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progress, the more we increase our chances for collective annihilation. Indeed, despite the potential human benefits of technological advancement, the triumph of the technical over the poetic in political affairs undermines the role of human creativity. How many critical theorists still have to affirm the importance of arts and humanities to the promotion of peace? Theory and science are not objective: we produce the technologies we desire, which are over-coded with all manner of assumptions and prejudices. So, as the technological mind continues to produce war machines
insurmountable structures. Contestation was met with a fierce response from the 183 The regime fights back 183 governance structures of the state as regimes attempted to regain control over the situation, using a range of draconian strategies. The rejection of ‘being thus’, in turn, created a situation wherein both regime and peoples sought to define the ordering of political life and, as a consequence, the very limits of political space. This process of contestation resulted in the emergence of war machines and a struggle to exert control over them. Regime responses to
become disputed. As Mbembe suggests, space is ‘the raw material of sovereignty and the violence it carried with it’.51 16 16 Houses built on sand The fragmentation of sovereignty can result in existential transformation as life is displaced, often stripped of political meaning and reduced to bare life. It is within such conditions that we see the emergence of war machines, entities that challenge the rule-based form of political organisation. Developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the concept of the war machine sits in opposition to the state, which
sand creation of bare life was a mechanism of sovereign power, designed to ensure order and compliance. Yet in a number of cases, the creation of bare life was an insufficient expression of sovereign power. Instead, we see regimes choosing to exert sovereign power through necropolitics, with war machines emerging as a consequence of widespread fragmentation. In such conditions, localised manifestations of the global nomos, defined by a spatialised exception and underpinned by conditions of modernity have become increasingly contested by the contingency of daily life. Amid
Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), 25. 4 Franks quoted in Peter J. Boyer, ‘The New War Machine’, The New Yorker , 30 June 2003. 5 Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 22
, including shell shock and dismembering conditions requiring amputation. 3 Indeed, patient experiences of war have rapidly adjusted as the so-called modern ‘war machine’ became increasingly rationalised and effective in its power to maim and kill. The nature of smaller civil conflicts has also been affected by the modern nature of combat, a development with equally important implications for medicine and
English radicalism has been a deep-rooted but minority tradition in the political culture since at least the seventeenth century. The central aim of this book is to examine, in historical and political context, a range of key events and individuals that exemplify English radicalism in the twentieth century. This analysis is preceded by defining precisely what has constituted this tradition; and by the main outline of the development of the tradition from the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century. Three of the main currents of English radicalism in the twentieth century have been the labour movement, the women’s movement and the peace movement. These are discussed in some detail, as a framework for the detailed consideration of ten key representative figures of the tradition in the twentieth century: Bertrand Russell, Sylvia Pankhurst, Ellen Wilkinson, George Orwell, E.P. Thompson, Michael Foot, Joan Maynard, Stuart Hall, Tony Benn and Nicolas Walter. The question of ‘agency’ – of how to bring about radical change in a predominantly conservative society and culture – has been a fundamental issue for English radicals. It is argued that, in the twentieth century, many of the important achievements in progressive politics have taken place in and through extra-parliamentary movements, as well as through formal political parties and organisations – the Labour Party and other socialist organisations – and on occasion, through libertarian and anarchist politics. The final chapter considers the continuing relevance of this political tradition in the early twenty-first century, and reviews its challenges and prospects.
soundly defeated in the second round of the 2012 presidential election. But in terms of conquering a party organisation, there appeared to be little doubt. The memory was of Sarkozy as a killer, a bulldozer who would sweep aside all opposition; as the all-conquering former minister who had captured the UMP in 2004 – against opposition from President Chirac – and transformed it into a war machine that swept him to power in the 2007 presidential election; as the comeback kid, who returned from a brief period of crossing the desert (2012–14) and swept aside all challengers
/iiy185 . 58 United Nations Security Council (2020). Final report of the Panel of Experts on Yemen, 27 January 2020 (S/2020/70). 59 M. Knights, ‘The Houthi War Machine: From Guerrilla War to State Capture’, CTC Sentinel , 11:8 (2018), 15–23, https://ctc.westpoint.edu/houthi-war-machine-guerrilla-war-state-capture/ (accessed 5 April 2022). 60 Y. Veilleux-Lepage, ‘Implications of the Sunk Cost Effect and Regional Proximity for Public
stripping of 7 Introduction 7 meaning from political life to the emergence of war machines. Such variety reveals the multifarious stresses and pressures on regimes seeking to maintain power amid an array of societal pressures. Chapter 8 locates the domestic repercussions of the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath within broader Middle Eastern geopolitical and normative environments. Central to all chapters is a focus upon the role of agency. The uprisings were triggered by the actions of a single individual whose act of resistance inspired the region-wide contestation