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Global Horizons
After the Globe, Before the World
This book explores the implications of claims that the most challenging political problems of our time express an urgent need to reimagine where and therefore what we take politics to be. It does so by examining the relationship between modern forms of politics (centred simultaneously within individual subjects, sovereign states and an international system of states) and the (natural, God-given or premodern) world that has been excluded in order to construct modern forms of political subjectivity and sovereign authority. It argues that the ever-present possibility of a world outside the international both sustains the structuring of relations between inclusion and exclusion within the modern internationalized political order and generates desires for escape from this order to a politics encompassing a singular humanity, cosmopolis, globe or planet that are doomed to disappointment. On this basis, the book develops a critique of prevailing traditions of both political theory and theories of international relations. It especially examines what it might now mean to think about sovereignties, subjectivities, boundaries, borders and limits without automatically reproducing forms of inclusion and exclusion, or universality and particularity, expressed in the converging but ultimately contradictory relationship between international relations and world politics.
368 pages, Paperback
First published September 7, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 28, 2017
This book is aimed towards academics and postgraduate students in the field of international relations. Stylistically, it is a very difficult read with Walker’s prose often requiring the reader to re-read large sections of the book. Walker, admittedly, states that this is a very difficult endeavor: trying to imagine political possibilities outside current discourses of international relations.
In many ways, this book provides a genealogical account of how certain “givens” - such as sovereignty - of international relations undergird the way we engage with politics today. His critique of the dominant traditions of international relations and political theory - notably, political realism - is a great illustration of how to be critical, at least from a poststructuralist point of view, and how to maintain a temporary stance in relation to a particular claim about the world.
At times it is evident that Walker faces difficulty in trying to imagine a world outside the realm of the dominant political discourses. As a follow up to his seminal work ‘Inside/Outside’, this book is truly an enlightening read, offering a fresh perspective on the discipline and status of international relations today. However, often times it can be frustrating how Walker refers to certain thinkers - often fleetingly - without truly elaborating on their own philosophical doctrines in reference to his thought process. The overlaps initially seemed forced until I went to the endnotes of the book, which, themselves could stand alone as the second volume of this edition.
In many ways, this book provides a genealogical account of how certain “givens” - such as sovereignty - of international relations undergird the way we engage with politics today. His critique of the dominant traditions of international relations and political theory - notably, political realism - is a great illustration of how to be critical, at least from a poststructuralist point of view, and how to maintain a temporary stance in relation to a particular claim about the world.
At times it is evident that Walker faces difficulty in trying to imagine a world outside the realm of the dominant political discourses. As a follow up to his seminal work ‘Inside/Outside’, this book is truly an enlightening read, offering a fresh perspective on the discipline and status of international relations today. However, often times it can be frustrating how Walker refers to certain thinkers - often fleetingly - without truly elaborating on their own philosophical doctrines in reference to his thought process. The overlaps initially seemed forced until I went to the endnotes of the book, which, themselves could stand alone as the second volume of this edition.
June 11, 2012
Forget my previous review. After a second reading, I find this book uninspired and lacking on many accounts. First of all, this book adds little to the themes already explored in Walker's "Inside/Outside". Not only is it written in a far worse way, but in particular, the formal sides to the book are atrocious. For example, it is possible to accept the style of gazillions of parentheses within parentheses, but the usual style is that after a few pages of rant, there's an obnoxiously long footnote, citing dozens of books as exploring some sides to the argument that Walker is at pains to make, but instead of an intellectual catharsis, the reader gets little (if any) ground of where or what to relate Walker's romantic abstractions to. If that's the intention, or aim to engage a more active reading, then it simply fails to do, because even at the most esoteric in "French theory", one could identify patterns, terms or citations that indicate the fields to which the authors are speaking. Instead, on the side of terms, Walker is incredibly dull and repeating references to the "borders, boundaries and limits" for the thousandth time forces one to actually doubt, if that is meant to mean anything at all.
Second, targeting Kant as the site of inquiry for modernity is an interesting idea, but it seems to me as if Walker was himself troubled of whether he is talking to the neo-Kantian constructivism in IR (Finnemore, Price, Reus-Smit or Ruggie - which I think is the case), or seeking to make a much detailed confrontation with the German theorist, famous for never moving beyond the "local" site of Konigsberg. Sure, the idea of situating Kant not as an answer to modernity", but as an example of a thinker who reflexively grapples with all the forces that are pulling it apart [leaving out the possibility that modernity itself is just a practice for the legitimation of violence in the name of whatever is to supersede it], then a lack of textual engagement with Kant simply does this book a disservice. So can be the case with Kelsen or Schmitt as heirs to Weberian modernity, who are cited, but hardly situated (just consider that Schmitt's 'Political Theology' received fierce criticisms from theologians and his contemporaries, therefore making 'Political Theology II' a far more interesting case for taking Schmitt as a problematization of theology, politics and sovereignty). That is to say, it appears that Walker is guilty precisely of what he is warning his readers of, which is that of taking the thinkers as a kind of 'given', instead of sites of problematization.
Last, I dare to suggest that behind the facade, Walker appears to be a structuralist of the most obnoxious Levi-Strauss/Bourdieu acceptance, meaning that whatever one does, reality is structured (Walker explores at length the formations of space and time, but these, again, seem as already structured beforehand), without little interest in the forces that determine how this came about, how this process happens. Walker seems to me to abuse aporias in a way that would make any sustained reader of Derrida fairly uncomfortable. It is precisely because for Walker, the "outside" is given and much less an outcome of the blind spots in our imagination where Derrida fairly responds to the set of problematizations from Heidegger and Levinas, where the term came from (besides a differential engagement with the Greeks), referring to what we might call the Event as a moment where political action actually becomes possible.
Sure, there are some nice sides to the book, but I have my doubts that these can get easily neglected by people reading outside of the International Relations discipline, simply because there are more thoughtful engagements with any of the thinkers mentioned available in political theory series of any good publishing house that actually might make much clearer what they are talking about.
Second, targeting Kant as the site of inquiry for modernity is an interesting idea, but it seems to me as if Walker was himself troubled of whether he is talking to the neo-Kantian constructivism in IR (Finnemore, Price, Reus-Smit or Ruggie - which I think is the case), or seeking to make a much detailed confrontation with the German theorist, famous for never moving beyond the "local" site of Konigsberg. Sure, the idea of situating Kant not as an answer to modernity", but as an example of a thinker who reflexively grapples with all the forces that are pulling it apart [leaving out the possibility that modernity itself is just a practice for the legitimation of violence in the name of whatever is to supersede it], then a lack of textual engagement with Kant simply does this book a disservice. So can be the case with Kelsen or Schmitt as heirs to Weberian modernity, who are cited, but hardly situated (just consider that Schmitt's 'Political Theology' received fierce criticisms from theologians and his contemporaries, therefore making 'Political Theology II' a far more interesting case for taking Schmitt as a problematization of theology, politics and sovereignty). That is to say, it appears that Walker is guilty precisely of what he is warning his readers of, which is that of taking the thinkers as a kind of 'given', instead of sites of problematization.
Last, I dare to suggest that behind the facade, Walker appears to be a structuralist of the most obnoxious Levi-Strauss/Bourdieu acceptance, meaning that whatever one does, reality is structured (Walker explores at length the formations of space and time, but these, again, seem as already structured beforehand), without little interest in the forces that determine how this came about, how this process happens. Walker seems to me to abuse aporias in a way that would make any sustained reader of Derrida fairly uncomfortable. It is precisely because for Walker, the "outside" is given and much less an outcome of the blind spots in our imagination where Derrida fairly responds to the set of problematizations from Heidegger and Levinas, where the term came from (besides a differential engagement with the Greeks), referring to what we might call the Event as a moment where political action actually becomes possible.
Sure, there are some nice sides to the book, but I have my doubts that these can get easily neglected by people reading outside of the International Relations discipline, simply because there are more thoughtful engagements with any of the thinkers mentioned available in political theory series of any good publishing house that actually might make much clearer what they are talking about.
July 18, 2015
Disclaimer: I was taught by RBJ Walker at both the Undergraduate and Graduate level.
After the Globe, Before the World became one of my most dog-eared and underlined books by the end of my undergraduate studies. The book, much like its author, can appear intimidating in its highly specified rhetorical structure and long-winded sentences. However, I believe that the worldview espoused by Walker is one of fundamental importance. It is not an exaggeration to say that this book truly taught me how to think critically about not only my beliefs, but the assumptions that underpin, engender, and predetermine these beliefs.
After the Globe, Before the World became one of my most dog-eared and underlined books by the end of my undergraduate studies. The book, much like its author, can appear intimidating in its highly specified rhetorical structure and long-winded sentences. However, I believe that the worldview espoused by Walker is one of fundamental importance. It is not an exaggeration to say that this book truly taught me how to think critically about not only my beliefs, but the assumptions that underpin, engender, and predetermine these beliefs.
July 24, 2015
This book is a little nuts. RBJ Walker's prose is a lot to get through and takes a lot of focused and exhausting reading to really get the points. At several points in each chapter, Walker has paragraph long run on sentences that make the flow of the book a real slog. The book does present a very interesting critique of current IR theory and poses many challenges for future IR scholarship.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews