The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory

Bleiker, Roland

doi:10.1057/9780230244375_2

Cited by 45 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…One of the main ways that most college students become aware of events and people across the world is through images. This is supported by a “pictorial turn” (Mitchell ) in contemporary culture, an “aesthetic turn” in international relations (Bleiker ), and the “society of spectacle” (DeBord 1995; Kellner ) noted by critical theorists . As one political scientist noted: “Our perceptions of current political events stem from the images and stories that our memory recalls from art—films, books, paintings, but also the recreated events on TV (Edelman :2).” We do not objectively observe the world; it is translated and constructed for us primarily visually.…”

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confidence: 96%

“…An esthetic approach assumes “that there is always a gap between a form of representation and what is represented therewith. Rather than ignoring or seeking to narrow this gap, as mimetic approaches do, esthetic insight recognizes that the inevitable difference between the represented and its representation is the very location of politics (Bleiker :510).” This approach is broader than film, images, and art. Kellner's use of Guy Debord's “Society of the Spectacle” is discussed in a footnote later in the paper.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Visualizing International Relations: Assessing Student Learning Through Film

Swimelar

2012

Int Stud Perspect

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Much has been written in the last decade on using film as a pedagogical tool in the classroom and specifically in the teaching and learning of international relations (IR). Instructors assert that film has numerous beneficial effects in terms of student interest, engagement, conceptual understanding, and class performance. This article builds upon the existing literature and fills a gap by presenting and analyzing the empirical findings of recent classroom research on the usefulness of five films for student engagement, understanding, and interpretation of various IR topics (IR theory, media and war, and human rights). The data and their analysis reveal that film can potentially be a powerful and dramatic medium to aid student learning of IR, but the results are mixed. Students' written work also demonstrates that film's value can be overrated and that film can be superficial and confusing. This research sheds light on how we can better use film in the international studies classroom beyond its entertainment and illustrative value.

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confidence: 96%

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confidence: 99%

Visualizing International Relations: Assessing Student Learning Through Film

Swimelar

2012

Int Stud Perspect

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“…Taking the constitutive potential of these spaces seriously not only (re)frames such performances as possible counterperformances to the trajectories of the contemporary biometric state and associated technologies of risk, but, in so doing, opens up their emancipatory potential. While such remarks are by no means new, they can in fact be couched in what is now regularly referred to as an aesthetic turn within international relations scholarship (Bleiker, 2001(Bleiker, , 2006. 5 The significance of this in a context of Total Information Awareness, Hemispheric Travel initiatives and a condition not so distant from the 'biopolitics redux' considered in various cultural spaces in this analysis emphasizes the disruptive potential of such spaces and initiatives.…”

Section: Experimenting With the Real And A Cure For Surveillancementioning

confidence: 93%

Securing the Political Imagination: Popular Culture, the Security Dispositif and the Biometric State

Müller

2008

Security Dialogue

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What is the relationship between popular culture and the reliance on risk management as a framework for governance in the emerging security dispositif? Furthermore, how is one to understand the influence of culture and cultural forces in relation to the emerging biometric state and the alleged security imperatives therein? This article contends that the emerging security dispositif, and the associated imaginations and cultural performances that sustain and shape it, are vital to the production of what is referred to here as the 'biometric state'. Motivated by an obsession with technologies of risk and practices of risk management, the biometric state is defined by the prevalence of virtual borders and reliance on biometric identifiers such as passports, trusted-traveller programmes and national ID cards, as well as the forms of social sorting that accompany these manoeuvres. Raising the marriage of convenience that connects two related dispositifs of security -geopolitics and biopolitics -the article considers the relationship between their referent objects: the state and everyday life, respectively. More specifically, popular culture integral to sustaining the emerging security dispositif forms the core of the analysis, as the article asserts the constitutive possibilities of popular culture.At first he thought that everyone was like him, but the surprise and bewilderment of an acquaintance to whom he began to describe that hollowness showed him his error, and also let him know, forever after, that an individual ought not to differ from its species. (Borges, 1999: 319) The majority of detainees in recent paranoia times are from the invisible underclassshadow citizens who drive taxis, deliver food, clean tables, and sell fruit, coffee, and newspapers. The only time we 'see' them is when we glance at the license in the taxi partition, or the vendor ID card. (Mohaieman, 2006) Writing and music can be war machines. (Deleuze & Guattari,

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“…13 Although inspired by this literature, the present article offers a slightly different perspective. For one thing, the religious technologies of the self are not conceived of as merely visual, but more precisely as "aesthetic assemblages", i.e.…”

Section: Religion and Violence: Governing Muslim Militancy Through Aementioning

confidence: 99%

Religion and Violence: Governing Muslim Militancy through Aesthetic Assemblages

Crone

2014

Millennium

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One of the ways in which the relationship between religion and violence has been conceptualized is through the concept of "radicalization". In the wake of the London bombings, "radicalization" became a favored policy term that was reinvented in order to manage and prevent the new phenomenon of "homegrown terrorism". Around 2005, it was a widespread assumption that "homegrown terrorism" had a religious dimension, and the concept of "radicalization" therefore had to articulate how religion and terrorism were related. Most concepts of radicalization describe a cognitive transformation, where the progressive adoption of radical religious ideology is the first step in a process thateventually-could lead to terrorism.The argument that religion and violence are connected through intellectual processes can also be found in academic literature. Max Weber, who studied the relation between religion and practice, famously argued that a specific Weltanschauung-a protestant ethics-was paving the way for an ascetic practice that contributed to the growth of capitalism. 1 More precisely, it was a specific interpretation or rationalization of religious dogma (the idea of predestination) that subsequently made religious actors act in specific ways. Weber's influence on the study of religion before and after 9/11 cannot be overestimated. Recently, Cecelia Lynch has proposed a neo-Weberian model of how to understand the relationship between religion and violence. "(W)e must first assess", she writes, "what religious guidelines suggest for particular situations, and then look more deeply into how religious actors interpret those guidelines -how they bridge the gap

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The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory

Cited by 45 publications

References 78 publications

Visualizing International Relations: Assessing Student Learning Through Film

Visualizing International Relations: Assessing Student Learning Through Film

Securing the Political Imagination: Popular Culture, the Security Dispositif and the Biometric State

Religion and Violence: Governing Muslim Militancy through Aesthetic Assemblages

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