Sergei Prozorov - Ontology and World Politics: Void Universalism I

With a level of philosophical sophistication rarely found in the discipline of international relations, Sergei Prozorovs texts issue challenges that no one interested in politics in general and global politics in particular should ignore.

Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawaii Manoa, USA

Taken together, Ontology and World Politics and Theory of the Political Subject represent the most ambitious re-articulation of the ontological and ethical foundations of universalism to date by one of the most brilliant and provocative scholars of his generation. I can thus warmly recommend these volumes to anyone with an interest in cutting-edge international political theory.

Jens Bartelson, Professor of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden

Drawing on a wide range of sources in political theory and philosophy, Prozorov develops a novel and ambitious defense of universalism. He does so not against, but through approaches that critique global models for their hegemonic and excluding nature. The result is a re-articulation of universalism that seeks to affirm difference and plurality through concepts of community, equality and freedom.

Roland Bleiker, Professor of International Relations,
School of Political Science and International Studies ,
University of Queensland, Australia

ONTOLOGY AND WORLD POLITICS

Together these two companion volumes develop an innovative theory of world politics, grounded in the reinterpretation of the concepts of world and politics from an ontological perspective.

In the discipline of international relations the concept of world politics remains ambivalent, functioning both as a synonym of international relations and its antonym, denoting the aspirations for overcoming interstate pluralism in favour of a universalist politics of the global community or the world state. Rather than distinguish world politics from international politics by its site, level or issues, Prozorov interprets it as another kind of politics. Drawing on Martin Heideggers account of world disclosure and Alain Badious phenomenology of worlds, this book posits world politics as a practice of the affirmation of universal axioms across an infinite plurality of limited and particular situations or worlds. Prozorov reinterprets the familiar principles of community, equality and freedom in ontological terms as attributes of pure being, subtracted from all positive determinations, and presents them as axioms of universalist politics valid in any world whatsoever. This approach to world politics serves as the groundwork for a comprehensive reconsideration of the central themes of political and international relations theory.

Systematic and accessible, these works will be key reading for all students and scholars of political science and international relations.

Sergei Prozorov is University Lecturer in World Politics at the University of Helsinki and Academy of Finland Research Fellow. He is the author of four books, the most recent being The Ethics of Postcommunism . He has also published numerous articles on political philosophy and international relations in major international journals.

Interventions

Edited by Jenny Edkins, Aberystwyth University and
Nick Vaughan-Williams, University of Warwick

As Michel Foucault has famously stated, knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting. In this spirit the EdkinsVaughan-Williams Interventions series solicits cutting edge, critical works that challenge mainstream understandings in international relations. It is the best place to contribute post disciplinary works that think rather than merely recognize and affirm the world recycled in IRs traditional geopolitical imaginary.

Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawaii at Mnoa, US

The series aims to advance understanding of the key areas in which scholars working within broad critical post-structural and post-colonial traditions have chosen to make their interventions, and to present innovative analyses of important topics.

Titles in the series engage with critical thinkers in philosophy, sociology, politics and other disciplines and provide situated historical, empirical and textual studies in international politics.

Critical Theorists and International Relations

Edited by Jenny Edkins and Nick Vaughan-Williams

Ethics as Foreign Policy

Britain, the EU and the other

Dan Bulley

Universality, Ethics and International Relations

A grammatical reading

Vronique Pin-Fat

The Time of the City

Politics, philosophy, and genre

Michael J. Shapiro

Governing Sustainable Development

Partnership, protest and power at the world summit

Carl Death

Insuring Security

Biopolitics, security and risk

Luis Lobo-Guerrero

Foucault and International Relations

New critical engagements

Edited by Nicholas J. Kiersey and Doug Stokes

International Relations and Non-Western Thought

Imperialism, colonialism and investigations of global modernity

Edited by Robbie Shilliam

Autobiographical International Relations

I, IR

Edited by Naeem Inayatullah

War and Rape

Law, memory and justice

Nicola Henry

Madness in International Relations

Psychology, security and the global governance of mental health

Alison Howell

Spatiality, Sovereignty and Carl Schmitt

Geographies of the nomos

Edited by Stephen Legg

Politics of Urbanism

Seeing like a city

Warren Magnusson

Beyond Biopolitics

Theory, violence and horror in world politics

Franois Debrix and Alexander D. Barder

The Politics of Speed

Capitalism, the state and war in an accelerating world

Simon Glezos

Politics and the Art of Commemoration

Memorials to struggle in Latin America and Spain

Katherine Hite

Indian Foreign Policy

The politics of postcolonial identity

Priya Chacko

Politics of the Event

Time, movement, becoming

Tom Lundborg

Theorising Post-Conflict Reconciliation

Agonism, restitution and repair

Edited by Alexander Keller Hirsch

Europes Encounter with Islam

The secular and the postsecular

Luca Mavelli

Re-Thinking International Relations Theory via Deconstruction

Badredine Arfi

The New Violent Cartography

Geo-analysis after the aesthetic turn

Edited by Sam Okoth Opondo and Michael J. Shapiro

Insuring War

Sovereignty, security and risk

Luis Lobo-Guerrero

International Relations, Meaning and Mimesis

Necati Polat

The Postcolonial Subject

Claiming politics/governing others in late modernity

Vivienne Jabri

Foucault and the Politics of Hearing

Lauri Siisiinen

Volunteer Tourism in the Global South

Giving back in neoliberal times

Wanda Vrasti

Cosmopolitan Government in Europe

Citizens and entrepreneurs in postnational politics

Owen Parker

Studies in the Trans-Disciplinary Method

After the aesthetic turn

Michael J. Shapiro

Alternative Accountabilities in Global Politics

The scars of violence

Brent J. Steele