What do you think?
Rate this book
Third World Protest: Between Home and the World
If boundaries protect us from threats, how should we think about the boundaries of states in a world where threats to human rights emanate from both outside the state and the state itself? Arguing that attitudes towards boundaries are premised on assumptions about the locus of threats to vital interests, Rahul Rao digs beneath two major normative orientations towards boundaries-cosmopolitanism and nationalism-which structure thinking on questions of public policy and identity. Insofar as the Third World is concerned, hegemonic versions of both orientations are underpinned by simplistic imageries of threat. In the cosmopolitan gaze, political and economic crises in the Third World are attributed mainly to factors internal to the Third World state with the international playing the role of heroic saviour. In Third World nationalist imagery, the international is portrayed as a realm of neo-imperialist predation from which the domestic has to be secured. Both images capture widely
held intuitions about the sources of threats to human rights, but each by itself provides a resolutely partial inventory of these threats. By juxtaposing critical accounts of both discourses, Rao argues that protest sensibilities in the current conjuncture must be critical of hegemonic variants of both cosmopolitanism and nationalism.
The second half of the book illustrates what such a critique might look like. Journeying through the writings of James Joyce, Rabindranath Tagore, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, the activism of 'anti-globalisation' protesters, and the dilemmas of queer rights activists, Rao demonstrates that important currents of Third World protest have long battled against both the international and the domestic, in a manner that combines nationalist and cosmopolitan sensibilities.
held intuitions about the sources of threats to human rights, but each by itself provides a resolutely partial inventory of these threats. By juxtaposing critical accounts of both discourses, Rao argues that protest sensibilities in the current conjuncture must be critical of hegemonic variants of both cosmopolitanism and nationalism.
The second half of the book illustrates what such a critique might look like. Journeying through the writings of James Joyce, Rabindranath Tagore, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, the activism of 'anti-globalisation' protesters, and the dilemmas of queer rights activists, Rao demonstrates that important currents of Third World protest have long battled against both the international and the domestic, in a manner that combines nationalist and cosmopolitan sensibilities.
- GenresPoliticsTheoryNonfiction
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
2 people are currently reading
72 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 5, 2021
I read this book as an interpretive effort to retrieve subjugated knowledges from hegemonic IR discourses (cosmopolitanism and communitarianism). Some messy & scattered thoughts on this genre and the book itself:
- What is the archive?
- What is hegemony and how to interpret it?
1). Historicize in the agnostic democratic theorists' sense, exposing the contingency of hegemonic orders established through the consensual practice of intervention and economic conditionality and their proximity with certain discourses (here, liberal cosmopolitanism). ⇒ the theorist is an agent in this agonist game
2). How do you understand the coexistence of the anti-colonial discourse and the consensus (or, in Rao's words, pluralism and solidarism)? How much consensus do you need to establish a hegemony? The notion that communitarian pluralism and cosmopolitan solidarism are in a dynamic, historical, and mutually constitutive relationship (71) is interesting, it is so very relevant with Isin's notion of alterity and its solidaritisc, agonistic, and alienating technologies. Indeed, "authoritarian pluralism and coercive solidarism are their own best friends. (104)" The question to me is, how does someone situated in the alienated position (aka. acknowledging neither pluralism nor solidarism) speak and be recognized?
3). What is consensus? How about the dual tendency of cosmopolitanism towards both the justification and critique of empire? ⇒ the absolute consensus being: nation-state and sovereignty, material modernity, intervention and economic conditionality as exceptions, yes, but should we make a distinction between normative consensus and strategic or instrumental consents (e.g. the trickle-down effect theory of Taiwanese nation as a practical category in an "organized hypocrisy")?
4). The hegemony of these discourses is also manifested by the "actuality of the combinations of these world views in the practice of resistance" (108), in that their seemingly polarized contestation contribute to the unintelligibility of complex and nuanced resistance discourse. ⇒ Rao illustrates this excellently.
- What does it mean to articulate a subjugated subjectivity under hegemonies? How do you analyze the hegemonic discourse with an awareness of the performativity of knowledge?
1). How do you deal with the paranoia, fear, anger, anxiety, etc. in your theorizing? Here, in particular, is the subaltern use of liberal cosmopolitanism necessarily bad (and thus needs to be preemptively captured) because of the latter's proximity to imperial histories and bearing of imperial sensibilities? Should theorists be predictive and responsible for all the appropriations beyond their will? Importantly, at the core here is the tension between normative theory and praxis, but is critical theory necessarily at the side of the praxis? I think the point here is not to construct an opposition between normative and critical theory but to no ways to constitute a radical subjectivity of and from praxis on the ground (the making of we). This, however, has a lot to do with interpretive methods, with different ontological and epistemological commitments.
2). What do interpretations and hermeneutic provisions do if such accounts are subjugated, unintelligible, and unrecognized? What if, like Engin Isin says, the "game" of politics as subject constitution itself is necessarily alienating? The task then is not just retrieving the alienated into the agonistic and establish the new solidarist (new hegemony), or to identify the new deservedly "other", but also to rethink the game per se, unless one is determined to essentialize this game as human nature or hold an absolutely realist view on politics. In this sense, the ethic of care is metaphysical.
3). Where do intersubjective processes situate in this game of alterity? Is it utopian? Smothering? Expecting too much from the subaltern? How do you institutionalize this? I would say the seemingly contested notions of politics: deliberative, agonistic, and Schmittian, converge in their reductive view of politics as relational identity formation instead of intersubjective relationship building/breaking ⇒ feedback (Spade's mutual aid, etc., prefiguratively eroding the system indeed, but a bit reactive to me), ethical responsibility and ethical singularity (Spivak's deconstruction, but sometimes such paranoid agnosticism is too ahistorical and tautological), communicative act (Habermas, Benhabib, etc. a bit too functional and Eurocentric to me), feminist ethic of care (institutional), Baldwinian tough love, Moten and Harney's hapticality, etc., all of these perspectives are seeking to address not only "who are 'we’, our enemies, adversaries, and comrade", but also "what relationships are enabled or disabled in this practiced collectivity", the tension here is between the fluidity, heterogeneity, small feelings, locality, subjugations, complex contradictions, ambivalences of lived sensibilities of the "undercommons" on the one hand, and the fixation, solidaristic imperative, big feelings, globality, articulable resistance, revolutionary consistency, certainties, of movement's "big history" sensibilities on the other hand ⇒ I guess this is why the eventful approach to studying already existing or existed protests, uprisings, or movements will never do justice to political sensibilities ⇒ with the common risk of taking an internally harmonious "we" for granted, e.g. all human rights advocates are proponents for feminism, or all people from the same activist circle know how to respect each other ⇒ I think this is the methodological blindness of solipsism inherited from structuralist linguistics, but paradoxically you will need to trace this solipsistic method using genealogical tools
4). Can the subaltern speak? Note that the structure of analysis here is very similar to that of many mainland leftists' concern of the collision of Chinese nationalism and capitalist globalization. Not dichotomous, for sure, but how do you touch the geographical undecidability of subaltern politics here when you preserve the category of the "Chinese or Third World worker"? The commitment to certain ontology (Third World) and normative theory (institutional cosmopolitanism) here, and ultimately the barriers they put on intersubjectivity, is my concern. In Tadir's word, there is a risk of theoretical subsumption that textualizes hegemonies in a very narrow way (decolonial and anti-nationalist struggles) that permits an absence of horizontal threats (intersectionality) and diasporic sensibilities (statelessness) in the analysis.
5). Who is the audience? Any indication on a new radical hegemony (re: Mouffe)? Or just heroically rearticulating a history 2? What does history 2 do? There seems to be nothing new to activists on the ground. Is his audience the communitarians and the cosmopolitans instead? Where is the author? How does he touch the masses? Here he seems to understand the job of the theorist as a translator who makes the subaltern intelligible (not necessarily by representation) by bringing their voices into dialogue with hegemonic voices. Indeed, he notes that his work "does not claim to be a work of subaltern normative theory" but is "better read as an account of how cosmopolitanism and communitarianism are deployed by elite theorists on behalf of subalterns" (106-7)." Still, why rearticulating elitist accounts? I get it that it is important to understand why the seemingly incompatible hegemonic discourses are actually mutually constitutive and they operate together to make these resistant accounts unintelligible, **but why invoke the subaltern in the first place in the introduction?** Subalternity in Rao's account seems to be broadly understood as a site of all subjugated knowledges, the complex layers and ecological environment within are missing in his analysis. What I am concerned with here is the elitist narcissistic preoccupation with the unintelligibility of their own knowledges or worldviews, which could blind them (us?) with regards to their own cultural capital or power and their consolidation of "other" unintelligibilities in their assertion of knowledge.
- What is the archive?
- What is hegemony and how to interpret it?
1). Historicize in the agnostic democratic theorists' sense, exposing the contingency of hegemonic orders established through the consensual practice of intervention and economic conditionality and their proximity with certain discourses (here, liberal cosmopolitanism). ⇒ the theorist is an agent in this agonist game
2). How do you understand the coexistence of the anti-colonial discourse and the consensus (or, in Rao's words, pluralism and solidarism)? How much consensus do you need to establish a hegemony? The notion that communitarian pluralism and cosmopolitan solidarism are in a dynamic, historical, and mutually constitutive relationship (71) is interesting, it is so very relevant with Isin's notion of alterity and its solidaritisc, agonistic, and alienating technologies. Indeed, "authoritarian pluralism and coercive solidarism are their own best friends. (104)" The question to me is, how does someone situated in the alienated position (aka. acknowledging neither pluralism nor solidarism) speak and be recognized?
3). What is consensus? How about the dual tendency of cosmopolitanism towards both the justification and critique of empire? ⇒ the absolute consensus being: nation-state and sovereignty, material modernity, intervention and economic conditionality as exceptions, yes, but should we make a distinction between normative consensus and strategic or instrumental consents (e.g. the trickle-down effect theory of Taiwanese nation as a practical category in an "organized hypocrisy")?
4). The hegemony of these discourses is also manifested by the "actuality of the combinations of these world views in the practice of resistance" (108), in that their seemingly polarized contestation contribute to the unintelligibility of complex and nuanced resistance discourse. ⇒ Rao illustrates this excellently.
- What does it mean to articulate a subjugated subjectivity under hegemonies? How do you analyze the hegemonic discourse with an awareness of the performativity of knowledge?
1). How do you deal with the paranoia, fear, anger, anxiety, etc. in your theorizing? Here, in particular, is the subaltern use of liberal cosmopolitanism necessarily bad (and thus needs to be preemptively captured) because of the latter's proximity to imperial histories and bearing of imperial sensibilities? Should theorists be predictive and responsible for all the appropriations beyond their will? Importantly, at the core here is the tension between normative theory and praxis, but is critical theory necessarily at the side of the praxis? I think the point here is not to construct an opposition between normative and critical theory but to no ways to constitute a radical subjectivity of and from praxis on the ground (the making of we). This, however, has a lot to do with interpretive methods, with different ontological and epistemological commitments.
2). What do interpretations and hermeneutic provisions do if such accounts are subjugated, unintelligible, and unrecognized? What if, like Engin Isin says, the "game" of politics as subject constitution itself is necessarily alienating? The task then is not just retrieving the alienated into the agonistic and establish the new solidarist (new hegemony), or to identify the new deservedly "other", but also to rethink the game per se, unless one is determined to essentialize this game as human nature or hold an absolutely realist view on politics. In this sense, the ethic of care is metaphysical.
3). Where do intersubjective processes situate in this game of alterity? Is it utopian? Smothering? Expecting too much from the subaltern? How do you institutionalize this? I would say the seemingly contested notions of politics: deliberative, agonistic, and Schmittian, converge in their reductive view of politics as relational identity formation instead of intersubjective relationship building/breaking ⇒ feedback (Spade's mutual aid, etc., prefiguratively eroding the system indeed, but a bit reactive to me), ethical responsibility and ethical singularity (Spivak's deconstruction, but sometimes such paranoid agnosticism is too ahistorical and tautological), communicative act (Habermas, Benhabib, etc. a bit too functional and Eurocentric to me), feminist ethic of care (institutional), Baldwinian tough love, Moten and Harney's hapticality, etc., all of these perspectives are seeking to address not only "who are 'we’, our enemies, adversaries, and comrade", but also "what relationships are enabled or disabled in this practiced collectivity", the tension here is between the fluidity, heterogeneity, small feelings, locality, subjugations, complex contradictions, ambivalences of lived sensibilities of the "undercommons" on the one hand, and the fixation, solidaristic imperative, big feelings, globality, articulable resistance, revolutionary consistency, certainties, of movement's "big history" sensibilities on the other hand ⇒ I guess this is why the eventful approach to studying already existing or existed protests, uprisings, or movements will never do justice to political sensibilities ⇒ with the common risk of taking an internally harmonious "we" for granted, e.g. all human rights advocates are proponents for feminism, or all people from the same activist circle know how to respect each other ⇒ I think this is the methodological blindness of solipsism inherited from structuralist linguistics, but paradoxically you will need to trace this solipsistic method using genealogical tools
4). Can the subaltern speak? Note that the structure of analysis here is very similar to that of many mainland leftists' concern of the collision of Chinese nationalism and capitalist globalization. Not dichotomous, for sure, but how do you touch the geographical undecidability of subaltern politics here when you preserve the category of the "Chinese or Third World worker"? The commitment to certain ontology (Third World) and normative theory (institutional cosmopolitanism) here, and ultimately the barriers they put on intersubjectivity, is my concern. In Tadir's word, there is a risk of theoretical subsumption that textualizes hegemonies in a very narrow way (decolonial and anti-nationalist struggles) that permits an absence of horizontal threats (intersectionality) and diasporic sensibilities (statelessness) in the analysis.
5). Who is the audience? Any indication on a new radical hegemony (re: Mouffe)? Or just heroically rearticulating a history 2? What does history 2 do? There seems to be nothing new to activists on the ground. Is his audience the communitarians and the cosmopolitans instead? Where is the author? How does he touch the masses? Here he seems to understand the job of the theorist as a translator who makes the subaltern intelligible (not necessarily by representation) by bringing their voices into dialogue with hegemonic voices. Indeed, he notes that his work "does not claim to be a work of subaltern normative theory" but is "better read as an account of how cosmopolitanism and communitarianism are deployed by elite theorists on behalf of subalterns" (106-7)." Still, why rearticulating elitist accounts? I get it that it is important to understand why the seemingly incompatible hegemonic discourses are actually mutually constitutive and they operate together to make these resistant accounts unintelligible, **but why invoke the subaltern in the first place in the introduction?** Subalternity in Rao's account seems to be broadly understood as a site of all subjugated knowledges, the complex layers and ecological environment within are missing in his analysis. What I am concerned with here is the elitist narcissistic preoccupation with the unintelligibility of their own knowledges or worldviews, which could blind them (us?) with regards to their own cultural capital or power and their consolidation of "other" unintelligibilities in their assertion of knowledge.
Displaying 1 of 1 review