Shampa Biswas - International Relations and States of Exception

International Relations and States of Exception

Critically but sympathetically interrogating Italian philosopher Giorgio Agambens analysis of the logic of sovereign power, this volume draws attention 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 third world 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 are the expendable bodies that the territorial and market-driven logic 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 grounded theory and sophisticated analyses of how contemporary international relations works through the production of exceptions.

Bringing together a range of internationally-renowned scholars, International Relations and States of Exception will be of vital interest to students and scholars of International Relations, Critical Theory and 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 international 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, and Malaysian politics She is co-editor of Power, 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

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2010
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

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2010 Shampa Biswas and Sheila Nair selection and editorial matter;
individual contributors, their contributions

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
International relations and states of exception: margins, peripheries, and
excluded bodies / edited by Shampa Biswas and Sheila Nair.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
[etc.]
1. International relations. 2. Sovereignty. 3. Non-state actors (International
relations) 4. Refugee camps. 5. Political prisoners. I. Biswas, Shampa. II.
Nair, Sheila
JZ4034.I67 2009
327.1 dc22
2009014815

ISBN 0-203-86868-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0-415-77694-5 (hbk)

ISBN 10: 0-415-77695-3 (pbk)

ISBN 10: 0-203-86868-4 (ebk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-77694-3 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-77695-0 (pbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-203-86868-3 (ebk)