Papers by Mauro J Caraccioli
Re-Envisioning Ideology: Disciplinary (Neo)Liberalism and the Production of World Order, 2021
In this Introduction, I discuss the motivations underlying this Special Issue in honor of the 20t... more In this Introduction, I discuss the motivations underlying this Special Issue in honor of the 20th Anniversary of François Debrix's Re-Envisioning Peacekeeping: The United Nations and the Mobilization of Ideology. Highlighting the contextual relevance of the text, I discuss the role Debrix's work has played in the broader interrogation of disciplinary logics within the field of International Relations and beyond, as discussed by the accompanying essays. Specifically, I point to the book's critique of economic moralism, the simulation of order, and ever-increasing virtuality of politics in the context of U.S. higher education's transformations during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Routledge Handbook of Historical International Relations (Routledge, 2021), 2021
Much has been written about theories of empire in the last two decades.1 Indeed, the prodi- gious... more Much has been written about theories of empire in the last two decades.1 Indeed, the prodi- gious outbreak of scholarly turns, moments, and calls to arms have made the world as difficult to define as culture, nature, or, in recent times, globalization (Burbank and Cooper, 2011; Ghosh, 2012; Immerwahr, 2019).Yet despite the proliferation of contemporary works attending to history’s multiple imperial moments, providing a definition for empire doesn’t seem to be the problem, but rather how to use it as a concept.Asking scholars to think contextually about empire seems ironically less helpful in this regard.The requisite periodization of the term’s meanings often leads to debates concerning the risks of anachronism, instead of tracing the continuities and ruptures between imperialism’s many constitutive parts. Empire, as presumed, has brought together many viewpoints under its shadow, but to very little unity. In this chapter, I look to the study of early empires as one such type of conceptual narrative, in particular the ways that modern empires have justified their logics of conceptual domin- ation.
Daniel Bertrand Monk and Michael Sorkin (eds.), Between Catastrophe and Revolution: Essays in Honor of Mike Davis (Urban Research Publishing), 2021
Of the many lenses that critical social theorists have developed to understand the present era, r... more Of the many lenses that critical social theorists have developed to understand the present era, ruination is not usually one that comes to mind. There are several books, studies, and research collectives interested in how the cata- strophic can serve as a potential site from where future forms of human life— if not just theories of the future—can emerge. In this chapter, I turn to the distinct existential anxiety surrounding our contemporary ecological crisis. Specifically, I examine the social positioning of critics at the fringes of the so-called climate wars, as they offer contend- ing narratives about humanity’s future (or lack thereof) in the face of a dying planet.
International Studies Review, 2020
At stake in this forum are the politics of translation in the study of global politics. More spec... more At stake in this forum are the politics of translation in the study of global politics. More specifically, the following interventions aim to consider the ways that scholars can recenter the utility of language toward more flexible conceptions of relationality. As each contribution reveals, translation is indispensable to individual theorizations of international politics; yet taken together, the forum aims to mitigate the alleged necessity of a lingua franca in IR scholarship. We go beyond the linguistic demands of conventional conceptual history in that each intervention employs a reflexive disposition to consider both their subject position and normative aspirations in the experience of translation. The forum's overall goal is to illustrate the ethical imperative to acknowledge the contextual specificity of linguistic encounters-past, present, and future-and in the process breathe life into the prose of world politics.
Teaching Marx & Critical Theory in the 21st Century, 2019
Perspectives on Politics, 2018
Contemporary Political Theory, 2018
Histories of the conquest of America have long highlighted the role of wonder, possession, and de... more Histories of the conquest of America have long highlighted the role of wonder, possession, and desire in Spanish conceptions of the New World. Yet missing in these accounts is the role that studying nature played in shaping Spain's imperial ethos. In the sixteenth century, Spanish missionaries revived the practice of natural history to trace the origins of New World nature. In their pursuit of the cultural meanings of natural landscapes, however, Spanish natural historians naturalized their own fears of the demonic. In this article, I argue that naturalist inquiry served as an empirical and spiritual laboratory to develop a contentious narrative of political domination. I focus specifically on the writings of the missionary ethnographer, Bernardino de Sahagún, who compiled the first bilingual account of the peoples of the Aztec empire and used his immersion in Nahua culture to promote indigenous conversion to the Christian faith. Sahagún's narrative techniques were aimed at the New World's cultural regeneration, particularly through the study of nature. Yet his intellectual transformation during this journey bears surprising ideological paradoxes. Sahagún's legacies therefore offer political theorists today a medium to rethink key historiographical assumptions about the anthropolitics of nature and the broader geopolitics of early modern political thought. Contemporary Political Theory (2018). https://doi.
International Studies Perspectives, 2018
This article contributes to calls for a reflexive ethnography of academic life by examining the r... more This article contributes to calls for a reflexive ethnography of academic life by examining the relationship between exile and courage in the work of Paulo Freire. I turn to Freire’s experience of exile and the role it plays in his critical pedagogy in order to develop a reflexive framework linking scholarly encounters with global politics and different forms of courage. I begin my analysis with a portrait of Freire’s life and work, focusing on the distinct elements in his writing that contribute to what I call an exilic reflexivity. I then turn to Freire’s writing on conscientization, pedagogy, and the role of ideology in higher education to highlight missed opportunities by international relations (IR) scholarship to engage with alternative forms of existential courage. Freire’s approach to education offers IR scholars an opportunity to rethink exile in light of ongoing structural challenges within the political economy of academic life. While Freire was not an IR scholar as such, his work is positioned against similar economic, political, and ideological constraints on contemporary academia, conveying a pedagogy of freedom that remains highly relevant today.
International Studies Review, 2017
History of Political Thought, 2017
Published in 1590, José de Acosta's Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias has been largely exclu... more Published in 1590, José de Acosta's Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias has been largely excluded from the canon of Western political thought. Focusing on the work's contributions to the ideological development of the early Spanish Empire, this paper turns to Acosta's Historia Natural as a philosophical and empirical exploration of the natural landscape of the New World. Situated between conflicting political demands, the work should be regarded as an exemplary treatise on political judgment in the history of early modern thought. Central to this interpretation is Acosta's negotiation between religious ideals and scientific observation.
The Political Economy of Rare Earth Elements, 2015
Human Beings in International Relations, 2015
Political actors have long drawn on utopian imaginaries of colonizing marine and island spaces as... more Political actors have long drawn on utopian imaginaries of colonizing marine and island spaces as models for idealized libertarian commonwealths. A recent inheritor of this tradition is the seasteading movement, which seeks to "further the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities [by] enabling innovations with new political and social systems" on semi-stationary, floating platforms. Fueled by a cocktail of ideologies (techno-optimism, libertarian secession theories, and strains of anarcho-capitalism), seasteading is touted as the newest "frontier" in creative, entrepreneurial, and social engineering. Inherent in the project, however, are buried ideals about the nature of ocean space, the limits of sovereignty, and the liberatory role of technology and capitalism in the drive for social change and individual freedom. We explore these notions through an examination of seasteading's broader philosophical and economic underpinnings, and their deployment through multiple structural, legal, and social frameworks.
International Political Sociology
When phenomenology emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, philosophy was paralyzed by para... more When phenomenology emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, philosophy was paralyzed by paradigmatic trench warfare and self-referential dialogues. Scientism was challenging philosophy's prerogative of providing foundations. Phenomenologists opposed the resulting perspectives which they labeled ''nothingbut'' approaches for reducing and conflating complex real-life phenomena into nothing but overgeneralized concepts that resolved any incongruities via linguistic bridge-building.
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Papers by Mauro J Caraccioli
Throughout his career, Talal Asad has engaged with the assumptions behind multiple disciplines that have framed the way that the West has formulated knowledge about the non-Western world, interventions that continue to reverberate in multiple disciplines. Asad, moreover, has also engaged with the question of human embodiment (pain, emotion, and discipline), the concepts of tradition and of culture, and with questions about modern democratic politics, building upon Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault via the method of genealogy. By juxtaposing Asad's thought with that of his critics, students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds will be able to gain much from the different ways of thinking about secularism that may inform their own research and help them be more sensitive to potential methodological assumptions and problems.
Some of the larger questions we aim to explore together include: what are the origins of conquest narratives in relation to intercultural encounters in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Americas? How have conquest narratives served to establish religious belief and schools of thought? How have theories of narrative shaped the scholarly writing of histories of conquest, and how have subaltern voices established a space in these accounts? What were the moral, political, and juridical questions surrounding the emergence of conquest narratives in the medieval, early modern, and contemporary time horizons? What literary and narrative agency can be discerned from the various accounts of conquerors and conquered peoples? What were the links between narrative, conquest, and spiritual / theological visions? How did religious narratives of conquest differ across geographical contexts? The class also affords students an opportunity to examine issues of historical / historiographical knowledge, sacredness and war, patriotic epistemologies, ethnosuicide, apocalyptic thought, and the (mis)appropriation of the past in the present.
The class affords students an opportunity to critically examine issues of transnationalism, imperialism, legal and social history, social justice, sovereignty, and race. Course Objectives: 1. Introduce students to different historiographical and interpretive strategies for thinking about the theories, histories, and uses of law by European empires. 2. Assess the concepts, debates, and scholarly rifts that have shaped dominant approaches in the fields of History and Political Science in their study of imperialism, colonialism, and their imbrication with legal, civic, and institutional governance. 3. Expose students to a variety of mediums, formats, and disciplinary lenses to develop their oral, written, and analytic skills in a collaborative and supportive context.
The course begins by examining how the study of empires is often wrapped-up with the justification of imperial projects by way of historical, or historiographical, revisionism. That is to say, we explore how writing about empire is deeply enmeshed with the politics of imperialism itself. We then move to illustrate that narrative logic by discussing the historical analysis of modern forms of empire, drawing on writings that emerged from the 16th Century Spanish conquest of the New World. We look at early debates among Spanish theorists to examine the range of empirical and philosophical arguments that European thinkers inherited to justify colonial governance, territorial security, and the geopolitical domination of foreign lands. From there, we examine substantive uses and appropriations of these tactics across different empires and sub-empires, specifically: Tsarist Russia, Enlightenment Britain and France, Imperial Germany, and the contemporary United States.
Subsequent themes in this class include the political economy, sociology, and culture of various colonial locales, highlighting the arguments of pro-imperial authors, anti-imperial authors, and postcolonial theorists interested in challenging present-day ideological motivations for empire. In as much as imperialism is both an inclusive and exclusive project, we will specifically discuss how those tensions are embodied in written, visual, and musical forms. The course ends with an assessment of the role that empire and imperialism play in our society today, primarily in the face of various dramatic structural changes resulting from another contentious term: globalization. Students will find that the legacies of imperial competition, rule, and self-understanding are longstanding features of our shared world. More than this, however, they may also be immutable political necessities.
Throughout the seminar we will explore the theories and politics of globalization from the perspective of various subfields of academic inquiry, for example: the history of political thought, political anthropology / sociology, political economy, feminist and eco-feminist theory, critical international relations, postcolonial theory, queer theory, disciplinary history, international history, and international ethics among others. To organize this wide range of lenses, we will employ three complementary analytic frameworks meant to understand the dynamics behind current theories (and theorizing) of globalization: globalization as imperialism, globalization as political economy, and globalization as existential domination.
With this backdrop in mind, the course aims at developing an innovative scholarly and pedagogical approach. As a disciplinary endeavor within the field of Political Science, we will study classical texts and theories with attention to their normative assumptions about the world and the craft of theory. As an interdisciplinary exercise, however, we will also juxtapose foundational arguments and theories with contemporary critical perspectives from the margins of Political Science and beyond. The goal is to highlight that globalization is not so new within the history and sociology of the study of politics. Yet more than this, that reflexivity in the study of globalization can lead scholars to embrace the inherent dynamism of global processes, exchanges, and transformations within their own activity. Doing so may better equip contemporary globalization scholarship to do theory in more radically grounded ways, thus granting a clearer ethos to the old adage: " think globally, act locally " .
The seminar considers how theorists have historically thought about the politics of domination in terms of sociological categories (class, race, gender, elites, states, etc.) reflecting a shared disciplinary and conceptual foundation between sociology and political science, as well as how the politics of domination influences the " nature of nature. " The course draws from three exemplary frameworks to show how methodologically, disciplinarily, and conceptually these frameworks have been useful for thinking about, discussing, and operationalizing a politics of domination. These include institutions and organizations, nature/environment/society, and the body and life itself.
The first section will consist in the discussion of the effects of neoliberalism on institutional change in advanced and developing capitalist political economies and societies. Discussion will focus on the sources and nature of neoliberalism and its status as an " episteme " of social, political, and economic knowledge, that is, neoliberalism as an " idea, " and its relationship with contemporary states and capitalism. We will explore neoliberalism as a variant of Polanyi's " utopia of the market " and Polanyi's analysis of the market as a form of political authority. We then turn to the institutional context of the rise of neoliberalism in the advanced capitalist states: the making of postwar Fordism and its crisis, the changing nature of political domination under post-Fordist " flexible accumulation, " and the rise of financialization and the debt state. We will review the politics, ideologies, and practices of neoliberalism and their critiques.
The second section will consider the histories of nature that have been written into the social and natural realm via the study of ecological networks, the intersectional effects (and sources) of ecological domination, and ecological emancipation as a political and intellectual project. Each of these practices has been justified as a means of reining in nature's unpredictability, making it subservient to human knowledge and productivity on the one hand, or, limiting human domination over the planet (and ourselves) on the other. In the former, alternate forms of knowledge, livelihood, and governance have been marginalized to make way for more modernizing models of social control. In the latter, allegedly new spaces and modes of being are left open for exploration. This section therefore considers how contemporary forms of political domination write away subaltern ways of knowing and living, hence presenting a limited scope of available alternatives for social, political, and technological progress.
The final section examines the ways that the politics of domination work at the molecular level and through biomedical and health categories. As bodies are being reconfigured through biotechnology and bioengineering so, too, are governance strategies and political technologies of domination. This section explores the changing nature of politics alongside the changing “nature of nature”. It looks specifically at the relationships between geography, empire, technology, and the body.