Out of Line: Essays on the politics of boundaries and the limits of modern politics

323 Pages·2016·1.82 MB·English

by  R. B. J. Walker

OUT OF LINE
A collection of essays on the politics of boundaries, this book addresses a broad
range of cases, some geographical, some legal, and some involving less tangible
practices of inclusion and exclusion. The book begins by exploring the boundary
between modern Western forms of international relations and their constitutive
outsides. Beyond this, the author engages with relations between subjectivity and
security, security and nature, social movements and a world politics, as well as the
politics of spatiotemporal dislocation. Two chapters address the work of Thomas
Hobbes and Max Weber as exemplary accounts of the relationship between
boundaries and the constitution of modern forms of politics. Each chapter speaks
not only to the politics of specific boundary practices, but also to the limits within
which modern politics has been shaped in relation to claims about spatiality,
temporality, sovereignty and subjectivity. In this way, the book draws attention to
a pervasive account of a scalar order of higher and lower that has shaped more
familiar distinctions between internality and externality.
Offering an analysis of the relation between concepts of internationalism,
imperialism and exceptionalism, as well as the implications of spatiotemporal dis-
location for claims about democracy, the book links contemporary claims about
the transformation of boundaries to various ways in which political life is said to be
in crisis and in need of novel forms of critique. Brought up to date by a new and
extensiveintroductoryessayandanassessmentofthestatusofpoliticaljudgementafter
9/11, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of politics, international
relations, political theory and political sociology.
R. B. J. Walker is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Victoria, Canada, and Professor Associado, Instituto de Relações
Internacionais, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
GLOBAL HORIZONS
Series Editors: Richard Falk, Princeton University, USA and R. B. J. Walker,
UniversityofVictoria,Canada
We live in a moment that urgently calls for a reframing, reconceptualizing and
reconstituting of the political, cultural and social practices that underpin the
enterprises of international relations.
While contemporary developments in international relations are focused upon
highly detailed and technical matters, they also demand an engagement with the
broader questions of history, ethics, culture and human subjectivity.
GLOBAL HORIZONS is dedicated to examining these broader questions.
1. International Relations and 6. Beyond the Global
the Problem of Difference Culture War
DavidBlaneyandNaeemInayatullah Adam Webb
2. Methods and Nations 7. Cinematic Geopolitics
Cultural governance and the Michael J. Shapiro
indigenous subject
Michael J. Shapiro
8. The Liberal Way
of War
3. Declining World Order
Killing to make life live
America’s imperial geopolitics
Michael Dillon and
Richard Falk
Julian Reid
4. Human Rights, Private
9. After the Globe, Before
Wrongs
the World
Constructing global civil society
R. B. J. Walker
Alison Brysk
10. Ideas to Die For
5. Rethinking Refugees
The cosmopolitan challenge
Beyond states of emergency
Giles Gunn
Peter Nyers
11. Re-Imagining Humane 14. Humanitarian Intervention
Governance and Legitimacy Wars
Richard Falk Seeking peace and justice in the
21st century
12. Politics of Difference Richard Falk
The epistemologies
of peace 15. Out of Line
Hartmut Behr Essays on the politics of
boundaries and the limits of
13. The Colonial Art of modern politics
Demonizing Others R. B. J. Walker
A global perspective
Esther Lezra
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OUT OF LINE
Essays on the politics of boundaries
and the limits of modern politics
R. B. J. Walker
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Firstpublished2016
byRoutledge
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andbyRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2016R.B.J.Walker
TherightofR.B.J.Walkertobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeen
assertedbyhiminaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,Designs
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Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor
utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinany
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publishers.
Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintentto
infringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Walker,R.B.J.
Outofline:essaysonthepoliticsofboundariesandthelimitsofmodern
politics/R.B.J.Walker.
pagescm.--(Globalhorizons)
1.Internationalrelations--Philosophy.2.Boundaries--Politicalaspects.I.Title.
JZ1242.W3472016
327.101--dc23
2015008600
ISBN:978-1-138-78312-6(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-138-78461-1(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-69322-4(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byIntegraSoftwareServicesPvt.Ltd.
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xii
1 Despite all critique 1
2 World politics and Western reason: universalism, pluralism,
hegemony (1980) 37
3 The doubled outsides of the modern international (2005) 65
4 The subject of security (1995) 82
5 On the protection of nature and the nature of
protection (2005) 97
6 Social movements/world politics (1994) 112
7 Europe is not where it is supposed to be (2000) 143
8 They seek it here, they seek it there: locating the political
in Clayoquot Sound (2003) 161
9 Violence, modernity, silence: from Max Weber to
international relations theory (1993) 182
10 Hobbes, origins, limits (2011) 201
11 War, terror, judgement (2002) 217
12 International, imperial, exceptional (2005) 236
viii Contents
13 Which democracy for which demos? (2013) 266
14 The political theory of boundaries and the boundaries of
political theory: interview with Raia Prokhovnik (2012) 286
Index 302
PREFACE
The essays I have brought together here respond to specific events and problems
arising in many different places. They nevertheless speak to broad concerns about
the future of modern forms of political life. The earliest essay has its roots in the
mid-1970s,while thelatest respondstodynamicsthatstillappear inthedailynews.
Much has changed over that period, but much has remained remarkably resilient.
Four decades isbothaverylong time andamereinstant;andasthewisestpolitical
commentators have long insisted, timing is everything, even with boundaries that
are inscribed in stone and secured with blood.
A large part of my own work over that period has tried to understand the
remarkableresilienceofspecificaccountsofwhatitmeanstothinkaboutboundaries
despite dramatic social, economic and technological processes that have led many
analysts to predict or even simply presume their imminent obsolescence. A major
explanation for this resilience, I have argued, involves very deep attachments to
specific principles of – and both boundaries and relations between – sovereign
authority and human subjectivity. Moreover, these principles have been shaped
within historical cultures that have tended to privilege specific accounts of spatial
topology and geometry, and to imagine temporal possibilities in more or less
spatial terms as some form of linear history. Consequently, as these essays seek to
demonstrate, the politics of boundaries must involve much more than the status of
geographical borders, or even the limits of sovereign or legal jurisdiction. No
politicalanalysiscanaffordtotreatboundariesasmeredemarcationsbetweenplaces
or times in which to find comparable or dissimilar forms of the political.
As such, these essays have been influenced by a great many people in many
different places working within a broad array of scholarly fields and traditions.
They do not have a comfortable disciplinary home; no one interested in the politics
of boundaries can afford such luxuries. Fortunately, I have been privileged to
encounter both intellectual brilliance and political bravery in many settings, to