Repositório RCAAP

Abstract In this article, I examine the writings of the 18th-century Italian thinker Giambattista Vico and the 19th-century Indian thinker/social reformer Jyotiba Phule about myths, temporality, and the past. Both these thinkers turned to historicising myths in order to engage with debates in the present. Both viewed myths as reflecting social relations of power and domination, and sought to understand their material realities, emphasising human agency, collective change, and the social construction of language and practices. Both pointed to the limits of history, albeit in different ways: Vico by introducing the notion of providence, and Phule by rewriting the myths he had rationalised, using the same mythological figures, in order to intervene in the politics of the present from a marginal perspective (that of being low-caste). I juxtapose these two disparate thinkers in terms of their similarities in historicising myths, and analyse why Phule goes further than Vico in exceeding the boundaries of history. I argue that Phule’s cultural context allowed him to return to myths more easily than Vico, although the latter revered them as well.

Abstract Abstract: Historicism has shaped global politics by projecting multiple images of development. Specifically, it has served to legitimise Western forms of hegemony by naturalising the schema of ‘First in the West, then in the Rest,’ thereby damning non-Western Others to the ‘waiting room’ of history (Chakrabarty 2000). In this light, decolonising international relations must likewise complement efforts to decolonise the stagist views of historicism implicit in civilisational history. However, this focus on stagism neglects the ways in which historicism has also been employed to assert non-Western agencies in the name of culture, and to legitimise colonialism, as it was in the case of Japan. The case of Japan thus raises the question of whether limiting the critique of historicism to that of being a stagist civilisational discourse is sufficient or not. This article argues that there are not just one but two problems with historicism in international relations: first, that the stagist view of history legitimises the civilising mission; and second, that the romantic turn to culture as a means of resisting Eurocentric history may actually underwrite a colonialist discourse as well. If this is correct, the debate on historicism must not only engage with the concept of civilisation, but also with the concept of culture as a site through which sovereignty is projected.

Abstract Abstract: Léopold Sédar Senghor’s 1961 Speech at Oxford University is a provocative and critical intervention during what is generally considered to be a decolonisation period. It is a speech that engages across eras, and one from which we can glean insights on how to nourish ideas and modes of thinking that may be needed in this historical moment. With it, Senghor illustrates the importance of humanism for interlocutory dialogue, which is necessary to transcend delimiting and violent kinds of relations. This article deploys the idea of surreptitious speech to examine how Senghor makes these arguments in a crevice moment. I present a homologous reading of Senghor’s speech using the lecture itself as a base with its three sections: ‘Negritude as a Form of Humanism’, ‘The African Mode of Socialism’, and ‘Conclusion’. Atop the speech, this essay develops in five sections that mirror the re-imagining and the future imagining that Senghor accomplishes with his words. I suggest that this speech represents a vision of a humanistic, decolonial future that keeps alive the idea and the hope of a more universal universalism.

Abstract Abstract: How does it feel when one’s wound is an exhibit for an academic who investigates what is scripted as defeated life practices? How does it feel to deal with texts announcing victorious life practices such as human rights and progress while life is being threatened by the modern technologies of violence? How is it possible to read the texts in any hermeneutic fashion while so many familiar ‘coloured’ bodies are being targeted and slaughtered? These are the questions that haunt me in my academic journey. I will attempt to answer them by exploring how the project of Westernised education (developmental time) is entangled with a deeper understanding of the political that poet Murid al-Barghouti captures in his reflection: ‘[politics] is your memories that you fear to gaze at but you gaze at it despite it all.’ I wonder how much the festering wounds and the prominence of the familiar invoke a different temporality that can be but too aware of the crimes committed against humanity in the name of progress and development. I wonder how that political act of the unwilling gaze at one’s wounds and one’s memory reaffirms a notion of time thought to be over, but is not.

Abstract Abstract: This paper examines the possibilities and limitations of an emergent global discourse of indigeneity to offer an oppositional praxis in the face of the depredations of settler colonialism in post-apartheid South Africa. Self-conscious articulations of indigeneity, we argue, reveal the fraught relationship between increasingly hegemonic and narrow understandings of the indigenous and the carceral logic of apartheid. We examine this by focusing on the meanings and attachments forged through indigenous plants in two realms: the world of indigenous gardening practised by white suburban dwellers and that of subsistence farming undertaken by rural black women. This juxtaposition reveals that in contrast to the pervasive resurrection of colonial time that defines metropolitan indigenous gardening, the social relations of a subsistence cultivator challenge the confines of colonial temporality, revealing a creative mode of dissent structured around dreams, ancestral knowledge, and the commons. Our exploration of struggles around botanical indigeneity suggests that anticolonial modes of indigeneity do not necessarily inhere in recognisable forms and that studies of the indigenous need to proceed beyond those that bear familial resemblance to emergent global understandings.

Abstract Abstract: Recent international relations (IR) scholarship has developed a growing awareness of this discipline’s colonial roots, prompting a search for decolonising approaches. This article is about indigenous sovereignties and how they have been occluded in the currently globalised European system of states. The method employed is a case study of two of the most impoverished and brutalised Indigenous Peoples in Brazil: the Guarani and the Kaiowa. In an attempt to transit between the world of Westphalia and non-European worlds, it starts by engaging in a conversation with Guarani and Kaiowa knowledge. Then, through a long-term historical analysis, it examines the main colonial processes that caused the occlusion of Guarani and Kaiowa sovereignty. Finally, it provides a broader perspective on how the diffusion of the European model of sovereignty, confronted with Indigenous resistance, has led to the social exclusion of Indigenous Peoples worldwide.

Abstract Time has been the forgotten dimension in the debate on the post-secular, originated by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas in the Social Sciences two decades ago. This article proposes a study of post-secularity from the temporal dimension and concludes that it is possible to affirm that post-secularism is a way of colonialism by other means. The article also inquires into the capacity of the post-colonial approach to offer a critical reading of political religiosity that would include the underlying cultures of time. In response to this question, it explains the controversial nature of post-colonial thought with respect to this task. However, it argues that post-colonial and de-colonial perspectives are nonetheless useful for apprehending cultures of time among religious actors.

Abstract Abstract: Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe uses Martin Heidegger’s Being-with to ground his defence of a decolonial historiography. In this essay I show that Heidegger’s broader aims within Being and Time nullify Chakrabarty’s hopes for recovering fragile political spaces. In contrast to Heidegger, I propose Hannah Arendt’s writings on Jewish politics as an alternative for students of decolonisation. Arendt’s focus on plurality and new beginnings complement Chakrabarty’s critiques of historicism and political belonging in a way that more fully realises the broader ambitions of Provincializing Europe.

Abstract The Chilean democratisation process sought the international rehabilitation of a country in the declarative triad of human rights, democratic representation and economic liberalism. Since 1994, the country has reached greater prominence through economic diplomacy and the strategy of open regionalism, and with it the influence of business interest groups. This article holds that, additionally, the human rights movement gave the civilian governments a stamp of symbolic commitment to this issue that, at the turn of the century, led to Chile's active participation in multilateral forums on social inclusion. Additionally, with the turn of the century, the State opened spaces for the interaction of border social groups, particularly the ethnic groups, with which they had cultivated strong transnational dynamics.

Abstract This paper proposes an explanation to the domestic coalitions organised in Brazil around the FTAA negotiations, which stand as a hard case for the existing theories on political cleavages: industrialists and trade unions, albeit having shared common interests in the negotiations, did not adopt a joint strategy to foster their positions. The hypothesis to explain the political alignments in the FTAA is that the opening of the Brazilian market, which had advanced a lot in the years of negotiations, altered the priorities of workers and employers, as well as their preferences in foreign trade policy, hindering the reconciliation of class interests. Both agreed that the U.S. proposal for the FTAA was undesirable, but they completely disagreed on other issues that emerged in the political agenda during the reforms period, such as the role of the State in an open economy, the scope of labour and social rights and the social security system, the structure of taxation, etc. Some of the controversial issues were not new, but the international trade liberalisation intensified the dispute over them.

Abstract In 2007, Mexico, the USA and Canada signed the North America Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza (NAPAPI). During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the plan was implemented for the first time. After the emergency, the three countries decided to review their response, and update the plan. This study analyses the trinational negotiations towards the amended NAPAPI of 2012. More specifically, it focuses on the intergovernmental synergies and intersectoral dynamics in Mexico's domestic policy-making process relevant to the negotiations. The general research questions guiding this analysis were: how do domestic intergovernmental processes and intersectoral dynamics in Mexico affect the crafting of foreign policy? And how does international cooperation affect the domestic public health agenda? The study seeks to answer these questions by examining the H1N1 pandemic, the challenges facing Mexico in the course of the pandemic, and its experience of NAPAPI. It also examines the domestic policy process in Mexico for revising this trinational plan.

Abstract Non-state actors contribute with inputs to the elaboration of the national interest in trade negotiations, thus enhancing its legitimacy. Nevertheless, does the participation of those actors necessarily equal influence on the part of all segments of civil society on policymaking? To answer the question, I argue that procedural legitimacy should be evaluated not only in relation to the inputs society provides to the State, but should also consider whether officials actually analyse societal contributions in decision-making. I demonstrate the empirical application of the model based upon Brazil's experience in multilateral trade negotiations during the 2000s, using Mexico as a shadow case. I conclude that foreign trade policymaking can only be democratised if, in procedural legitimacy, the State attributes equal weight to contributions from all types of societal actors, including civil society organisations and organised social movements, which tend to have less material resources and power than interest groups such as business associations and labour unions.

Abstract The purpose of this study is to consider the relationship between domestic change and foreign policy in Brazil, a country seeking to become Latin America's hegemon, and achieve greater global status. It focuses on Brazil's partnerships with other countries in the Global South. It argues that, due to the combination of institutions and interests behind foreign policy-making in Brazil, there is no coherent project of South-South engagement. As a result, South-South ties tend to contradict the Brazilian government's foreign policy objective of acting as a global equaliser. The study also examines the drivers of Brazil's foreign conduct, and argues that the politico-economic determinants of foreign policy differ from those of domestic policy.

Abstract This article addresses the transition from the presidency of Hugo Chávez to that of Nicolás Maduro, in the light of the effects of the dynamics in domestic politics and the changing international order on the formulation of Venezuela's foreign policy. We start from a central question: how does Maduro's government, amid a less favourable global scenario, face the international commitments made by its predecessor under complex and different domestic conditions? Our central hypothesis is that the historical currents of sociopolitical fragmentation, regional tensions and the energy market, pose difficulties to the continuation of an expansive foreign policy, but in turn act as a stimulus for greater centralisation of power internally, and the politicisation of the foreign policy agenda, in line with the objectives and general trends pursued by the governing party.

Abstract Driven by China's increasing global influence, China-Brazil relations have deepened significantly in the 21st century; for Brazil, this bilateral relationship has become one of the most important aspects of its foreign relations. This article aims at analysing how Brazil's foreign policy towards China was made and implemented during the eight years of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's presidency, and the first four years of Dilma Rousseff's presidency. While scholars agree that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not exclusively dominate this policy, little is known about which state and non-state actors were involved, how and why they interacted, and how their interactions influenced policy choices. The article starts by identifying the actors that played a significant role in formulating Brazil's China policy. Next, drawing on the concept of network governance, it explores the processes and mechanisms that governed the interactions among them. It concludes with an assessment of the democratic quality of this policy area.

Abstract Public opinion plays a growing role in foreign policy formation in democratic societies. In this study, we use survey data from The Americas and the World project to establish whether Latin Americans share a common regional identity, and regard Brazil as a regional leader. Our results indicate that the majority of Brazilians do not identify themselves as Latin Americans. Moreover, while they believe their country is the most suitable candidate for regional leadership, they are unwilling to bear the costs of assuming such a role. Our study also explores perceptions of regional identity and Brazilian leadership in other Latin American countries, based on their own respective power aspirations. It shows that less powerful Latin American nations recognise Brazil as a regional leader, but citizens in middle powers, like Argentina and Mexico, still believe their countries should play a prominent regional role.

Abstract The control over what Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero (2008) conceptualise as ‘pluripotent’ life has become an essential factor of capitalist agriculture; this occurs through the regulation of strategic genetic resources. We recognise this course as part of a larger project of neo-agro-colonialism, which takes place by controlling both biotechnology and territories as an expression of a fungible power, turning geopolitics into biopolitics and vice-versa. While assessing the power relations and manipulation of spatio-temporalities in the process of life fabrication, we discuss the mechanisms of control over ‘pluripotent’ life – genetically modified seeds and biopiracy through patentisation of traditional knowledges – which turns life into a commodified good. This is to say that the instrumental use of life fabrication within the rationale of globalised capital (re)creates post-colonial temporalities that legitimise (re)new(ed) colonial ties. We ascertain that it is the manipulation of life’s temporality that allows capital to be (re)produced in the agricultural context of the molecular age.

Abstract This article analyses the political status of mothers whose children have been killed by members of the Brazilian military police and armed forces in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the course of the ‘war against drugs’. These mothers bear witness to the reality of state interference in the lives of their families. The loss of a child interrupts their intimate affective bonds and temporal linkages between the past, present and future, thereby requiring a resignification of the meaning and temporality of their lives. The war waged by the state and the mothers’ struggle for justice gives rise to a social dynamic that positions these mothers in a reordering of space and a redefinition of time, creating a spatio-temporal existence of pain, despair and hope.

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to introduce the thought of Brazilian statesman Rui Barbosa (1849–1923) on foreign policy and international relations from the vantage point of doctrinal reflection. In recent years, scholars have thoroughly sought to find the existence of a distinct Brazilian national thinking, building on the premise that there is no great diplomacy without a consistent foreign policy perspective. Thus, it would be mandatory to search for ideas and reflections that had assisted the foreign policy construction of the country, considered by many as well succeeded in most respects. In this context, the paper seeks to identify the possible foundations of Rui Barbosa’s vision on foreign policy and international relations, which is highlighted by a strong moral and religious foundation and settled on his contemporary conceptions on the pursuit of international peace.

Abstract This essay aims to discuss the appropriation of the concept of emerging power to the field of international relations, the theoretical impact it inflicts on the discipline, and the duality of its formation as a theoretical category. The adjective emerging has been appropriated into the vocabulary of international relations, but such lexical novelty comprises a debate with earlier theorisations on intermediate states. It is argued that this dialogue between the transience in the narratives of change, brought up by the qualifier emerging powers, and the stasis from the theoretical accumulation on the condition from which it breaks through is a constitutive foundation for the concept as an analytical device for international relations.