Posthuman International Relations

Waking IR Up from its ‘Deep Newtonian Slumber’

“…Decision-making free from the aspiration to control change rests on a choice to generate 'desirable pathways' in the face of rapid and fast alterations and pervasive uncertainty and risk. 67 Therefore, the claim here is that the art of acting politically attests to the ethical choices demanded by a decision-making 'dancing to the rhythms of global life'. Such normative understanding borrows from (what John Keats has termed as) the poetry of 'negative capabilities' -the 'capabilities of being in uncertainty, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason' -which demonstrate an ability to think 'under fire', live with ambiguity, remain 'content with half-knowledge' and engage in a non-defensive way with change, while resisting the impulse (merely) to react.…”

“…In fact, the radical totality of human and non-human interactions has recently been framed as 'posthuman IR'. Following SR's recognition of the qualitative and quantitative difference between human and nonhuman systems, the 'complex ecologism' of 'posthuman IR' uncovers that the 'world is not divided into territories in which bounded societies of humans live under singular political authority and in the context of discrete natural environments'; 24 instead, global life is 'a complex interweave of numerous systems nested, intersected and embedded in each other, all undergoing processes of co-evolution and linked by innumerable feedback loops'. 25 SR echoes this ontological commitment by describing world affairs as complex interactions 'between people and each other, their products, their activities, nature and themselves'.…”

“…Thus, in summarising the ethical implications of the complexity paradigm in the three books under review, it can be inferred that the ethos of political action discussed by them hinges on three principles: (i) precautionary principlestressing the need to develop 'the art of working with uncertainty'; (ii) humility principle -recognising that 'action escapes the will of the actor'; and (iii) resilience principle -developing the adaptive capacity to 'expect the unexpected as the norm'. 56 Such consideration of the ethical underpinnings of complexified IR suggests that political action does not occur in a vacuum, but in idiosyncratic and dynamic spatiotemporal context. 57 At the same time such engagement contributes to the conversation on what being free under the conditions of complexity might mean.…”

“…The question is: how can we all participate meaningfully in something that can plausibly, but still only vaguely, be called international politics populated by actors whose subjectivity lacks 'agential intentionality'? 64 While this question does not have a singular and definitive answer, a crucial feature of the responses suggested by the complexity paradigm demand an ethos willing to accept and engage with the ambiguity of global life.…”

“…Antoine Bousquet and Simon Curtis, 'Beyond Models and Metaphors: Complexity Theory, Systems Thinking, and International Relations', Cambridge Review of International Affairs 24, no. 1 (2011): [43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62]; Erika Cudworth and Stephen Hobden, Posthuman International Relations: Complexity, Ecologism, and Global Politics (London: Zed Books, 2011); Robert Deuchars, 'Deleuze, DeLanda and Social non-linear fashion. Consequently, the outcomes of such interactions are difficult to infer, let alone to predict.…”