Emin Tagma is a PhD candidate and Lecturer in the Depart-
ment of Political Science at Arizona State University, U.S.A. His research
interests are critical theories ofinternational relations, and sovereignty and
biopower,thedisciplinary historyofinternationalrelations,andthehistory
of the modern university.
Decha Tangseefa teaches political science at the Faculty of Political Science,
Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand. His research and teaching
interests are political theory and philosophy, critical international studies,
and cultural studies, especially relating to displaced peoples. He has con-
tributed to several major anthologies and journals in Thai and English,
including Alternatives: Global, Local, Political.
Elizabeth Shannon Wheatley is currently a PhD candidate and teaching
associateatArizonaStateUniversity,U.S.A.Herresearch interestsinclude
international relations theory, immigration, critical cosmopolitanism,
postcolonial studies, and the politics of humor.
Marie Woodling is a Research Assistant in the Department of International
PoliticsatAberystwythUniversity,Wales,U.K.Sherecentlycompletedher
doctorate, which critically explores the intersections of subalternity, post-
coloniality, and state power at the U.S.–Mexican border.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all our contributors for journeying with us on the
long process of completing this book. We are especially grateful to Briana
Coyle for her indefatigable and always cheerful energy as research assistant.
We also owe a special thanks to Eve Paludan who helped us pull the entire
manuscript together with her expert copyediting skills, and David Forest for
research assistance on the introduction.
Heidi Bagtazo, senior editor of Politics and International Studies at Rou-
tledge, believed in this project, and we are so grateful for her encouragement
throughtheentireprocess.WealsothankLucyDunne,PaolaCelliandSusan
Dunsmore, also of Routledge, for working with us on the technical details of
getting the manuscript to completion.
Finally,wewouldliketoacknowledgetheunderstanding,love,andsupport
ofourfamilies,without whom the successfulcompletionof this project would
havebeenimpossible.Sheila acknowledgesespeciallyherpartnerMikJordahl
for his loving patience and companionship in the many months it took to get
this project done. Shampa is indebted to Richard Ashford for his remarkably
unwavering support—always—and to Ishan and Samir for enduring her far
too many unforgivable absences.