Pessimism in International Relations: Provocations, Possibilities, Politics [1st ed.] 978-3-030-21779-2;978-3-030-21780-8

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xi
Introduction: The Problems of Pessimism (Tim Stevens, Nicholas Michelsen)....Pages 1-10
Front Matter ....Pages 11-11
Pessimism in International Relations (Richard Ned Lebow)....Pages 13-36
The Romance of Realism: Pessimism as Tragedy (Ronnie Hjorth)....Pages 37-52
Cassirer, Fatalism and Political Myth: Historical Lessons in the Consequences of Pessimism for International Relations (Mark Bailey)....Pages 53-66
Liberal Pessimism: An Intellectual History of Suspicion in the Cold War (Dillon Stone Tatum)....Pages 67-81
Productive Pessimism: Rehabilitating John Herz’s Survival Research for the Anthropocene (Tim Stevens)....Pages 83-98
Front Matter ....Pages 99-99
The Global Politics of Ugly Feelings: Pessimism and Resentment in a Mimetic World (Elisabetta Brighi)....Pages 101-117
Pessimism and the Alt-Right: Knowledge, Power, Race and Time (Nicholas Michelsen, Pablo de Orellana)....Pages 119-136
The Pessimism of the Shipwreck: Theorising Μigration in International Relations (Myriam Fotou)....Pages 137-153
The Pessimism Traps of Indigenous Resurgence (Sheryl R. Lightfoot)....Pages 155-172
After Pessimism? Affirmative Approaches to the Anthropocene (David Chandler)....Pages 173-190
Afterword: The New Pessimism in Twenty-First-Century World Politics (Philip G. Cerny)....Pages 191-203
Back Matter ....Pages 205-215

Citation preview

PSIR · PALGRAVE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Pessimism in International Relations Provocations, Possibilities, Politics

Edited by Tim Stevens Nicholas Michelsen

Palgrave Studies in International Relations Series Editors Mai’a K. Davis Cross Northeastern University Boston, MA, USA Benjamin de Carvalho Norwegian Institute of International Affairs Oslo, Norway Shahar Hameiri University of Queensland St. Lucia, QLD, Australia Knud Erik Jørgensen University of Aarhus Aarhus, Denmark Ole Jacob Sending Norwegian Institute of International Affairs Oslo, Norway Ayşe Zarakol University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK

Palgrave Studies in International Relations (the EISA book series), published in association with European International Studies Association, provides scholars with the best theoretically-informed scholarship on the global issues of our time. The series includes cutting-edge monographs and edited collections which bridge schools of thought and cross the boundaries of conventional fields of study. EISA members can access a 50% discount to PSIR, the EISA book series, here http://www.eisa-net.org/sitecore/content/be-bruga/mci-registrations/eisa/login/landing.aspx. Mai’a K. Davis Cross is the Edward W. Brooke Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University, USA, and Senior Researcher at the ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Norway. Benjamin de Carvalho is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Norway. Shahar Hameiri is Associate Professor of International Politics and Associate Director of the Graduate Centre in Governance and International Affairs, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, Australia. Knud Erik Jørgensen is Professor of International Relations at Aarhus University, Denmark, and at Yaşar University, Izmir, Turkey. Ole Jacob Sending is the Research Director at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Norway. Ayşe Zarakol is Reader in International Relations at the University of Cambridge and a fellow at Emmanuel College, UK. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14619

Tim Stevens · Nicholas Michelsen Editors

Pessimism in International Relations Provocations, Possibilities, Politics

Editors Tim Stevens Department of War Studies King’s College London London, UK

Nicholas Michelsen Department of War Studies King’s College London London, UK

Palgrave Studies in International Relations ISBN 978-3-030-21779-2 ISBN 978-3-030-21780-8  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank all the contributors for their hard work and enthusiasm for the project. Many were attendees at a workshop, ‘Pessimism in International Relations’, held in September 2017 at King’s College London, sponsored by the British International Studies Association (BISA) Poststructural Politics Working Group. We thank Aggie Hirst, Tahseen Kazi and Christina Oelgemoller for facilitating the workshop and Bisi Olulode for logistics. Also in attendance at the workshop were Antoine Bousquet, Lara Montesinos Coleman, Stephan Engelkamp, Evren Eken, Alvina Hoffmann, Shir Ben-Naftali and Seán Molloy, all of whom contributed ideas that have helped shape this volume in various ways. We also thank the participants of the European International Studies Association section on ‘Pessimism and International Relations’ held in Prague in September 2018, whose presentations, contributions and vibrant debates greatly helped the project. In particular, we thank Beate Jahn, Jeff Huysmans, Felix Berenskoetter and Vassilios Paipais for their contributions. We also sincerely thank Sarah Roughley, Mary Fata and the team at Palgrave Macmillan for their support and advice and Josh Bryson for the index.

v

Contents

1

Introduction: The Problems of Pessimism 1 Tim Stevens and Nicholas Michelsen

Part I  Histories of Pessimism 2

Pessimism in International Relations 13 Richard Ned Lebow

3

The Romance of Realism: Pessimism as Tragedy 37 Ronnie Hjorth

4

Cassirer, Fatalism and Political Myth: Historical Lessons in the Consequences of Pessimism for International Relations 53 Mark Bailey

5

Liberal Pessimism: An Intellectual History of Suspicion in the Cold War 67 Dillon Stone Tatum

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viii   

Contents

6

Productive Pessimism: Rehabilitating John Herz’s Survival Research for the Anthropocene 83 Tim Stevens

Part II  Pessimisms Today 7

The Global Politics of Ugly Feelings: Pessimism and Resentment in a Mimetic World 101 Elisabetta Brighi

8

Pessimism and the Alt-Right: Knowledge, Power, Race and Time 119 Nicholas Michelsen and Pablo de Orellana

9

The Pessimism of the Shipwreck: Theorising Μigration in International Relations 137 Myriam Fotou

10 The Pessimism Traps of Indigenous Resurgence 155 Sheryl R. Lightfoot 11 After Pessimism? Affirmative Approaches to the Anthropocene 173 David Chandler 12 Afterword: The New Pessimism in Twenty-FirstCentury World Politics 191 Philip G. Cerny Index 205

Notes

on

Contributors

Mark Bailey is Assistant Professor in Politics in the School of International Studies at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China. Before joining UNNC he worked in a series of teaching positions at Nottingham, Sheffield, UCL and Lancaster universities in the UK, specialising in the fields of International Political Economy and International Relations. His research interests revolve around the use of political myth in discourses of globalisation; the ‘anti-globalisation’ movement (especially the mythologising of the movement from within); US foreign policy in the post-1945 period; and the political philosophies of Ernst Cassirer, Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin. Elisabetta Brighi is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Westminster, London, UK. Her research looks at international security, international political theory and foreign policy, on which she has published widely. Her latest book is Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics and International Relations: The Case of Italy (Routledge, 2013). She is currently working on a monograph, ‘Security, Aesthetic and Camouflage in the City’. Philip G. Cerny  is Professor Emeritus of Politics and Global Affairs at the University of Manchester and Rutgers University-Newark. He previously taught at the University of York and the University of Leeds. He has been a visiting fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Sciences Po and the University of Tasmania, and a visiting professor at Dartmouth College and New York University. His books include, The Politics of Grandeur: Ideological Aspects of de Gaulle’s Foreign ix

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Notes on Contributors

Policy (Cambridge University Press, 1980), The Changing Architecture of Politics: Structure, Agency and the Future of the State (Sage, 1990) and Rethinking World Politics: A Theory of Transnational Neopluralism (Oxford University Press, 2010). David Chandler  is Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster, London, UK. His recent monographs include: Becoming Indigenous: Governing Imaginaries in the Anthropocene (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019, with Julian Reid); Ontopolitics in the Anthropocene: An Introduction to Mapping, Sensing and Hacking (Routledge, 2018); International Peacebuilding: The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1997–2017 (Palgrave, 2017); The Neoliberal Subject: Resilience, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016, with Julian Reid); and, Resilience: The Governance of Complexity (Routledge, 2014). Pablo de Orellana is a Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK. His research focuses on the role of identity in diplomacy, nationalism, International Relations theory and art history. His Ph.D. looked at how diplomacy constructs knowledge about political subjects. He has published articles on the history and mechanics of nationalist ideas, diplomatic communication, the role of identity in diplomacy and an upcoming monograph on the diplomacy of the First Vietnam War. He is currently researching the latest evolutions in nationalist thought and movements in Europe and America. Myriam Fotou  is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Leicester, UK. Her research aims to create a distinctive ethics of hospitality, which functions as a way of thinking about the relationship between representation and humanisation, of being alert to precarious life, and of responding to the ‘missing’ Other or the ‘unmissed’ Other, that is, an Other who may be present in the Western imaginary, but who, nonetheless, does not possess any clear status or agency; who is ‘illegal’ in her presence, exists in a legal vacuum, or is a figure of destitution or liminality. Ronnie Hjorth is Professor of Political Science at the Swedish National Defence College, Stockholm, Sweden. He specialises in international political theory, political theory, international ethics and international society. He has published recently in Journal of International Political Theory, De Ethica and Review of International Studies, and his latest book is Equality in International Society: A Reappraisal (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Notes on Contributors   

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Richard Ned Lebow is Professor of International Political Theory in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and Bye-Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, UK. His most recent books are The Rise and Fall of Political Orders (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Avoiding War, Making Peace (Palgrave, 2017) and Max Weber and International Relations, (Cambridge University Press, 2017). He is a Fellow of the British Academy. Sheryl R. Lightfoot is Canada Research Chair of Global Indigenous Rights and Politics at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Canada, where she holds academic appointments in Political Science, First Nations and Indigenous Studies and in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. She also currently serves as Senior Advisor to the UBC President on Indigenous Affairs. Her research focuses on Indigenous global politics, especially Indigenous rights and their implementation in global, national and regional contexts. Dr. Lightfoot is Anishinaabe from the Lake Superior Band of Ojibwe. Nicholas Michelsen  is Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. His research focuses on International Relations as an academic discipline, the politics of self-destruction, strategic communications, propaganda and public diplomacy, resilience, the rise of farright populist movements, intellectual history and political philosophy. His book, Politics and Suicide: The Philosophy of Political Self-Destruction was published by Routledge: Interventions in 2015. He is currently working on a monograph on ‘Unmapping the 21st Century’, with Neville Bolt. Tim Stevens is Senior Lecturer in Global Security in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK, and head of the King’s Cyber Security Research Group. He is the author of Cyber Security and the Politics of Time (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and co-author of Cyberspace and the State (Routledge, 2011). He is Senior Fellow and Associate Researcher at le Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Paris, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Dillon Stone Tatum  is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Francis Marion University, USA. He teaches and researches in International Relations, international security and critical approaches to world politics. His current research focuses on the historical development of international liberalism and its relationship to practices of violence and intervention.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Problems of Pessimism Tim Stevens and Nicholas Michelsen

The origins of disciplinary International Relations (IR) are often said to be located in the global crises of the twin world wars of the twentieth century. The horrors of World War I fostered optimism, expressed as liberal faith in the problem-solving capacities of new international institutions like the League of Nations. World War II announced the death of these dreams and ushered in more pessimistic accounts of the human condition, often framed as incipient tragedy. Post-war scholars of IR were thereby lured away from grand projects of utopian transcendence to more hard-nosed assessments of human proclivities and possibilities. As many authors have identified, this narrative has its limits, but in its latent warnings against grand historical gestures its resonance persists.1 Critiques of the present day in IR are infused with disaffection at attempts to make the future meaningful, less dangerous, or inevitably better. These critiques intersect with, and are bolstered by, a general impression that the international realm is consumed by a wide variety of crises, many apparently intractable. Commentators lament a sense of T. Stevens (*) · N. Michelsen  Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] N. Michelsen e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_1

1

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unfolding global catastrophe, from cyber insecurity and technological dystopia to narratives of ecological degradation; from the abandonment of migrants to the sea to the complexities of metastasising civil wars; from the resurgence of geopolitical and nuclear risks to the empowerment of demagogic forces and the widespread erosion of democracy. The so-called liberal international order which arose after the end of World War II seems to be under particularly intense pressure. Faced with ecological, technological, economic, social and political crises, there is a growing awareness that history did not end with the fall of the Iron Curtain; we just weren’t paying attention. From both left and right there emanates a strong suspicion that ‘things are getting worse’ and that little can be done to prevent further deterioration. Faith in the future of the global is dissipating and may soon decompose entirely. The nation-state finds itself caught between simultaneous globalising and disaggregating economic, social and political pressures. This appears to be resulting in further erosion to the tentative architectures of global governance, along with the slowly evaporating international hegemony of the United States. Post-war hopes of a ‘global village’ bound together in digital harmony would seem to be dying also. So too the Earth beneath our feet, its carrying capacity failing in a putative Anthropocene that reifies our role as an irresistible geochemical force. We have reached an inflection point, beyond which lies—well, what exactly? Perhaps this intuition of foreboding should not surprise us: IR is informed by a broad tradition in which modernity is crisis. The perpetual cycle of destruction and rebirth is central to pessimistic critiques of the Enlightenment after Adorno and Horkheimer, just as it is to reactionary traditionalism and its associated strands of cultural and racial pessimism.2 To some extent this is because pessimism is associated with forms of historical thinking which are politically ambiguous, and which have therefore been seen as useful to thinkers of the Left or Right.3 Pessimism has often been attached to cyclical understandings of history, in which social formations are fated to revolve endlessly back to more primitive structures. Pessimism about historical change has thus been bound up with complex intellectual histories of decadence, whose narratives of cultural decline loop inevitably back to social possibilities determined already in the romanticised past.4 Reactionary pessimisms have been reactivated in our own time, most notably as a tool of populism.5 For some, the ‘heartbroken, furious’ knowledge that ‘[h]ope is precious; it must be rationed’, is rooted in reflection upon the failures of the European revolutionary

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projects of the twentieth century.6 Yet at the same time, the white nationalist right which characterises the sometimes violent rise of populism in Europe and the United States has also arisen from a sense of disaffection with the status quo and a loss of hope in the sustainability of the architectures of tradition.7 Our age has perhaps its clearest expression in the mood of rising pessimism: pessimism as zeitgeist, as it were. It is apparent that this pervasive pessimism is inherent to various political projects and takes multiple forms—cynical, reactionary, fatalistic and acquiescent. Consistent with this attitude is the frequent association of our own time with the interwar period in Europe, when, as Richard Overy observes, pessimism was ‘highly contagious’.8 For IR, this has important consequences. Principally, can contemporary pessimism serve our intellectual project without collapse into fatalism, cynicism, acquiescence or reaction? Part of the answer must relate to how IR views the potential for any form of emancipatory progress. Pessimism tends to cleave towards regressive readings of change. In IR, the loss of hope in the future of the liberal order, and in social science, might easily be tied up with a loss of hope in disciplinary progress itself, thereby evoking a ‘post’-critical project.9 Pessimistic rejections of the liberal historiography recurrent in Critical IR resonate uncomfortably with the pessimisms articulated by reactionary movements worldwide, particularly those which claim globalised liberalism is little more than a cover for imperialism or cultural colonialism, as evidenced in recent diatribes by the likes of Steve Bannon, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán. Pessimism in IR is imbricated with a wider loss of faith in modernity and even in democratic political engagement. It may thus place the critical project in IR scholarship, itself often rooted in anti-liberalism, into inadvertent alliances with nostalgic anti-modernism and nationalist populist statism.

Why Now? The context for this edited volume, then, is the pessimistic mood which seems to have captured contemporary international politics. Pessimism about the international, as in other areas of social science, has often been regarded as a disreputable attitude to the human condition, incapable of generating positive social and political programmes.10 Pessimism, after all, is supposed to have an inimical relationship to hope. Key theories of IR—including realism, liberalism and critical theory—are riven

4  T. STEVENS AND N. MICHELSEN

with pessimistic readings of human nature and of history, yet the character and possibilities of their pessimisms are too rarely interrogated or disassembled. The loose group assembled under the label of Critical IR has been defined by a rejection of transcendent projects in the name of a progressive vision. Pulling out from the broader critical tradition that rejects transcendent thought in light of the experience of World War II, Critical IR has long been pessimistic about the promise of social science precisely so as to advance human emancipation.11 In IR today, pessimism as an intellectual mode is particularly widespread and distributed across intellectual traditions declaiming the collapse of the liberal order. Realist, critical, poststructuralist, post- and de-colonial critiques of IR are all inflected with pessimism about the future, and about the promise of the extant liberal order were it to survive. This raises the question of whether IR as a discipline may be too rooted in pessimism or even perhaps irrevocably tied to it. Is pessimism fundamentally opposed to the loftier intellectual ambitions of IR—a hope to end or limit war, a hope to better manage global resources, or a hope to foster more international cooperation in protecting the rights of the individual—in giving rise to conservativism and suggesting a range of agency-eroding qualities? Has pessimism been IR’s inescapable condition of possibility? If our answer to the latter query is in the affirmative, this raises important questions for the field. How can we escape the risks of fatalism and complacency that can attend pessimisms? How does pessimistic critique relate to the hope that has been central to the modern tradition since the Enlightenment, and how may this be linked to nostalgic or reactionary critiques of the modern which have returned in force today? How can we or others deploy pessimism about the world to give us hope? One set of issues here relates to whether pessimism can be a resource or is always a limit to any intellectual endeavour. Pessimism appears to be bound up with an unravelling of ontology, which is to say an unwinding of faith in the liberal institutions and attitudes that were previously relied upon to govern IR. Is pessimism then a door to new ways of being and seeing the international? Might pessimism r­e-animate emancipatory international political projects? IR has always sought to make the future meaningful. To ask what pessimism means specifically for IR scholars and scholarship, and in particular those working in the critical tradition, is also to ask: Is the discipline of IR doing well in the face of apparent global breakdown on all fronts? Is it in need of a good dose of pessimism about itself? After all, a certain pessimism about

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knowledge itself is part of the energy which drives all intellectual growth and opens up new avenues for thought and theoretical production. This edited volume examines how the analysis of pessimism in IR might proceed, and we hope will launch a wider research agenda which takes these questions forward. It is likely that we as IR scholars, and the ways in which we have developed as a discipline, have some responsibility for the causes of contemporary pessimism. This would suggest that the pervasiveness of a pessimistic mood today is a resource that IR can and must channel or seek to capture in developing its future analyses and intellectual efforts. If pessimism has unique power in thinking about the state of the world today, perhaps IR scholars have particular responsibility to be pessimistic, so that there can be hope. No doubt, pessimists are part of the crisis of our time. Pessimism can and does act as an excuse for intellectual failure, as well as a justification for unpalatable politics. It is clear that some pessimisms and pessimists in IR are ‘better’ than others; but how can this be determined? In other words, if we self-identify as pessimists, how might we convince others that we do not conform to George Bernard Shaw’s description of a pessimist as ‘A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it’?12 Each of the chapters in this volume seeks to unpick a specific intellectual lineage or contemporary formation of pessimism. The chapters in Part I deal with pessimisms in a range of historical and conceptual locations. It is necessary to recognise that pessimisms can be highly diverse in their formations and effects, and to understand how different contexts inform this diversity. Chapters address pessimisms going back to the ancient world, realist pessimisms, liberal pessimisms in the work of Raymond Aron and Jacob Talmon, the relationship between pessimism and the politics of the 1930s that informed the work of Ernst Cassirer, and the pessimism that animated the more hopeful Survival Research of John H. Herz. In Part II, the chapters take up the themes already developed, in exploring pessimisms that underpin and circulate within contemporary IR. The chapters deal with negative affective or emotional dynamics in world politics, the populist pessimism of the Alt-Right, liberal cosmopolitan pessimism about migration, pessimism in indigenous politics, the limits of critical pessimism in the Anthropocene, and in the Afterword, pessimism about the state-system itself. By exploring these diverse varieties of pessimism in and about IR, we seek to open up space for further genealogies and archaeologies of the pessimistic zeitgeist that orientates our age.

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Part I: Histories of Pessimism In his opening chapter (Chapter 2), Ned Lebow addresses the historical interplay of pessimism and optimism in philosophy, politics and IR theory. Taking issue with Dienstag’s claim that pessimism is uniquely modern, Lebow shows how pessimism takes many forms and relationships to optimism. Lebow draws attention to the relatively recent construction of the pessimism-optimism problem. Each had existed prior, as ancient philosophers understood, but the Enlightenment constructed them as a binary, in order to reduce their complex interpenetration to a simpler psychological order. Lebow argues that this has obscured the role that pessimism can play as a motivating force in international affairs. It is too often identified as the enemy of optimism, but its aliveness to complexity and change can furnish us with precisely the creative powers we need to address the exigencies of the contemporary world. The chapter, covering pessimisms from the ancient world to today, examines the inescapable relationships diverse pessimisms have to optimisms, and the diverse ways in which the two may be combined or bridged together. In turning to the significance of this complex relationships to IR, Lebow argues that periods of pessimism may give rise to optimistic visions and periods of optimism may give rise to pessimistic ones, and warns that the contemporary moment encourages us to reduce the two to binary opposites when what is needed is do justice to their complex interaction. In Chapter 3, Ronnie Hjorth then turns to realism as a tradition in IR. He argues that realism’s propensity to look backwards for patterns drawing on the tragic narrative makes realism vulnerable to nostalgia, forming ‘retrotopic’ visions of the future or seeking to restore ‘Arcadian’ images of past glory. Hjorth shows how pessimism is central to the romantic aspects of realism, entailing heroism, tragedy, myth and destiny. In unpicking the romance of realism, Hjorth shows how its vaunted claims to cold rationality and pragmatism are entangled with nostalgia and dystopic or retrotopic visions of a glorious past. Mark Bailey takes up the problem of political myth-making in Chapter 4, through an investigation of the work of Ernst Cassirer, a thinker whose work, Bailey argues, has been under-appreciated in IR. Bailey locates Cassirer’s work in its intellectual historical context—the philosophical debates which circulated prior to, and to some extent underwrote, the rise of German National Socialism. In asking the same question of poststructuralists in IR that Cassirer asked of Heidegger and

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Spengler, Bailey suggests that contemporary intellectual ‘positions fuel the quest for ontological certainty that often fuel the discourses of reactionary populist political myths, not least in the form of some notion of the “true” or “authentic” community of “the nation”’. In raising the problem of self-knowledge as central to political pessimism, Cassirer becomes a key thinker for our times. In Chapter 5, Dillon Tatum explores how the spectre of totalitarianism informed and defined liberal IR theories during the twentieth century. Focusing on the work of Jacob Talmon and Raymond Aron, Tatum shows how pessimism became central to liberal thinking during the Cold War. In showing that liberal theory is ‘rife with pessimism’, Tatum undermines the presentation of the liberal tradition as Panglossian. Rather, in uncovering the liberal pessimism of the Cold War, this chapter opens up discussion of how fear may once again be forcing a recently triumphalist liberal world order to confront its own problematic legacies. Tim Stevens examines the pessimism of John H. Herz in Chapter 6, and his attempt to think the possibility of survival in the face of nuclear or environmental catastrophe. Here pessimism becomes a productive source of learning and insight into how problems might be faced and resolved in the Anthropocene, referring to our geological era dominated by human activity. As Stevens shows, Herz’s concern for the conditions of possibility for human survival in the face of existential threats means that his particular brand of pessimism provides a potentially rich resource for IR as a discipline, in seeking to provide grounds on which action can be based. ‘Productive pessimism’ here becomes a necessary part of the intellectual toolbox for responses to, and problem-solving within, the Anthropocene.

Part II: Pessimisms Today In Chapter 7, Elisabetta Brighi frames pessimism as a contemporary ‘ugly feeling’, reflecting a proliferating global sentiment of disenchantment with modernity, politics and progress. As a sense of loss and failure pervades the contemporary international political environment, pessimism, along with resentment, has become the predominant mood. In analysing pessimism as an affective condition connected to ressentiment, Brighi explores how the once-vaunted critical potential of negative thinking may be dissipating. Inasmuch as it is concerned with ‘obstructed agency’, pessimism shares much with the sense of alienation from the present that

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orientates reactionary movements worldwide. However, Brighi argues, there may nonetheless be something to be learnt or ‘reconstituted’ out of the viral circulation of negative emotions under neoliberalism today, just as moods like melancholia have been reconstituted by thinkers in the name of Left emancipation. Nicholas Michelsen and Pablo de Orellana take forward some of the issues raised in the previous chapter by focussing on a single strand of contemporary pessimism. The pessimism of the Alt-Right, in the United States, Michelsen and de Orellana argue in Chapter 8, is defined by a distinctive form of historico-political thinking. Its pessimism concerns, first, the institutional agents of truth, anchored in rejection of a hegemonic ideological formation they identify with liberalism. Second, AltRight pessimism is deeply concerned with the survival of identity, framed as birth-culture, and the inevitability of its erosion under liberal ideology. Finally, Alt-Right pessimism posits the certainty of the rupture of society in the form of race war and/or the collapse of the democratic state. Taken together, this reactionary branch of contemporary pessimism welcomes the racial apocalypse as evitable and necessary for the dissolution of global liberal institutions. Myriam Fotou then explores the pessimism which frames liberal debates around migration and, in particular, the drowning of migrants at sea. Noting the possibility of a productive or fruitful pessimism, Fotou shows in Chapter 9 that the symbolic and intellectual inheritance of the shipwreck is a phenomenon ripe with pessimistic cultural content, notably framing migrant death and suffering as an inevitability. In tracing the legacy of the literary pessimism of the shipwreck in IR, Fotou shows how the apolitical nature of the sea is a contingent representation, allowing for the naturalisation of disaster as beyond human control, or at best open to technical management or mitigation. In thinking the pessimism of the shipwreck, Fotou seeks to return IR to an ethos of hospitality and responsibility to the foreign other, crossing the sea. In Chapter 10, Sheryl Lightfoot challenges the innocuousness of pessimism, inasmuch as it creates a number of traps for Indigenous theory about IR. Lightfoot outlines three specific ‘pessimism traps’ which, she argues, preclude or discount the agency of Indigenous groups who have long campaigned for inclusion in ‘relations international’ and formal recognition by settler-states like the United States, Canada and Australia. The first of these traps sets up a binary between authentic indigenous agency and co-optation by the settler-state. The second assumes that

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the state is unified, deliberate and unchanging in its desire to colonise and control. The third trap involves the assumption that any engagement with the Westphalian settler-state is both misguided and inimical to Indigenous sovereignty and continuing existence. These modalities of indigenous pessimism can be powerful mobilising tools but also sit in some degree of dissonance with the ideas of many Indigenous ­resistance movements and their efforts to advance self-determination globally. Lightfoot thus raises the possibility that pessimism, whilst understandable in light of the history of Indigenous communities worldwide, can inhibit efforts to creatively transform the Westphalian state into something more just. David Chandler argues that pessimism is a dated philosophical form, attached in particular to the tradition of Frankfurt School critical theory. Taking up the issues raised by the Anthropocene condition for IR, Chandler argues in Chapter 11 that it signifies the ‘eclipse of both the modernist imaginary (with its optimistic telos of universal knowledge and progress) and its romantic critical counterpart of disenchantment and philosophical pessimism’. The Anthropocene is the far limit of the idea that a happy ending is available to us using the resources of a pessimistic critique; in this sense it implies the exhaustion of philosophical pessimism. To affirm the Anthropocene is to move beyond pessimism, in the loss of even the capacity to imagine an ‘after’ the end of the world. Phil Cerny concludes the book with an Afterword, which sets the problem of pessimism in the context of the contemporary challenges facing the state-system, due to the persistence of concurrent globalisation and fragmentation. Cerny argues that the forms of pessimism discussed by the authors in this book, attached to nationalist populism, failures in global governance, or the limits of the state as a policy actor in the face of climate change, reflect a wider restructuring of world politics. The state system has given rise to quite specific forms of pessimism and optimism. The dissociation of state policy making in the face of complex global challenges has come alongside transformations of global economic processes that compound these issues. This has resulted in what he terms the ‘New Pessimism’, associated with the so-called populist backlash across the world. Only time will tell, Cerny concludes, if a reconsolidated or reconstructed state can hope to manage the globalisation-fragmentation dialectic.

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Notes



1.  Benjamin de Carvalho, Halvard Leira, and John M. Hobson, “The Big Bangs of IR: The Myths That Your Teachers Still Tell You About 1648 and 1919,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39, no. 3 (2011): 735–58; Torbjørn L. Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory, third edn. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016); Nicholas Michelsen, “International Relations Scholarship at 100: Publicism, Truth-Pluralism and the Usefulness Problem,” New Perspectives: Interdisciplinary Journal of Central & East European Politics & International Relations 26, no. 3 (2018). 2. Pablo de Orellana and Nicholas Michelsen, “Reactionary Internationalism: The Philosophy of the New Right,” Review of International Studies (2019). 3. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1926 [1918, 1923]); Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History: Abridgement of Vols. I–VI (Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1988). 4.  Neville Morley, “Decadence as a Theory of History,” New Literary History 35, no. 4 (2004): 573–85. 5. Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist,” Government and Opposition 39, no. 4 (2004): 541–63. 6. Salvage Magazine, “About Us,” http://salvage.zone/about/ (accessed 8 April 2019). 7. Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (Rochester, VT: Inner Tradition, 2002 [1972]). 8. Richard Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars (London: Allen Lane, 2009), 3. 9. Jonathan Luke Austin, Rocco Bellanova, and Mareile Kaufmann, “Doing and Mediating Critique: An Invitation to Practice Companionship,” Security Dialogue 50, no. 1 (2019): 3–19. 10. Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 4. 11.  Mark A. Neufeld, The Restructuring of International Relations Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 12. George Bernard Shaw, An Unsocial Socialist (London: Constable, 1932 [1883]), 67.

PART I

Histories of Pessimism

CHAPTER 2

Pessimism in International Relations Richard Ned Lebow

Introduction In this chapter I explore the nature of pessimism as an attitude and philosophy and contrast it with optimism. They are views of life that find expression in many diverse domains. They shape our framing of important life decisions, ranging from choice of careers and partners, our openness to risk-taking, to expectations about success or progress at the personal, group and national levels. Pessimism and optimism influence our receptivity to different political and intellectual projects, among them International Relations (IR) paradigms. Both views of life are best conceived of as anchors of a continuum, with most people and philosophies closer to the middle than the extremes. I make several claims in this chapter. I challenge Joshua Foa Dienstag’s assertion that pessimism is a modern phenomenon. I agree that pessimistic philosophies are a reaction to optimistic ones but that such a phenomenon is well documented in ancient Greece. I contend that pessimism and optimism are socially as well as psychologically determined; their prevalence and expression are dependent on context. Neither pessimism nor optimism is a stable category, as our R. N. Lebow (*)  King’s College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_2

13

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understandings of them, and the expectations they generate, change over time. A judgment once considered optimistic may be regarded as pessimistic a decade or century later, and vice versa. Pessimism and optimism are also rhetorical strategies. Optimists make pessimistic arguments or claims, and pessimists do the reverse. They do so in the hope of making people more receptive to their projects. It is difficult at times to distinguish between pessimism and optimism or to determine if a person or theory is one or the other. This is equally true of IR scholars. For this and other reasons there is often as much variation on a pessimism–optimism scale within disciplinary paradigms as across them. Pessimism is something of a conceptual morass. Many in the helping professions associate or even equate it with depression, fatalism, and cynicism. Others mistakenly assume that pessimists deny progress or the possibility of progress or human happiness. There are, moreover, multiple kinds of pessimism with different stances with regard to the value of life, the vita activa, and expectations about what is possible in personal or political life. I will explore some of these differences as they pertain to IR. There has been a general shift towards optimism in the modern era. Twentieth-century pessimists are also more optimistic in secular matters than their ancient or Mediaeval counterparts. In IR theory, this shift is evident in the emergence of liberalism and Marxism, although it lingers in realist thought from the late nineteenth century to the present, where pessimism is something of a Grundprinzip. The pendulum may be moving in the other direction at the moment because of perceived political and environmental threats. These shifts influence both the popularity of this and other paradigms in the profession and the character of theories rooted in them. It is too soon to know if we are witnessing a reversal in the long-term shift from pessimism to optimism, or a short-term fluctuation. Assessing any shift requires a baseline, which is difficult because of the subjective and evolving benchmarks of policymakers and scholars.

Pessimism and Optimism Pessimism finds philosophical expression in the writings of, among others, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, W.G.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault. Pessimism has given rise to the near-constant flow of narratives, and other representations, of

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the alleged decline of nation-states, Western civilization, or humanity in general. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century exponents of decline include Henry Adams, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Oswald Spengler, T.S. Eliot, Paul Klee, the Surrealists, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley.1 Pessimism is best characterised as a perspective that understands the world to be disordered, disenchanted, contradictory and even absurd. Arthur Schopenhauer, one of the most prominent theorists of modern pessimism, called human life ‘some kind of mistake’.2 Pessimists accept the world as it is—or as they think it is—and do not believe that humans have the ability to change it so as to produce greater happiness or security. Many believe that attempts to do so are likely to be counterproductive and lead to more suffering. Pessimism does not deny progress.3 Many acknowledge that scientific, engineering and medical advances, and economic development and political reforms, have made us wealthier, healthier, longer-lived and more secure. Pessimists nevertheless contend that these developments have not changed the human condition in any fundamental way and have come at a price that optimists downplay or ignore. They believe we must accept our limitations and learn to live with uncertainty, vulnerability and the prospect of unhappiness and tragedy. For Nietzsche, arguably the most interesting modern theorist of pessimism, we might turn this irrevocable state of affairs to our advantage by embracing instability—including that of our own identities—and the on-going process of becoming and, with it, the constant rebirth of the present.4 Nietzsche goes further and insists that a tragic vision of life is a precondition of progress. As tragedy disappears from society, people became less capable of acting intentionally and ethically.5 Pessimists do not give up on life but endorse a philosophy of self-conduct that prepares and fortifies us for the unexpected and unpleasant. Pessimists contend that they expect nothing from life and may be pleasantly surprised. Optimists, they assert, suffer through a lifetime of disappointments. Optimism embraces progress and the possibility of fundamental change in the human condition through scientific advances and social engineering. It finds philosophical expression in the writings of Locke, Kant and Mill, all of whom are upbeat about the human potential for betterment and the ability of properly designed institutions to allow greater human fulfilment. Optimism finds wide expression in liberal, socialist and nationalist political discourses, literature and art. The Statue

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of Liberty in New York Harbor and the Emma Lazarus poem carved into its plinth may be the most famous representation of liberal and national optimism. Optimists and pessimists have diametrically opposed perspectives on reason. Beginning with Bacon and Hobbes—Nietzsche would say with Socrates—optimists have put great store in the power of reason. They conceive of it as a vehicle for promoting positive changes in society, primarily through mass education and the redesign of institutions. Since Thomas More, extreme optimists have offered utopias as model societies in which individual happiness and collective harmony are achieved through procedures and practices that rest on and reinforce what their authors believe to be universal human traits and aspirations.6 They invariably incorporate the principle of equality and de-emphasise material goods and their use as status symbols. In some utopias, property and women are held communally. Utopian authors generally assert or imply that their imaginary worlds are realisable in practice; this is a common feature of nineteenth-century socialist utopias. Other utopias are offered as ideal-type worlds that can provide inspiration and direction for improving, although never perfecting, the societies in which authors and readers reside.7 George Logan astutely observes that utopias, like their golden age predecessors, assume that a world without evil is impossible so long as competition over property and sexual partners exists.8 For pessimists, reason is a source of unhappiness. Rousseau, generally considered the founding father of modern pessimism, embeds his theory of human motives in an historical account of the emotional and cognitive development of humankind. As is well known, he posits three stages of development: savage, primitive (both part of the state of nature) and civilised. Man is driven by amour de soi (love of self) and identification (pity and sympathy) in his original, savage state. Amour de soi, which man shares with animals, is a pre-rational instinct for survival, tempered by pity for the suffering of others. For want of reason, primitive man is ‘given over to the single feeling of his own present existence’.9 Primitive man is distinguished by his ability to think and reflect. Comparative modifiers enter his vocabulary; he not only compares himself to other people but recognises that others make comparisons to him. Recognition and esteem are conferred on those who excel in the various comparative categories. Public standing is now the dominant goal, and amour propre (the passion to be regarded favourably by others) becomes the principal motive for human actions. Material goods are valued in so far as

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they contribute to this goal. Any voluntary slight or insult is intolerable because it is interpreted as contempt for one’s person and ‘more unbearable than the harm itself’.10 Vengeance becomes terrible and men turn ‘bloodthirsty and cruel’.11 Civilised man is also moved by amour propre but a subtle yet important transformation occurs. His cognitive faculties increase and his calculations and goals become more complex. He is driven to postpone gratification for long periods of time, if not endlessly, in the pursuit of affluence. Whereas savage man sought esteem directly, civilised man seeks it indirectly, through the attainment and display of material possessions. Tocqueville offered a variant of this argument: modern man is also a product of his cognitive abilities, which led him to establish categories and typologies and to conceive of general ideas and clusters of related ideas. This ultimately leads people to reject all social distinctions and the hierarchies they sustain.12 Modern people are distinguished from their predecessors by their ‘ardent, insatiable, eternal and invincible passion for equality’; freed from the social constraints of the old regime, they become creatures of boundless energy and ceaseless ‘thirst for gain’.13 Pessimists produce dystopias. They depict dysfunctional societies that exaggerate features of the present—bureaucracy, capitalism, socialism, advertising, technology—to show their truly dreadful consequences when used for perverse ends. Evgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) are classic representatives of this genre. In the second half of the twentieth century, dystopias far outsold utopias, and several of them (e.g., 1984, A Clockwork Orange) became box office hits when turned into films. Utopias and dystopias are a good barometer of the mood and expectations of intellectuals and sometimes of the population more generally. These novels indicate that dystopias are not the work of traditional conservatives. Their authors do not defend capitalism, religion or Victorian values. They are not opposed to modernity but to the dangerous political and economic directions in which they believe it is heading. Dystopia more or less triumphed over utopia in the course of the twentieth century as intellectuals became increasingly disillusioned with the allegedly liberating power of reason. The failure to achieve a classless society by peaceful or revolutionary means also hastened the demise of utopia.14 The post-war era nevertheless saw a new spurt of utopias. B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two (1948), Robert Graves’ Seven Days in New Crete

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(1949) and Aldous Huxley’s Island (1962) follow the time-worn formula of distant island or future worlds that reject industrialism in favour of a simple, agricultural life. From the perspective of the twenty-first century, such idylls seem impractical and unattainable, if not undesirable. Many of us respond negatively to utopias because of their authoritarian political structure and oppressive regulation of private life.15 In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Scottish poet and socialist Alexander Gray exclaimed that ‘no Utopia has ever been described in which any sane man would on any conditions consent to live, if he could possibly escape’.16 Bacon, More, Hegel and Marx were optimistic about the future and wrote utopian tracts or novels. Rousseau and Nietzsche broke with this tradition and envisaged a bleak, culturally desolate future. For many intellectuals, two World Wars and the Holocaust confirmed Nietzsche’s pessimistic view of history. Leo Strauss favoured a return to natural law. Post-structuralists like Foucault not only rejected the Enlightenment ‘project’ but condemn progressive narratives of history as dangerous falsehoods.17 Optimism nevertheless remained rampant in America, where throughout the twentieth century it was encouraged in personal life and politics by a range of popular philosophers and political leaders. Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 classic, The Power of Positive Thinking, sold 5 million copies and was a New York Times bestseller for 186 weeks. Ever since, psychologists and life coaches have urged people to think positively.

Conceptual Confusion In 1974 psychologist Aaron Beck and colleagues attributed depression to pessimistic and ‘unrealistic negative views’ of the world.18 In 1985 they developed a ‘hopelessness scale’ that is still used to diagnose depression and prediction of suicide attempts.19 Many patients defend their pessimistic understandings of reality as justified. Committed to a more optimistic view of life, Beck and colleagues dismiss those arguments as a form of ‘deflection’.20 This approach to depression endures in the United States despite considerable psychological research indicating that optimism is far from a panacea for anxiety and other personal problems. In 1979, Lauren Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abramson challenged the conventional view that depressed people suffer from cognitive biases that lead them to embrace pessimistic views about themselves and the

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world.21 They proposed the ‘depressive realism’ hypothesis and argued that pessimistic people made more accurate predictions than their optimistic counterparts. Julie Norem argues that ‘defensive pessimism’ may be a more appropriate strategy in some circumstances.22 It requires people to think through in advance possible negative outcomes as a means of reducing anxiety associated with a contemplated behaviour or looming challenge. These claims have generated lots of discussion but no consensus that could be called robust. The Beck scale may be useful in predicting suicides but conceptually it is flawed because it equates pessimism and depression. The scale measures depression, which correlates with suicide. There is no evidence that pessimism shares this relationship with suicide, or that it is necessarily associated with depression. Depressed people can be optimists about the world, as were or are, among others, Samuel Johnson, Hans Christian Andersen, Art Buchwald, Bob Dylan, John Stuart Mill, Winston Churchill and Lady Gaga. Nor are pessimists necessarily depressed. Voltaire, Karl Marx, Albert Camus and Leo Strauss were, on the whole, happy people. Pessimism is not the same thing as unhappiness. Pessimism is an attitude toward life that can find expression in behaviour and philosophy. Unhappiness is a state of mind that arises and wanes as a function of circumstance, or alternatively is an aspect of personality. The two may, of course, be related. George Henry Lewes suggests that the former is a function of the latter: ‘Our philosophy, when not borrowed, is little more than the expression of our personality’.23 One could just as easily make the reverse case, arguing that personality is malleable and shaped by life experiences. Beliefs and personality are by no means always reinforcing. Nobody chooses to be unhappy, but many people, some of them happy, choose to be pessimists. Joshua Foa Dienstag rightly observes that treating pessimism as a disposition or personality attribute ‘robs it of its seriousness’ and reduces it to a mere complaint or more nefariously, I would add, a psychological problem in dire need of treatment.24 Pessimism also needs to be distinguished from fatalism and c­ ynicism. Fatalism refers to an attitude of resignation in the face of some future event or events which are thought to be inevitable. As a philosophical doctrine it holds that people have no power to influence the future or even their own actions. The classic argument for fatalism is made by Aristotle in his ‘De Interpretatione’. He addresses the question of

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whether in relation to all questions it is necessary that the affirmation or the negation is true or false.25 Pessimism respects agency and the ability of people to act independently and most pessimist thinkers make no claims about the inevitability of the future. Rather, like Sophocles, Tocqueville and Nietzsche, they understand it as open, complex, and unpredictable. They do not espouse resignation but acceptance of the limitations of human agency in achieving stipulated goals and the impossibility of fundamentally improving the human condition. Nietzsche, a pessimist, was keen to distinguish his brand of pessimism from what he called ‘Turkish fatalism’.26 Cynicism is an attitude or state of matter characterised by a general distrust of others’ motives.27 There is no reason to suppose it correlates with pessimism. It might even lead to optimism. Immanuel Kant was a cynic and an optimist and the two orientations were very much related in his mind. He had a low opinion of human nature but thought the ‘crooked timber’ of humanity could sustain social order. People want to be respected by others so they could gain honour and material rewards. They accordingly give the illusion of acting ethically and displaying modesty, affection and respect for others, even selflessness. Almost everybody, he thought, understands the duplicitous nature of this behaviour, in large part because they are acting the same way for the same reasons.28 ‘When human beings perform these roles, eventually the virtues, whose illusion they have merely affected for a considerable length of time, will gradually really be aroused and merge into the disposition’.29 Classical realists posit different kinds of positive relationship between cynicism and international relations. Thucydides believed that society was held together by a belief in a natural order sanctioned by the gods. Growing disbelief in the gods and justice by members of the educated elite had undermined what he called the ‘ancient simplicity’ (eūthēs). To restore order, members of the aristocracy had to pretend to believe in the gods and traditional justice to set an example for the rest of the population.30 Hans Morgenthau thought that cynicism coupled with the balance of power could have a restraining effect. In early editions of Politics Among Nations he laments that the Cold War has become a Manichean struggle between good and evil in which compromise is regarded as a deal with the devil.31 Morgenthau hoped to convince American leaders to reframe the Cold War as a power struggle that could be managed most effectively by a combination of deterrence

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and diplomacy. This frame of reference would restrain American leaders in the short term and possibly wind down the Cold War in the long term. For political reasons they would still have to resort to public rhetoric that exaggerated Soviet evil and the threat communism posed.32

A False Binary The supposed binary of pessimism and optimism is easily overstated. Both approaches to life are sometimes combined, the most extreme version of which may be in Christianity. It has encouraged a deep pessimism about life but great optimism about an afterlife. These contrasting attitudes combine successfully by applying them to two different worlds, with remarkable popular appeal. Certain forms of evangelical Christianity, most notably Dispensationalism, keep this tradition alive. The worse life becomes, the more that evil triumphs, and closer draws the day of rapture and Jesus’ return.33 Pessimism breeds optimism. Marxism-Leninism offers a secular variant. The very success of capitalism will be responsible for its downfall, so oppression is reason for hope. Stalin took this belief literally and ordered the German Communist Party to do nothing to oppose Hitler’s rise to power.34 As noted in the introduction to this chapter, pessimism and optimism are best conceived of as a continuum with people arrayed along it. One’s position on the continuum may well change in response to life experiences and how one works them through emotionally and intellectually. Anxiety appears to correlate with pessimism.35 Bad experiences and disappointment, and worse still tragedy, might be thought to make people more pessimistic. But the reverse is also observed. Child Holocaust survivors are on the whole an optimistic and successful group of people.36 There is some evidence that optimism and pessimism are differentially associated with the two cerebral hemispheres. High self-esteem, a cheerful attitude that tends to look at the positive aspects of a given situation, as well as an optimistic belief in a bright future, are associated with physiological activity in the left hemisphere. A gloomy viewpoint, an inclination to focus on the negative part and exaggerate its significance, low self-esteem, as well as a pessimistic view on what the future holds, are interlinked with neurophysiological processes in the right hemisphere.37 The same may be said about theories in philosophy or IR. Not every optimistic theory is Panglossian, nor is every pessimistic one nihilistic.

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Some philosophers are deeply pessimistic, as were the Stoics in ancient times and Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann in the nineteenth century. Others are notably less so, perhaps the best example being Nietzsche and his ‘Dionysian’ pessimism.38 It requires confronting the ‘terror’ of the chaos, uncertainty, and unpredictability of the world and, in so doing, seeking and perhaps finding self-definition and purpose through the aesthetic ideal of living ‘beautifully’ and with courage in a cruel world. It is a ‘pessimism of strength’, not weakness, because it has the potential to overcome nihilism and encourage meaningful action.39 At a stretch, it might even be termed a kind of optimistic pessimism, with the caveat that it was accessible only to those with considerable inner resources. Max Weber was a pessimist about himself, politics and IR and his country’s future.40 But pessimistic theories are not necessarily the product of pessimistic people. Hans Morgenthau was an optimist by nature. He was confident about his chances in life even when trying desperately to escape Europe and the clutches of the Nazis. A decade later, from the secure post of a tenured professor in Chicago, he was nevertheless deeply pessimistic about the chances of humanity to avoid destroying itself.41 John Stuart Mill was deeply pessimistic about his personal life but extremely optimistic about the ability of reason to bring about a healthier, wealthier and more peaceful life for humanity.42 Theorists can display pessimism and optimism in different domains or time perspectives. John Dewey said he was ‘very sceptical about things in particular but [had] an enormous faith in things in general’.43 People can shift in viewpoints in the course of their lives. Morgenthau’s life in America gradually changed him, making him more optimistic about American and international politics. He regarded the threat of nuclear war and destruction as no less grave but became more optimistic about the prospect of coping with it.44 Motivated bias may be a catalyst associated with change. Morgenthau was deeply concerned about the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Given the increasingly serious nature of the threat, he was more willing than before to consider the feasibility of some kind of supranational effort to control nuclear weapons. The European project suggested to him that such transformations were possible but only with popular backing. He framed this project as a more ambitious variant of supranational control in Western Europe over coal and iron.45 Mikhail Gorbachev provides an example of a policymaker in a similar situation. He desperately needed an accommodation with the West to side-line hardliners and free resources for glasnost and perestroika. Gorbachev convinced himself he could do

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this, displayed extreme optimism in the face of Reagan’s initial hostility but ultimately succeeded.46 Gorbachev might be considered lucky because when political leaders convince themselves they will succeed in the face of contradictory evidence they are more likely to fail.47 Pessimism and optimism are also rhetorical categories. Pessimistic and optimistic theorists of IR invoke the opposite perspective to sell their theories or political initiatives. Alison McQueen shows how three political realists—Machiavelli, Hobbes and Morgenthau—recognised the appeal and power of the apocalyptic imaginary. Even though they strongly opposed apocalyptic thinking, they adopted its rhetoric to advance more moderate projects. All three thinkers, she contends, at some point succumbed to apocalyptic thinking to confront an age of catastrophe.48 Ironically, this led to their turn to more pessimistic language. Morgenthau, for example, made apocalyptic arguments about the annihilation of humanity to generate support for supranational control over nuclear weapons. Bipolarity, nuclear weapons and a seemingly Manichean struggle between opposing social systems were transforming the practice of IR and making it less stable and more war-prone in an era when all-out war had become unimaginably costly.49 Liberals have done the same in reverse. They have an optimistic teleology: for many, the spread of capitalism and democracy is all but inevitable.50 At the same time, they sound the alarm about those who oppose democracy and capitalism, talk about the need to pull together, even to create new organisations with coercive power to help bring about this outcome.51 In the nineteenth and twentieth century, Marxists did something similar with their efforts to create a vanguard of the proletariat to prepare the working class for revolution.

Origins Pessimism and its close variants in many modern European languages derive from the Latin word pessimus, meaning ‘the worst’. It was coined, or at least popularised, by Jesuit critics of Voltaire’s 1759 novel Candide, ou l’Optimisme. Voltaire satirised Leibniz, who maintained that we lived in the ‘best [optimum] of all possible worlds’. The Jesuits accused Voltaire of pessimisme.52 Joshua Foa Dienstag offers this and other examples in support of his contention that pessimism is a product of modernity. In his view, it arose from a shift in the conception of time from cyclical to linear.53 Optimism, he contends, is the product of a view of

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time as linear and progressive. Liberalism and socialism are political ideologies and projects rooted in this understanding. Pessimism is a reaction against them, which is why it arose in the eighteenth century, most importantly in the writings of Rousseau. Dienstag is interested in theories of life and politics, not personal perspectives on life. His dating is in large part a product of his focus on a specific kind of discourse. There were precious few theories of life and politics until modern times, although numerous thinkers developed what might be called pessimistic philosophies in other genres. Greek tragedy may be the best example, and the one cited by Nietzsche in support of his argument that pessimism, as embodied in tragedy, was a core principle of ancient Greek society.54 If we stay with Dienstag’s understanding of pessimism as an ‘ethic’, ‘a technique of the self’, or a ‘form of life’, there is then good reason to extend it further back in time. Tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides shared this outlook, as did Thucydides, who applied the genre of tragedy to history. By this account, pessimism precedes optimism. Nietzsche recognised this ordering. He wrote of the pessimism of ancient Greece, especially in Greek tragedy, which he described as the dominant cultural form before Plato and rationalism. In 1886 he added the subtitle ‘Hellenism and Pessimism’ to a new edition of The Birth of Tragedy. In contrast to Dienstag, who describes pessimism as a reaction to optimism, Nietzsche asserts that ‘pessimism… is older and more original than optimism’.55 Individual and philosophical pessimism has a long history that can be documented at least as far back as the Greeks. Sophocles and other tragedians, including Thucydides, believed that people were largely at the whim of nature and other people; efforts to assert control over them were more likely than not to be counterproductive. Happy lives were rare and fortuitous and the best people could do was to try to avoid the worst by keeping a low profile.56 Dienstag may nevertheless be correct in thinking that pessimism and optimism are related. In Reason and Cause, I suggest that tragedy, and the works of Sophocles and Thucydides in particular, were a response to the novel conditions of fifth-century Athens. Empire, trade and population growth had created a society in which everything was both more complex and interdependent. Intellectual inquiry and reflection were responsible for a kind of proto-Enlightenment that emphasised the role of reason and questioned civil and divine authority. These developments

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combined to produce a degree of autonomy and self-confidence that encouraged hubris.57 Tragedy’s pessimism diagnosed the consequences of this exaggerated ‘optimism’ and offered a sophisticated alternative. The larger epistemological issue raised implicitly by Dienstag’s dating concerns our ability to identify or describe something in the absence of an appropriate concept. Consider the concepts of repression and charisma, developed respectively by Freud and Weber. They enriched our understanding of human and political behaviour. Their novelty was conceptual, not empirical. People had presumably always resorted to repression as a defense mechanism and leaders had always attracted followers by virtue of their magnetic appeal, even if Weber associated charismatic authority with a particular era of history.58 The same holds true for pessimism. People held pessimistic and optimistic views of life before the concepts were invented.

International Relations International relations were not extensively theorised until the modern age but those few pre-modern works are uniformly pessimistic. Thucydides, Plato, Machiavelli and Hobbes thought pessimism was unavoidable. Optimism begins with liberalism and socialism, both of which have roots in Christianity and its belief in paradise. Modern realism, which claims to be a long-standing feature of Western thought and practice, is in reality a reaction to widespread beliefs among intellectuals and some policymakers that war and strife could be all but eliminated by democracy, economic development and international law. Like most religious, philosophical or intellectual movements, the proponents of new paradigms in IR have sought legitimacy by tracing their lineage back to distinguished individuals or thinkers. Realists have done this with Thucydides, liberals with Kant, and constructivists with German Historicists and Wittgenstein.59 The first two claims are questionable as they are based on cherry-picked, out-of-context quotes and indefensible readings of Thucydides and Kant.60 Modern realism is no more a descendant of Thucydides than Jesus, as claimed in the New Testament, is the descendant of Abraham, David, and Adam.61 Realism and liberalism are newly minted nineteenth- and twentieth-century political philosophies. Although the latter is a response to the former we do injustice to both by framing them as a binary. They readily penetrate one another. We accordingly find optimistic forms of

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realism and pessimistic expressions of liberalism.62 There is as almost as much variation within each paradigm in this regard as there is between them. As noted, representatives of each employ the worldview of the other to persuade audiences of the correctness of their assumptions, predictions, and policies. Thucydides has been made a realist in retrospect so it is fair to ask where he fits on the pessimism–optimism continuum. He is a quintessential pessimist in his belief that reliance on reason is a cause of tragedy, that the future is opaque, and leaders exaggerate their ability to control other actors and their environment. Like Sophocles, he believes that great men and political units are their own worst enemies.63 He puts little faith in the ability of deterrence or the balance of power to preserve the peace or prevent one unit from achieving hegemony.64 There is nevertheless a hint of optimism in his preface to his account of the Archidamiam and Peloponnesian Wars where he suggests that it is ‘a possession for all time’. I infer he means that hubris will lead to tragedy repeatedly in politics and international affairs and the knowledge about this state of mind and its likely consequences has the potential to make readers more aware of the danger and possibly less likely to act this way.65 Max Weber is arguably more pessimistic than Thucydides. If Nietzsche focused on Europe’s underlying cultural crisis, Weber addressed its political and epistemological manifestations. In a disenchanted world, there was no certainty of any kind, not only about values but also about scientific knowledge. In his thinking about IR, Weber is very much a product of his time. Following Hegel and prominent German historians, he endows the state with ethical potential and gives it priority over the wishes and self-interests of citizens. He adheres to a Darwinian view of politics and routinely describes peoples and states as violent competitors in an unending and unavoidable struggle for survival. He treats states as fully independent units and is oblivious to the process of globalisation that was making national economies interdependent, although it would be halted temporarily in 1914. Darwinism and the hard shell of states provided the scaffolding for what would become the realist paradigm in IR.66 Hans Morgenthau has been already been described as a realist who became more optimistic over time about the possibilities of controlling nuclear weapons through a supranational institution and thereby preventing nuclear catastrophe. Early editions of Politics Among Nations were insistent that IR could progress. His model was the European Coal

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and Steel Community and follow-on institutions. He considered them important examples of progress that significantly reduced the chance of a future European war. He did not theorise this change the way Karl Deutsch did but was impressed by his argument and more convinced of it by 1970.67 Kenneth Waltz is perhaps the most optimistic realist theorist. He claimed that bipolarity stabilised IR and reduced the chances of war in comparison to multipolar systems.68 This is because superpowers feel more secure than great powers; there is less uncertainty about the military balance and less perceived loss from the defection of an ally. These structural features are determining because leaders are sufficiently rational to understand them and act accordingly. Waltz differs from most other realists in the faith he has in reason. Thucydides and Morgenthau are pessimistic in part because they regard reason as a double-edged sword. Waltz sees it as the mechanism responsible for peace. Rationalist models of conflict and deterrence theories, both nested within the realist paradigm, are even more reason-based; most assume leaders capable of carrying out complex calculations of cost, gain, and risk.69 Some, like Bueno de Mesquita’s The War Trap, are pessimistic about peace, and others are more optimistic. This variation is a function of their somewhat arbitrary starting assumptions.70 John Herz offers a different and equally interesting perspective as he sought a synthesis between realism and liberalism and pessimism and optimism.71 Stanley Hoffmann arguably did something similar.72 E.H. Carr attempted to combine realism with socialism.73 This cursory discussion of realisms indicates that it incorporates theories that ran the gamut from highly pessimistic to cautiously optimistic because of their different assumptions about structure, agency and reason. The same variations could be documented for liberalism and Marxism. All interpretations are, of course, open to challenge. Two controversies surround my assessment of optimism and pessimism in Thucydides and tragedy. Nick Rengger and Peter Euben come close to accusing me of hubris for suggesting that Thucydides thought that tragedy might be avoided.74 I contend that they overstate my claim; at best, knowledge about tragedy might reduce its frequency. In effect, Thucydides is exposing readers to the darkest and most pessimistic of scenarios—as Hobbes and Morgenthau later would do—to restrain leaders from indulging in exaggerated expectations (elpis) and committing themselves to the kinds of initiatives responsible for tragedy. He is encouraging pessimism to

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foster optimism. Optimism is the basis for progress, and the recurrence of tragedy in international affairs a cause for pessimism. Mervyn Frost argues that knowledge of tragedy—and more importantly, a tragic perspective on life and politic—can foster more ethical behaviour, greater responsibility by state actors, and help reduce conflict.75 James Mayall and Nick Rengger make the counter-case, contending that unreasonable optimism is more likely to foster tragedy than prevent it.76 There is much to learn from further analysis of realist theories on a pessimism–optimism continuum and from theorists of other paradigms. I suspect that it will support my contention that variation in the first instance reflects different takes on reason. Pessimism not only questions the rationality of political actors but assumes they exaggerate both their rationality and the power of human reason to transform the human condition. The former prompts miscalculation and the latter hubris. The more political actors are assumed to be rational the more optimistic many theorists become. However, belief in rationality cuts two ways. Its implications for war and peace depend on the substantive assumptions of theorists. If they depict the world as inescapably conflictual, with political units locked into life-and-death struggles for resources and honour, then instrumental reason will lead them to the pessimistic conclusion that conflict and war are inevitable. This is true for Max Weber and John Mearsheimer.77 Alternatively, if they believe that reason promotes enlightened self-interest, they will be more optimistic, as were Karl Deutsch and John Herz. Variation is also a function of the Zeitgeist but again not in a linear way. Classical realists like Morgenthau, whose approach to IR is embedded in a tragic view of life, are dubious, or at least cautious, about the power of reason. It breeds overconfidence. But in its absence, leaders fail to perceive threats accurately or balance against them. More important than good reasoning for Morgenthau is ‘the wisdom and moral strength’ of leaders. Peace and stability ultimately depend on the courage to exercise restraint for fear of the consequences of acting aggressively.78 Classical realists are in general pessimists but cautiously optimistic in eras characterised by good leadership that is relatively free of domestic political constraints. In periods of political optimism scholars are more likely to advance optimistic theories of international politics. This was true in the years after both World Wars and after the end of the Cold War. But pessimistic theories will also appear as a reaction. Eras of pessimism about

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international politics encourage optimistic theories as a source of hope. Deterrence theories arose in the 1960s at the most dangerous period of the Cold War and this is also when John Herz wrote his major works on IR. Kenneth Waltz published his theory of IR as the Cold War heated up again after the collapse of détente and the rise of superpower competition in the Third World. Bob Axelrod’s study of the success of tit-fortat strategies was published in 1984 and became an immediate sensation because many believed it held out the prospect for hope in a period of renewed confrontation under President Ronald Reagan.79 Optimistic theories in turn encourage pessimistic rejoinders.

Conclusions Pessimism is the opposite of optimism. Can we have one without the other? To address this question we must distinguish between these personal and philosophical orientations from their naming. Both orientations were present in late fifth-century Athens and probably earlier, although not effectively documented. What we call pessimism also found philosophical expression in tragedy, although Athenian playwrights and their audiences conceived of it differently. The plays of Sophocles and the historical account of Thucydides drove home the extent to which human beings were at the mercy of forces over which they had no control and suggested that the best response was a cautious attitude to life characterised by prudence and self-restraint, what the Greeks called sōphrosunē. Once the concepts of pessimism and optimism emerged they reshaped our thinking about these views of life in important ways. The Enlightenment substituted a simpler concept for a more complex one, allowing their framing as a personality characteristic, even an aberrant one, rather than a considered and rational response to the vagaries and challenges of life. Of equal importance, the pairing of these concepts encouraged us to think of them as poles of a binary. This linked them in ways they had not been before and with important consequences, some of which I have discussed. The optimism–pessimism binary, I contend, does injustice to both orientations. I have tried to demonstrate this in the case of pessimism. The binary ignores, or at least largely downplays, the considerable, often profound, variation in the everyday meanings of pessimism and theoretical constructions of it. The binary all but disallows the possibility that pessimism and optimism can be bridged or combined, or that people and

30  R. N. LEBOW

theories can seek a middle ground between them. It narrows, rather than broadens, our understanding of both orientations towards life. By denying what they have in common, how they might be bridged, combined, or superseded if treated as thesis and anthesis in a dialectic, it creates a false or exaggerated juxtaposition of them as competing and opposed views of life. Finally, the binary encourages us to associate certain psychological characteristics and behaviour with each view, fostering stereotypy and stigma. It is no accident that the categories of pessimism and optimism were formulated in the late eighteenth century, or that Voltaire and the Jesuits were associated with their development. Enlightenment thinkers believed in the ability of reason to understand and master the world. In their drive to order the physical and social worlds they created or elaborated a number of stark, rigid, either-or distinctions, among them existence-essence, mind-body, subject-object, and liberal-conservative. The pessimism–optimism binary is a conceptual artefact intended to reduce fuzziness and complexity to order and simplicity. This binary is very much a product of the historical moment. Enlightenment thinkers and their descendants rejected religion as a superstition and one that stood in the way of progress. However, the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment projects of liberalism and socialism are Christianity in a secular form. They promise to restore the Garden of Eden through the rational ordering of society. Pessimists regard these projects as the ultimate expression of hubris. Being an optimist or pessimist today is placing a bet on history and human nature and buying into or rejecting a teleology. This is particularly evident in IR theory. Nietzsche warned that the greatest form of tyranny is becoming prisoner of a single way of thinking. This is likely to happen whenever philosophy believes in itself and attempts to create a world in its own image.80 Theories of all kind attempt this, including those that address IR. They restrict our horizons and blind us to complexity, nuance, impermanence, and to the creativity of humans in finding new ways of addressing their needs and expressing themselves. One way to free ourselves from such tyranny is to interrogate our analytical frameworks and their starting points. This volume’s inquiry into pessimism is a useful step in this direction.

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Notes











1. Oliver Bennett, Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001); Matthew W. Slaboch, A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). 2.  Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Vanity of Existence,” in Essays and Aphorisms, trans. R.J. Hollindale (London: Penguin, 1970), 51–54. 3. Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), xi, 25, 40. 4. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollindale (New York: Random House, 1967), 417. 5. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), 17–18, 59–60, 84, 96–98; Benjamin A. Schupmann, “A Pessimism of Strength? Tragedy and Political Virtue,” in Toni Erskine and Richard Ned Lebow, eds., Tragedy and International Relations (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 129–43. 6. Thomas More, Utopia, eds. George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams, rev. edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 7.  Richard Ned Lebow, The Politics and Ethics of Identity: In Search of Ourselves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chapter 2. 8.  George M. Logan, The Meaning of More’s Utopia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 7–8. 9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men,” in Donald A. Cress and David Wooton, eds., The Basic Political Writings, second edn. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing), 55. 10. Ibid., 73. 11. Ibid. 12. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, eds. Harvey C. Winsfield and Debra Winthrop (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), II.1.3, 411–12. 13. Ibid., II.2.1., 482. 14. Judith Shklar, After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). 15. Sylvia Bowman, The Year 2000: A Critical Biography of Edward Bellamy (New York: Bookman, 1958), 121. 16. Alexander Gray, Socialist Tradition: Moses to Lenin (London: Longman & Green, 1946), 62. 17. Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 153–54.

32  R. N. LEBOW 18.  Aaron T. Beck, Arlene Weissman, David Lester, and Larry Trexler, “The Measurement of Pessimism: The Hopelessness Scale,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 42, no. 6 (1974): 861–65. 19.  Aaron T. Beck, Robert A. Steer, Maria Kovacs, and Betsy Garrison, “Hopelessness and Eventual Suicide: A 10-Year Prospective Study of Patients Hospitalized with Suicidal Ideation,” American Journal of Psychiatry 142, no. 5 (1985): 559–63. 20. Ibid. 21.  Lauren B. Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abrahamson, “Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and Non-Depressed Students: Sadder but Wiser,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 108 (1979): 441–85; Lauren B. Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abrahamson, “Depressive Realism: Four Theoretical Perspectives,” in Lauren B. Alloy, ed., Cognitive Processes in Depression (New York: Guilford, 1998), 223–65. 22.  Julie K. Norem and Nancy Cantor, “Defensive Pessimism: Harnessing Anxiety as Motivation,” Journal of Personality and Psychology, 51 (1986): 1208–17; Julie K. Norem, The Positive Power of Negative Thinking (New York: Basic Books, 2001); Steve Conor, “Is Pessimism Really Bad For You?,” The Guardian, 20 November 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/20/is-pessimism-bad-for-you (accessed 15 August 2018). 23. George Henry Lewes, The Philosophy of Common Life (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauschnitz, 1860), II, 49. 24. Dienstag, Pessimism, 17. 25. Aristotle, “De Interpretatione,” in Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), I, 25–38. 26. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, trans. R.J. Hollindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), Second Supplement, “The Wanderer and His Shadow.” 27.  Luis E. Navia, Classical Cynicism: A Critical Study: Contributions in Philosophy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 1. 28.  Immanuel Kant, “To Perpetual Peace,” in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1983), 107–43; Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, ed. Robert Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Séan Molloy, Kant’s International Relations (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017), 94–96, 100–11. 29. Kant, Anthropology, 32. 30. Richard Ned Lebow, Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests, and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 152–53, 293–97. 31. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Alfred J. Knopf, 1948).

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32. Author’s Conversations with Hans Morgenthau, 1961–1962, 1968–1970. 33. Rapture Ready Index, https://www.raptureready.com/rapture-ready-index/ (accessed 1 April 2019); Tim Le Haye, Revelation Unveiled (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999); Richard Ned Lebow, The Politics and Ethics of Identity: In Search of Ourselves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chapter 6. 34. Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (London: Penguin, 2017), part III. 35. William M. Dember and Judith Brooks, “A New Instrument for Measuring Optimism and Pessimism: Test-Retest Reliability and Relations with Happiness and Religious Commitment,” Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 27 (1989): 365–66; William M. Dember, Stephanie H. Martin, Mary K. Hummer, Steven R. Howe, and Richard S, Melton, “The Measurement of Optimism and Pessimism,” Current Psychology 8, no. 2 (1989): 102–19. 36. Aaron Haas, The Aftermath: Living with the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Robert Krell, “Psychological Reverberations of the Holocaust in the Lives of Child Survivors,” in The Mona and Otto Weinman Annual Lecture (Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1997); Peter Suedfeld, Light from the Ashes: Social Science Careers of Young Holocaust Refugees and Survivors (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001). 37.  David Hecht, “The Neural Basis of Optimism and Pessimism,” Experimental Neurobiology 22, no. 3 (2013): 173–99. 38. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” vol. II, Preface in Human, All-Too-Human, 4. 39. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, 17. 40. Marianne Weber, Max Weber: A Biography, trans. Harry Zohn (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1988), 40, 412, 521–22; Wolfgang J, Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, 1890–1920, trans. Michael S. Steinberg, second edn. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984 [1974]), 190–282. 41. Author’s conversations with Hans Morgenthau, 1970–1978. 42. Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Start Mill (New York: Macmillan, 1954). 43.  John Dewey, “Letter to Scudder Klyce,” 16 April 1915, quoted in Dienstag, Pessimism, 17. 44. Lebow, Tragic Vision of Politics, 250–56. 45. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 196–97, 402, 419–45, Hans Morgenthau, “Death in the Nuclear Age,” in The Restoration of American Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 155–61. 46. Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, “Understanding the End of the Cold War as a Non-Linear Confluence,” in Richard K. Hermann

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and Richard Ned Lebow, eds., Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 189–218. 47. Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), Chapters 4–5; Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Stein, We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: University Press, 1994), chapters 2–3. 48. Alison McQueen, Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 49. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 196–97, 402, 419–45; Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Four Paradoxes of Nuclear Strategy,” American Political Science Review 58, no. 1 (1964): 23–35. 50. Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999); Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992); Alexander L. Wendt, “Why a World State Is Inevitable,” European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 4 (2003): 491–542. 51. G. John Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney, “Democratic Internationalism: A New Grand Strategy for the Post-Exceptionalism Era,” Council on Foreign Relations Working Paper, November 2012. 52. Writing in Revue de Trévoux, cited in Dienstag, Pessimism, 9. 53. Dienstag, Pessimism, 16. 54. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, “Self-Criticism,” 4. 55. Nietzsche, Werke, 4, 1.208. To be fair to Dienstag, he cites this quote but argues against Nietzsche’s claim. 56. For a good introduction, see “Tragedy,” in Martin Banham, ed., The Cambridge Guide to Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1118–20; Susan L. Feagin, “Tragedy,” in Edward Craig, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998), vol. 9, 447–52; Morris Weitz, “Tragedy,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Collier Macmillan, 1967), 155–61; John Drakakis and Naomi Conn Liebler, “Introduction”, in John Drakakis and Naomi Conn Liebler, eds., Tragedy (London: Longman, 1998), 1–20; Jennifer Wallace, The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 57.  Richard Ned Lebow, Reason and Cause (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 58. Max Weber, Economy and Society, trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1978), II, 1111–57. 59. Richard Ned Lebow, “Texts, Paradigms and Political Change,” in Toni Erskine and Michael Williams, eds., Reconsidering Realism: The Legacy

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35

of Hans J. Morgenthau in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 241–68. 60.  Daniel Garst, “Thucydides and Neorealism,” International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1989): 469–97; Lebow, Between Peace and War, chapters 2–3; Molloy, Kant’s International Relations. 61. The New Testament provides two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus, one in the Gospel of Matthew and another in the Gospel of Luke. Matthew’s starts with Abraham, while Luke begins with Adam. The lists are identical between Abraham and David but differ significantly from there on. 62. Tatum, this volume. 63. Lebow, Between Peace and War, chapters 2–3. 64. Richard Ned Lebow, “Thucydides and Deterrence,” Security Studies 16, no. 2 (2013): 163–88. 65. Richard Ned Lebow, “Tragedy, Politics, and Political Science,” in Erskine and Lebow, eds., Tragedy and International Relations, 63–74. 66.  Max Weber, “The Nation State and Economic Policy,” in Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs, eds., Weber: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1–28; Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, 1890–1920, trans. Michael S. Steinberg, second edn. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984 [1974]), Chapter 7; Richard Ned Lebow, ed., Max Weber and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), chapter 2. 67.  Karl W. Deutsch, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). Author’s conversations with Hans Morgenthau, New York, 1969–1972. 68. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGrawHill, 1979). 69. For example, Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964); Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The War Trap (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981); Robert Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); James D. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995): 379–414. 70. For an analysis of the arbitrary but determining nature of these assumptions, Richard Ned Lebow, Why Nations Fight: The Past and Future of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), chapter 3. 71. John Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism: A Study in Theories and Realities (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1951); John Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); Stevens, this volume.



36  R. N. LEBOW 72. Stanley Hoffmann, The State of War: Essays on the Theory and Practice of International Politics (New York: Praeger, 1965); Stanley Hoffmann, The Relevance of International Law: Essays in Honor of Leo Gross (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1968). 73. E.H. Carr, The Twenty Year’s Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1940). 74.  Nicholas Rengger, “Tragedy or Scepticism? Defending the AntiPelagian Mind in World Politics,” in Erskine and Lebow, eds., Tragedy and International Relations, 53–62; J. Peter Euben, “The Tragedy of Tragedy,” in Erskine and Lebow, eds., Tragedy and International Relations, 86–96. 75. Mervyn Frost, “Tragedy, Ethics, and International Relations,” in Erskine and Lebow, eds., Tragedy and International Relations, 21–43. 76. James Mayall, “Tragedy, Progress, and International Order,” in Erskine and Lebow, eds., Tragedy and International Relations, 44–52; Rengger, “Tragedy or Scepticism?” 77. John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001). 78. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 172. 79. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984). 80. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Helen Zimmern (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1977), 15; Tracy Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), chapter 9.

CHAPTER 3

The Romance of Realism: Pessimism as Tragedy Ronnie Hjorth

Introduction One temptation when engaging in political reflection is the inclination to avoid dealing with the world we live in and focus instead on utopian dreams.1 An equally serious temptation is the tendency to turn around and look at the past as an ideal. The formative dual conception of liberalism and realism encompasses both these positions and oscillates between them. Liberalism is progressive and oriented towards change. Realism looks at the element of ‘recurrence and repetition’.2 Presently, realism challenges liberalism, as familiar patterns of power politics are once again recognisable. The widespread worry about contemporary international affairs awakens an interest in realist thought, particularly that of the Cold War period. This means relating to a pessimistic international theory which is essentially a product of the twentieth century.3 Focusing on the presumed permanent elements of international politics, realism recalls historical parallels, such as the notion of a new Cold War. Looking back in times of turmoil is not necessarily harmful but R. Hjorth (*)  Swedish Defence University, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_3

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may involve the resurrection of redundant political ideals and narratives. One recurring narrative of realism is that of tragedy, central to past masters such as Carl von Clausewitz and Hans J. Morgenthau, as well as to contemporary realist scholars like John Mearsheimer.4 As Mervyn Frost points out, tragedy is backward-looking.5 When looking backwards, realism is vulnerable to nostalgia. Such reaction may involve looking at the future with the perspective of the past, substituting utopia for retrotopia, or may involve the cultivation of an arcadian temperament attempting to restore imagined conditions of past times.6 The main argument of this chapter is that realism embraces a romantic account of politics. It therefore has something in common with the meaning of the term ‘romance’, when referring to tales of chivalry and heroism. The tragic narrative evokes the romantic image of a world drama that stands in sharp contrast to realism’s scientific pretentions. It is a romance of a particular kind, which develops a particular account of political pessimism. I demonstrate that this tragic outlook not only reflects historical experiences or attempts to moderate liberal hubris, but it also shapes a mythical account of international politics that is sometimes supportive of political conduct, which may also backfire. The possible intellectual collection between the work of Morgenthau and Leo Strauss is explored, suggesting that Morgenthau uses tragedy as way to describe the nature of international politics to the public, while reserving the finer details and deeper politico-moral complexity of the matter to diplomats and scholars. He therefore pursues a method in line with Strauss’ distinction between ‘exoteric’ and ‘esoteric’ writing. The problem, well known to Strauss, is that the power of narratives may limit conduct. Thus, those who dance with the devil will have to pay the piper.

The Romantic Narrative Realism is often portrayed as an objective and detached political theory. This can be traced back to the first lines of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, where the author presents himself as, ‘Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians; he began at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war’.7 Despite being an Athenian, Thucydides attempts to approach the war more as an observer than as a participant or supporter of Athens. The history of the war unfolds in the form of a story told by this ‘citizen-observer’. The position of the author as a

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disinterested witness lends the work a flavour of truth and reason. Similar positions are adopted by other prominent ‘realist’ authors. For example, Machiavelli’s list of practical advice to the princes of all times derives from his experience as a servant of Florence.8 E.H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis covers a very limited period of the political history of Europe, but its urbanity and foundations in the relativity of thought suggest the possibility of transhistorical wisdom.9 Morgenthau’s structural theory of international politics is anchored in an ‘anti-humanist’ tradition influenced by Nietzsche and Freud, searching for the objective laws of politics.10 There are striking similarities in the writings of the realists worthy of further exploration. First, while realists remain citizens, there pertains an ambition to write political history from the observer’s point of view. We learn that a realist is not a cosmopolitan but an ‘Athenian’. The refusal to accept the position of an outsider—a citizen of nowhere, or a citizen of the world—reflects both a desire to be serviceable to one’s community, as well as making the statement that there is no such thing as impartiality in matters of power and war. In a world where there are only states, an author of war and peace has a duty not to forsake the interests and wellbeing of fellow citizens. Consequently, the realist is a citizen serving his or her country in the best possible of ways. This does not imply that outsiders lack moral rights, or that national interests always have priority. For example, Carr argues that the basis for morality of states is ‘the willingness not to insist on all the prerogatives of power’; Morgenthau claims that the balancing of good and evil is ‘an inescapable necessity’.11 Kenneth Waltz and Hedley Bull pictured the ethics of statecraft within the framework of a major structuring element (system or society) giving priority to the independence and survival of states.12 Thus, the view of the realist as a detached observer, a scientist, is difficult to defend. Some realists have cultivated such an attitude to their vocation, but this may have more to do with adopting a scientific outlook than with pursuing the broader realist tradition. Second, a realist author tells a story that helps connect the observed chain of events. In doing so, they are often inclined to adopt ‘nonideal’ theory and are not easily enchanted by political perfectionism. Consequently, Ned Lebow shows how realist narratives often resemble classic Greek tragedy, such as Thucydides’ account of the Sicilian expedition.13 Morgenthau’s realism also emerges from a story—most clearly shown in Scientific Man versus Power Politics—that is critical

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of the rationalism of modern social science and of the belief in reason and progress. In his account, such belief misunderstands the nature of man and avoids the darker aspects of existence, a theme emphasised by Christian authors and later ‘discovered’ by thinkers such as Freud.14 For Morgenthau, the tragic theme characterises international politics. States are driven to fulfil their destiny and to play their endless game of power. He claims that the story of power politics can only be told by one who realises the practical situation of a statesman and who is able to ‘look over his shoulders’ when interpreting his actions.15 Morgenthau compares this to the distinction between a photograph and a portrait: …the photograph shows everything that can be seen by the naked eye; the painted portrait does not show everything that can be seen by the naked eye, but it shows, or at least seeks to show, one thing that the naked eye cannot see: the human essence of the person portrayed.16

Hence, according to Morgenthau, realism can at least catch a glimpse of the essence of world politics, but the scientific ideal is too limited to provide explanations or to guide the politics of power. Narrative is one way to escape the limitations of science but there are difficulties involved. For example, over-relying on stories makes us dependent on the power of the narrator.17 Plato realised that myth is power; a way to control a people would then be the commanding of a narrative. The most successful narrative, writes Strauss, is one close to the view of the people, so that reason and custom meet. This, he remarked, is the ‘politically good’.18 Realists produce tragic narratives, connecting observations to a conception of power widely accepted in media and elsewhere. Hence, the tragic narrative finds good soil and is easy to defend to the public. This is a strength of realism, regardless of whether its analyses are always correct, because realism connects to established narratives and capitalises on their familiar resonances. Third, realist literature presents a story of great men and heroes. It is not surprising to find such a theme in the work of Thucydides, or in the familiar genre of Greek tragedy. It is more surprising to find ­similar scenography in the work of Henry Kissinger. A leading figure of Cold War diplomacy, he presents his version of international politics as a thea­ tre where the major players are the state leaders and master diplomats. According to Kissinger, the foundations of American diplomacy build on the heritage of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who represent

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the familiar couple of realism and liberalism.19 One reason for relating to persons in this way is that many (‘classical’, as opposed to structural) realists are not resistant to the notion that statesmen make a difference in international politics. It may also be a way to interact with the powerful and to seek a curious acquaintance with the world of politics. But those who fly too near the sun will have their wings burned. One way to avoid sharing the fate of Icarus is to maintain the ethos of science and emphasise strict—and somewhat conservative—theory and sound methods. Strauss brought the matter considerably further when advocating an esoteric manner of writing ‘in which the truth about all crucial things is presented exclusively between the lines’.20 The scrupulous might even paraphrase Machiavelli’s advice and claim that it is more important to appear scientific than to be scientific.21 Whatever the case, the scientific outlook is a protection. While realists often take an interest in the powerful players, power and greatness do not necessarily go hand in hand. It may be that realist authors prefer the great leaders of their own country or culture, or that some leaders possess the virtues of good statesmanship while others do not. Morgenthau presents this as ‘ethical inhibitions’, when moral rules function as ‘an absolute barrier’ to policy.22 The notion of the master statesman goes back to Plato, Machiavelli and Burke, and is indeed a grand theme of political science. Selecting a particular leader for praise is where realism would touch upon stories of chivalry and pure romance. For what is an ideal statesman but an ideal? Plato realised this and made it a theme of one of his dialogues.23 However, in politics, great men prevail to impress other great men; we are required to refer to them and their kind. To sum up, contrary to the description of realism as a tradition of political inquiry that is detached, impersonal, objective, scientific, factbased and searching for the universal laws of power politics, the above description presents realism as a romantic narrative, a story of great men and heroes, of power and nations, of tragedy and destiny, told to citizens by authors in service of their country, even when disguised as the obedient servants of Clio. These two ways to describe realism are not necessarily incompatible, as the following section suggests.

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Realism and Romanticism In the lectures published as The Roots of Romanticism, Isaiah Berlin claimed that Romanticism ‘is the largest recent movement to transform the lives and thought of the Western world’, and a ‘gigantic and radical transformation, after which nothing was ever the same’.24 Romanticism affected practically all areas of Western thought and was a major influence on politics.25 Therefore, the question is not if Romanticism affected realism but how. It suffices here to mention a few elements of Romanticism that connect to realism. The purpose is limited to the exploration of a connection and inner relationship. Placing Romanticism in time and place, Berlin suggests ‘the second third’ of the eighteenth century in Germany.26 Among the names associated with the movement are Herder, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Schiller, Hölderlin and Goethe. Berlin identifies two vital elements of Romanticism.27 First, that Romanticism emphasised the willingness of people to withstand suffering and sacrifice, even death, in defence of their ideals. Tragedy is central to Romantic literature, but it is a different kind of tragedy than that of the classic Greek drama. The classical tragedy typically flows from some mistake or error in character, or from a lack of knowledge. The Romantic tragedy is caused by the dedication to values or ideals.28 Second, Romantics rejected the idea, characteristic of the Enlightenment, that there must be rational solutions to all problems. From this follows that science does not provide enough guidance. While Enlightenment thinkers generally were optimistic about mankind’s capacities for improvement, Romanticism tended to be pessimistic, predicated on the tragic fate of romantic heroes, and thereby cultivated an aesthetic devotion to the beauty of the tragic. As for political thought, Romanticism brought an emphasis on the nation as a collective project, mainly through the work of Herder and Fichte. Moreover, Burke and Adam Müller developed the organic concept of the state. The state, argues Müller, subsumes all of the people, spiritual as well as material, into a ‘living whole’.29 For Burke, the state encompasses the previous, the present and the coming generation, reacting against both social contract theory and the legalistic concept of the state. Moreover, romantics disapproved of the separation of public and private spheres and rejected the liberal idea of the state as the guarantor of individual rights, as well as the utilitarian idea of the state as an instrument for maximising happiness.30 Romantic political thought does

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not sit comfortably with a theory viewing international society as either the result of negotiations among sovereigns, or as a hierarchical system of rules and norms. Consequently, Burke toned down the importance of treaties in the relations of states, focusing instead on the element of shared conventions and understandings.31 Clausewitz praised the military genius of Napoleon Bonaparte and conceived of states as living entities in conflict, viewing war as the normal condition.32 Romantics rejected the notion of a World State, as well as the position that there is one ‘harmonious whole’ to be eventually discovered and possibly governed by rational persons.33 They challenged the idea of the cosmopolitan person leaving only two options, citizenship or exile. This also affects the view of the external representation of the state among other states. The Hobbesian state-person is a representative of a commonwealth formed by contract.34 The state-person of Romanticism is a living organism. Berlin described how pessimism and tragedy typically took shape in Romantic literature: The strong must have room in which to breathe, and the weak go to the wall; if the weak suffer, they will naturally resist, and it is right that they should resist, and it is right that the strong should suppress them. Therefore conflict, collision, tragedy, death – all kinds of horrors – are inevitably involved in the nature of the universe. The view is therefore fatalistic and pessimistic, not scientific and optimistic, not even spiritual and optimistic, in any sense of the word.35

These words reveal parallels to realist descriptions of power politics. Realism, too, rejects the notion of the world as a ‘harmonious whole’. Realism does not picture the world political system as a ‘harmonious whole’ but as an ‘incomplete whole’ in which interstate relations are essentially aporetic. Different denominations of realism give different reasons for international aporia, but they all somehow take it to be an essential condition of international politics. The influence of Romanticism upon realism is not always readily apparent. Morgenthau’s position is interesting, if not very clear. He explicitly recognises Burke and Goethe for their critique of rationalism.36 At the same time, he refers to Romanticism in a derogatory sense, categorising both Müller and Carl Schmitt as ‘romantics’.37 In Morgenthau’s eyes, Schmitt’s folly was his unwillingness to accept normative political theory. Morgenthau took the position that the problematic

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relationship between politics and ethics is essential; only a romantic could think otherwise. Moreover, Morgenthau often describes international politics in terms of romantic tragedy. For example, tragedy plays an important role in Scientific Man versus Power Politics: In this insolvable contrast between what he needs and wants and what he is able to obtain, the statesman is indeed the prototype of social man himself; for what the statesman experiences on his exalted plane is the common lot of all mankind. Suspended between his spiritual destiny which he cannot fulfil and his animal nature in which he cannot remain, he is forever condemned to experience the contrast between the longings of his mind and his actual condition as his personal, eminently human tragedy.38

Morgenthau also describes world affairs and the fate of nations in the language of Romantic tragedy, such as in the final words of ‘The Twilight of International Morality’. Here Morgenthau observes in the modern world a tendency to substitute relativism and nationalism for universal moral standards. His response to this is not a Schmittian defence of state sovereignty and absolutism but a pessimistic message formulated in a manner known to Romanticism: a tragic tale describing a situation where there is no God, no hope, and nothing to curb the struggle for power among nations. The morality of the particular group, far from limiting the struggle for power on the international scene, gives that struggle a ferociousness and intensity not known to other ages. For the claim to universality which inspires the moral code of one particular group is incompatible with the identical claim of another group; the world has room for only one, and the other must yield or be destroyed. Thus, carrying their idols before them, the nationalistic masses of our time meet in the international arena, each group convinced that it executes the mandate of history, that it does for humanity what it seems to do for itself, and that it fulfils a sacred mission ordained by providence, however defined. Little do they know that they meet under an empty sky from which the gods have departed.39

These examples show that tragedy is an essential part of Morgenthau’s theory and not just an attitude. There are several ways to interpret the function of tragedy in Morgenthau’s oeuvre and in realism more generally, and it is of course possible that Morgenthau meant different things in different texts when referring to tragedy, but whatever reasons he had,

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his writings on tragedy indicate a relationship between Romanticism and realism. In sum, several themes of twentieth-century realism resonate with elements characteristic of Romanticism, including the notion of tragedy in politics, the non-legalist concept of the nation, the inherent conflict among nations, and the pessimistic vision. The connections established here are not conclusive but should be convincing enough to support the notion that the political pessimism characteristic of realism relates to Romanticism. There may of course be other reasons for pessimism, but the point is that pessimism is a vital part of the realist outlook and the romance of realism carries the narrative of the tragic destiny of nations.

Realistic Dystopia or Romantic Pessimism? Dystopian images play a role in political theory. A well-known account of this is Plato’s description in the Republic of political decay, presented as a slippery slope from Timarchy via Oligarchy to Democracy and finally Tyranny, involving political and moral corruption.40 Plato, the great utopian, voices scepticism as to the realisation of the ideal state conception. Similarly, Hobbes, the early modern thinker who perhaps more than anyone has inspired twentieth-century liberal and realist scholarship, presents the state of nature as a dystopian state of war, contrary to most authors of the time.41 Plato and Hobbes were both rationalists, yet each realised that facts and logic alone are not convincing enough, hence their emphasis on myth and rhetoric.42 In IR theory, dystopian notions seem to prevail, particularly in realism. Is there a reasonable theoretical account of political pessimism in realism? Is there for example such a thing as a realistic dystopia to contrast John Rawls’s liberal notion of a realistic utopia? Rawls argues that ‘political philosophy is realistically utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition’.43 Accordingly, Rawls argues that ‘the limits of the possible are not given by the actual, for we can to a greater or lesser extent change political and social institutions and much else’.44 Rawls’ ideal account of ‘wellordered peoples’ is contrasted with three degenerate categories. However, his contention seems to be that all peoples strive to become liberal peoples and that reason works in only one direction. It is striking that Rawls does not account for political decay. History shows that such

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a move is not only possible in a philosophical sense but that it actually happens. Thus, Rawls’s philosophy involves an account of ‘realistic utopia’ but not of ‘realistic dystopia’. A realistic dystopian theory would refer to the possible rather than the actual. While not accounting for the impossible, it would not exclude movement towards the worse. This means that we face two equally realistic and intelligible options. However, twentieth-century realists have not formulated such a theory. They have sought to integrate realism and liberalism into a broader theoretical conception. Carr identifies ­optimism with the progressive attitude of liberalism (what he labels utopianism), while treating realism as sceptical and pessimistic. Presenting both doctrines as straw men, Carr obtained not two perspectives but a space for theoretical and empirical reflection combining them: ‘Utopia and reality are thus the two facets of political science. Sound political thought and sound political life will be found only where both have their place’.45 Similarly, Morgenthau portrayed realism as opposed to idealism in a dialectical fashion, and Martin Wight pictured realism as pessimistic, backward-looking and cyclical, yet as one of three parallel traditions of modern international thought which he thought imperative to combine.46 Realist pessimism come in different shapes and forms, but the dystopian narrative does not seem to derive from those various incarnations, from realism, from ‘anti-humanism’, from the structure of the security dilemma, or from the assumption that states act ‘as if’ they were egoistic. The dystopian framework of realism is part of realism itself. The suggestion put forward here is that realist pessimism flows from the Romantic heritage. In what follows, the argument is that the romance of realism is not just intellectual but offers a solution to a particular problem of political theory and practice. Morgenthau called attention to the conflict between politics and science, claiming that science cannot and should not curb politics. Giving politics priority invites a problem addressed by Strauss and Hannah Arendt, two influential political theorists and friends of Morgenthau. They viewed this as the problem of the relation between the philosopher and the citizen, or the polis that was first addressed by Plato. His initial solution was that in the absence of a philosopher-king, a ruling myth could do the job, but he warned that the myth could backfire. Strauss regarded this problem as a major concern for political theory and wrote extensively about it. His response to the problem involves the

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distinction between ‘esoteric’ and ‘exoteric’ writing, presenting the truth ‘between the lines’.47 Thus, the advice is to handle the truth carefully so that it would not transform into opinion. But Strauss knew that opinion is essential to politics and often mistaken for the truth. Therefore, the philosopher must know how to relate to opinions when improving the city.48 Similarly, Arendt wrote that in political life a truth when uttered quickly becomes ‘an opinion among opinions’.49 Arendt’s reading of Plato’s cave allegory criticises Plato’s suggestion that philosophy is the solution to politics and underlines that expert rule subverts freedom and action.50 Strauss and Arendt made clear that their work was limited to the bounded community and not to international politics. Nevertheless, it is surprising that the realist literature and particularly the work of Morgenthau does not elaborate on their work, especially since he explicitly claims that in politics one should distinguish between truth and opinion.51 Reading ‘between the lines’, this perspective adds further explanation to Morgenthau’s and possibly other realists’ elaboration of tragedy. For example, the nine rules and practical advice ending Politics Among Nations show the complexity of diplomacy as an activity requiring knowledge, principles and judgement, as well as a clear theoretical understanding of international politics; clearly not a matter for troglodytes. For example, the consideration of national interest defined as power, the capacity to consider interests of other powers, the propensity to compromise, and the leading of public opinion, are matters bound to be controversial.52 Twentieth-century realists offered advice for the improvement of practical statecraft. This was certainly true of Carr, whose epitaph ‘to the makers of the coming peace’ was no doubt serious. Morgenthau, Kissinger and Kennan all contributed to US foreign policy during the Cold War. In this context, realism was not always the combatant of liberalism but sometimes its ally. The primary engagement, after all, was against totalitarianism, that is, Fascism and Stalinism. Carr’s merging of ‘the two facets of political theory’ make liberalism and realism antagonist-friends reflecting two temperaments: liberalism is optimistic, oriented towards reform; realism is pessimistic and conservative. The pessimism of realism contrasts with the optimism of liberalism; the scientific presumptions of realism contrast the ideological convictions of liberalism; and, perhaps, the romance of realism challenges the rationalism of liberalism. If this is true, the tragic vision is just a restraining force. The

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argument is that progressive politics should not escape the tragic, that tragedy helps us realise ethical dilemmas, or that it might prevent liberal hubris.53 But, it can also be argued, as Nicholas Rengger does, that the tragic account of world politics is to ‘overly romanticise’ the matter and that a sceptical approach will suffice.54 Whatever the case, these readings give preference to a liberal worldview. An alternative interpretation is that the romance of realism relates to familiar and broadly accepted narratives in service of practical statecraft. Thucydides’ work was likely to engage his readers because they could identify with tragedy. The many references to the Melian dialogue during the Cold War may have had similar reasons: a simplifying narrative; a narrative helpful to the construction of a realist tradition; a way to illustrate the permanence of power politics. However, the Melian dialogue shows the arrogance that comes from superior strength and pictures statecraft without morality. Morgenthau may have added the advice to leaders that ‘[i]t is a dangerous thing to be a Machiavelli. It is a disastrous thing to be a Machiavelli without virtù’.55 Nevertheless, the Romantic story of power and nations is probably easier to deliver to the public than the complex philosophical terrain explored by Morgenthau. The point is that the romance of realism—particularly the tragic vision—is akin to a ruling myth of power politics elaborating on familiar narratives. Practical statecraft, then, becomes a concern for diplomats and master strategists in control of opinion rather than ruled by it. The deeper knowledge is reserved for the few who possess the appropriate theoretical knowledge and the ability to look over the shoulders of statesmen as ‘disinterested observers’ understanding their ‘thoughts and actions’ better than they do themselves.56 However, the reliance on narrative or myth is a double-edged sword, potentially helpful but also confining, possibly fettering both statesmen and analysts. To rely on myth and narrative means to risk falling prey to them. In the case of realism, the Romantic narrative looks for patterns, explanations and solutions in the past. But it is more than a backward glance or a detached historical comparison. This paper suggests that romance is essential to realism. This is the story of great nations and leaders, of the destiny of nations in unavoidable confrontation. From this flows the danger of political arcadianism, the reconstruction of a glorious past that perhaps never was more than a romance, or the formulation of a political course allowing retrotopic images to form the visions for the future. The problem with the romance of realism is that it is both

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backward-looking and embracing of a pessimistic vision. Hence, expectations for progress are low, crisis and suffering are expected, and peace is in permanent danger.

Conclusion In the post-Cold War era, realist IR scholars had to rethink the events of the recent past and confront the theoretical lacunae in their approaches to the study of international politics.57 The question remains whether realism can inspire a constructive political pessimism at a time when both leaders and analysts fear the consequences of the perceived breakdown of the liberal world order? To what extent does realism offer a perspective, consolation, or even a solution that could pacify our present worries? This chapter offers a description of realism, calling attention to the Romantic element of the doctrine. It is argued that realists of all times are ‘Athenians’ in service of their country, but they are not just factbased, scientific and rationalistic. The return of realism also means the return of a particular kind of romance involving pessimistic histories, tragedy and, generally, a somewhat gloomy outlook on the world of politics and diplomacy. This paper suggests that the pessimistic vision of politics is not just a way to limit liberal optimism, or to cure the hubris of progressive reformers but possibly is a way to legitimise a political course that is too complicated and controversial to defend publicly. Tragedy is romance and originally belongs to the arts. Perhaps, therefore, tragedy is easy to exploit and awakens well-known patterns of thought. However, the elaboration of a pessimistic Romantic narrative is likely to fuel a sense of nostalgia moving the attention from the present to the past. It may be that the return of realism helps to balance the optimism of post-Cold War liberalism. However, the pessimism and nostalgia it brings with it will require the statesman, analyst and scholar to learn how to navigate in the domain of reason, as well as in the realm of romance.

Notes

1. I am indebted to Kjell Engelbrekt, Linus Hagström and Tom Lundborg for their comments on an early draft, and to Nicholas Michelsen for his comments and suggestions.

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2.  Martin Wight, “Why Is There No International Theory?” in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966), 26. 3.  See Nicolas Guilhot, After the Enlightenment: Political Realism and International Relations in the Mid-Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 4. For example John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001); Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 5.  Mervyn Frost, “Tragedy, Ethics and International Relations,” International Relations 17, no. 4 (2003): 486. 6. See Zygmunt Bauman, Retrotopia (London: Polity Press, 2017); Ronnie Hjorth, “Political Decay and Political Arcadianism,” De Ethica 5, no. 1 (2018): 37–49. 7. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1943), 33. 8. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (Ware: Wordsworth, 1993). 9. E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1995). See Charles Jones, “Carr, Mannheim, and a Post-Positivist Science of International Relations,” Political Studies 45 (1997): 232–46. 10. See Ulrik Enemark Petersen, “Breathing Nietzsche’s Air: New Reflections on Morgenthau’s Concepts of Power and Human Nature,” Alternatives 24 (1999): 83–118; Christoph Frei, Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2001); Robert Schuett, “Freudian Roots of Political Realism: The Importance of Sigmund Freud to Hans Morgenthau’s Theory of International Power Politics,” History of the Human Sciences 20, no. 4 (2007): 53–78; Nicolas Guilhot, “American Katechon: When Political Theology Became International Relations Theory,” Constellations 17, no. 2 (2010): 224–53. 11. Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 138, 152; Hans J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1946), 202–4. 12. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977); Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979); Tom Lundborg, “The Ethics of Neorealism: Waltz and the Time of International Life,” European Journal of International Relations 25, no. 1 (2019): 229–49. 13. Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics. 14. Morgenthau, Scientific Man, 204–5.

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15. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, fourth edn. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967), 5. 16. Ibid., 7. 17.  Erik Ringmar, “Alexander Wendt: A Social Scientist Struggling with History,” in Iver Neumann and Ole Waever, eds., The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making (London: Routledge, 1997), 284. 18. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 152. 19. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). 20. Leo Strauss, “Persecution and the Art of Writing,” Social Research 8, no. 4 (1941): 491. 21. Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter 18. 22. Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Twilight of International Morality,” Ethics 58, no. 2 (1948): 80. 23. Plato, Statesman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 24. Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism (London: Chatto & Windus, 1999), 1, 5. 25.  For example, Douglas Moggach, Romantic Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 26. Berlin, Roots of Romanticism, 6. 27. Ibid., 134. 28. Ibid., 10–13. 29. Müller, quoted in Berlin, Roots of Romanticism, 124. 30. Ursula Vögel, “Romanticism,” in David Miller, Janet Coleman, William Connolly, and Alan Ryan, eds., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought, second edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 454. 31. Edmund Burke, Burke’s Politics: Selected Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke on Reform, Revolution and War, ed. Ross J.S. Hoffman and Paul Levack (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967), 458. 32. Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Oxford: Penguin, 1968). 33. Berlin, Roots of Romanticism, 67. 34. Quentin Skinner, “Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person of the State,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1996): 1–29. 35. Ibid., 56. 36. Morgenthau, Scientific Man, 40. 37. Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Political Science of E.H. Carr,” World Politics 1, no. 1 (1948): 134. 38. Morgenthau, Scientific Man, 221. 39. Morgenthau, “The Twilight,” 99. 40. Plato, Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), books 8 and 9.

52  R. HJORTH 41.  See Noel Malcolm, “Hobbes’s Theory of International Relations,” in Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 432–56; Annabel Brett, Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern International Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 42.  See Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Michael Oakeshott, “Leviathan: A Myth,” in Hobbes on Civil Association (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1975). 43. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 11. 44. Ibid., 12. 45. Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 10. 46. Frei, Morgenthau, 221; Robbie Shilliam, German Thought and International Relations: The Rise and Fall of a Liberal Project (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions, ed. Gabriele Wight and Brian Porter (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991). 47. Strauss, “Persecution,” 491; Michael P. Zuckert and Catherine Zuckert, Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2014). 48.  Richard L. Velkley, Heidegger, Strauss and the Premises of Philosophy (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2011), 12–13. 49.  Hannah Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” Social Research 57, no. 1 (1990): 78. 50. See Miguel Abensour and Martin Breaugh, “Against the Sovereignty of Philosophy Over Politics: Arendt’s Reading of Plato’s Cave Allegory,” Social Research 74, no. 4 (2007): 955–82. 51. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 4. 52. Ibid., 540–48. 53. See Lebow, Tragic Vision of Politics; Mervyn Frost, “Tragedy”; James Mayall, “Tragedy, Progress and the International Order: A Response to Frost,” International Relations 17, no. 4 (2003): 497–503. 54. Nicholas Rengger, “Tragedy or Scepticism: Defending the Anti-Pelagian Mind in World Politics,” International Relations 19, no. 3 (2005): 327. 55. Morgenthau, “Political Science of E.H. Carr,” 134. 56. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 5. 57.  For example, Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994).

CHAPTER 4

Cassirer, Fatalism and Political Myth: Historical Lessons in the Consequences of Pessimism for International Relations Mark Bailey

Introduction Since his death in April 1945, the work of the German-Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer has sadly slipped to becoming some of the most ignored—especially in the English-speaking world—of any major intellectual figure. However, that this should be the case (bar occasional flickers of revival over the last two decades) seems distinctly strange, given that Cassirer’s philosophical writings remain instructive to scholars across a number of social science disciplines. It is the purpose of this chapter, therefore, to explore one small aspect of Cassirer’s prodigious output that focuses on the dangers of political mythology, in order to interpret present developments in global politics. Further, the express intention of the chapter, as far as space allows, is to raise awareness of Cassirer’s work in a manner that demonstrates how Cassirer’s philosophy raises questions

M. Bailey (*)  University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_4

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about the relationship between philosophy, politics and pessimism, both during his own time and in the present. Accordingly, the chapter will investigate these themes through a critical exploration of Cassirer’s reading of political mythology—understood here as ‘collective expressions of the desire for salvation’, as articulated through ‘ideologically-charged narratives’1—and the role of fatalism in encouraging their emergence and promulgation. Further, in keeping with the themes of this volume, the connection between fatalism and pessimism will be analysed, both in terms of the historical context in which Cassirer himself was writing, and from the perspective of present political developments. To this end, this chapter will begin by summarising the philosophical background that led to Cassirer’s ruminations on political mythology, derived from his three (later four)-volume magnum opus, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, before moving on to Cassirer’s understanding of political myth as it appeared in the posthumously published, The Myth of the State (1946). After discussing the role and relationship between fatalism and pessimism in political mythology, the chapter contemplates the historical context in which Cassirer was writing, before considering the present political situation. The paper, moreover, poses one crucial question to present-day scholarship in the light of Cassirer’s work, namely, ‘if not this, then what?’ The chapter’s core argument is that this is a question in desperate need of an answer if the present climate of pessimism is not to transform into nihilism.

Cassirer and the ‘Technique of the Modern Political Myth’ Developed from Cassirer’s three-volume The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1929), and from a series of lectures delivered at Yale University in 1944–1945, the posthumously published, The Myth of the State (1946), sought to explain a specific historical puzzle. How was it that a militaristic and genocidal regime (German National Socialism) could usurp a constitutional liberal-democratic republic with such extraordinary rapidity and with so little resistance? Cassirer’s ruminations on what he termed ‘the technique of the modern political myth’ begins by first defining myth as ‘the objectification of a collective desire’.2 As the most primitive of the various ‘symbolic forms’—myth, religion, language, art and science—through which humanity creates meaning about the world,

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myth represents the most primal means by which humanity objectifies its existence. Myth’s focus is the animistic world of the emotional and the immediate, in which there is fundamentally no differentiation between objectifying subject and the objectified world. Directly connecting the resort to myth by modern politicians with periods of acute political crisis, Cassirer argues that the seductive power of political myth lies in its emphasis on primal, emotionally-centred forms of meaning-creation, that offer miraculous solutions to seemingly intractable problems. By stressing collective conformity and helplessness in the face of mass emotional hysteria, moreover, political myths undermine the autonomous reason of the rational modern subject vital for the survival of the modern democratic polity.3 Taking the form of a collective desire for a ‘saviour’, Cassirer conjoins the reappearance of myth in modern politics with a call for ‘strong leadership’ to present a way out of crisis. Successfully emergent leaders come to resemble biblical prophets, given carte blanche to enact redeeming solutions with scant regard to previously existing law, custom or precedence. However, a bare appeal to the collective emotional desires of the populace at times of crisis is not sufficient to achieve popular consent. Far from being spontaneously occurring episodes of explosive emotion, modern political myths require careful fabrication in the manner of the other commodities present in technically advanced civilisations, and require legitimation through appeal to highly sophisticated ‘theories’— political ideolog ies—that, on the surface at least, give to modern political myths an appearance of perfect rationality.4 Cassirer posited that there are four key aspects of political mythology, each of which is mutually reinforcing in the subversion of democratic political culture and the ability of the individual to exercise the degree of moral autonomy and rational judgement democracy requires if it is to be sustained. One, the inculcation of an overwhelming sense of fatalism: that there is no way of escaping the present crisis from conventional, constitutional means. In this sense, fatalism leads to a deep sense of pessimism concerning the prospects for the future unless there is some kind of radical, potentially cataclysmic, change in social and political institutions. Political myth provides a carefully fabricated blueprint for just such changes, and thus encourages a collective desire for salvation at the hands of charismatic leaders offering ‘miracle cures’.5 Second, the state needs to ‘proclaim a single, simple supreme value around which all members of society could find true unity, one which could not permit

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another value next to it. The supreme value could be a race, a nation, or an ethnically-defined community’.6 Whatever the supreme value, it serves to define an emotional bond between individual and community and is impervious to rational refutation or discursive dissuasion. For the Nazis, this was the idea of the sanctity of the race, but it could equally be ethnicity, religion, class or other means of creating emotionally-centred division on cultural lines.7 The third aspect is that all other ethical or other forms of cultural cultivation that might contradict the supreme value, and thus sow doubt as to its inviolate sanctity, are to be declared null, void and rendered ineffective, often through campaigns of violent vilification and denigration. Any individual capacity to exercise judgement as a critical, ethical, morally autonomous human being is obliterated, by threat or application of force if necessary. Key to this is the maintenance of a hysterical climate of existential threat that serves to paralyse the critical faculties in the name of communal cohesion. It also serves to heighten the animus directed towards ‘out’ groups made the scapegoats for the present crisis.8 The final component is the introduction of new political rites that cultivate a culture of mass, permanent hysteria and encourage an attitude of unquestioning acquiescence. The collective nature of participatory rites instils a climate of mass affirmation that the individual is at the mercy of a cosmic-political play of which they are an infinitesimal part. Only The Leader has a clear appreciation of the true nature of the play that their presence serves to personify. Rites fundamentally, therefore, alter the way citizens think and speak. They rearticulate the inner world of moral and ethical consciousness to reflect the new reality The Leader wishes to create.9 Confronted with these four stratagems, and doubting the value and worth of individual autonomy and democracy in the face of political catastrophe, individuals resort to positions of dependence and acquiescence to the solutions proposed.10 In this way, mythmakers seek to remake society in the image of their narrative of perfection, and to crush dissent in all its forms. In addition to the urgency of addressing the rise of German National Socialism that led to The Myth of the State, Cassirer’ s concern with the technique of the modern political myth also reflected a deeper series of interlinked philosophical problems. With respect to political mythology and fatalism, Cassirer places considerable emphasis in The Myth of the State on the influence of figures such as Oswald Spengler and Martin Heidegger in cultivating a deeply pessimistic public mood in the interwar

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period. Importantly, he blamed neither for the rise of National Socialism (although Cassirer was acutely aware of Heidegger’s alleged anti-Semitism and later pledge of allegiance to National Socialism) but identified clearly the manner in which each, however inadvertently, helped prepare the ground. Spengler’s assertion of the cultural bankruptcy of Western civilisation had served to create a sense that the time was ripe for ‘men of destiny’ to come forth to ‘revitalise’ German politics and society. Heidegger’s Being and Time, moreover, had the effect of inflaming historically entrenched, anti-rational currents within German culture.11 Specifically, Heidegger’s work was instrumental in sowing a public mood of deep pessimism about the future in its assertions that humanity is defined by Geworfenheit, the condition of being involuntarily ‘thrown’ into the stream of time, leaving it permanently a prisoner of the conditions and temporality of its existence.12 Coupled with the successive political and economic crises of the interwar period—which provided considerable apparent veracity to the principal theses of both Spengler and Heidegger)—this climate of fatalism and pessimism was fundamentally explosive, potentially creating ‘a pliable instrument in the hands of the political leaders’.13 In making these points, Cassirer recognised that a culture of fatalism also represented the death of politics. As Colin Hay explains, ‘fatalism and resignation are the antithesis of politics. The extent to which our destiny is determined by processes beyond our control is the extent to which it is non-political… Similarly, the extent to which we entrust our destiny to fate is the extent to which we deny ourselves the capacity to shape outcomes’,14 Unable to perceive an escape from their present torment, millions of Germans in the 1930s were prepared to surrender their political and ethical freedoms to those who proclaimed that they could. It was an attempt to find answers to the questions raised by the rise of uniquely modern forms of political myth ology that spurred Cassirer to write The Myth of the State. In answer to the crises of the time, the Nazis proved particularly adept at offering a carefully fabricated, superficially plausible and emotionally compelling account of the reasons behind the contemporary political and economic situation that made the complex and multifaceted beguilingly simple. Moreover, by capitalising on a deep sense of historical fatalism and pessimism, the Nazi account of the reasons for Germany’s woes effectively delivered them carte blanche to remake German society and culture in their own genocidal image.

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Cassirer’s Historical Context Cassirer was writing in response to a twin crisis in Continental philosophy and the increasing degeneration of the political situation in interwar Germany. In many respects, he was embarking on a doomed mission to save the existing liberal order, consummated in Germany in the formation of the Weimar Republic. He also sought to preserve the liberal, Kulturphilosophie tradition of figures such as Goethe, Herder and Humboldt from being consumed by reactionary and anti-rationalist political and cultural forces in interwar Germany that despised the fundamental optimism that underpinned this movement’s view of culture as the source of human self-liberation. The first of these twin philosophical crises was the impact of Darwinism on philosophy, which Cassirer argued had led to ‘a complete anarchy in thought’.15 The publication of the Origin of the Species (1859) resulted in a major shift in the character of anthropological philosophy from mathematical explanations of human nature to biological ones. It similarly encouraged a widespread belief that the empirical facts of evolution would similarly lead to a metaphysical revelation of the fundamental principles underpinning evolution’s dynamic processes of change. This would contribute to the uncritical projection of the telos of natural evolution onto the world of culture, and the concomitant belief that a cultural telos could be discerned by reference to the empirical facts of human cultural life. The result was a race to reduce the evolution of human culture to a primum mobile, so as to systematise human culture along ‘scientific’ lines in a quest to prove conclusively the essential unity and homogeneity of human nature. However, this race produced multiple theories of human nature that were at once reductive and utterly mutually exclusive in their different accounts of human nature’s essential motivating force. Moreover, they each exhibited a tendency to be inflated (deliberately or otherwise) into Grand Theories of everything. These exhibited tendencies that philosopher Mary Midgley later saw as reflecting a symbiotic relationship between ‘reductionism’ and ‘payoff’: the reduction of social phenomena to a singular cause that then becomes a universal solution to all problems.16 The appearance of this multitude of conflicting explanations concerning the underlying metaphysical principles of human nature resulted in a complete loss of an ‘intellectual centre’; an absence of any general frame of reference against which philosophical claims might be judged for their veracity. It also contributed to a growing personalisation of intellectual

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disciplines and the increasing ‘barbarism of specialization’ in philosophy and the social sciences as more and more disciplines emerged, focusing on ever-more limited aspects of human activity. This narrowing of focus, together with the tendency towards the formation of ‘schools’ of thought within, between and in some cases across disciplines, centred on individual scholars whose words quickly assumed quasi-theological and eschatological qualities in the hands of their numerous disciples. For Cassirer, this situation was increasingly intolerable, leading to a crisis in humanity’s knowledge of itself that presented a ‘grave threat to…ethical and cultural life’.17 The second philosophical crisis that Cassirer confronted was the growing emergence of Liebensphilosophie, the ‘Philosophy of Life’, in the early years of the twentieth century. This was a form of that fundamentally clashed with the kind of idealist philosophy of Spirit (Geist) that Cassirer’s work typified. Closely associated with the philosophies of Kierkegaard, Bergson, Simmel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Scheler, Liebensphilosophie completely rejected the historicist optimism omnipresent in Cassirer’s work, which placed a deep-seated faith in the progress of the human spirit in history. In contrast, Liebenphilosophie asserted an equally deep-seated, reactionary and highly anti-rationalist pessimism, in which Geist ‘is seen not as a transformation of life but as alienation, an inauthentic relationship to Being’.18 Thus, Liebensphilosophie sought a more ‘authentic’ and immediate mode of existence through the rejection of modern rationalism and the perceived arid technicism of modern, liberal, capitalist civilisation. In particular, it encapsulated a deep disenchantment and regarded Cassirer’s Enlightenment-based Kantian liberalism as being fundamentally deluded in the face of the experiences of the war and the economic and political crises that followed.19 Cassirer himself was not entirely unsympathetic to many of the arguments of the life-philosophers. He was alive to the threat to modern society presented by technological alienation and the manner in which consumer capitalism portended society’s moral debasement, thanks to its reduction of life to a fruitless quest to satisfy material desires.20 Moreover, in the case of the life-philosophers’ understanding of the purely expressive nature of myth, he was in complete agreement, even as he contested their assertion that myth presented a more ‘authentic’ mode of existence than that of reason. In response to these twin crises, Cassirer offered the three volumes of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, and a series of later works, such as The Myth of the State and The Logic of the Cultural Sciences. The Philosophy of

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Symbolic Forms, in particular, can be seen as Cassirer’s attempt to provide, first, an answer to the crisis of self-knowledge that he held responsible for many of the failings of modernity and, second, to provide the general philosophical framework against which truth claims could be tested. Through all of these works, Cassirer continues to assert his fundamentally optimistic, liberal idealism. Here we learn that humanity is fundamentally a symbolic animal; it is the power to engage in the process of meaning-creation through symbolisation that separates humanity from other animals. No other creature has the power to create abstract meanings and concepts in the manner that, for instance, distinguishes humanity’s experience of time as a concrete past, present and future from the animal world’s experience of pure immediacy.21 These works reflected Cassirer’s need to balance the relationship between the various symbolic forms, from the pure irrational expressiveness of myth to the rationalist signification of natural science.22 They allowed Cassirer to identify the significant fallacies of both Liebensphilosophie and of the logical positivists, who had narrowed the focus of philosophy to purely logical questions.23 For one thing, as a fundamentally symbolic animal, all human meaning-creation, even at its most primeval and expressive in the form of myth, requires mediation through the process of symbolic creation. We simply cannot recognise anything as being meaningful without the process of conceptual formation that symbolisation involves. Therefore, for humanity, a world of pure immediacy cannot exist.24 Further, those such as Simmel who despaired of the process of self-alienation of creator from object of cultural creation discounted the truly democratising effects of culture. It presented a realm in which all could play their part, no matter how small it might prove to be. Rather than see culture as a source of alienation and pessimism, therefore, humanity needs to recognise that we are all participants in the dance of cultural creation; it is fundamental to our very existence as human beings and is therefore inescapable.25 However, perhaps the most potent critique of life-philosophy was one that Cassirer advanced only tenuously in the famous 1929 Davos debate with the figure often presented as his philosophical nemesis, Martin Heidegger. This critique can be effectively summarised in a single question: ‘if not this, then what?’ Cassirer challenged Heidegger’s radical rejection of any form of universality, rooted in the latter’s ontological insistence of the lonely finitude of Dasein—human existence—and of

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the nature of universality as the very expression of inauthentic existence. Similarly, for Heidegger, the temporal finitude of Dasein limited all products of culture to the same impermanence as human beings themselves. Pointing to the fact of linguistic communication, and by extension to a situation in which he and Heidegger could conduct such a conversation, Cassirer challenged this assertion. That linguistic communication was possible at all pointed to the necessary existence of some forms of intersubjective universality that made human social life possible, and which were therefore key to determining the very nature of our existence.26 This critique is potentially highly illuminating. It indicates one of the core reasons why Cassirer accused Heidegger and Spengler, and life-philosophy in general, of contributing, however unintentionally, to the climate of fatalism and pessimism in German society that afforded National Socialism the opportunity to occupy political and cultural space. In his extreme ontological solipsism, Heidegger undermined the possibility of a common morality, of a shared, intersubjective criteria for assessing that which is true and that otherwise. If this was Heidegger’s intention, therefore, with what did he intend to replace these things, other than a Darwinistic ‘war of all against all’?27 What then were the prospects for human civilisation other than a slide into the abyss? In their cultivation of a culture of pessimism in German life, their rejection of reason as ‘inauthentic’, their purifying elision of truth in favour of the expressive irrationalities of myth, and their consequent failure to stand up to (and even, in Heidegger’s case, the acceptance of) the violent mythical fantasies of Nazism, many of the life-philosophers, and indeed the German academy in general, stood accused of a fundamental dereliction of their philosophical duty in warning of the dangers Nazism presented to cultural life.28 Moreover, in their active embrace of disenchantment with Enlightenment ideals and its consequent pessimism concerning the future, the life-philosophers and their followers forgot another of the aphorisms of the Nietzsche they so venerated: that when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.

Political Myth, Philosophy and Pessimism in the Present As when Cassirer was composing his later works, our contemporary period sees a liberal world order threatening to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. A combination of near-continuous economic and financial crisis, technological alienation, ecological destruction,

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cultural and demographic shifts, disillusionment with and distrust of the institutions of liberal democracy especially, and soaring rates of wealth and income inequality have contributed to the irruption of highly anti-rationalist, reactionary populist movements across the world. Accompanying the rise of these movements has been the emergence of a form of ‘post-truth’ political discourse that shows complete indifference to questions of truth or falsity and exhibits many of the characteristics of the technique of the modern political myth Cassirer articulated in 1945. None of these movements exhibit anything like the ambitions for global conquest and genocide of the Nazis, but nevertheless they reflect a profound, increasingly global, culture of pessimism and political disenchantment that portends great uncertainty with respect to the future. Of particular concern to this chapter is one of the fundamental questions that Cassirer posed in The Myth of the State with respect to Heidegger and Spengler especially: what has been the role of scholarship in precipitating this state of affairs? This is a question that brings the problem of ‘if not this, then what?’ to the very centre of critical analysis. This question is of specific interest when considering the increasing ubiquity of post-structuralist forms of critical inquiry in the social science s. Is perhaps the cultural legacy of post-structuralism the exact opposite of what post-structuralists themselves actually intended? In short, to what extent has the post-structuralist determination to problematise all forms of ontological certainty, of fixed identity and secure foundations to knowledge, together with its often aggressively anti-rationalist rejection of both liberalism and the Enlightenment (for all the considerable flaws of both), actually become part of the problem, as opposed to part of the solution?29 For example, the post-structuralist claim that there are no authoritative ontological claims as to what is ‘real’, only a multiplicity of interpenetrating and competing interpretations of the nature of existence, historical events and the social world is seriously problematic. Rather than being a source of political emancipation, the bleak post-structuralist assessment of modern political communities contributes to a profound sense of ontological disorientation, not least in its linkage of the absence of truth to the operations of political violence in the form of power and the sovereign state.30 Moreover, it leads to the question as to whether such positions fuel the quest for ontological certainty that often fuel the discourses of reactionary populist political myth s, not least in the form of some notion of the ‘true’ or ‘authentic’ community of ‘the

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nation’. Questions remain, therefore, as to whether post-structuralism, for all the undoubtedly valuable work it has done in identifying cultural, political, ethnic, racial, socioeconomic and other forms of (often hidden) exclusions and acts of oppression and violence, might not have ended up doing more harm than good in terms of presenting new forms of political possibility (which in the case of Foucault are deemed impossible, anyway).31 Rather than the radical, liberatory and emancipatory rethinking of contemporary life and history its adherents have often claimed, this line of argument posits that post-structuralism has instead been profoundly debilitating to the remaking of political life in a manner that might address the many issues of the relationship between power and knowledge (especially in contemporary capitalism). Instead of leading to a revolution in thinking and a rejuvenation of political communities, therefore, post-structuralism has served to inculcate a deep current of solipsism, pessimism, confusion and nihilistic cynicism in both popular and intellectual life that has served to open a considerable political space in which the political myths of post-truth have been able to thrive in the absence of any firm counterweight.32 These problems serve to bring us back to one of the fundamental questions in Cassirer’s philosophy that post-structuralism lacks an answer to: how can a ‘crisis in self-knowledge’ and ‘what counts as truth’ be addressed in an intellectual climate in which the possibility of either has been obliterated? In denying any ethical foundation to knowledge, post-structuralism denies any ethical foundation to politics and, in the process, negates the possibility of holding to account even the most ludicrously fantastical, outright fictional and frighteningly totalising accounts of political and historical events. This has proven profoundly destructive to the ability to maintain the kind of pluralistic and respectful dialogue necessary to the maintenance of functional, accountable, transparent and deliberative democratic politics advocated by Cassirer. Such a politics remains the starting point for any kind of emancipatory process focused on the delivery of social justice, not least to those amongst the silenced, oppressed and marginalised. However, it is difficult to see how such a politics is possible if it is not conceivable to at least agree dialogically on a set of processes through which claims to truth and knowledge can be verified, validated and accepted. This ontological dislocation begs the question as to how, and on what grounds, individuals may make rational and morally autonomous judgements in a polity in which the

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emotionally centred narrative s of political myths have become dominant. Faced with this problem, the question of ‘if not this, then what?’ assumes a degree of importance that has arguably never been more acute since the time of Cassirer himself.

Notes

1. Christopher Flood, Political Myth: A Theoretical Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 42. 2. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven, CT and London, 1974), 47. 3. Cassirer, Myth of the State, 277–81; Ernst Cassirer, “The Technique of Our Modern Political Myths,” in Donald Philip Verene, ed., Symbol, Myth and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer, 1935–1945 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 242–70. 4. Cassirer, Myth of the State, 288. 5. Ibid., 282–83, 290–93. 6. Deniz Coskun, “The Politics of Myth: Ernst Cassirer’s Pathology of the Totalitarian State,” Perspectives on Political Science 36, no. 3 (2007): 163. 7. Cassirer, Myth of the State, 282–83; Ernst Cassirer, “Judaism and the Modern Political Myths,” in Symbol Myth and Culture, 233–41. 8. Cassirer, Myth of the State, 283–84; Coskun, “Politics of Myth,” 163. 9. Cassirer, Myth of the State, 284–87; Coskun, “Politics of Myth,” 163–65. 10. Cassirer, Myth of the State, 284–88. 11. Cassirer, Myth of the State, 248–75; William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York and London: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 80–116. 12. Cassirer, Myth of the State, 289–93; Cassirer, “The Technique of Our Modern Political Myths,” 259–63. 13. Cassirer, Myth of the State, 289–93; Cassirer, “The Technique of Our Modern Political Myths,” 263. 14. Colin Hay, Why We Hate Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), 67. 15. Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1972), 21. 16. Cassirer, Essay on Man, 18–21; Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 30–31. 17. Cassirer, Essay on Man, 21–22; John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (London and New York: Allen Lane, 2007), 1–73.

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18. Emmanuel Papparella, “The Uniqueness of Giambattista Vico’s Poetic Philosophy,” MetaNexus, 5 September 2007, https://www.metanexus. net/uniqueness-giambattista-vicos-poetic-philosophy/ (accessed 1 April 2019). 19. Robert Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press), 168–69. 20. John Michael Krois, Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1987), 205–207; Deniz Coskun, “Politics of Myth,” 159. 21. Cassirer, Essay on Man, 23–55. 22. Ibid., 63–71, 222–28; Cassirer, Myth of the State, 279–80; Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer, 122–27. 23. Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer, 128–59. 24. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3, The Phenomenology of Knowledge, trans. Ralph Mannheim (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1957), 39; Ernst Cassirer, The Logic of the Cultural Sciences, trans. S.G. Lofts (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press), 103–28. 25. Cassirer, Logic of the Cultural Sciences, 105–10. See also, Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 4, The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, trans. John Michael Krois (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1996), chapter 1. 26.  Peter Eli Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press), 136–214; Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer, 214–15. 27. Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer, 217. 28. Cassirer, Myth of the State, 295–96. 29. Jim George and David Campbell, “Patterns of Dissent and Celebration of Difference: Critical Social Theory and International Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1990): 281. 30. Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 148; Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1975–76, eds. Alessandro Fontana and Mauro Bertani, trans. David Macey (London: Penguin, 2004), 49. On post-structuralist accounts of power, violence and the sovereign state, see Richard Ashley, “The Powers of Anarchy: Theory, Sovereignty and the Domestication of Global Life,” in James Der Derian, ed., International Theory: Critical Investigations (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1995), 94–128; R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 31. See Matthew D’Ancona, Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back (London: Elbury Press, 2017), 91–96; Charles Taylor,

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“Foucault on Freedom and Truth,” Political Theory 12, no. 2 (1984): 152–83. 32. David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 10–13; Michelsen and de Orellana, this volume.

CHAPTER 5

Liberal Pessimism: An Intellectual History of Suspicion in the Cold War Dillon Stone Tatum

Introduction The Oxford English Dictionary aptly defines pessimism as ‘a tendency to see the worst aspect of things’.1 In International Relations (IR), seeing the worst aspect of things is often associated with political realism, which views power politics as a tragedy and the unfolding of history as the cyclical rise and fall of great powers. It is a dangerous world. For realists, pessimism is an analytical frame as much as a psychological one.2 However, political realists do not have a monopoly on pessimism. If pessimism is a tendency to see the ‘worst’, it has a robust and complicated genealogy, ranging from critical approaches to world politics to even the seemingly progressive and triumphalist writings of liberals. In the aftermath of the horrors of the twentieth century, perhaps pessimism is the unifying feature of contemporary political thought. In short, we are living in an age of pessimism. The argument of this chapter is twofold. First, I argue that pessimism is not an orientation to the world inherently opposed to liberal theory. D. S. Tatum (*)  Francis Marion University, Florence, SC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_5

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In fact, liberal international theory is rife with pessimism. Looking particularly at the writing of Cold War liberal intellectuals demonstrates that liberal thinkers have often had a difficult time looking at the ‘best aspect of things’. Second, I show that liberal pessimism during the Cold War centred around three themes: suspicion towards metanarratives of progress; fear of totalitarianism; and a realisation that optimism is a leading cause of the ills of politics and society—indeed, that optimistic doctrines like nationalism, Romanticism, and socialism were the harbingers of the deadliest century in human history. For both theorists examined in detail in this chapter, historian Jacob Talmon and philosopher/ public intellectual Raymond Aron, the Holocaust was a particularly significant event in shaping their liberal pessimisms, as were the beginnings of the nuclear age and the rise of Stalinism. This chapter proceeds as follows. First, I elaborate on the context of liberal pessimism during the Cold War. Pessimism was directly related to a deep change in the liberal project in the post-war era: one that saw liberals focusing their gunsights (literally and figuratively) on totalitarianism, which was associated with communism, with the East, and with the method of ‘messianism’. Themes of fear, pessimism and suspicion were constitutive of a global liberal politics of (in)security. Second, I focus on two theorists, Israeli historian Jacob Talmon and French philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron, to understand how these discourses of pessimism operated in specific intellectual contexts. Both thinkers wrote within the vein of what Paul Ricoeur referred to as a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’,3 interpreting Cold War politics through a pessimistic lens. Optimism requires a hermeneutics of faith, one that attempts to see the best in things, to take narratives at face value, and to interpret the past, present, and future through rose-coloured glasses. A hermeneutics of suspicion, on the other hand, is deconstructive: it digs deeper into the hidden implications, meanings, and even sinister undercurrents of power embedded in our shared experiences.4 For Ricoeur, critics of liberalism including Marx, Nietzsche and Freud were paradigmatically suspicious. I argue that for liberal pessimists in the Cold War, including Talmon and Aron, suspicion and a sense of danger pervaded their interpretations of liberalism, world politics and democracy. I conclude by reflecting briefly on the implications of Cold War pessimism for theorising contemporary world order, introducing the question of: should we be pessimistic, or not? Should we embrace a world view that sees politics through the lens of ‘the worst?’

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Liberal Pessimism During the Cold War Cold War liberalism is sandwiched between two periods of liberal optimism and triumphalism. The period of liberal empire in the nineteenth century was an intellectual context built upon a civilisational narrative: liberals argued that empire would bring to the world reason and progress and put the ‘barbarians’ at the periphery on the proper developmental path.5 Theorists like John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville and others were excited about the prospects of change that empire could bring and built strong architectures of justification for those projects through a triumphalist discourse of liberty and freedom. At the other end of the timeline was post-Cold War optimism, expressed in the belief that liberal democracy had prevailed at the expense of other imaginings of the world, particularly the global socialist project, heralding what Francis Fukuyama termed (pace Hegel) the ‘End of History’.6 For liberals of the nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, as well as those on the ‘winning’ side of the Cold War, there was much to celebrate. This was not the case for Cold War liberalism. There are at least three contextual features of the post-war world that contributed to the rise of a liberal pessimism. First, the sheer destructiveness of World War II and the terrors of the Holocaust had an enormous influence on Cold War intellectual thought. Theorising about liberty and freedom in the aftermath of the deadliest events of world history required a meditation on the fact that human beings are capable of the worst kinds of evils. Across the gamut of liberal theorising, this spectre was looming. From republican theorists like Hannah Arendt, to social democrats like George Orwell, into the social science work of figures such as Zygmunt Bauman, the Holocaust, especially, loomed large. As Orwell himself wrote, regarding the connections between nationalism and anti-semitism in the wake of World War II, it is ‘a safe assumption that the disease loosely called nationalism is now almost universal’.7 The legacies of genocide and the war were here to stay. Second, the threat of nuclear conflict heavily influenced mid-century liberal thought. Arendt wrote eloquently, and urgently, that the game of nuclear deterrence was a central question of our time, although, ‘to the question how shall we ever be able to extricate ourselves from the obvious insanity of this position, there is no answer’.8 Like other libertyminded individuals, Arendt was a pessimist that our current conceptions of things like violence, power, legitimacy and authority could offer

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us refuge from the problems of mass murder in the twentieth century. While many of these concerns were related to race and ethnocentrism, they created an atmosphere of suspicion and fear in liberal political thought.9 What did it mean for a political theory of the twentieth century that we could kill each other at speeds never before imagined?10 Third, the rise of superpower rivalry between the West and the USSR was a central theme in Cold War liberal thought. This was not simply because many liberal thinkers were actively involved in the cultural politics of the Cold War.11 The Soviet Union came to stand as a personification of the problematiques liberalism has had to confront for centuries: for Talmon this was a democratic ‘messianism’; for Aron, it was the rise of ‘secular religions’ like nationalism. Whether or not the USSR was a direct threat to Western culture, ideology, and security, Cold Warriors constructed the Soviet Union as such.12 Even Isaiah Berlin’s and Erich Fromm’s writings on liberty and freedom, respectively, are responses to the sorts of totalising narratives associated with Soviet politics.13 Cold War liberals had much to be pessimistic about. While the above examples of pessimistic liberalism briefly show how the mood of postWorld War II politics was one of pessimism, this is not to say that all liberals were pessimistic during this period. Developmentalism and the rise of an ‘emancipatory liberalism’ associated with democracy, aid and societal restructuring were often similar to the triumphalism of liberal empire.14 However, liberal pessimism was both a challenger to, and a critic of, other liberal imaginings of world politics during the Cold War. The aftermath of the Holocaust, nuclear weapons and the rise of Soviet Union caused many of the most avid proponents of liberalism to adopt a pessimistic attitude. It is important from the outset to define what I mean by ‘liberalism’, which in this chapter refers to two things. In the first place, I follow scholars like James Richardson and Duncan Bell in defining liberalism from a contextualist position. As Richardson notes, ‘liberalism consists in a sequence of debates, literal or figurative – the spelling out of contending positions with some reference to what went before’.15 I understand liberalism as a contextual set of arguments that are self-reflectively considered ‘liberal’ by the authors that put those arguments forward. Both Talmon and Aron consider themselves liberal and identified themselves as such. In the case of the former, his book, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, pits liberal democracy (a concept he admires and with which he allies) against ‘totalitarian democracy’. Aron explicitly situates himself

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in the tradition of liberal democracy.16 Both thinkers were also involved with the international anti-communist cultural group, the Congress of Cultural Freedom, which was aimed at countering communist influence in art and intellectual production. In sum, Talmon and Aron were self-aware of their position within a broader intellectual group of liberal democrats. Second, I understand liberalism ideologically as a set of ideas that promotes individual freedom, puts forth the benefits and virtues of individual agency, and which values—to a great extent—the promises of the free market. Both Talmon and Aron fit this bill well. This is a bare-bones definition of liberalism but it excludes variants of socialism, all varieties of fascism, and conservativism, particularly with the latter’s emphasis on organic wholes over individualism. Talmon and Aron align well with this version of liberalism. Talmon’s critique is lodged against socialism and totalitarianism: the former critiques the free market and individualism, the latter glorifies the authority of the state. One commentator wrote of Talmon that he embodied a ‘strong liberal and essentially anti-communist approach to politics and history’.17 Aron, as well, is perhaps most famous for his critique of the Left, as seen in his famous The Opium of the Intellectuals, which attacked Marxism’s penetration of the French academy. Both Talmon and Aron were strong and unabashed ideological liberals, directly engaged in the dual critique of Left and Right totalitarianism, in which consisted the biggest threat, in their views, to Western civilisation. Each deeply believed that their efforts were not just those of an historian, or a sociologist but part and parcel of a global battle over the ideologies vying for supremacy during the Cold War.18 Each is also illustrative of a distinctive Cold War liberal pessimism. The following briefly reconstructs some of the thematics of Cold War pessimism in Talmon’s and Aron’s work, focusing on their perspectives regarding the future of global politics in the aftermath of the Holocaust, in the context of nuclear weapons, and in the looming rise of the Soviet Union.

Talmon, Pessimism and the New Priesthood Jacob Talmon’s work illustrates the emergence of a twentiethcentury pessimistic liberalism, while also showing with utmost clarity the origins of much of the anxiety, terror and fear shared by many Cold War liberals in the post-World War II order. Talmon, himself, was an

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influential historian, and—in many senses—a ‘genealogist’ of left-wing totalitarianism. He is most famous for his book, Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, which was first released in 1952, detailing the eighteenthcentury origins of totalitarian thought in Rousseauvian ‘political messianism’. His work has been largely forgotten in contemporary debates about the history and politics of totalitarian governance, having declined in popularity since at least the 1980s, especially as the works of other historians of totalitarianism, like Hannah Arendt, have ascended in influence.19 Like Arendt, and Talmon’s close friend Isaiah Berlin, Talmon was influenced in his thinking by the events of the Holocaust, World War II and the exile of European Jewry. He was a Jewish intellectual living in Europe in the middle part of the twentieth century, but as an historian he astutely observed that events like the Holocaust, or the rise of Stalin, were often the result of triumphalism and optimism gone wrong. For Talmon, the heroes of modern Western philosophy, ‘instead of being protectors of human dignity and individual liberty, can provide sophisticated justifications and cruel rationalisations for oppression and autocracy’.20 In Talmon’s view, the origin of political movements like Stalinism in the Soviet Union was political messianism: the secularisation and politicisation of religious concepts. However, while writing about left-wing totalitarianism, Talmon also saw right-wing movements originating in similar languages. Writing about Romanticism in the nineteenth century, Talmon observes that one of the defining processes that brought the Nazis to power was prefigured by the prophets of the Romantic revolution: ‘Here we arrive at a point where radical revolutionary universalism touches that other mighty formative force released by the age – nationalism’.21 Furthermore, the rise of Nazism and the beginnings of the Holocaust were not simply the result of the actions of a single man. Talmon makes it clear that he does not want to diminish Hitler’s role in these processes. Instead, the Holocaust, for Talmon, was an instance of ideas gone wrong. This, for Talmon, was the origin of antisemitism in Europe, or the ‘concept of abstract powers, ideas, desires, interests, and processes being embodied in entire groups of people’.22 Many of the processes that led directly to a genocide unparalleled since the ‘dawn of history’23 were intellectual processes: processes based on a messianic understanding of the political, and the idea that a progressive optimism expressed in politics could ‘save us’.24 Or at least those of us the doctrines considered worthy of saving.

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Talmon’s experience of living through the Holocaust—as a European Jew in his twenties—certainly contributed to his pessimistic view of the end point of optimistic ideologies of political messianism. Talmon was also, however, a Zionist. Talmon’s Zionism was not a triumphalist one and, in fact, Talmon had an uneasy relationship with both the ideology of Zionism and the foreign policy practices of the State of Israel throughout his life. On the one hand, he ‘articulated the suspicion that any preconceived rational plan was bound to lead to totalitarianism because its application would involve increased use of force, issuing in terror’.25 This was the caution against a Zionism based in political messianism, something of which Talmon was fearful. Talmon believed that Israeli foreign policy, as well, and especially the occupation of Palestinian territories, would lead to a ‘moral corruption’ of Zionism.26 On the other hand, however, Zionism was the last refuge for European Jewry following the Holocaust. Especially in later life, Talmon became a vociferous supporter of Israel and the Zionist project; it was often difficult for him to make a distinction between those who critiqued Israel and those who were anti-Semitic. Talmon suffered, in the words of Arie Dubnov, from ‘siege syndrome’.27 Talmon’s view of other twentieth-century developments, and particularly the Cold War militarisation of nuclear technology, also represented a form of suspicion and fear. Talmon equated nuclear weapons not with deterrence but as a threat to the security of countries like Israel. He was not so much worried about the superpowers risking nuclear war over the Middle East—this was something that could be dismissed quickly.28 However, nuclear weapons urged restraint, and Talmon’s pessimism led him to believe that if Israel continued its obsession with security at the risk of further escalating the Arab-Israeli conflict, it would be ‘suicidal’.29 There is no way to achieve absolute security in the context of nuclear weapons but escalating the conflict on the basis of increased security might incentivise the Arab states or the Palestinians to obtain more powerful weapons, and that possibility had unthinkable consequences. His analysis of the nuclear era in the midst of the Arab-Israeli conflict returns to themes of scepticism of political messianism: in this case, ‘security’ is the altar upon which Israel is willing to sacrifice itself. This is selfdefeating; it is dangerous; it is ‘suicidal’. As a genealogist, Talmon traces the history of communism to the political messianism of the eighteenth century, seeing its early development in ideas about economic socialism, and particularly those of

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Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, who allegedly wrote the treatise The Code of Nature, which Talmon considered to be the ‘first book in ­modern times to put fully-fledged communism on the agenda as a practical programme, and not merely as a Utopia’.30 Talmon’s point in providing a history of the origins of totalitarian communism is to demonstrate the trajectory of eighteenth-century ideas leading to the emergence of Stalinism in the twentieth century. Talmon did not see these as unconnected. On the contrary, Talmon believed that Stalinism was not a bastardisation of intellectual trends of the modern period but proof of their bankruptcy altogether. In writing about anti-semitism under Stalinism, Talmon makes this clear by pointing out that anti-semitism under the rule of Stalin shows just how the optimism of eighteenthcentury socialism was misplaced: It used to be said with enormous self-assurance that the enthronement of socialism would not merely do away with social oppression and racial animosities but was bound to inaugurate the reign of fully scientific and objective laws of social development, with human arbitrariness and individual or group perversity entirely ruled out. If we are now to ascribe such terrific effectiveness to the personal arbitrariness of one man, we are surely thereby denying the foolproof scientific determinism of the system as such.31

There is little doubt that Talmon thought of his own work, and particularly the trilogy beginning with The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, to be his legacy in the fight against Cold War communism.32 Talmon’s understanding of the Cold War was built on the traumas of the twentieth century: the Holocaust, the rise of Stalin, and Talmon’s own attempts to defend the establishment of Israel.33 More than anything, Talmon’s political and historical writings led him to deep suspicion, to scepticism, and to pessimism about the role of ideas in history. Intellectuals, particularly, should be ‘treated with suspicion’; after all, they were simply ‘modern priests’, giving a messianic justification for an emancipatory politics that lead to the likes of Stalin.34

Aron and the Critique of Optimistic Histories Raymond Aron, as Roy Pierce noted in 1963, was ‘one of the leading political thinkers of the twentieth century’.35 Aron’s biography gives us a bit of insight into the origins of his pessimistic liberalism. He was trained

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as a philosopher, receiving his doctorate in the philosophy of history in 1930. He was always a committed liberal, but his experiences before and during World War II greatly influenced his views on politics. He fought in the armed forces for France against Germany during the war, ultimately fleeing to London after the German occupation of France in order to assist the Free French Forces, becoming one of their biggest intellectual supporters.36 In 1955, he wrote his infamous treatise, The Opium of the Intellectuals, which directly challenged French intellectuals regarding their left-wing criticisms of liberalism and free-market capitalism. Aron’s pessimism comes from a distinct intellectual milieu. He, like many other European intellectuals of his generation, attended Alexandre Kojève’s influential lectures on Hegel and the ‘End of History’, though he did not share Francis Fukuyama’s later triumphalist interpretation of that idea.37 For Aron, visions of utopia were not sustainable and not achievable. As Bryan-Paul Frost notes, for Aron ‘the chances of [perpetual peace] occurring are so miniscule that it is better to look for ways in which wars and hostilities can be decreased in severity rather than eliminated altogether’.38 Aron was a paradigmatic pessimist. Aron admits that his pessimism originated in the 1930s, as he witnessed the rise of totalitarianism in Europe. Rather than a pessimism of resignation, however, Aron called this an ‘active pessimism’. He wrote: ‘Once and for all, I ceased to believe that history automatically obeys the dictates of reason or the desires of men of good will. I lost faith and held on, not without effort, to hope’.39 Aron’s own training as a philosopher of history, and an expert on Kantian philosophy nonetheless, was put to the test by twentieth-century European politics. Aron saw a pessimistic vision of history as one that was cyclical, viewing Europe not as a triumph but as another example of the rise and fall of great empires. Aron stated, ‘Western civilization is dying, just as the ancient civilizations died, in the midst of wars and revolutions, sprawling cities and uprooted masses, the overrefinement of impotent elites and the triumph of money or technology’.40 Europe, in Aron’s view, could not be viewed through the optimistic lens of triumphalist visions of history. Europe was over altogether. The Holocaust and the horrors perpetuated by the Nazi party more generally were evidence of this pessimistic understanding of history. In a penetrating section of his essay, ‘The Intelligibility of History’, he meditated on the causes of the rise of Hitler and the beginnings of World War II. He developed this cyclical view of history by drawing a comparison with the Roman empire. ‘Why did the conservative states’,

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Aron asked, ‘give the Teutonic Caesar time to accumulate enough arms, not for victory, but for his own burial beneath the ruins of civilization?’41 The lessons of the Holocaust and World War II were precisely those that progressive and optimistic views of modern history could not explain: What happens when humankind loses control of its own history? What happens when, rather than shaping our own destiny, we are ‘dragged along’ in a cycle of violence? For theorists like Aron, these questions were all the more critical in an age of total war.42 The nuclear age, too, prompted Aron to rethink triumphalist views of history. An age of total war, with the promise of technologies of total destruction, was not an age where triumphalism should reign supreme. Rhetorically, Aron gives us reason to believe that he is not a pessimist when it comes to the promises and pitfalls of nuclear weapons and makes early arguments about Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that presage later work on deterrence by political realists.43 Furthermore, Aron is critical of what he calls the pessimistic argument about nuclear weapons: that we are facing a ‘collective suicide’ while living under the spectre of nuclear annihilation. However, Aron rejects the optimistic vision as well, the vision of ‘peace through fear’. He argues instead that choosing between these two alternatives is impossible, unless we were able to adopt a teleological history of integration (a world state?), that is simply impossible to predict. After all, there is not a single historical logic (what Aron calls ‘the logic’) but instead a logic. Contingency exists alongside Aron’s cyclical understanding of history.44 Like Talmon, Aron was preoccupied with the evolution and politics of the Soviet Union, and in tying the development of communism together with untenable and optimistic views of history. Aron terms Marx’s theory of history a ‘catastrophic optimism’.45 He contrasted Marx with other views of history that were decidedly less optimistic, less inclined to try to change the world through misguided conceptions of human progress, theorists like Machiavelli and Vilfredo Pareto.46 In this way, the rise of figures like Stalin, and organisations like the Soviet Union, were doomed to tend towards totalitarianism, as their own orientations towards optimism were dangerous, destructive and irresponsible ways of imagining history. In this sense, Aron broadly shares Talmon’s own understanding of the ways that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century optimism (and ‘messianism’ in Talmon’s case), create a straight line to left-totalitarianism in the twentieth century. Optimism is an ideology, and a dangerous one.

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Talmon and Aron were not the only pessimistic liberals during the Cold War. However, these two writers provide a window into the ways that liberals, especially those affected personally by the horrors of the twentieth century, thought about the histories, practices and futures of liberal democracy.

Conclusion This chapter briefly reconstructed the context of Cold War liberalism and examined the works of two of its prominent exponents in order to illustrate the historical and textual bases of Cold War liberal pessimism. In many ways, the works of Talmon and Aron are exemplary of not just a pessimism rooted in liberalism but also the same kinds of pessimism of other thinkers living during the Cold War. Totalitarianism was a structuring feature of post-World War II political thought; in fact, it is not unreasonable to argue that Cold War thought about politics more generally is a strand rooted in both fear and suspicion about the potentials for new totalitarianisms, as well as a deep pessimism about the promises of post-war modernity. Contemporary political thought as a distinct way of theorising about politics is about the threat of totalitarianism. Authors on the left, including Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, though critical themselves of post-war liberalism, illustrate similar fears of totalitarianism. Theorists on the right, including prominent philosophers like Leo Strauss, were also worried about the rise of totalitarianism, its threat to political community, and the perils of the coming age.47 What makes liberal pessimism unique is the fact that liberalism is a theoretical tradition of promise. It is the promise, as per Richard Rorty (writing at the tail end of the Cold War), that we will continually enlarge our vocabularies of solidarity, with the hope that we can move towards a world order that values human life and devalues cruelty.48 However, promise was not always a central theme of liberal thinking during the Cold War. More than promise, and certainly more than Utopia, was the fear that long-term historical and intellectual trends may lead us to a worsening, a tightening of the grip of totalitarianism on Western society. Not a liberalism of hope, the liberalism of writers like Talmon and Aron was a liberalism of fear.49 This fear, and the resultant pessimism, shaped the way these writers thought about the development of political projects. Talmon had a shaky relationship with Zionism: on the one hand, Zionism was a way to create a haven for Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust,

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but its nationalism verged on messianism. For Aron, liberalism had to come to terms with a realist logic of power politics; emancipation was a fool’s errand. Utopia was no longer sustainable. Furthermore, this understanding of pessimism rooted in fear is distinct from other ways of conceptualising pessimism. Lebow (this volume), for example, sees pessimism from the vein of a critique of reason and optimism. While this is demonstrated in both the cases of Talmon and Aron, their analyses of the ‘worst aspects’ of the twentieth century were methodologically rooted in suspicion, fear and a genealogical reconstruction of history. What can Cold War pessimism teach us about the world today? Should we embrace a liberal pessimism? Talmon and Aron had reason to feel pessimistic—they were Jewish authors writing in the aftermath of the Holocaust, living in the wake of the atrocities of the twentieth century.50 Both attempted to write a history of their own times. Talmon as an historian and Aron as a philosopher of history recognised that an examination of the twentieth century with historical sensitivity necessitated pessimism towards the future. Both had hope that the future would be bright but had little faith in that outcome. If pessimism is a focus on the ‘worst aspect of things’, then pessimism is an ethic to cultivate, an ethic that forces a political community to reckon with its own history, a recognition that the ‘worst’ may be yet to come, or that it could happen again. Liberals need that reckoning in a world where a triumphalist liberal world order may be ending altogether.

Notes



1. “Pessimism,” in Oxford Dictionary Online. Available at https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pessimism (accessed 1 April 2019). 2. See, inter alia, John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). For an ‘optimistic realism’, see Charles Glaser, “Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help,” International Security 19, no. 3 (1994/1995): 50–90. 3. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977). 4. On the distinction between a hermeneutics of faith and a hermeneutics of suspicion, see Ruthellen Josselon, “The Hermeneutics of Faith and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion,” Narrative Inquiry 14, no. 1 (2004): 1–28. 5.  See, Beate Jahn, “Barbarian Thoughts: Imperialism in the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill,” Review of International Studies 31, no. 3 (2005): 599–618.

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6. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). Also see Alexander Wendt, “Why a World State Is Inevitable,” European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 4 (2003): 491–542. 7.  George Orwell, “Antisemitism in Britain,” April 1945. Available at http://www.george-orwell.org/AntiSemitism_In_Britian/0 (accessed 1 April 2019). 8. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Javanovich, 1970), 4. 9. On racial politics of Arendt’s work, see Patricia Owens, “Racism in the Theory Canon: Hannah Arendt and the ‘One Great Crime in Which America Was Never Involved’,” Millennium 45, no. 3 (2017): 403–25. 10. This theme of speed/distance is addressed at length in Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), chapter 4. 11.  See, Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta Books, 2000). 12. For an example of the cultural Cold War literature, see Stephen Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, second edn. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). 13. Isaiah Berlin, Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy, second edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Henry Holt, 1941). 14.  For an overview of major trends in development and humanitarianism during the Cold War, see Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), Chapter 7. 15. James Richardson, Contending Liberalisms in World Politics: Ideology and Power (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), 19. 16. Raymond Aron, L’Algerie et la république (Paris: Plon, 1958), 5. 17. Arie Dubnov, “A Tale of Trees and Crooked Timbers: Jacob Talmon and Isaiah Berlin on the Question of Jewish Nationalism,” History of European Ideas 34, no. 2 (2008): 221. 18.  The best introduction to the CCF is Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? See also, Andrew Rubin, Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012). 19. Russell Jacoby, Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 60. 20. Arie Dubnov, “Priest or Jester? Jacob L. Talmon (1916–1980) on History and Intellectual Engagement,” History of European Ideas 34, no. 2 (2008): 134. 21. Jacob Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt: Europe 1815–1848 (London: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967), 94; Hjorth, this volume.

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22. Jacob Talmon, “European History—Seedbed of the Holocaust,” in David Ohana, ed., Jacob L. Talmon: Mission and Testimony: Political Essays (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2015), 194. 23. Ibid., 186. 24. Bailey, this volume. 25.  Malachi Hacochen, “Jacob Talmon Between Zionism and Cold War Liberalism,” History of European Ideas 34, no. 2 (2008): 152. 26. Ibid., 156. 27. Dubnov, “A Tale of Trees and Crooked Timbers,” 237. 28. Talmon, “Israel and the Arab World,” in Mission and Testimony, 251. 29. Ibid., 246. 30. Jacob Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Mercury Books, 1952), 17. 31.  Jacob Talmon, “The Nature of Jewish History—Its Universal Significance,” (1956) in Mission and Testimony, 53. 32. Dubnov, “A Tale of Crooked Timbers,” 222. 33.  Efraim Podolsik, “Anti-Totalitarian Ambiguities: Jacob Talmon and Michael Oakeshott,” History of European Ideas 34 (2008): 211. 34. Dubnov, “Priest or Jester?,” 134. 35.  Roy Pierce, “Liberalism and Democracy in the Thought of Raymond Aron,” Journal of Politics 25, no. 1 (1963): 14. 36. The biographical literature on Aron is limited. One exception is Brian Andersen, Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998). For a reconstruction of Aron’s international thought, see Reed Davis, A Politics of Understanding: The International Thought of Raymond Aron (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2009). 37.  Bryan-Paul Frost, “Raymond Aron on the End of the History of International Relations,” Perspectives on Political Science 35, no. 2 (2006): 76. 38. Ibid. 39. Raymond Aron, “On the Historical Condition of the Sociologist,” (1970), in Mirian Conant, ed., Politics and History (New York: Free Press, 1978), 65. 40. Raymond Aron, “The Dawn of Universal History,” (1961), in Politics and History, 232. 41.  Raymond Aron, “The Intelligibility of History in the Twentieth Century,” (1954) in Franciszeck Draus, ed., History, Truth, Liberty: Selected Writings of Raymond Aron (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 78. 42. Ibid., 94.

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43. See, for example, the discussion of balances of power in Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979). 44. Aron, “The Anarchical Order of Power,” (1968) in History, Truth, Liberty, 273. 45. Raymond Aron, “Machiavelli and Marx,” (1970) in Politics and History, 91. 46. See ibid. for an extended discussion. 47. See, particularly, Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1964), Introduction. 48. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). See, also, Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). 49.  This term is indebted to Judith Shklar, “The Liberalism of Fear,” in Nancy L. Rosenblum, ed., Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 21–38. 50. For a related argument about the impact of the Holocaust on American realists, see Richard Ned Lebow, “German Jews and American Realism,” Constellations 18, no. 4 (2011): 545–66.

CHAPTER 6

Productive Pessimism: Rehabilitating John Herz’s Survival Research for the Anthropocene Tim Stevens

Introduction As indicated elsewhere in this volume, there are good reasons why pessimistic readings of the human condition surface readily at the present time.1 Forces of nationalism, subversion, technological disruption and environmental degradation spur many to think that the worst is both inevitable and imminent. We are at an ‘inflection point’ in human history: act now, or face the disastrous consequences of not doing so. Frequently, discourses of impending disorder frame our predicament as a one-time choice between extinction and survival.2 The environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion, established in 2018, makes this plain in its public statements: ‘We are facing an unprecedented global emergency. To survive, it’s going to take everything we’ve got’.3 Living in the Anthropocene, this new geological era dominated by human activity, is going to be difficult; surviving it will be more challenging still. T. Stevens (*)  Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_6

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Yet, statements such as these, which would seem inherently pessimistic, are not necessarily fatalistic. The pessimism expressed does not presume that we sit by and do nothing; quite the opposite. It is precisely because this form of pessimism envisions dark futures that it demands action in the present to avoid them. In other words, pessimism is not a negative disposition denying the possibilities of agency under conditions of radical change but a positively charged resource that reinforces our active capacities and gives focus to their expression. In this sense, we may perhaps talk of ‘productive pessimism’ as a political orientation for the Anthropocene. This chapter explores this proposition by looking at the work of John H. Herz (1908–2005), described by later scholars as a ‘professional pessimist’.4 Like his better-known peers, Hans Morgenthau, E.H. Carr and Karl Deutsch, Herz made important contributions to the emergence of International Relations (IR) as a discipline in the twentieth century. Although his legacy might not be as immediately visible as those friends and colleagues, Herz is perhaps taught more often than them: his theorisation of the ‘security dilemma’ will be familiar to most IR students as an important explanans of international behaviour.5 Herz made other significant contributions, including attempts to reconcile realism and liberalism, and to questioning the primacy of states in the international system.6 Lebow suggests, however, that Herz is most inspiring today for his proposals for ‘Survival Research’.7 Herz outlined an interdisciplinary programme of research and policy engagement to address problems of human extinction and survival. This was developed gradually in the decades after World War II and published only as sketches towards the end of his life. Perhaps on account of their incompleteness, they have not translated into concrete research or policy initiatives and have received scant scholarly attention to date.8 This chapter suggests that Survival Research can be viewed as contingent on Herz’s ‘productive pessimism’ and, moreover, that it provides insights into how scholarly research and policy engagement might be directed in the Anthropocene. The first section looks at John Herz’s pessimistic views on extinction and survival as they developed through his career. He identified the twin catastrophes of nuclear annihilation and environmental degradation as existential threats to humanity in what we today frequently refer to as the Anthropocene. From these ideas emerged his articulation of a ‘survival ethic’, which is explored in the second section. This required shifts in cognition and political action that put collective interests at its

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heart, without which humanity would perish. In the following section, I examine Herz’s plans for a Survival Research programme in which all scholars should be engaged, so as to bring about positive sociopolitical and technological change. Rooted firmly in pessimism, this programme aimed to address world problems in clear-eyed fashion and propose solutions to them. The subsequent section and conclusion look more deeply at the role pessimism played in Herzian Survival Research and its affinities with contemporary IR’s engagement with the Anthropocene. Specifically, it suggests we can learn from Herz’s ‘productive pessimism’ and use it to propel, rather than retard, our thinking and action as we look out into a troubled world.

Extinction and Survival John Herz was a pessimist, by his own admission and in the assessments of others. In the 1970s, he recalled that he was pessimistic even before leaving his native Germany for the United States in 1939, given the political conditions in Europe at the time.9 The perversions of Hitlerian scientism and pseudo-rationalism left Jewish emigrés like Herz notably pessimistic about the potential of reason to ‘curb the violent tendencies of world politics’.10 The experience made him wary of modernist claims of progress and of humanity’s ability to tame its worst instincts and avoid future cataclysms. This pessimism never left him and it persisted as ‘a red thread’ woven into his life and work.11 Herz’s pessimism took on a particular hue, however, that distinguished him from his peers. Even before WWII ended with nuclear detonations over Japan in August 1945, he had raised concerns that the human species ‘may turn out to have been among Nature’s abortive attempts to create a species capable of survival’.12 For Herz, atomic, and then thermonuclear, weapons heralded a new phase of existence: the ability of humankind to obliterate itself through means of its own making. In a memorable passage from 1959, he wrote: ‘The age-old dream of the mass-killers of history, which found a relatively modest realization in a Tamerlane’s skull-mountains or even in Hitler’s gas chambers, now, thanks to the progress made in the technology of destruction, seems finally to be fully attainable’.13 By this time, he was already linking this narrative to what he saw as an unfolding environmental catastrophe, manifest in resource depletion, pollution and overpopulation. Both nuclear and environmental threats were wrapped up in a general critique of technocratic management and scientific

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rationalism that held them accountable as key conditions and drivers of this state of affairs.14 Herz was not alone in these judgements, of course, but, relative to much of IR in the post-war period, his stance was unusual.15 Not only was he prescient in his attention to environmental issues, but his ultimate concern was not, as with most others, about the survival of the state but with the survival of the human species. To be sure, he wrote at length about the threats to statehood posed by both nuclear weapons and ecological degradation, but he was disposed to address them as species-level existential issues, rather than solely through the lens of raison d’État. As Audra Mitchell has shown, discussions of extinction in IR have long prioritised the survival of specific states, rather than interrogating the possible emergence of conditions that could erase all human institutions and all ways of life.16 Herz was clearly thinking about both, although the latter would, of necessity, eclipse the priorities of the former. Worse still, in the case of environmental problems, these are less straightforward to discern. The looming ecological disaster was ‘no less deadly than that of the atom bomb and possibly even more so because it is less obvious and less spectacular [which] permits the unenlightened, if they perceive it at all, to postpone serious consideration and concern’.17 Ulrich Beck would later describe this as ‘living in the hazardous age of creeping catastrophe’, portending ‘the impending “suicide of the species”’.18 The problem of visibility compounds issues of venality and ignorance. This concern with the end of humanity is pessimistic in that it identifies human nature as resistant to change, even when presented with evidence that, if true reason were to prevail, would indicate incontrovertibly the need to change our collective course. Our future demise would be caused by a human inability to reflect upon our nature and properly discern the material effects of projecting deficient world views on the planet and its inhabitants. If we were not to somehow alter this apparent trajectory, wrote Herz in 1982, the ‘globe is in danger of becoming uninhabitable’.19 Herz’s response, typically, was not to accept this impasse. Despite the undeniably pessimistic tone of his prognostications, Herz recalled towards the end of his life that it was precisely the realisation of the scale of the challenges presented by nuclear weapons and environmental change that compelled him to find new ways of engaging with them.20 Furthermore, it was from within the flawed human animal that he might find the moral and practical resources to do so. As he noted,

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‘For the first time in the earth’s history a species boldly calling itself Homo sapiens possesses the factual resources and should have the wisdom to secure its continuance’.21 While hinting strongly at our hubris and arrogance, Herz still believed that humanity had the potential to choose a different path.

Survival Ethics This shift would not be easy, as it would require a global recalibration of interests and values. From the perspective of disciplinary IR, survival had always been key to states’ actions in the international system. For instance, Martin Wight wrote that ‘International theory is the theory of survival’.22 States maximise their security so as to survive conditions of international anarchy, promoting an ‘ethos of survival’ that fosters perpetual conflict and competition.23 Herz himself captured this dynamic in the concept of the ‘security dilemma’ but also prefigured Wight’s statement when he wrote that ‘thinking about how to survive means thinking about international politics’.24 For Herz, this meant paying attention to non-zero sum international interactions, which he explicitly linked to the twin themes of extinction and survival. A ‘common interest in survival’, he proposed, had to take priority over any form of realpolitik that thrives on the failures of others.25 In order to do this, Herz had to develop a new way of understanding interests and objectives in international politics, which he came to call ‘realist liberalism’.26 It would never be an easy task reconciling realism and liberalism, given perennial disciplinary assertions of their incommensurability, but this project aimed to balance national interests with the interests of humanity as a whole.27 More precisely, national interests are served by recognising existential species-level threats and adopting courses of action to remediate them. The interests of one are the interests of all when facing up to threats of nuclear annihilation or environmental collapse. No state or group is exempt from these considerations and must work towards ‘survival in a world that had become mortally vulnerable for even the mightiest’.28 These concerns were addressed many times in his work and their ethical dimension is articulated in passages like the following from 1976: It is my thesis that because in today’s world, for the first time, the s­ urvival of all is in jeopardy, even those who (like myself) are value-relativists

88  T. STEVENS (i.e., believe that, in principle, no ‘ought to’ can be derived from an ‘is’) can agree that, when certain values become so overwhelmingly important that their nonrecognition appears absurd to practically everybody engaging in human discourse, those values can be posited as certain or undeniable. Where the alternative to the ‘ought to’ denotes physical extinction of the entire human race, survival, not of individuals or specific groups but of mankind as such, becomes an absolute value.29

This avowed ‘normativism thus combines political realism with ethical idealism’ in what he termed a ‘survival ethic’.30 Survival ethics would be more comprehensive than any existing ‘traditional parochial ethics’ in its attention to global issues’ priority over local, territorial concerns, and in its temporal dimension would attempt ‘to ensure a future for future generations and to leave them with a livable heritage on earth’.31 This would require a marked shift towards a universalist mindset that Herz was keen to characterise as a ‘world-consciousness’ distinct from any form of unrealistic utopianism.32 He was undeterred by the difficulties of inculcating this cognitive change on a global level, even as he wrote of the situation that, ‘I must in all honest admit to considerable pessimism’.33 Herz was clear-eyed in his assessment of the obstacles ahead of humanity—as most pessimists claim to be34—but set about thinking how to translate abstract theory into concrete practice. The vehicle he identified for this transformation was ‘Survival Research’.

Survival Research John Herz began sketching the contours of Survival Research in the mid-1980s and worked on it on and off for the rest of his life.35 The themes of his Survival Research surfaced variously during this period, but it was only shortly before his death in 2005 that a special issue of World Futures emerged, inspired by a 1988 Herz presentation in New York and edited by philosopher of science Ervin László and architect Peter Seidel.36 This was revised in book form and included chapters by Herz, László, Seidel, and a diverse range of scholars from ecology, systems science, evolutionary psychology, anthropology and economics, and the noted proponent of the ‘Gaia hypothesis’, James Lovelock.37 The authors shared a common pessimism about the ability of humankind to address serious environmental problems in the absence of radical cognitive and political change. The discourse of ecological crisis around

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which this book and many other interventions are organised is, as is well attested, frequently pessimistic, if not outright apocalyptic in tone.38 This does not, however, terminate the possibilities of political and practical action: the apocalypse, for instance, rarely portends a catastrophic end but is a device through which revelation and transformation can be brought about. Apocalypses are ‘passage points leading from one form of social order to another’.39 This sense runs strongly through Survival Research as articulated by Herz and those inspired by his initial conceptual forays into the idea, despite their evident pessimism and visions of societal and environmental collapse. To clarify this by borrowing from the triad of medical intervention, Herz and his colleagues moved through phases of diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. Herz’s diagnostic themes in his posthumous chapter are consistent with his earlier work but were expressed anew in his proposals for Survival Research.40 He identified five major reasons why issues of survival had been dangerously neglected in mainstream politics and media.41 The first concerned the normalisation of the threats of nuclear weapons and environmental deterioration, by which we grow accustomed to their presence and elect to live with them instead of addressing them directly. Herz offered no causal explanation for this situation but it will be familiar from today’s political responses, or lack thereof, to climate change, which are rooted in complex assemblages of social, cultural and other factors.42 The second is closely related, in that we fail to discern the cumulative impacts of incremental negative change, in the case of the environment, and of the continuing existence and extension of nuclear technologies, which are all but invisible to the ordinary person. So, we become comfortable living with threats but pay little heed to how they are changing. Herz’s third diagnostic frame is the persistent human attachment to modes of thought that are not fit for purpose in tackling issues of existential threat. This is particularly the case for conceptualisations of ‘national interests’ that do not recognise their contingent relationship with global interests. As noted previously, no state can survive absent an appreciation of higher-level planetary dynamics. These are often obscured by groups motivated by self-interest, supported by influence operations, whether these are political, economic or ideological in nature. This fourth diagnostic aspect is firmly situated in a pessimistic reading of the human condition, in which powerful actors sway public opinion in order to preserve the status quo to their own advantage. Herz

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later considers these vested interests agents of ‘laissez-faire ideology in an age of rampant, unyielding globalization’.43 As others have noted, globalisation in no way a priori demands a developed sense of shared global interests.44 The fifth symptom in Herz’s analysis is a simple lack of awareness of the interconnectedness of the global system, in which actions can have effects elsewhere that escape normal observation or understanding. If this diagnosis is ignored, Herz would argue, the prognosis is bleak. As he hinted many times in his life, the required shifts in attitude and action to avert disaster would not readily come about. However, this pessimism was not a barrier to action or an excuse for fatalism; as he recalled of his last-minute flight from Nazi Germany, his ‘realistic pessimism made me emigrate in time and survive’.45 Although he was pessimistic about global futures, he focused on what he could do, as a scholar, to bring about survival outcomes. Taking into account the above diagnosis, his proposed ‘treatment’ came in the form of Survival Research, whose principal aim was ‘to clarify the relationship between causes and effects, “ordinary” and customary attitudes and actions and destructive survival consequences’.46 Survival Research was not defined succinctly but would be a truly interdisciplinary and international undertaking, exploiting knowledge and experience across multiple academic disciplines and institutions.47 Indeed, he asserted, it ‘should be the primary responsibility of scholars to engage in survival issues’.48 Solutions and ideas generated would be pushed up to decision-makers and filter out to global publics, allowing each to be better informed as to the available options for positive action. This latter would demand the conscious effort of actors beyond the academy, particularly the media and primary and secondary educators. Of course, to maintain practical and policy relevance— the overall ambition of the project—Survival Research could not only address known problems but foster modes of enquiry and engagement to address new ones when they arose. Only by raising awareness and promoting novel modes of thought could researchers convey ‘a sense of urgency of the survival problems to all those who otherwise might, like lemmings, follow the call to the precipice’.49 Importantly for IR scholars, and consistent with Herz’s work in general, it must also transcend existing internecine disputes between realism and liberalism, and provide a way for all scholars of the international to contribute meaningfully to a wider social project.

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Surviving the Anthropocene with John Herz? No one should pretend John Herz bequeathed a blueprint for surviving the so-called Anthropocene—a term current after his time—nor that he alone has articulated guidelines for this challenge. Contemporary IR scholarship has begun, belatedly but robustly, engaging with the Anthropocene, but Herzian Survival Research has played almost no role in these developments. This is curious, given the obvious resonances with this emerging literature. That he has not been cited more often in this emerging literature on the Anthropocene is perhaps because his ideas were so preliminary. Or, it may be that his realist credentials preclude his consideration by the critical wing of the discipline, in which most Anthropocene research is situated.50 Perhaps, too, his lingering rationalism—despite his identification of its role in our current predicament— alienates him further. However, Survival Research might be recognised by contemporary IR scholars as similar in many respects to those programmes currently proposed. In its attention to globality, environmental consciousness, interdisciplinarity, non-state political forms, and its tone of temporal urgency, Survival Research would seem to be an overlooked chapter in the genealogy of Anthropocene thinking in IR. His motives and ambitions arguably have something useful to offer, albeit with some modification to take account of political, normative and technological changes. ‘Anthropocene’ identifies our present geological epoch as distinct from its Holocene predecessor, one in which the activities of humankind have impacted global environmental processes and systems such that their traces are being inscribed in the physical stratigraphy of the Earth itself.51 Scientific stratigraphers have yet to approve formally this addition to deep global chronology, but many suggest a commencement date coincident with the nuclear age, when events at Alamogordo began the global scattering of nuclear isotopes and their subsequent sedimentation into the rocks of the future.52 That a specific stratigraphic marker might be identified for the beginning of the Anthropocene is less important politically than the processes that constitute the possibility of an Anthropocene in the first place: dramatic environmental degradation, climate change, atmospheric pollution, overpopulation, resource mismanagement, fossil fuel consumption, biodiversity depletion, species extinction and other negative anthropogenic impacts on the stability of natural cycles ordinarily operating on non-human time-scales. These all

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have longer histories than a mid-twentieth century date suggests, but the putative acceleration of systemic change in recent decades has suggested to many scientists the need to establish the Anthropocene as a separate epochal unit, in order to draw attention to its physical, ecological, socioeconomic and political ramifications.53 Consequently, the debate over the Anthropocene is not restricted to earth scientists alone. Indeed, the deliberations of the body that would formally approve the naming of a new epoch, the International Commission on Stratigraphy, have prompted geologists themselves to wonder if the Anthropocene is less scientific nomenclature than political or popular statement, so charged are the implications and possible motivations of this move.54 IR scholars have turned to the consequences of this categorisation, both for the understanding of international politics and for the potential reorientation of IR itself towards a more productive engagement with the implications of Anthropocene thinking. Congruent with a longer tradition of IR scholarship promoting concerns with planetary security and the imbrication of the social and natural worlds, the Anthropocene is read as an opportunity to divest IR of its narrow focus on state behaviour, reimagining it as an intellectual and practical discipline fit for the challenges of a new geological epoch and sociopolitical context. Crucially, IR is encouraged to address the potentialities of interdisciplinary engagement across the social and natural sciences, and to explore its own assumptions and theoretical commitments, many of which are rendered complicit in the formation of the Anthropocene itself.55 Central to these critical interventions is a concern with survival. Herz would recognise and support all these propositions. As discussed elsewhere, there are problems with Survival Research as expressed by John Herz.56 Its global pretensions and anthropocentrism are obvious openings for critical refutation, as is his faith in political leadership and enduring respect for rationalism. Yet, its possible value to the Anthropocene debate in IR and its extensions into sociopolitical practices are to be found in precisely two aspects of his outlook that would most concern potential critics: realism and pessimism. Anthropocene politics as established in IR cannot be the sole preserve of our critical colleagues: it must involve others, who, like Herz, would self-identify as realists. Herz demonstrates that realism need not be hidebound by an alleged aversion to normativity. After all, do not realists seek to change the world, albeit in the image of the state? This is as much a normative statement

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as any critical intervention. As Michael Desch observes, realists ‘study world politics in order to make it more humane and just within the limits of what international anarchy allows’.57 Enlisting realists in solving the problems of the Anthropocene is an essential factor in moving on the Anthropocene debate from an IR parlour game to a central concern of practical politics. This is precisely the ambition of some of IR’s most strident voices in the contemporary discussion of the Anthropocene, whose ‘Manifesto’ is no less a call for concerted action than anything proposed by Herz.58 Indeed, some of Herz’s friends chided him for starting a ‘crusade’, not something in which a proper realist should engage.59 Herz, however, shows that realism is not always the enemy of activism or ‘progress’. Nor is pessimism. We are told that the Anthropocene demands we remain optimistic about the future, that we embrace ‘affirmative’ ethics to get us through and to thrive.60 In this framing, pessimism leads to resignation and fatalism, neither of which applies to Survival Research. Or perhaps, as Chandler (this volume) argues, we need to move beyond philosophical pessimism, once we abandon modernist presumptions about the split between nature and society. Certainly, Herz’s pessimism was grounded in disillusion with modernity, another facet of his life and work with critical affinities. Read in these terms, Herzian pessimism would appear outdated and dispositional, instead of a quality to be embraced. However, Herz’s pessimism was not a form of ‘passive fatalism’.61 He was very specific that a realistic pessimism clarifies our perspectives on reality and prepares us for the future.62 In this sense, it provides a reasoned foundation upon which action can be based; indeed, in its normative register, must be. Survival Research was his response to pessimism about the future, not a denial of it. Pessimism in this case was productive and operated as the basis for action, not as an excuse for inaction. As he wrote late in life, ‘I consider myself a realist who comes sometimes to pessimistic conclusions, but never gives up looking for solutions if ever so difficult ones’.63 This suggests again that his pessimism was not a psychological attitude but was born of seeing the world as it really is, the claim of all pessimists. As Lebow notes, pessimists ‘do not give up on life but endorse a philosophy of self-conduct that prepares and fortifies us for the unexpected and unpleasant’.64 In Herz, we find a pessimistic diagnosis leading to a positive programme for effecting sociopolitical change. If he were not a pessimist, Survival Research may never have arisen.

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Conclusion The productive pessimism of John Herz found expression in his plans for Survival Research. Although unrealised, Survival Research has much in common with present IR preoccupations and prescriptions for action in the Anthropocene. The ambition of this chapter has been to suggest that productive pessimism can act as a resource for progressive sociopolitical action and to reintroduce Herz’s ideas into the present debate over IR’s engagement with our contemporary condition. Specifically, I argue that pessimism in Herz’s work and ideas is a rational precondition of future-oriented research and problem-solving. It does not stymie research and action but spurs it on. We can learn from this approach when tackling the desperate problems of our time, in IR and elsewhere. While the future may look increasingly bleak to the pessimistic mind— and I include myself in this category—this means we must redouble our efforts to ensure that our pessimism is not rewarded, as it were, by being, ultimately, ‘correct’. Or, at the very least, that we attempt to avert catastrophe, thereby furthering our chances of surviving uncertain times. Survival Research, despite its shortcomings, has at its core a highly political message: adapt or die. This is not the metaphorical exhortation of the business guru but a statement of existential choice that we ignore, literally, at our peril. As Herz found out early in his life, pessimism saved his life. Perhaps it can save ours too.

Notes

1. This chapter is based in part on Tim Stevens, “Exeunt Omnes? Survival, Pessimism and Time in the Work of John H. Herz,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 46, no. 3 (2018): 283–302. 2. Peter Townsend, The Dark Side of Technology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 3.  https://rebellion.earth/ (accessed 27 November 2018). 4. Rens van Munster and Casper Sylvest, Nuclear Realism: Global Political Thought During the Thermonuclear Revolution (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 78. 5. Originally articulated in John H. Herz, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 2, no. 2 (1950): 157–80. 6. An excellent review of Herz’s work is provided by Peter Stirk, “John H. Herz: Realism and the Fragility of the International Order,” Review of International Studies 31, no. 2 (2005): 285–306.

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7. Richard Ned Lebow, “German Jews and American Realism,” Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 18, no. 4 (2011): 560. 8.  Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 261–65; Kennedy Graham, “‘Survival Research’ and the ‘Planetary Interest’: Carrying Forward the Thoughts of John Herz,” International Relations 22, no. 4 (2008): 457–72. 9. John H. Herz, The Nation-State and the Crisis of World Politics: Essays on International Politics in the Twentieth Century (New York: David McKay, 1976), 8. 10.  Miles Kahler, “Rationality in International Relations,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 920. 11. Jana Puglierin, John H. Herz: Leben und Denken zwischen Idealismus und Realismus, Deutschland und Amerika (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2011), 121. 12.  John H. Herz, “Power Politics and World Organization,” American Political Science Review 36, no. 6 (1942): 1042. 13.  John H. Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 228. 14. John H. Herz, “The Impact of the Technological-Scientific Process on the International System,” in The Nation-State and the Crisis of World Politics: Essays on International Politics in the Twentieth Century (New York: David McKay, 1976), 172–94. 15. Rens van Munster and Casper Sylvest, Nuclear Realism: Global Political Thought During the Thermonuclear Revolution (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). 16.  Audra Mitchell, “Is IR Going Extinct?,” European Journal of International Relations 23, no. 1 (2017): 3–25. 17. Herz, International Politics, 316. 18.  Ulrich Beck, “Risk Society and the Provident State,” in Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski, and Brian Wynne, eds., Risk, Environment and Modernity (London: Sage, 1996), 40. There is obvious conceptual affiliation here with Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 19. John H. Herz, “Foreign Policy and Human Survival,” in George Schwab, ed., United States Foreign Policy at the Crossroads (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 167. 20. John H. Herz, “An Internationalist’s Journey Through the Century,” in Joseph Kruzel and James N. Rosenau, eds., Journeys Through World Politics: Autobiographical Reflections of Thirty-Four Academic Travellers (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989), 252.

96  T. STEVENS 21. Herz, “An Internationalist’s Journey,” 256. 22. Martin Wight, “Why Is There No International Theory?” International Relations 2, no. 1 (1960): 48. 23.  Louiza Odysseos, “Dangerous Ontologies: The Ethos of Survival and Ethical Theorizing in International Relations,” Review of International Studies 28, no. 2 (2002): 403–18. 24. Herz, International Politics, 3. 25. Ibid., 311. 26.  John H. Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism: A Study in Theories and Realities (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1951). 27.  See, Christian Hacke and Jana Puglierin, “John H. Herz: Balancing Utopia and Reality,” International Relations 21, no. 3 (2007): 367–82; Ken Booth, “Navigating the ‘Absolute Novum’: John H. Herz’s Political Realism and Political Idealism,” International Relations 22, no. 4 (2008): 510–26. 28. John H. Herz, “Technology, Ethics, and International Relations,” Social Research 43, no. 1 (1976): 109. 29. Ibid., 107–8. 30. Herz, “An Internationalist’s Journey,” 259. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid.; Herz, “Idealist Internationalism,” 178. 33. Herz, “Technology,” 109. 34. Lebow, this volume, 13. 35. Herz, “An Internationalist’s Journey,” 260–61. 36. World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research 59, nos. 3–4 (2002–2003). 37. Ervin László and Peter Seidel, eds., Global Survival: The Challenge and Its Implications for Thinking and Acting (New York: SelectBooks, 2006). Herz’s paper was later published, after many editorial rejections, in revised form as John H. Herz, “Reflections on My Century,” International Journal of Applied Economics and Econometrics 10, no. 1 (2002), 151–63. 38.  Stefan Skrimshire, ed., Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination (London: Continuum, 2010). 39. Tim Stevens, Cyber Security and the Politics of Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 116; Jairus Grove, “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Everything: The Anthropocene or Peak Humanity?” Theory and Event 18, no. 3 (2015), https://muse.jhu.edu/ article/586148 (accessed 1 April 2019). 40. John H. Herz, “On Human Survival: Reflections on Survival Research and Survival Policies,” in Ervin Laszlo and Peter Seidel, eds., Global Survival: The Challenge and Its Implications for Thinking and Acting (New York: Select Books, 2006), 9–25. For an earlier version, see John

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H. Herz, “On Human Survival: Reflections on Survival Research and Survival Policies,” World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research 59, nos. 3–4 (2003): 135–43. 41. Herz, “On Human Survival,” 2006, 11–13. 42. See, for example, Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 43. Herz, “On Human Survival,” 2006, 18. 44. Manfred B. Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the War on Terror (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 45. Herz, “On Human Survival,” 2006, 19. 46. Ibid., 13. 47.  See also, Peter Seidel, “Survival Research: A New Discipline Needed Now,” in Laszlo and Seidel, eds., Global Survival, 1–7. 48. Herz, “On Human Survival,” 2006, 15. 49. Ibid., 16. 50. Stevens, “Exeunt Omnes?,” 299–300. 51. Jan Zalasiewicz, The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). On the origins of the term and its antecedents, see Will Steffen, Jacques Grinevald, Paul Crutzen, and John McNeill, “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (2011): 842–67. 52. Colin N. Waters et al., “Can Nuclear Weapons Fallout Mark the Beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch?,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71, no. 3 (2015): 46–57; Jan Zalasiewicz et al., “When Did the Anthropocene Begin? A Mid-Twentieth Century Boundary Level Is Stratigraphically Optimal,” Quaternary International 383 (2015): 196–203; Colin N. Waters et al., “The Anthropocene Is Functionally and Stratigraphically Distinct from the Holocene,” Science 351, no. 6269 (2016): 137–47. 53.  Will Steffen et  al., “The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship,” AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 40, no. 7 (2011): 739–61; Crispin Tickell, “Societal Responses to the Anthropocene,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (2011): 926–32; Michael A. Ellis and Zev Trachtenberg, “Which Anthropocene Is It to Be? Beyond Geology to a Moral and Public Discourse,” Earth’s Future 2, no. 2 (2014): 122–25. 54.  Stanley C. Finney and Lucy E. Edwards, “The ‘Anthropocene’ Epoch: Scientific Decision or Political Statement?,” GSA Today 26, nos. 3–4 (2016): 4–10; Whitney J. Autin and John M. Holbrook, “Is the Anthropocene an

98  T. STEVENS Issue of Stratigraphy or Pop Culture?,” GSA Today 22, no. 7 (2012): 60–61. On the ICS and its Anthropocene Working Group, see Noel Castree, “The Anthropocene and Geography I: The Back Story,” Geography Compass 8, no. 7 (2014): 436–49. On the implications of ‘geological’ thought for social and political studies, see the special issue, “Geosocial Formations and the Anthropocene,” Theory, Culture & Society 34, nos. 2–3 (2017). 55. Indicative publications include: Anthony Burke, Stefanie Fishel, Audra Mitchell, Simon Dalby, and Daniel J. Levine, “Planet Politics: A Manifesto from the End of IR,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44, no. 3 (2016): 499–523; Nigel Clark, “Anthropocene Incitements: Towards a Politics and Ethics of Ex-Orbitant Planetarity,” in Rens van Munster and Casper Sylvest, eds., The Politics of Globality since 1945: Assembling the Planet (London: Routledge, 2016): 126–44; Madeleine Fagan, “Security in the Anthropocene: Environment, Ecology, Escape,” European Journal of International Relations 23, no. 2 (2017): 292–314; Cameron Harrington, “The Ends of the World: International Relations and the Anthropocene,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44, no. 3 (2016): 478–98; Oran R. Young, “International Relations in the Anthropocene,” in Ken Booth and Toni Erskine, eds., International Relations Theory Today, second edn. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016): 231–49; Stephanie Lawson, “IR Theory in the Anthropocene: Time for a Reality Check?,” in Synne L. Dyvik, Jan Selby, and Rorden Wilkinson, eds., What’s the Point of International Relations? (London: Routledge, 2017): 182–92. 56. Stevens, “Exeunt Omnes?,” 300–1. 57. Michael S. Desch, “It Is Kind to Be Cruel: The Humanity of American Realism,” Review of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 419. 58. Burke et al., “Planet Politics.” 59. Kenneth Thompson and Beverly Thompson, “Human Survival: Crusade or Coherent Plan?” in George Schwab, ed., United States Foreign Policy at the Crossroads (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 195–215. 60.  Cameron Harrington, “Posthuman Security and Care in the Anthropocene,” in Clara Eroukhmanoff and Matt Harker, eds., Reflections on the Posthuman in the International Relations: The Anthropocene, Security and Ecology (Bristol: E-International Relations, 2017), 73–86; Chandler, this volume. 61. Stirk, “John H. Herz,” 306. 62. Puglierin, John H. Herz, 270. 63. Herz, “Reflections,” 151. 64. Lebow, this volume, 13.

PART II

Pessimisms Today

CHAPTER 7

The Global Politics of Ugly Feelings: Pessimism and Resentment in a Mimetic World Elisabetta Brighi

The World at a Loss Contemporary world politics seem to be on the brink of dystopia. The looming threat of environmental catastrophe, the ongoing humanitarian crisis linked to mass migration, and a never-ending global economic recession stand in the background of a politics gone rogue. Resurgent across much of the world, fascism has made considerable inroads in the Americas, in Asia and in Europe. After a phase of gradual erosion, democratic institutions are now shaken to their core by mass movements and street protests seeking to redefine the perimeters and parameters of political space. Finally, global social transformations are threatening long-established identities and their entitlements, while an increasing number of political systems are actively attacking freedoms and progressively restricting rights. The sense of crisis, failure and loss is palpable across much of the world. E. Brighi (*)  University of Westminster, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_7

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In 2015, the media colossus Bloomberg decided to rename its yearly financial forecasts, ‘The Pessimist’s Guide to the Year’. Notably, the scenarios featured in the 2019 edition were generally deemed to be particularly worrying, not due to their fantastical nature but because they had all already ‘happened in the past. Just not at once’.1 This sense of doom and gloom is further mobilised and capitalised upon by world leaders. On 20 January 2017, US President Donald Trump delivered his inauguration speech by depicting a landscape worthy of Edgar Allan Poe, in which through a glass darkly he presented America as a scene of ‘carnage and catastrophe’, threatened at every corner by enemies within and without.2 Indeed, Trump channelled and popularised widely held dark fantasies that reflect an annihilation anxiety in which the world braces itself from falling into an abyss of dread and extinction.3 Meanwhile, in countries such as the US, life expectancy among the once-prosperous white middle class continues to drop due to the staggering rise of the so-called ‘diseases of despair’—drug abuse, including the opioid crisis, alcoholism and suicide.4 All this marks a striking departure from the mood that characterised the final decades of the twentieth century and the turn to the new millennium. Three decades after the world-changing events of 1989, the much-trumpeted triumph of liberal democracy, the affirmation of the neoliberal economic model, and the expansion of the zone of freedom, all seem a long distant memory, a broken illusion, a lost paradigm. The failure of the liberal agenda has ushered much of the world into a phase of disenchantment and retreat. The optimism of the end of the Cold War has thus given way to the pessimism of the twenty-first century. Tellingly, the current global crisis has been readily compared to that of the 1920s and 1930s when, in the words of E.H. Carr, the ‘liberal utopia’ collapsed under the weight of its own illusions and the dark realities of power politics, nationalism and genocidal violence (re-)emerged from the underground.5 And yet, the current moment also resonates with earlier crises; indeed, it harks back to that sense of disorientation, confusion and dread that nineteenth-century existentialists expressed towards a society transfigured by modernity, with its dazzling yet profoundly alienating ways of life.6 What these historical moments have in common is the coming to the surface of ‘ugly feelings’, negative collective moods, sentiments of disenchantments, which have significant yet ambiguous political import.7 Resentment and pessimism stand out as particularly important, and sufficiently ‘ugly’, contemporary dispositions. This chapter provides a

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reading of the global political implications of their current re-emergence. To do so, I first examine the common characteristics of these ugly feelings, highlighting their shared dysphoric roots, their latent and noncathartic nature, and their ambivalent emotional work. Secondly, I expand on the political consequences of this ambiguity, noting how ‘negative emotions’ can serve rather different political purposes along the conservative-progressive, reactionary-emancipatory spectrum. The next two sections focus on resentment and pessimism respectively, contrasting these negative emotions but also highlighting their overlaps and embedding them in the current political scenario to show how they are mobilised in contemporary global politics. The chapter will conclude with an assessment of the mimetic effects of the circulation of negative affects, considering the strategies, tactics and antidotes at our disposal in the process of stemming the global contagion of ugly feelings.

Sentiments of Disenchantment as ‘Ugly Feelings’: Locating Pessimism and Resentment Before dissecting pessimism and resentment qua sentiments of disenchantment, it might be useful to offer a preliminary definition of these dispositions that highlights their common phenomenological matrix, namely the experience of failure and loss. If resentment can be understood as the emotional response to the experience of being unfairly treated, namely a response to a failure of justice—and the loss of trust, or face, that ordinarily comes with it—pessimism is the mental and emotional disposition that acknowledges and anticipates the possibility of failure and loss as inherent, or inevitable, in human affairs. Instantiations of loss and failure include the fallibility of the human condition, the loss of existential meaning, and/or the failure of those personal or collective programmes designed to achieve greater happiness in one’s life or, indeed, in civilisation at large.8 Pessimism and resentment are likely to become dominant collective moods when loss and failure are rife in the historical conjuncture: in such a world, disenchantment prevails. As I argue in the following two sections, there is a lot that distinguishes resentment and pessimism. And yet, because these two dispositions stem from a similar problematique—failure and loss, and the disenchantment that comes with these—in this section, I consider them together. The value of doing so is also to highlight a number of revealing overlaps and similarities, especially when it comes to their political extensions and implications.

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To start with, both pessimism and resentment can be characterised as dysphoric dispositions (as opposed to euphoric ones).9 Dysphoric emotions are difficult to bear in that they come with or convey a sense of unease, pain, dissatisfaction or displeasure. People experiencing pessimism or resentment are, if one sticks to the Greek origin of the term dysphoria, literally ‘feeling bad’ about some distressing, discomforting or disappointing reality. They are in a ‘bad place’, that is, in an emotional dystopia of some kind. These bad feelings, or bad places, however, are distinct from specific psychological conditions such as depression or anxiety—which they can indeed lead to, though not necessarily. Secondly, pessimism and resentment are both semantically and syntactically negative. On the one hand, they are saturated with socially stigmatising meanings and values, associated as they are with unhappy stereotypes and characterisations (such as the pessimist’s proverbial black cloud hanging over their head). On the other, they are organised around trajectories of repulsion rather than attraction. Pessimism and resentment, in other words, seek to create or maintain distance from disappointing states of affairs by moving away from them, or standing against them, instead of embracing them out of a philic friendship with things. Thirdly, and perhaps even more interestingly, both pessimism and resentment can be considered latent and non-cathartic emotions—that is, emotions that have nothing of the immediacy or suddenness of feelings such as fear or anger, and their outbursts. Rather, pessimism and resentment are characterised by flatness and ongoingness. The lack of drama and lack of release associated with these affects means that, unlike anger or rage, these dispositions can be sustained over a long time, often at a low or latent intensity, like an arrow kept in permanent tension by a nagging sense of disappointment, yet never released from its bow. Fourthly, pessimism and resentment may well be triggered by specific situations, aimed at clearly defined objects, and felt by particular subjects. Yet, they tend to pulverise and refract into loose, generic moods that, on the one hand, lack the strategic clarity and goal-orientedness of other negative feelings, such as anger or fear; on the other, are predicated on a blurred, rather than sharp, distinction between subject and object. Finally, and relatedly, these sentiments stand at the margin instead of at the centre of those political projects and theories built around grander and more prestigious feelings such as fear and anger. Suffice here to think of the centrality of fear to the political theory of Thomas Hobbes and Niccolò Machiavelli, or indeed the IR tradition of realism.

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Alternatively, one can think of anger and rage, and their centrality to theories of justice, from Aristotle to today’s postcolonial literature.10 Pessimism and resentment pale in comparison to these distinguished political emotions and do not claim as noble a pedigree in political theory and IR. However, they do excel in the more gloomy task of being ‘sentiments of disenchantment’, in the apt characterisation offered by Italian philosopher Paolo Virno.11 According to Virno, sentiments of disenchantment are distinguished by two key features. On the one hand, they have historically occupied a special place in the critique of modernity—thus, the strong link between negative affects and the Frankfurt School tradition of ‘negative thinking’. On the other hand, sentiments of disenchantments are slippery and complex, ambiguous and ambivalent. Indeed, the politics they sustain is not just ambivalent but also equivocal—it can be radical or reactionary, progressive or conservative, and always needs discerning in context. Regarding the first point, negative affects such as alienation, cynicism or even anxiety were historically endowed with critical and creative potential because of the way they fuelled a form of ‘negative thinking’ that sustained a critique of modernity. Among critical theorists, Herbert Marcuse illustrated most vividly the power of negative thinking in revealing those aspects of domination that revolutionary practice aimed to overcome.12 Marcuse argued that only a critique fuelled by doubt and cynicism would be able to cut through the material conditions of exploitation and the social and psychological mechanisms that concealed such exploitation. That is why cultivating a critical attitude able to embrace feelings of resentment and pessimism was deemed necessary and, in fact, emancipatory. Echoing Adorno and Marcuse, John Holloway recently argued that negative thinking ‘is the only form of thought adequate to a wrong world. […] It is the wrongness of the world that makes dialectics or negative thought necessary […] If the world is wrong, then we are negative beings: our very existence is a movement against’.13 According to a host of critical scholars, therefore, negative emotions did important political work in the twentieth century. Arguably, however, in post-Fordist societies these feelings no longer have an automatic critical potential. As Antonio Negri noted, in the global, postmodern modes of production affect has acquired ‘fundamental productive qualifications’: thus, emotions are mobilised, monetised and actively controlled.14 The injunction of productivity today has entirely captured the affective, emotive sphere, rendering

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emotions just another dimension of performance, just as life becomes another dimension of work.15 What happens then to the emancipatory power of negative feelings? Paolo Virno argues that ‘so-called advanced technologies do not so much provoke alienation, a scattering of some long-vanished “familiarity”, as reduce the experience of even the most radical alienation to a professional profile’.16 Virno warns that negative emotions have been perversely integrated as the operating requirement of such societies, fully reabsorbed and reconfigured, perfectly functional and hegemonic in our contemporary precarious lives: ‘nihilism, once the dark side of technology’s productive power, has become one of its fundamental ingredients, a prized commodity’.17 It is fair to ask ourselves, therefore, whether negative emotions today are still what they used to be. My wager is that we cannot automatically associate any critical or emancipatory power to the affects of resentment or pessimism today—this is obvious when we consider how these moods are mobilised by both the Right and the Left in contemporary global politics, lending their power to both conservative and progressive projects. The ambivalence of these ‘sentiments of disenchantment’ therefore must be placed in full view. What kind of political subjectivity do resentment and pessimism sustain today? What is the global politics of these ugly feelings? In the next two sections I turn to each sentiment in search of answers.

The Ambivalent Politics of Resentment/Ressentiment As an ugly feeling, resentment has a bad name and a long history.18 Ordinarily, resentment is considered a negative political emotion—not only corrosive of human relationships but detrimental, on a collective and political scale, to civic compassion and social order, as liberal philosopher Martha Nussbaum has most recently restated.19 A long tradition in modern Western political thought, from Grotius to Norbert Elias, has attached a stigma to ‘red’ emotions such as anger, rage and indeed resentment, considering these primarily as destructive forces to be contained by reason, or transcended through charity. Interestingly, however, a different reading of this ugly feeling has recently re-emerged in political theory and moral philosophy. According to this counter-narrative that draws on the Aristotelian reading of anger as a morally useful affect, resentment has been rediscovered as a virtuous affect. Rather than being the enemy of political causes, resentment has been viewed, in the words of Adam Smith, as the

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‘guardian of justice’.20 That is, the emotional state which, more than any other sentiment, including charity and forgiveness, proves that we care about and are ‘committed to certain moral standards, as regulative of social life’.21 Instead of an emotion incompatible with social order, as ‘a passion for justice denied’, writes Robert Solomon, ‘resentment lies at the heart of democracy’.22 Resentment is not only an appropriate individual response to failures of justice, but it is also an indispensable attitude to cultivate if an overall degree of fairness is to be maintained in society. There is virtue in resentment, in other words, as Holocaust survivor Jean Améry famously claimed.23 However, there is yet another story that can be told about resentment, one that highlights a further ambiguity in this sentiment, as well as the ambivalent nature of the politics inspired by it. This story is well encapsulated in the slight literal variation that separates the two terms commonly used to refer to this sentiment—resentment and ressentiment. If resentment has been given a virtuous face when it indicates a legitimate response to a perceived injustice, ressentiment has traditionally been painted in less favourable terms and equated with metaphysical envy and narcissistic rage. While resentment is understood to denote a legitimate sense of anger, and a desire for justice in the face of an injury, ressentiment indicates the pernicious and self-defeating folding-in of this emotion onto itself. It is the spiteful and counterproductive mentality cultivated by victims or ‘slaves’, in Nietzsche’s famous characterisation.24 According to Max Scheler’s reading of Nietzsche’s ressentiment, the origin of this emotion lies not in questions of justice but in questions of recognition, in particular the envy that derives from comparing oneself to others and resenting one’s inferiority. ‘Envy […] is the strongest source of ressentiment. It is as if it whispers continually: “I can forgive everything, but not that you are – that you are what you are – that I am not what you are – indeed that I am not you”’.25 Ressentiment is therefore a frustrated, ossified and ultimately generalised form of resentment; it is the affect that underpins the construction of scapegoats, the exercise of revenge, and the affirmation of a negative or inverted form of enjoyment. For the subject experiencing ressentiment, enjoyment perversely comes more from the misfortunes of others than an increase in one’s well-being. Interestingly, a number of contemporary political and social theorists, such as Wendy Brown, William Connolly but also Réne Girard, seem to be in agreement that ressentiment, rather than resentment, is one of the dominant moods of our age. The conditions of late modernity, with the

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apparently limitless expansion of neoliberalism and its logic of extreme competition, create the breeding ground for an explosion not so much of resentment but of ressentiment. As Wendy Brown stated, individuals are ‘starkly accountable, yet dramatically impotent’—as such, they are ‘quite literally seething with ressentiment’.26 Further, Réne Girard argued that rivalry and envy, already normally present in human relations given their inevitably mimetic nature, have escalated out of proportions in late modernity due to the very operating principles of liberal and capitalist societies. This creates an epidemic of envy and ressentiment.27 William Connolly submitted that contemporary ressentiment is not only about the return of a Nietzschean, existential resentment against mortality and our finitude, but it is also about ‘stored resentment that has poisoned the soul and migrated to places where it is hidden and denied’, a ressentiment grown out of ‘an accumulation of justified resentments’ that got somehow congealed and encoded into the political sphere.28 While resentment has been given credit as a negative emotion with critical potential, ressentiment has not been considered generative of emancipatory possibilities. Gilles Deleuze proposed that far from being an active and positive mode of political action, ressentiment is an alienating and non-emancipatory negative emotion, one that decomposes resistance and incapacitates contestation.29 More recently, Éric Fassin has looked at the question of resentment and ressentiment in connection with the contemporary return of populism.30 In his recent book Populisme: le grand ressentiment, Fassin recognises once again the ambivalent politics of resentment which, on the one hand, has been appropriated by the right to fuel, as ressentiment, an increasing xenophobic sentiment against migrants and minorities; but, on the other hand, has also been reintroduced, qua resentment, in the discourse of the new ‘populist left’ to inspire the struggle against economic elites and for greater economic and social equality. Resentment therefore emerges as an ambivalent and ambiguous expression of our contemporary disenchantment—its political work is complex, equivocal and ever-shifting. Can the same be said about pessimism?

Pessimism as Melancholia: On the Creative Possibilities of Negativity As a sad passion, in Spinozan terms, pessimism shares a number of characteristics with resentment. This dysphoric, non-cathartic, flat emotion suggests a degree of suspended or obstructed agency—either in the

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subject, or in the context that gave rise to such feelings. Moods associated with pessimism, such as cynicism and above all melancholia, were central to nineteenth-century existentialism in the same way as resentment. As signals of radical alienation from the system and, as such, affects with critical potential, these moods were also valued in the process of critique of modernity. However, can the same be said now about contemporary forms of pessimism? Is the politics of pessimism today as ambiguous and slippery as the politics of resentment, caught between emancipatory and reactionary tendencies? In what follows I concentrate on pessimism understood as melancholia, starting from how one of the foremost pessimists of the last century, Sigmund Freud, introduced and understood such concepts. The series of works that properly started psychoanalysis at the turn of the twentieth century are arguably imbued with a pessimism that, on the one hand, has survived until today and, on the other, reflects Freud’s own sense of helplessness in the face of the human condition, as well as the specific cultural and political developments leading up to the two World Wars. Freud’s pessimism developed gradually to assume an ontological and metaphysical, as well as cultural and ethical, nature.31 The foundation of Freud’s ontological and metaphysical pessimism can be traced to the rejection of the Enlightenment’s optimism regarding the place of rationality and freedom of the will in human nature. Freud’s inquiry into the unconscious is nothing but an attempt to debunk the illusion that human beings determine their own destiny out of a rational and realistic pursuit of happiness. To start with, Freud’s theory of subjectivity places the conscious, rational self (the ego) in a complex triangle of forces which constantly threaten to overpower it— some of these wholly unconscious (the id), some super-conscious (the super-ego). Either way, to use Freud’s famous expression, our rational self, our ego, is not ‘master in its own house’.32 As a consequence, any sense of conscious control and direction over our own lives is bound to be severely limited; indeed, it is an illusion. Happiness, furthermore, is more futile and less realistic a prospect than its opposite, pain. Although our lives are dictated by instincts aimed at satisfying ‘the programme of the pleasure principle […], this programme is at loggerheads with the whole world’. As Freud laconically notes in Civilisation and its Discontents, ‘one feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be “happy” is not included in the plan of “Creation”’.33 From these ontological and metaphysical considerations, a strong form of ethical and cultural pessimism follows. Firstly, as Freud readily

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concedes in his 1920 book Beyond the Pleasure Principle, love and our libidinal instincts provide only one of the two foundations upon which our existence is built—the other foundation being an equally powerful set of instincts, born out of aggression and driven by the death principle. ‘As well as Eros, there [is] an instinct of death. The phenomena of life could be explained from the concurrent or mutually opposing action of these two instincts’.34 Aggressiveness is an ‘indestructible’ feature of human nature, admits Freud after approvingly citing the Latin maxim ‘homo homini lupus’.35 If the father of psychoanalysis was pessimistic about the human condition, he was even more disenchanted about the future of civilisation. That the instinct to destroy and kill has been a constant force since the dawn of humanity is testified by Freud’s assertion in Totem and Taboo that, at the root of civilisation and culture, one finds murder—namely, the foundational murder of the primal father.36 Civilisation, therefore, is nothing but an immense attempt at maintaining peace—a fragile state of affairs perpetually ‘threatened with disintegration’.37 The two World Wars only reinforced Freud’s sense of the irreparably flawed nature of the human endeavour, revealing how unstable (and hypocritical) our civilisational foundations were, and how illusory the chances of peace. In his 1915 essay, Timely Reflections on War and Death, Freud writes: ‘war cannot be done away with; as long as the conditions of life of the various nations are so different and the conflicts between them so violent, wars will be inevitable […]. We remember the old proverb: Si vis pacem, para bellum. This might be the time to alter it to read as follows: Si vis vitam, para mortem. If you wish to endure life, prepare yourself for death’.38 Furthermore, in his 1933 exchange of letters with Albert Einstein, with Nazism on the rise in Germany, Freud restated his belief that any attempt to outlaw war was bound to fail: ‘The ideal condition of things would of course be a community of men who had subordinated their instinctual life to the dictatorship of reason… But in all probability that is a Utopian expectation’.39 The problem of loss and death, so vividly imprinted in Freud’s consciousness by two World Wars, the loss of his beloved daughter Sophie, and his own persecution as a Jewish intellectual, occupies a central place in Freud’s entire psychoanalytical palimpsest. The question of how to cope with loss and death animates, in particular, Freud’s 1917 paradigm-altering reflections on Mourning and Melancholia.40 Arguably, this contribution provides an essential angle into the varieties and

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complexities of pessimism, both past and contemporary. While in his early work Freud understood melancholia as a form of depression of variable intensity, drawing on the then popular theory of neurasthenia, two decades later Freud identified mourning and melancholia more specifically as two different responses to the same problem, that of loss. If mourning is the normal mechanism through which we struggle to come to terms with the loss of an object to which we are consciously attached, melancholia is the affect generated by our inability to fully integrate loss. Appalled by the loss of the loved object, the melancholic subject refuses to let it go, to the point that they identify and fuse with it, at the expense of their own self: ‘in mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself’.41 Thus, despite the pain and disappointment that its loss has caused, the loved object is safe, but the melancholic subject is not—they start tormenting and criticising themselves, losing faith in their own self. ‘If the love for the object, which cannot be abandoned while the object itself is abandoned, has fled into narcissistic identification, hatred goes to work on this substitute object. […] And this signifies the satisfaction of tendencies of sadism and hatred, which are […] turned back against the subject’s own self’.42 This is how, according to Freud, pessimism turns into melancholia and, oftentimes, into a form of mania—via a narcissistic regression and an unacknowledged rejection of the ambivalence the subject felt towards the loved object in the first place. If this is Freud’s understanding of pessimism and melancholia, it is worth asking now what the political work of pessimism and, in particular, melancholia might be. As in the case of resentment, my argument is that this sentiment of disenchantment has translated into an ambivalent, equivocal and at times perverse kind of politics, suspended between action and reaction. A contemporary of Freud, Walter Benjamin, was the first to warn against the prevalence of a certain pessimistic, indeed melancholic, attitude especially among progressives on the Left. Benjamin mocked self-professed radicals of his time for merely mimicking the needs of the proletariat while being devoid of any genuine revolutionary praxis, thus providing a ‘papier-maché’ version of ‘the revolutionary gesture, the raised arm, the clenched fist’.43 Benjamin was, in other words, concerned about the way in which critique could turn into an empty and narcissistic nihilism, a ‘negativistic quiet’ which provided these intellectuals ‘comfortable arrangements […] in an uncomfortable situation’.44

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More recently, the debate about the future of the Left after 1989, the crisis of social democratic parties, and the global recession of 2008, has once again trodden on the terrain of pessimism and melancholia, assessing the political potential and pitfalls of these moods. In a 1999 piece titled ‘Resisting Left Melancholy’, Wendy Brown returned to both Freud and Benjamin to launch an attack against the way the Left had fundamentally failed to reorganise and restructure itself after the end of Communism.45 Brown accused the Left of being ‘more attached to its impossibility than to its potential fruitfulness, to its own marginality and failure rather than its hopefulness’.46 Although to some extent inevitable, given the Left’s siding with the underprivileged and the marginal, progressives had developed an unhealthy, traumatic attachment to defeat, including the historical defeats of the twentieth century. The Left, notes Brown, seems to be caught in ‘a structure of melancholic attachment to a certain strain of its own dead past, whose spirit is ghostly, whose structure of desire is backward looking and punishing’.47 It is precisely the sentiments of pessimism and melancholia ‘about broken promises and lost compasses’ that create ‘potentially conservative and even selfdestructive undersides of putatively progressive political aims’.48 Similarly to Benjamin, Brown intended to warn against the subtle nihilism of melancholia and the way this risked incapacitating and paralysing the Left precisely at a time of great need for a revived left-wing politics. In contrast to Brown’s arguments, Enzo Traverso presented an alternative view of a melancholic left-wing politics, one able to depathologise melancholia, celebrate a form of healthy, rather than self-satisfied, nihilism and rehabilitate it as a potential site of resistance.49 Traverso agrees that after the ‘eclipse of utopias’, the Left cannot but be burdened with a sadness it cannot dispel, which comes from defeat. However, sadness, detachment and irony can be points of departure—notwithstanding the imperatives of political action. After all, the transformation of the world, he suggests, can never be anything more than a ‘melancholic bet’.50 Along similar lines, in Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher offered important reflections on the role of negative feelings in building a progressive future.51 Although recognising that there is probably no escape from neoliberalism and its pervasiveness, Fisher is critical especially of that kind of left-wing politics which has replaced class analysis with moralism, solidarity with guilt and fear—appropriating forms of bourgeois nihilism that traditionally would be the purview of conservative movements. Recuperating the lessons of Marcuse and Adorno, Fisher contrasts this

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form of impotent melancholia and nihilistic pessimism with the real power of negative thinking, which can only consist of a conscious and deliberate politicisation of the overwhelmingly negative emotions of our age.52 The project of turning depression into anger was not one that Fisher himself could carry out in his own life.53 However, I would argue it remains his most important legacy.

Feeling Dangerously—Final Thoughts It would be bad enough to inhabit a world swallowed by rising tides of negative emotions. What this chapter sought to demonstrate is that the real complexity of the ugly feelings currently sweeping across the four continents is their treacherous, ambiguous and duplicitous nature. Resentment and pessimism have both gone global and constitute an important affective vector of international politics today. And yet, if there is certainly virtue in ‘feeling bad’, that is, feeling resentful or pessimistic, when this condition corresponds respectively to a clear commitment to pursue questions of global justice, or expose the affective micro-foundations that sustains neoliberal forms of exploitation, these sentiments of disenchantments can just as easily be hijacked by global political actors in an attempt to sustain narcissistic, self-satisfied subjectivities, incapable of acting politically and confined to narrow horizons. Spinoza famously argued that, insofar as it incapacitates action, inspiring sad passions is necessary for the exercise of power and indeed functional to the maintenance of hegemonic regimes and the stifling of any resistance.54 Before and contra Nietzsche, he was unconvinced that pessimism could lead to the life-affirming joy necessary for acting in the world—just as he condemned resentment and, a fortiori, ressentiment in as categorical a way as Nietzsche two centuries later. Therefore, today we should be asking ourselves whether the global hegemony of deeply conservative projects such as neoliberalism, or the growing threat of global fascism, can truly be tackled without questioning the envious, narcissistic and nihilistic affects on which these developments critically rely. There is, however, another complication to acknowledge. While the distinction between resentment and ressentiment, and between pessimism and melancholia, may be clear analytically, it certainly is not always clear in practice. When white masculinity in the US today can claim to be legitimately resentful towards minorities, invoking in all seriousness the status of ‘victim’—despite it being objectively hegemonic, and in fact

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conveniently using this discourse of victimhood to actually reassert its privilege—we are evidently confronted with two problems. On the one hand, the particularly slippery problem of how to adjudicate between the subjective and objective status of emotions that are structurally equivocal, built as they are on a poorly formed, if not wholly blurred, distinction between subject and object. On the other hand, the problem of how quickly these distinctions evaporate in the light of the highly mimetic, or viral, nature of today’s social ontology.55 The pace and intensity with which affect circulates globally today, not least thanks to social media, means that contagion effects are par for the course and that affects morph and mutate into memes at dazzling, uncontrollable speed. If this impairs our ability to unequivocally read contemporary moods and use them diagnostically to know something about our age, it may teach us the virtues of irony and humility which may well be necessary to read a complex present. In conclusion, pessimism and resentment may be hard to decipher and discern today and yet, this is the task that lies ahead for us, albeit in somewhat inauspicious circumstances. The contemporary capture of affect by neoliberalism, in particular, is bringing the process of atomisation and alienation of society to perfection. The possibility of consciousness—at both the collective and individual level—is actively controlled, limited and perverted. It is all the more urgent, therefore, to adopt a critical, almost genealogical approach to today’s ugly feelings, an approach able not least to keep open the possibility of reconstituting them. As Paolo Virno warned three decades ago already, in a cautious challenge to the power of negativity, ‘every new demand for liberation can do nothing but retrace, if under an opposing banner, the paths along which the experiences of the opportunist, the cynic, and the pessimist, have already run their course’.56

Notes

1. Agnieszka de Souza, “The Pessimist’s Guide to 2019: Fire, Floods and Famine,” 14 December 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/ pessimists-guide-to-2019/ (accessed 18 January 2019). 2. Michael Ure, “Trump’s Gothic Populism,” Public Seminar, 15 February 2017,  http://www.publicseminar.org/2017/02/trumps-gothic-populism/#_ednref3 (accessed 24 January 2019). 3. David P. Levine, Dark Fantasy (London: Karnac Books, 2018).

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4. Joshua Cohen, “‘Diseases of Despair’ Contribute to Declining US Life Expectancy,” Forbes, 19 July 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/ joshuacohen/2018/07/19/diseases-of-despair-contribute-to-declining-u-s-life-expectancy/ (accessed 24 January 2019). 5. E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016 [1939]). 6. Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York: Penguin, 1975). 7.  For the important debate concerning the difference between emotions, mood and affect, see Peter Goldie, The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and, in an IR context, Roland Bleiker and Emma Hutchison, “Theorizing Emotions in World Politics,” International Theory 6, no. 3 (2014): 500–3. In this chapter, however, I will use such terms interchangeably. 8. Lebow, this volume. 9. For an insightful dissection of a variety of ‘ugly feelings’ as sentiments of disenchantments, see Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). In this section I interrogate and extend Ngai’s diagnostics. 10.  See, respectively, Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou, Realism and Fear in International Relations: Morgenthau, Waltz and Mearsheimer Reconsidered (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Maureen Whitebrook, “Love and Anger as Political Virtues,” in Michael Ure and Mervyn Frost, eds., The Politics of Compassion (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 21–36. 11.  Paolo Virno, “The Ambivalence of Disenchantment,” in Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt, eds., Radical Thought in Italy (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 17. 12.  Herbert Marcuse, “A Note on Dialectic,” in Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, eds., The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (New York: Continuum Books), 445. 13.  John Holloway, Fernando Matamoros, and Sergio Tischler, eds., Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism (London: Pluto Press, 2008), 8, added emphasis. 14.  Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, “Value and Affect,” Boundary 2 26, no. 2 (1999): 86. 15. See David Chandler and Christian Fuchs, Digital Objects, Digital Subjects (London: University of Westminster Press, 2019). 16. Virno, “The Ambivalence of Disenchantment,” 14. 17. Ibid., 14–15. 18. For a longer treatment of resentment in global politics, see Elisabetta Brighi, “The Globalisation of Resentment: Failure, Denial, and Violence in World Politics,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44, no. 3 (2016): 411–32, on which this section draws.

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19. Martha Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity and Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 315. 20. Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 43. 21. Richard Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 69. 22. Robert C.A. Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the Social Contract (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990), 270. 23. Jean Améry, At The Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (New York: Schocken, 1980). 24. Marc Ferro, Resentment in History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010). 25. Max Scheler, Ressentiment (New York: Shocken, 1972 [1912]), 52. 26.  Wendy Brown, “Wounded Attachments,” Political Theory 21, no. 3 (1993): 402. 27. Rene Girard, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2010). 28. William Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 213; Connolly, “A World of Becoming,” in Alan Finlayson, ed., Democracy and Pluralism: The Political Thought of William Connolly (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 228–30. 29. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 57. 30. Éric Fassin, Populisme: Le Grand Ressentiment (Paris: Les Éditions Textuel, 2017); forthcoming in English as Populism, Left and Right (Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press). 31. For a comprehensive philosophical introduction to Freud and his works, see Jonathan Lear, Freud, second edn. (New York: Routledge, 2015); Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 84–117. 32. Sigmund Freud, “A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-Analysis,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVII (1917–1919), trans. and ed. James Strachey (London: Vintage, 2001), 143. 33. Sigmund Freud, “Civilization and Its Discontents,” in Peter Gay, ed., The Freud Reader (London: Vintage, 1995), 729. 34. Ibid., 754. 35. ‘Man is a wolf to man’, a proverb which Thomas Hobbes also used in his De Cive to illustrate the dangerous character of the ‘state of nature’. Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen, ed. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 3.

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36.  Sigmund Freud, “Totem and Taboo,” in On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia (London: Penguin, 2005), 141–42. 37. Freud, “Civilization and Its Discontents,” 750. 38. Sigmund Freud, “Timely Reflections on War and Death,” in On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia, 193–94. 39. Sigmund Freud, “Why War?” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXII (1932–1936), 199. 40. Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia, 203–18. 41. Ibid., 205–6. 42. Ibid., 211. 43.  Walter Benjamin, “Left-Wing Melancholy,” in Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, eds., Selected Writings: 1927–1934, vol. 2, part 2 (1931–1934) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 424. 44. Ibid., 425. 45.  Wendy Brown, “Resisting Left Melancholy,” Boundary 2 26, no. 3 (1999), 19–27. 46. Ibid., 26. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 27. 49. Enzo Traverso, Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 50. Ibid., 234. 51. Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester: Zero Books, 2008). 52. See also, Mark Fisher, “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” Open Democracy, 24 November 2013, https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/markfisher/exiting-vampire-castle (accessed 24 January 2019). 53. For an obituary reflecting on Mark Fisher’s suicide and the difference between pessimism and negative thought, see Adam Harper, “Negativity, Not Pessimism! Remembering Mark Fisher (1968–2017),” Open Democracy, 16 January 2017, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/negativity-not-pessimism-remembering-mark-fisher-1968-2017/ (accessed 1 April 2019). 54. Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San Francisco, CA: City Lights, 1988), 25–26. 55. See Christian Borch, ed., Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion: On Mimesis and Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019). 56. Virno, “The Ambivalence of Disenchantment,” 32.

CHAPTER 8

Pessimism and the Alt-Right: Knowledge, Power, Race and Time Nicholas Michelsen and Pablo de Orellana

Introduction Contemporary pessimisms intersect with wider patterns of reflection about the failures of progress, with implications for world order, democracy, social cohesion and cultural stability. The example of contemporary pessimism that we take as our focus here, a loose assemblage of groups largely based in the United States, which self-define as Alt-Right, develop a distinctive conceptualisation of progress in this context. Not unlike the New Left movements of the 1960s, their attitudes to time and progress reflect disaffection with modernity and the institutions of liberal democracy and liberal global governance. Such attitudes are far from a simply reactionary phenomenon, though its most reactionary forms interest us here. This chapter seeks to make sense of the pessimistic frames that govern thinking about progress in the US Alt-Right. It focuses on three core elements of how they see the world deteriorating: information and N. Michelsen (*)  Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] P. de Orellana  King’s College London, London, UK © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_8

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knowledge; the survival of birth-culture as ethnic identity; and the role of rupture—the expected race war. These three core elements, we argue, provide a framework for Alt-Right mnemonics (functional memory) of time, progress and, ultimately, politics. Pessimism has long been a central feature within diverse political and international theoretical traditions and approaches to history, as the other contributions in this volume demonstrate. Within IR, liberalism, conservatism, realism, the critical Frankfurt School tradition, among others, are rife with pessimism. Pessimists often read history through the prism of natural limitations, historical decline, crisis, corruption, reversion, or even millenarian catastrophe. The Alt-Right has, over the past two decades, developed a distinct strand of political pessimism that constitutes a complex and functional form of historico-political thinking. What is at stake in identifying and understanding the Alt-Right’s reactionary pessimism is, first, that it effectively participates in governing their understanding of knowledge, progress, power, identity and gender. Second, this temporal frame is actively involved in the creation of movements seeking to reform or transform society, and their attendant discourses. Much has been said of the apocalyptic visions that marked the life of Islamic State (ISIS), or other fanatical religious movements.1 However, a pessimistic reading of human nature and historical progress, particularly in relation to race and identity, is a distinctive feature of the American far right and particularly its contemporary Alt-Right expressions.2 Recent attempted and executed far-right attacks in the United States, Britain and New Zealand have revealed expectations of a race war in perpetrators.3 These actors explicitly wish to bring about or participate in the opening salvos of racial conflict because the pessimistic frame they use to interpret human progress, based on identity purity, posits interracial conflict in the near future as inevitable. These forms of historico-political thinking ground a pessimistic understanding of the contemporary condition. The expectation is that it will inevitably lead to an apocalyptic rupture when, as with the Book of Revelations, its ISIS equivalent, and other millenarian conceptualisations of progress, good and evil will battle in a final confrontation for the rule of heaven and earth. The use of the term ‛apocalyptic’ is appropriate, for we are looking at the prediction of a final material and normative struggle constructed around three key concerns: pessimism regarding institutional agents of truth; pessimism regarding the survival of identity; and

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the certainty of an upcoming race war. The structures of racial pessimism in movements on the far- or Alt-right sit alongside, and indeed purportedly exist because of, a pattern of racial optimism dominating liberal politics. This they see in either the assumption that race and racism are, or should be, a decreasingly significant feature of political life, or as a secret but nonetheless functional fact of liberal life, against which struggle must be continual. Our focus on the apocalyptic pessimism of the Alt-Right, like other contributions to this volume, draws attention to the return of pessimistic historico-political formations which had been out of fashion for at least half a century (although see Tatum, this volume). In this contribution, we define pessimism as a conceptual mechanism that explains progress over time and which privileges a sense that things are getting worse. In this frame, Alt-Right pessimist discourses achieve a very specific production of expectations, politics and subjectivity constructed around pessimistic mnemonics of human evolution. We use the term mnemonics, first, because we do not attribute a truly historical explanation of history to this historico-political formation, and second, because its conceptual and systematic functionality is more akin to a simple, racialised and identitarian grand narrative-like set of logical shortcuts that make sense of progress. This chapter explores the role of this temporal subjective framing in three moves. They address the Alt-Right’s pessimism regarding institutional agents of truth; the survival of identity; and the certainty of the rupture of society in the form of a race war and/or a collapse of the democratic state. This is part of broader research agenda concerned with a key contemporary nationalist movement, which we term by their self-styling New Right, and the discursive, policy, and even terrorist effects of their core philosophical machinery, which we call Reactionary Internationalism.

Exiting the Cathedral: Pessimistic Knowledge and Liberal Power The Alt-Right frames its understanding of politics in a pessimistic reading of the state of knowledge itself. That is, the production, interpretation and public delivery of knowledge. This epistemological pessimism is far more important than the seemingly absurd conspiracy theories of these online communities might suggest.4 It speaks, in fact, to the core

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reason these theories and the broader discourse of ‘fake news’ they have enabled in mainstream channels have been so successful in recent years.5 There is a widely shared understanding in the Alt-Right and more broadly in the American Right that dominant liberal institutions, universities, political and media elites, and major news outlets, act only as instruments for the furthering of a corrupt ideological dogmatic formation. They particularly see it as operating disciplinary mechanisms tied to definitions of acceptable speech and behaviours that are at odds with the ‘natural’ cultural norms of society, and itself.6 This is why the first move of all affiliated groups is to attack political correctness. The loose intellectual grouping termed the Dark Enlightenment (also known as NeoReaction or NeoRx) posits that liberal philosophy is a form of theological thinking, which updates Christian mysticism only to mask its continuing operation under an equally dogmatic secular ideology.7 This ideological formation is termed by one its leading thinkers, Mencius Moldbug (real name Curtis Yarvin), ‘The Cathedral’. This framework has given rise to a significant pattern of critique of modern society, mostly occurring online but which in recent years has spilled into the mainstream.8 Its core premise, which effectively functions as the primary epistemological mechanism of the Alt-Right, is that all contemporary information is overdetermined by a superstructural formation that imposes its subjectivities, analytics and solutions through elite structures like universities and the media.9 The concept of The Cathedral is not simply an obscure online meme. Alt-Right groups almost universally claim that modernism, ‘embodied’ in liberalism, is the ‘dominant ideology’.10 The Alt-Right, its European self-styled ‘New Right’ equivalents (Lega in Italy, FN in France, Leave.EU Brexiteers, Fidesz in Hungary, and others) as well as their leading thinkers, cohere around a critique of the architectures of modernist ‘thought control’—precisely the structures that Yarvin describes as The Cathedral.11 This problematisation of the dominant understanding of modern society and history is exemplified in the illusion-busting ‘red pill’, a widespread metaphor in Alt-Right discourse drawn from the popular film, The Matrix (1999), that articulates participation in the movement as itself an act of rebellion and liberation from ideological constraints.12 This freedom in turn makes it possible to transgress the constraints of power and return to reality. This account is at the root of the widespread acceptance in the Alt-Right of the idea that ‘mainstream’ media cannot be trusted; nor can

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political elites or representatives of scientific expertise such as academics.13 The concept of a visible yet invisible superstructure for the determination of credible knowledge claims runs operationally throughout the Alt-Right. True knowledge thus requires transgression of the disciplinary rules of the dominant ideology, which is expressed as a form of celebrant alienation. This is evident in memes featuring Pepe the Frog and a distinctively fierce form of ‘edgy’ humour that seeks to dismantle political correctness, which they read as a form of tyranny designed to sabotage the ‘natural’ superiority of whites. As with all liberal thinking, the AltRighter is encouraged to resist and develop resilience to these lies.14 Despite its diversity, the Alt-Right assemble around pessimism regarding the supposed protectors of enlightenment and knowledge, and the embrace of alienation from modernity. As Nick Land, another key thinker of the NeoReactionary strand of the Alt-Right, observed in his reading of Yarvin, this is a movement ‘entangling the urbane, cosmopolitan advocates of hyper-contractarian marketization with romantic traditionalists, ethno-particularists, and nostalgics of the “Lost Cause”’.15 This more complex assemblage distinguishes the American Alt-Right from the rest of the New Right, though both share the Gramscian presumption ‘that political change follows cultural and social change’.16 The Alt-Right assemblage is united in seeing politics as ‘down-stream from culture’ (a quote attributed to Andrew Breitbart), and as requiring struggle against the dominant forces that have captured the cultural common sense.17 This struggle begins, always, with a call for pessimism as to what is seen, heard, expected, and the explanations offered. This is what renders the cry ‘fake news’ so intuitive and appealing to the Alt-Right and why all other information falls flat. The struggle against The Cathedral also explains the success of conspiracy news on a bewildering array of topics: because the very act of seeking epistemic alternatives to liberal ideology means that ‘you are the resistance’.18 While easily parodied as paranoid conspiracy theorists, the Alt-Right cleavage of fake/real is governed by a powerful conceptual structure predicated on believability according to speaker. That truth-teller role is defined, like the nation, according to a racialised conceptualisation of culture and by their willingness to breach hegemonic liberal discursive limitations. This capacity to break rules on behalf of the ‘real’ nation is vital to achieving and maintaining a truth-teller role in the Alt-Right. It is why such politicians place so much stock on their capacity to behave and speak through irreverential and provocative breaches of

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political correctness. This enunciative position is, crucially, maintained by powerful norm-framing signals such as Trump’s qualification of ‘both sides’ in reference to Charlottesville, his persistent references to Latino ‘animals’, and tenacity on his border wall.19 As with other nationalist discourses of truth, this is frequently defined against the lies propagated by identity traitors.20 Truth-teller validity can have remarkable durability once established. Trump achieved this during the election campaign, which explains how, despite regularly issuing questionable ‘alternative facts’ from the White House, Trump is still believed by followers.21 For Alt-right pessimists, truth and knowledge are the central battlefield. The subjectivity and believability of news is simply a facet of AltRight attitudes to all modern knowledge. Pessimism about modern sources of knowledge is architectural to the critique of society that animates the Alt-Right. There are long and deep roots to this pessimism about knowledge, resting on the Evolan tradition of ‘resisting the subjectivity of modernity’ which is, by the same mechanism, why the Alt-Right rewards Trump’s anti-liberal outrage.22 ‘Natural’ identities—biological ideas of nation and gender, discussed below—remain the only category able to govern the production and dissemination of knowledge. This is why our analysis suggests that Trump’s production of identitarian, racial and gendered outrage is in fact his key link to Alt-Right supporters. AltRight truth-tellers validate their speech and credentials not by reference to established modern and liberal-institutional grounds for credibility but by their radical departure from them.

‘Humanity as Such Does Not Exist’: Survival, Identity and Time The radical departure from liberalism is clearest when it comes to identity. The rejection of liberal common sense is heavily invested in the rejection of the modernist ‘superstition-belief’ in a subjective ‘tabula rasa’, by which subjects are viewed as constituted by and adaptive to their lived environment. As De Benoist, a leading thinker in the New Right whose work is widely read in the US Alt-Right, postulates ‘Man is not born like a blank page. Every single individual bears the general characteristics of the species, to which are added specific hereditary predispositions to certain particular aptitudes and modes of behaviour. The individual does not decide this inheritance, which limits his autonomy and plasticity but also allows him to resist political and

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social conditioning’. In this logic, rejecting the universality of humanity reframes universalist norms as treacherous betrayal of the identity defined by ‘specific hereditary predispositions’.23 The Alt-Right assumes the reality of, and need for, subjective agency and adaptivity but views it as determined by biological boundaries that in turn produce culture. Man can only ‘construct himself historically and culturally on the basis of the presuppositions of his biological constitution, which are his human limitations’.24 Thus, the French New Right proposed a vision of a well-balanced individual, taking into account both inborn, personal characteristics and the social environment. It rejects ideologies that emphasise only one of these factors, be it biological, economic or mechanical. Because in this frame culture is held up as the key differentiation while remaining determined by racial biology, we refer to this influential conceptualisation of identity as birth-culture.25 In other words, human subjectivity is a matter of indigenous qualities mediated through engagement with history. This account of agency as adaptive but not plastic is what is at stake in the claim that ‘different cultures provide different responses to essential questions’, and that ‘man is by nature rooted in his culture […] at the interface of the universal (his species) and the particular (each culture, each epoch)’. In this reading, projects of universalism are always necessarily totalitarian, inasmuch as they seek to efface or ignore the rooting of agency in determined biological particularity.26 Programmatically, rather than treating biocultural diversity as a ‘burden’ to be reduced, ‘diversity is to be welcomed, and should be maintained and cultivated’. Indigenous diversity is what is placed at fatal risk by modernity, calling for political action to sustain the particular against universalist indifference.27 The birth-cultural bind grounds arguments for indigeneity and therefore pessimistic views of impurity. In the discourses of the white nationalists of the US Alt-Right, the refusal to ‘negate the concept of races’ is derived from the refusal ‘to blend all races into an undifferentiated whole’, or what the European New Right youth movement Genération Identitaire calls ‘forced interbreeding’ or ‘replacement’. The right to preserve (white European) indigenous particularity is claimed as already extended to other indigenous identity groupings. This requires that ‘ethno-cultural identity’ ‘should be acknowledged and recognised in the public sphere’.28 The incorporation of white ethnic identities into a generic argument for indigeneity is architectural to most strands of the Alt-Right.

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It sustains their calls for ‘white civil rights’ and segregation, which are integrated into the ‘natural conservativism [‘by which any group is’] ‘inclined to prioritise the interests of their tribe’, which logically entails that ‘separation is necessary for distinctiveness’.29 This Darwinian survivalism grounds Alt-Right pessimism as to rights-based civil society, implying that some identities hold back or abuse hard-working members of the community. The white phenotype birth-culture is framed as under threat by liberal-induced intermingling and resource distribution—both seen as identity sabotage. This framing of identity is simultaneously an articulation of inherent historically encoded privilege and of vulnerability, since the white race is deemed the most delicate and in need of political help to survive, potentially in the form of violent segregation. The project to re-gender politics plays a critical role alongside the discourse of race war. A common articulation on the Alt-Right is that ‘traditional gender roles are better for society’ and that sexual hierarchy must be allowed to return as legitimate politics. This approach to gender shares the same logic as that of identity, claiming a ‘natural’ biological order that must be reintroduced into politics to enable identity to thrive. As with all identities, gender is subsumed into the necessities of the struggle for survival among identities, which means that for the Alt-Right feminism and women’s control of their own bodies comes to represent an ‘unnatural’ threat to the reproduction of identity. In this view, inurement to the mythos of modernity, particularly gender and identity equality, only exposes the value of ethnocultural ‘natural’ norms. Mastery over gender and economics are themselves, in turn, key conditions for survival in the upcoming race war. In Alt-Right thought, time itself is defined by racial survival. In their biological conceptualisation of culture, which draws on nineteenthcentury ethnonationalist theory, identity is ‘eternal’ and unchanging.30 ‘Natural’ identity should not develop, which means that Alt-Right conceptualisations of temporality refer to life and death rather than progress. This temporal stillness means that history is defined by existentialist struggles for survival and the possibility of future extinction, instead of change in and to oneself. Change over time—particularly liberal progress—is considered an attack that weakens the atemporal stillness of race and culture, limiting its capacity to survive. To be able to ‘think against modernity’ is precisely to stop the advance of liberal time as progress, making it possible to rescue cultural traditions from amidst modernity’s ruins, by returning them to their timeless ‘eternal’ nature.

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This pessimist account of humanity and its identities is grounded on the inevitability of racial struggle, the product of bringing different birth-cultures together in unnatural multiculturalism. For the Alt-Right, politics has to admit that a race war is forthcoming, and that it is natural, not unethical, and must be prepared for as the only path to survival. For this, a return to violence—gendered and identitarian—must become once again a legitimate and natural form of politics, as they perceive it to have been in the nineteenth century, particularly with reference to European expansion in America and colonialism. Indeed, the first conflict is over the right to fight back against liberal mind-control, so as to prepare for it.

Embracing the Apocalypse? This contemporary formulation of pessimism has clear epistemological and apocalyptic inflections. Together, they create a potent capacity to mobilise those disaffected with the promise of modern progress. Race war is a key operator in narratives on the Alt-Right: it represents the coming crisis and needs to be prepared for, and solutions advanced on its assumption. Having abandoned high-modern solutions such as the race-supercharging ambitions of 1930s Fascists, these actors confront their visions of a bleak future without grand programmatic solutions. Having abandoned the emancipatory promise of the Enlightenment and modernity, they seek only the elimination of norms and structures preventing the natural flow of history and identity politics through violence. Their response takes shape in two forms, both of which rely on pessimistic readings of history and progress to propose accelerationist solutions: help unleash the inevitable race war, or hasten an exit from modern democracy and statehood altogether. The first is the most common: embrace the necessity of race war by ending the repression of identity violence and allowing it to occur as a natural political expression. The only limitation to this ‘natural’ human struggle is liberal universalism, which is blamed for conspiring against the white race by promoting ‘malicious population replacement at the hands of a government’, explaining the chants of ‘you will not replace us’ at Charlottesville.31 Liberals emerge as ‘anti-white’ traitors to their own birth-culture, which necessitates greater protection due to its ‘excessive hospitality, trust’ and ‘recessive genes supporting fragile Aryan phenotypes’—linking back to its need to control women.32 Consequently, the

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destruction of the white race is seen to sabotage ‘western civilisation’ or ‘culture’, because whiteness is its biological condition of possibility.33 Because birth into the race is the condition of possibility for civilisation and culture, the Alt-Right and European New Right (Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pen are prominent examples) can publicly frame migration and multiculturalism as existential threats without overtly mentioning race, while contemporarily promoting a ‘rapid acceleration to a state of extreme alarm, or racial panic’.34 The trajectory towards apocalyptic racial struggle is refracted in Alt-Right readings of globalisation. Global liberal norms are deemed to instrumentally mask or obfuscate the exercise of elite power, whence Trump’s calls to ‘drain the swamp’.35 Yet the rejection of their underlying modernist ideology underpins a more categorical rejection of a modernist globalism defined by an ‘inherent trend to degeneration or self-cancellation, rooted in the idea that [it] came from somewhere and is imposed on the rest’.36 This is, crucially, the logic that feeds the search for conspiratorial culprits, of which George Soros is often held up as a key example.37 Universalism, they argue, is a cipher for colonial imposition, ‘fed by the desire to erase all otherness by imposing on the world a supposedly superior model invariably presented as “progress”’.38 As Trump put it at the UN, the struggle of our time pits universalism against ethnocultural sovereignty.39 The destruction wrought by modernisation and development theory can only be addressed, for either the New or Alt-Right, following Schmitt, by the emergence of a new ‘nomos of the earth: a new organisation of international relations [as] a multipolar world of emerging civilisations’, where ‘power is defined as the ability to resist the influence of others rather than to impose one’s own’.40 A project of fostering resistance to universalist readings of global time is central to the pessimism that frames the Alt-Right. This is why cognitive resilience to modernist universalism, in nurturing the capacity to say ‘no’ to the erasure of particularity under a logic of progress, underpins the capacity of birth-cultures to endure.41 Liberal-globalist norms erode the capacity of the indigenous population to maintain themselves, to compete, but also to simply subsist in their autonomous particularity. Paternalistic aid and knowledge transfer are to be rejected in favour of each particularism becoming free to actualise their potential. For when the Cathedral of liberal ideology imposes a requirement to provide development assistance to others, it precludes all futures but ruin.

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The future, faced by a crisis integral to global modernity, can only be saved from nihilism by re-articulation through remembrance of race and its particular culture. Opposition to globalism as universalist imperialism requires the re-interpolation of the future with the past, a new mnemotechnics that frame and explain all history as an identity struggle: ‘the New Right has a very long memory: it maintains a relation to the beginning that harbours a sense of what is coming’.42 Such mnemotechnics, being devices that construct historical memory rather than history, produce two distinct temporal perspectives. Looking back to history, they make it possible to reinterpret the identity violence of the past as natural, jettisoning ‘white guilt’,43 and embracing the naturality and necessity of coming interethnic conflict. The same mnemotechnics project a future where, if freed from liberal universality, unconstrained white identity will be able to throw itself into surviving the racial apocalypse and, presumably because of its natural superiority, enjoy the fruits of its survival (space, resources, women) in the post-apocalyptic aftermath.44 Just as white identity politics tip invariably into a logic of racial purification and segregation, so too the pursuit of a pessimistic politics of the particular against the universal is prone to an accelerationary dynamic underpinned by the certainty of a descent into apocalyptic crisis. Opposition to universalism champions free adaptation, so as to allow for those who remember to determine right. This explicitly Darwinian conceptualisation is what allows for ethnocultural diversity in the reactionary internationalist assemblage, including, for example, European, American, Russian and Indian movements. Nationalists from any racial and cultural particularism can believe themselves the ‘fittest’ to survive in a world cured of the oppressions of liberal globalism. The resilience of the particular is self-evident, since it follows from the value of indigeneity’s tradition. The pessimism of interethnic struggle and destruction is projected onto others, making it possible to believe in one’s own race surviving the apocalypse. This prospect gives rise to the second solution: accelerating institutional decay. It side-steps race, incorporating it as one of the central issues to be resolved through the dismantling of the modern state which has become the vessel for liberal mind control. As Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and CIA data-mining firm Palantir, explains: ‘the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms’.45 Trump spent much of his election campaign arguing that he could act unencumbered and uncorrupted by the influence of ‘special interests’: he was

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already too wealthy to be bribed.46 The anarcho-capitalist or paleolibertarian strands on the Alt-Right, to which this argument seems to have appealed, can sit in some tension with the identitarian ideologues. In particular, their Randian elitism seems diametrically counter-poised to de Benoist’s or Bannon’s calls to defend populist democracy through separation between wealth and power.47 These positions are clearly linked in Alt-Right debates, particularly the reactionary critique of liberal universalism and its protection of the undeserving weak through welfare or equality. This is why anarcho-libertarians of the New and Alt-Right like Land discuss identitarianism in detail and conceive solutions that can address all their concerns. Alt-Right accelerationists embrace the apocalyptic racial and economic crisis so that it might lead to the dissolution of liberal institutions. They too begin with cognitive resistance and resilience to liberal democracy, ‘[s]ince winning elections is overwhelmingly a matter of vote buying, and society’s informational organs (education and media) are no more resistant to bribery than the electorate’. Democracy is here defined as a ‘parasite’ that has transformed ‘local, painfully dysfunctional, intolerable’ behaviour ‘into global, numbed, and chronic socio-political pathologies’. Its death is judged to be an inevitable consequence of its globalisation, whence the call to accelerate its demise. Acknowledging the inherently mythic nature of democracy is an irreversible pessimist position that leads them to advocate ‘something else entirely: an exit’.48 This takes the form of ‘neocameralism’: a surrender of society to those who already control the actual levers of power, a corporate state legitimised by technocratic efficacy in delivering value to shareholders. Land suggests that the closest contemporary examples are Hong Kong, Singapore or Dubai, which ‘appear to provide a very high quality of service to their citizens, with no meaningful democracy at all. They have minimal crime and high levels of personal and economic freedom. They tend to be quite prosperous. They are weak only in political freedom, and political freedom is unimportant by definition when government is stable and effective’.49

Conclusion All that remains in question is how much particularity will be left after the crash of modernity into racial conflict. It is easy to see how, across the Alt-Right, a Trumpian or Orbanian anti-liberal populist authoritarianism is agreed upon as a possible ‘escape route’.50 Fostering resilience

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to the ideology of modernity reconstitutes the political aesthetic of tradition as the means to popular mobilisation. The trend to degeneration identified with liberal modernity necessitates the dismantling of all obstacles to survival, including democracy. This chapter has explored the pessimistic Alt-Right view of truth and knowledge in the contemporary world, which is seen as dominated by liberal dogma. It then discussed its view of identity, which is dominated by a rejection of universalist frames of reference and the desirability of promoting Darwinian struggle among races as a form of social and identitarian justice. Finally, it engaged with how this way of understanding knowledge about the world and identity constructs the inevitability of a social rupture into racial conflict or, side-stepping race, anarcho-capitalist visions of post-democratic governance. This rupture, and especially the conceptualisation of history as defined by existentialist struggles for survival, reveal that in Alt-Right thinking political temporality is but the time left to prepare for the next survivalist struggle. This apocalypse is not only inevitable for the Alt-Right but also desirable.51 Only the destruction of The Cathedral can bring about normative, statal and social change, specifically the opportunity to reconstruct the world on the basis of ‘natural’ norms after the racial apocalypse. Denoting the heterogeneity of Alt-Right thought, these pessimistic temporal visions are often conflicting. It is, however, important to conclude by highlighting that they cohere around a deeply pessimistic account of human nature and a sense that struggle is necessary at the level of culture as well as politics. This frame leaves biological ideas, inevitably ethnonationalist and apocalyptic when it comes to any racially impure society, as the only dependable, believable and ultimately just way to understanding politics. This is an embrace of biologically determined birth-cultures struggling among themselves to survive. Denoting pessimism as to human agency, even their own, this account rejects politics in favour of struggle for which all must, instead, prepare. In this new nomos of the earth, the descent of politics into racial and economic survivalist struggle is to be embraced as a decisive and necessary event from which the deserving will emerge triumphant and the underserving and unfit will die. Conversely, any politics where knowledge, power and time are not defined by racial, cultural and identitarian struggle is to be rejected as a betrayal of nature.

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Notes





1.  Justin O’Shea, “ISIS: The Role of Ideology and Eschatology in the Islamic State,” The Pardee Periodical Journal of Global Affairs 1, no. 2 (2016): 51–65; Eleanor Beevor, “Coercive Radicalization: Charismatic Authority and the Internal Strategies of ISIS and the Lord’s Resistance Army,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 40, no. 6 (2017): 496–521; Anthony N. Celso, “Dabiq: IS’s Apocalyptic 21st Century Jihadist Manifesto,” Journal of Political Sciences & Public Affairs 2, no. 4 (2014), article 1000e111; J.M. Berger, “The Metronome of Apocalyptic Time: Social Media as Carrier Wave for Millenarian Contagion,” Perspectives on Terrorism 9, no. 4 (2015): 61–71; Jeffrey Kaplan, Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997). 2. Jeffrey Kaplan, “Red Dawn Is Now: Race vs. Nation and the American Election”, Terrorism and Political Violence 29, no. 3 (2017): 411–24. 3.  Ruth Wodak, Majid KhosraviNik, and Brigitte Mral, Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2013); Jordan Davies, BBC News, “Far-Right Extremist Planned ‘Race War’ by Making Explosives,” 22 December 2017, https://www.bbc. com/news/uk-wales-42450131 (accessed 29 December 2018); Seth Jones, “The Rise of Far-Right Extremism in the United States,” CSIS Briefs, November 2018; Vikram Dodd, “MI5 to Take Over in Fight Against Rise of UK Rightwing Extremism,” The Guardian, 28 October 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/28/mi5lead-battle-against-uk-rightwing-extremists-police-action (accessed 29 December 2018); Daniel De Simone, “The New Parents and the UK’s Neo-Nazi Terror Threat”, BBC News, 12 November 2018, https:// www.bbc.com/news/stories-45919730 (accessed 29 December 2018); BBC News, “Thomas Mair: Extremist Loner Who Targeted Jo Cox,” 23 November 2016, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38071894 (accessed 8 June 2018); BBC News, “Bradford Teen Terror Suspect ‘Praised Jo Cox Killer’,” 17 January 2017, https://www.bbc.com/ news/uk-england-leeds-38653144 (accessed 29 December 2018); Mike Wendling, “Christchurch Shootings: The Rising New Threat of Far-Right Violence,” BBC News, 18 March 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/ blogs-trending-47596446 (accessed 19 March 2019). 4. See, for example, Infowars, “You Are The Resistance—Infowars Intro,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQjGRLdAqZg (accessed 28 March 2019). 5. Fox News, “Hannity: The Fake News Media Have a New Target,” 17 April 2018, https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/hannity-the-fake-news-

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media-have-a-new-target (accessed 30 December 2018); Fox News, “Fake News Watch: Falling into Liberal Trap?” 14 December 2016, http:// video.foxnews.com/v/5247777861001/ (accessed 30 December 2018). 6. https://www.professorwatchlist.org/ (accessed 28 March 2019); Thomas D. Williams, “University Professor Threatened After Criticizing Leftist Bias,” Breitbart, 4 November 2018, https://www.breitbart.com/education/2018/11/04/university-professor-threatened-after-criticizing-leftist-bias/ (accessed 30 December 2018); Virginia Hale, “Study: ‘Collective Narcissism’ Drives Liberal Belief in Fake News,” Breitbart, 4 May 2018, https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/05/04/narcissism-liberal-belief-fake-news/ (accessed 30 December 2018); Charlie Nash, “REVEALED: Google’s Social Justice Warriors Create Wrongthink Blacklists,” Breitbart, 7 August 2017, http://www.breitbart.com/ tech/2017/08/07/revealed-inside-googles-sjw-cabal-blacklists/ (accessed 22 May 2018); Amanda Robbins, “Liberal Intollerance [sic] on Display in Reaction to George Washington University YAF Stance on LGBT Sensitivity Training”, Breitbart, 6 March 2015, https:// www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/03/06/liberal-intollerance-on-display-in-reaction-to-george-washington-university-yaf-stance-on-lgbt-sensitivity-training/ (accessed 30 December 2018); Katherine Rodriguez, “WATCH: Transgender Woman Lashes Out at Clerk After Being Called ‘Sir’,” Breitbart, 29 December 2018, https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/12/29/watch-transgender-woman-lashes-out-at-clerk-afterbeing-called-sir/ (accessed 30 December 2018). 7. Elizabeth Sandifer and Jack Graham, Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018). 8. “r/DarkEnlightenment,” reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/Dark Enlightenment/ (accessed 30 December 2018); “r/TheDailyMoldbug,” reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDailyMoldbug/ (accessed 30 December 2018). 9. Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” Breitbart, 29 March 2016, http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-t he-alt-right/ (accessed 4 September 2017). 10. Alain de Benoist and Charles Champetier, “The French New Right in the Year 2000,” Telos 115 (1999): 117–44. 11. See, particularly, Alain de Benoist, Au-delà des droits de l’homme (Paris: Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2016). 12. “r/TheRedPill,” reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/ (accessed 22 May 2018).

134  N. MICHELSEN AND P. de ORELLANA 13.  John Nolte, “The Mainstream Media’s Accused—The Rap Sheet, 57 So Far,” Breitbart, 29 November 2017, https://www.breitbart.com/ the-media/2017/11/29/mainstream-medias-accused-rap-sheet-15-far/ (accessed 30 December 2018). 14.  Bokhari and Yiannopoulos, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide”; Nicholas Michelsen and Pablo de Orellana, “Discourses of Resilience in the US Alt-Right,” Resilience 7 (forthcoming, 2019). 15. Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment (2012), part 4d, http://www. thedarkenlightenment.com/the-dark-enlightenment-by-nick-land/ (accessed 1 April 2019). 16. Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (Winchester: Zero Books, 2017), 12. 17. Nagle, Kill All Normies, 40. 18. Infowars, “You Are the Resistance.” 19. The White House, “What You Need to Know About the Violent Animals of MS-13,” 21 May 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/ need-know-violent-animals-ms-13/ (accessed 23 May 2018). 20. The Alex Jones Show, “Time Is Running Out for Deep State Traitors to Defeat Donald Trump’s MAGA Agenda”, 23 May 2018, https:// www.infowars.com/time-is-running-out-for-deep-state-traitors-to-defeat-donald-trumps-maga-agenda/ (accessed 28 March 2019); Jon Bowne, “Expose Soros and His Cabal of Wealthy Traitors,” InfoWars, 19 March 2018, https://www.infowars.com/expose-soros-and-his-cabal-of-wealthy-traitors/ (accessed 28 March 2019); The Todd Starnes Show, “Don’t Tread on Me, You Trump-Hating Traitors”, 12 July 2017, https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dont-tread-on-me-you-trumphating-traitors (accessed 30 December 2018); Breitbart News, “Ann Coulter: Ted Cruz, Fox News ‘Traitors,’ Formed ‘Unified Oligarchy’ Against Trump,” 13 March 2016, https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/03/13/ann-coulter-ted-cruz-fox-news-traitors-formed-unified-oligarchy-against-trump/ (accessed 30 December 2018). 21. Joel B. Pollak, “‘Alternative Facts’: The Media Finds a Meme for the ‘Resistance’,” Breitbart, 23 January 2017, https://www.breitbart.com/ the-media/2017/01/23/alternative-facts-left-finds-meme-resistance/ (accessed 30 December 2018); Gallup, “Trump Job Approval (Weekly),” https://news.gallup.com/poll/203207/trump-job-approval-weekly.aspx (accessed 30 December 2018). 22. Giulio Evola, Rivolta contro il mondo moderno (Milan: Hoepli, 1934). On the fruitfulness of illiberal outrage, see, for example, Alt-Right reactions to Trump’s ‘grab’em by the pussy’ comments, or those concerning Latinos and ‘shithole countries’ in “The Donald—America First!” https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/ (accessed 17 August 2018).

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23. de Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right.” 24. Ibid. 25. Alain de Benoist, Nous et les autres: Problèmatique de l’identité (Paris: Editions Krisis, 2007). 26. Alain de Benoist, Les démons du bien (Paris: Pierre-Guillaume de Roux Editions, 2013). 27. de Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right.” 28. de Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right”; Markus Willinger, A Europe of Nations (London: Arktos, 2014); Markus Willinger, Generation Identity (London: Arktos, 2013); “Qui sommes-nous ?” Génération Identitaire, https://www.generation-identitaire.com/generation-identitaire-2/ (accessed 9 October 2017). 29. James Doubek, “‘White Civil Rights Rally’ Approved for DC in August,” NPR, 21 June 2018, https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=622144455 (accessed 13 August 2018); Arthur Kemp, March of the Titans: A History of the White Race (Washington, DC: Foundation for Economic Liberty, 2006); Arthur Kemp, Folk and Nation: Ethnonationalism Explained (self-published, 2017); Bokhari and Yiannopoulos, ‘An Establishment Conservative’s Guide’. 30. Maurice Barrès, The Undying Spirit of France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1917). 31. Land, Dark Enlightenment, part IV; John Binder, “US Birth Rate Cut in Half Since 1950’s,” Breitbart, 22 July 2018, https://www.breitbart. com/politics/2018/07/22/u-s-birth-rate-cut-half-since-1950s-remainnext-century/ (accessed 31 December 2018); John Hayward, “Benjamin Harnwell: ‘There Is an International Movement to Reduce Global Population’,” Breitbart, 25 May 2016, https://www.breitbart.com/ radio/2016/05/25/benjamin-harnwell-international-movement-reduce-global-population/ (accessed 31 December 2018). 32.  Jack Montgomery, “Welcome Young Migrants to Replace ‘Dying’ Europeans, Says Archbishop”, Breitbart, 19 October 2018, https:// www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/10/19/welcome-young-migrantsto-replace-dying-europeans-and-begin-a-new-history-says-archbishop/ (accessed 31 December 2018); BBC News, “White US Nationalists Chant ‘You Will Not Replace Us’,” 12 August 2017, https://www.bbc.com/ news/av/world-asia-40911744/white-us-nationalists-chant-you-willnot-replace-us (accessed 31 December 2018). 33.  Nicholas Farrell, “‘We Want to Save Western Civilisation’: Steve Bannon and His English Ally on Their Plan to ‘Defend’ Europe”, The Telegraph, 30 November 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/ want-save-western-civilisation-steve-bannon-english-ally-plan/ (accessed 31 December 2018). 34. Land, Dark Enlightenment, part 4.

136  N. MICHELSEN AND P. de ORELLANA 35.  BBC News, “How Might Trump ‘Drain the Swamp’?” 18 October 2016, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-37699073 (accessed 28 March 2019). 36. Land, Dark Enlightenment, part 4. 37. Brett Samuels, “Trump: ‘I Wouldn’t Be Surprised’ if Soros Were Paying for Migrant Caravan,” The Hill, 31 October 2018, https://thehill.com/ homenews/administration/414171-trump-i-wouldnt-be-surprised-ifsoros-were-paying-for-migrant-caravan (accessed 31 December 2018); John Wagner, “Trump Says He ‘Wouldn’t Be Surprised’ if Unfounded Conspiracy Theory About George Soros Funding Caravan Is True,” Washington Post, 1 November 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ politics/trump-wouldnt-be-surprised-if-democratic-megadonor-georgesoros-is-funding-the-migrant-caravan/2018/11/01/9ea196a0-ddcf11e8-85df-7a6b4d25cfbb_story.html (accessed 31 December 2018). 38. de Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right.” 39.  Politico, “Full Text: Trump’s 2018 UN Speech Transcript,” 25 September 2018, https://politi.co/2NEe8Rh (accessed 8 November 2018). 40. de Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right”. 41. Alain de Benoist, Charles maurras et l’action française - une bibliographie (Niherne: Association Anthinea: 2002); Benoist, Au-delà des droits de l’homme. 42. de Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right.” 43. Tom Tancredo and Richard Sabell, “Tancredo: Dump Columbus Day for White Guilt Day?” Breitbart, 8 October 2016, https://www.breitbart. com/big-government/2016/10/08/tancredo-dump-columbus-day-forwhite-guilt-day/ (accessed 12 August 2018). 44. This frame, furthermore, allows various strands of the Alt-Right to produce their own post-apocalyptic utopias. For instance, Jack Donovan’s The Way of Men (Portland, OR: Dissonant Hum, 2012) proposed a future of roaming tribes of warrior men that keep women in farms for reproduction. 45. Peter Thiel, “The Education of a Libertarian,” Cato Unbound, 13 April 2009, https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian (accessed 26 August 2018). 46. Daniel Strauss, “Donald Trump’s New Pitch: I’m So Rich I Can’t Be Bought,” Politico, 28 July 2018, https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/donaldtrumps-so-rich-i-cant-be-bought-120743.html (accessed 13 August 2018). 47.  CBS 60 Minutes, “Steve Bannon Interviewed by Charlie Rose”, 10 September 2017. 48. Land, Dark Enlightenment, part 1. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. See, Tim Stevens, Cyber Security and the Politics of Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 119–20.

CHAPTER 9

The Pessimism of the Shipwreck: Theorising Μigration in International Relations Myriam Fotou

Introduction The verdict seems to be resounding: pessimism is making a comeback. After decades of having been ‘dismissed from the upper reaches of the canon of political thought’, it is now allowed a glorious (re)entrance.1 From environmentalism to global financial crises and from populism to theories of good governance, pessimism, it is repeatedly argued, should be considered an energising and even liberating philosophy, as an ethic of radical responsibility, perhaps even as a much-needed alternative to modernity’s progressivism.2 Pessimism is a modern phenomenon, according to Joshua Foa Dienstag, with roots in the Enlightenment. A lucid and consistent theorisation of pessimism can be found in various places in the modern era: from Voltaire to Rousseau and from Nietzsche to Camus, pessimism has always been present and inherent in philosophical and political thought. Pessimism, it is argued, is a common project that has somehow been obscured, there ‘to edify us about our condition and to fortify us for a life in a disordered and disenchanted M. Fotou (*)  University of Leicester, Leicester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_9

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universe’.3 Other scholars suggest that the main elements of pessimism can be found further back, in Hellenistic or Roman times, with nineteenth- and twentieth-century political philosophies cherry-picking them in their search for legitimacy.4 Questions regarding the impact of such a comeback and pessimism’s position in the broader historical perspective in general are equally varied: is this a short- or a long-term reversal in optimism’s preponderance in philosophy? Is such a perception of preponderance accurate, or should we treat optimism’s centrality as a two-hundred-year ‘anomaly’ finally being rectified?5 Can this question even be answered satisfactorily, as the binary opposition of optimism versus pessimism is problematic, often anachronistic and consistently eludes definition? Similarly, much has been made of pessimism in International Relations (IR). With a focus on realism, in particular, the common perception is of a discipline that, even at its most optimistic, has traditionally considered war unavoidable and state sovereignty of primary importance, trumping individuals’ rights and safety, with an emphasis on tragedy and caution as to the power of reason. Of course, the actual picture is more complex, and this volume goes to great lengths to explore this. It challenges the perceived position of IR in the optimism–pessimism continuum, as well as the continuum itself. IR’s pessimism is not the received wisdom that sees and expects the worst in the world. On the contrary, it can be an energetic pessimism that, while it may accept that, in the real world, the struggle for survival and strife are inevitable, engages with the said world in ‘a socially and politically productive’ manner.6 This involves the sober evaluation of environment, sustainability and security issues among others, and the problematisation of necessary action. However, this energetic pessimism has not been evident in the ways in which mainstream IR theorises migration. I argue that mainstream IR theory has instead shown a traditionally pessimist predisposition in issues of migration and border-crossing. Either because of the discipline’s focus on the state as a main actor, the importance of security theorising since the 1980s, or the inherent disregard of otherness in foundational IR thinking, IR’s pessimism towards the inevitability of migrant suffering is consistent and problematic in its failure to address death and violence against migrants in transit. For a discipline focused on power and its balancing, it is striking that in border-crossing the role and exertion of power—often resulting in exclusion, incidents of violence and even death—remains under-theorised and unchallenged, delegated to the

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disorder of the world, and seen as results of natural phenomena rather than man-made political decisions. Presented as either policy-relevant or pragmatist theorising, said thinking pessimistically eschews challenging the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin the practices leading to migrant death and suffering. In the first part of this chapter, I explore IR theoretical responses to human suffering at the point of border-crossing, with an emphasis on the post-2011 refugee ‘crisis’. I find that mainstream IR opts for the role of a pessimist spectator, who, without cynicism and on the terra firma of state sovereignty, does not seem compelled either to challenge its state-centred certainties regarding migration management, or engage in earnest with state and institutional responsibility despite watching the shipwrecked, the sea-stranded, the drowned. Despite the importance of death and suffering as themes for the development of modern philosophy in general, and pessimism in particular (as explored in the second part of this chapter), I argue that death and suffering in border-crossing seem to have little effect on current mainstream IR thinking. The second part also examines the ways in which the sea and the shipwreck have been used as pessimistic metaphors for, and places of, disaster, with deep historical, artistic and philosophical roots, while for IR they constitute the loci of reifying the state and its violent border practices. In the last part of the chapter, I briefly explore the possibility for a different kind of pessimism in IR. I argue for the need of a pessimism that challenges state narratives and does not take the priorities of policymakers as its sole frame of reference. Shaped by ethics of uncertainty, this should be an anti-misanthropic and empathetic pessimism that disputes the inevitability of migrant suffering.

Pereant ne peream: Mainstream IR in the Role of the Pessimist Spectator on terra firma7 Mainstream IR theory that engages with borders, border-crossing and migration is often bound up with a traditional understanding of philosophical pessimism, that is, a conception of the world where power, security and territoriality may contribute to unpleasant realities for migrants, liminal figures and unwanted others. Mainstream IR’s silence towards migrant deaths, as in the case of communitarianism, concurs with deeming these realities inevitable. So does mainstream cosmopolitanism’s stance, whose moral outcry at migrant suffering never seems

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to lead to a theoretical addressing of border-crossing violence. What is more, any expectations of, or efforts at, counter-theorising are objected to. Mainstream IR has repeatedly condemned any critical theorisations of responsibility towards foreign others or inquiries into their agency; it dismisses a more activist role for scholars in post-structuralist IR and critical security studies as unworkable, utopian, irrational or even unethical. David Miller, the main representative of ‘weak cosmopolitanism’, offers one of the rare recent attempts by a mainstream political theorist to address directly the current refugee crisis. In a recent article inquiring into political theory’s role in responding to the EU’s migration crisis, Miller recognises the ethical requirement to ‘show equal moral concern for human beings everywhere’.8 However, he objects to ‘strong cosmopolitanism’s’ suggestion that they should be afforded ‘equal treatment, in a substantive sense’.9 This, it is implied, would be utopian, whereas defending the ability of states to control their borders and exercise the right to exclude migrants is of paramount importance. This defence is essential on the basis of ‘relations of reciprocity’ between citizens and the pursuit of ‘projects that reflect culturally specific values and beliefs, generating special duties among fellow-members’, even in the face of an unparalleled rate of deaths at sea.10 To address the crisis, he explores the need to distinguish between bona fide refugees and economic migrants, despite criticisms of said distinction.11 He concludes with a well-known suggestion: states should agree to a burden-sharing scheme for allocating refugees, who should remain at the point of entry before this allocation is decided. This not-so-innovative suggestion argues in favour of keeping in place the Dublin regime (which defines the state of entry as that with the obliga­ tion to evaluate a migrant’s asylum request and the one to which she is always returned), fails to question the effectiveness of the system granting protection to migrants, and assigns the responsibility to share their ‘burden’ to European states. When Miller published his article, such a burden-sharing project was already in place, following the relevant burden-sharing German initiative and respective European Union plan (the unsuccessful results of which, with states like the UK, Ireland and Denmark opting out, Slovakia discriminating, and Hungary and Poland pushing back, are well documented).12 In essence, Miller’s suggestion amounts to keeping things as they are. Continuing shipwrecks, human suffering and deaths by drowning do not provide a great challenge for the political theorist at work: ‘in the case of the boat people’ (the

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dehumanising linguistic choice here is interesting), the minimum humanitarian duty to save those in imminent danger of drowning is recognised. However, said recognition of duty is soon followed by another assertion, unsubstantiated, if not disproven, this time: saving migrants is likely to constitute an incentive for further ‘visibly unsafe’ journeys. This is accompanied by the suggestion that breaking the link between rescue and acceptance (by pushbacks or by moving prospective migrants ‘in offshore detention centres, with those qualifying for refugee status placed in third countries’) is the main way to stop people from sea-crossing.13 David Miller’s approach is, of course, nothing new; to a certain extent, it resembles aspects of the standard communitarian approach and its main focus on the right to exclude migrants on the basis of community goals and preferences. Even when a state’s positive moral principle is to be recognised, as Walzer does in his contribution to the edited volume, Boundaries (1981), these obligations to foreign others do not and should not exceed mutual aid or Good Samaritanism.14 Otherwise, communities are closed and self-sustained, made up of people committed to a common life. Responsibility towards foreign others should therefore be calculated through policy prescriptions, quota policies, community interests, distribution of membership, granting of citizenship, obligations of host states towards source countries and vice versa, and so on. A pessimism regarding the loss of lives remains. An economy of the unavoidable-though-regrettable imbues discussions of the kind just seen.15 The political and IR theorist acquires the role of a spectator that on the terra firma of the sovereign state and communitarian reciprocity contemplates the unavoidable shipwreck out in the sea, proposing as the only solution, as Miller does, stopping people from sea-crossing altogether. Counter-intuitively, opposing philosophical approaches of the neo-Kantian or strong cosmopolitan kind do not seem to escape this pessimism either. The theory of just membership and cosmopolitan rights seems to suffer equally from pessimistic normative claims, with the terminology of ethics of migration and human rights approaches functioning in a similar pessimistic way. Discussions of migrant quotas, the asymmetry of the rights to enter and leave, limitations on the freedom of movement, an unsubstantiated focus on brain drain and so on, are all examples of discussions dominating the field, all the while staying clear of prioritising responsibility for the loss of migrant lives during bordercrossings. Although common as variables for policy orientation, such

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discussions often obscure, in their clinical, supposedly pragmatist narratives, the human dimension and suffering of the issues they are addressing. Ethics of migration very often say nothing about migration in the time of border-crossing per se. For instance, in a recent book by Joseph Carens, one of the most eminent representatives of migration ethics literature, the focus is on naturalisation, citizenship, labour migration and refugees.16 Bordercrossings and related plights, violence at the border, exclusion and death, shipwrecks and drownings in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, along with the migrants’ own voices, are seldom referred to, if at all. In the rare cases where mainstream IR theory questions the established legal hospitality framework, as in the case of the ongoing discussion of the issues presented by the definitional limitations of the 1951 Refugee Convention and other international legal instruments, started as early as the mid-1980s, all proposals are soon rejected as either too optimist, utopian or unfeasible. A recent articulation is found in Alexander Betts’ criticism of the refugee definition and his suggested concept of ‘survival migration’.17 According to this, inconsistency in institutional and state responses to migrants in peril and human suffering at large, and the need to account for threats like environmental change, food insecurity and generalised violence, can each be addressed with an expansion of the protected categories of migrant others beyond the current traditional legal understanding of persecution to include ‘persons who are outside their country of origin because of an existential threat for which they have no access to a domestic remedy or resolution’.18 The response to such proposals is standard in their pessimism, even by the authors of the proposals themselves: the controversial character of more inclusive definitions is quickly acknowledged. So are the challenges they may pose for a state-centred discipline: namely, the increase in ‘the size of the pool of people that need to be distributed amongst states’.19 Gibney is quick to cite numbers and statistics showing that if his own, ethically formulated, more inclusive definition is followed, the number of UN Convention refugees in the world would double.20 Therefore, while the need to question the current legal framework is recognised, it is simultaneously deemed in a traditional pessimist vein as utopian and unworkable. Miller, on the other hand, when discussing Betts’ ‘survival migration’, warns of the danger of overstretching the concept. He is worried, first, about the resulting ‘flood of people crossing the sea’ in their attempt to cross land borders to the richer European states (again, an unsubstantiated fact and a toxic metaphor regarding

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migration).21 He is concerned too about the overwhelming strain this will cause on the receiving mechanisms of the European states, and the ‘brain drain’ caused by the flight of young male migrants, ‘many of them already having, or seeking, university education’ in their home countries.22 This dire pessimist outlook of both the receiving states’ hosting abilities (research suggests that facilities in Europe are far from being overwhelmed) and of sending states’ futures (where research again suggests that the threat of brain drain is more of a myth than reality) is common in IR’s theorisation of migration management.23 Its alarmist tone is, however, missing when real tragedies, in the form of migrants’ deaths, occur. In mainstream IR’s approaches to migration, such tragedies are often seen as sad but logical results: strife in the periphery will always create a centripetal force towards the core, people will flee, move and travel, which will make them unwelcome, put them in peril or even kill them. IR scholars and theorists are not only informed, but also partially conditioned and formed through, this pessimism, which entails the acceptance of violence inflicted on the foreign other, often even involved in it in one way or another. Disguised as pragmatism, this is a pessimistic stance towards what could be done to alleviate suffering. Said pessimism ends up privileging the worldview and priorities of policymakers in constructing IR research and theorising, and constrains the questions asked while leaving violence against migrants invisible and unchallenged.24 Given that laws of hospitality partly entail this violence, and that we are members of communities guided by them, this pessimism is deemed only natural: our cities cannot be inundated by foreigners, we have to guarantee our survival before helping others, life is unfair, people die. Ethically speaking, this is a very problematic admission. Being formed within a pessimism that accepts a matrix of power, which renders migrant others invisible and their lives less worthy, ‘does not mean [either that] we need loyally or automatically to reconstitute that matrix throughout the course of our lives’25 or continue theorising in such pessimistic terms. I study the literary and philosophical roots of this pessimist theorising in the next section. I explore the literary topos of the sea-crossing and shipwreck as inevitable disaster to the point of it becoming a symbol of the pessimism of the Enlightenment. Discussing the claim distinguishing the natural from man-made disasters as bookends of modernity, I challenge mainstream IR’s treatment of migrant deaths as the regrettable yet natural results of disasters, inquiring into the need for IR to reconsider state responsibility and which lives matter.

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Pessimism at Sea: The Shipwreck as a Natural Disaster In ancient scholarship, most human attempts to cross the sea are handled philosophically with suspicion and pessimism. The ocean surrounding the inhabited world gives birth to mythological creatures, wholly unknown and different to the familiar forms of nature, not belonging to the arranged structure of the known world. Inhabited by monsters and associated with catastrophe and fear by Europeans until at least the eighteenth century,26 its unworldly character in ancient Greek philosophy is further emphasised by the fact that its god, Poseidon, is also responsible for earthquakes, traditionally the most terrifying of natural phenomena. Thalis of Miletus, a pre-Socratic philosopher and the founder of the school of natural philosophy, explains earthquakes in a semi-mythological way. He is not being metaphorical when he compares them to a ship’s turbulence in the sea given that in this proto-philosophy the earth is considered to rest on water, floating on the cosmic ocean.27 Hans Blumenberg, in his Shipwreck with Spectator, which stands also as an inspiration to this chapter, observes that the semantics of the sea voyage metaphor are set around two axes or prior assumptions: sea is conceived on the one hand as the natural limit of human activity and, on the other, sea is demonised as the sphere of the unforeseen and of the lack of nomos (anomia), ‘in which it is difficult to find one’s bearings’.28 In Christian iconography, sea is whence evil comes; in John’s Apocalypse it is stated that in messianic fulfilment, at the messianic time, ‘sea will be no more’. Virgil, less ominously, locates messianic time not at the end of the sea but in that of sea-crossings.29 Philosophers from antiquity are, with few exceptions, similarly wary of sea-crossings. From Lucretius to Nietzsche, and from Horace to Voltaire, ‘sea-crossing constitutes an imprudent if not blasphemous moment, analogous to contravening the inviolability of the earth, that is, breaking the law of terra inviolata’.30 As a result, contravening the law of the land and state cannot but lead, teleologically, to a shipwreck. Montaigne warns us, citing Propertius: ‘I cling to what I see and hold and do not go far from the port’.31 Leaving the port may not only undermine who we are, but also our existence—we put ourselves in peril if we swim against the current and out into the sea. For IR theory, the sea is also an important stage on which issues of sovereignty, security, foreign policy, geopolitical and diplomatic disputes and international obligations play out. In migration management, in recent years, the sea has come to symbolise a terrain of conceptual

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contestation of responsibility, where, due to a heightened securitised environment, living and dead bodies ‘test the limits of inclusion and exclusion’.32 Mainstream IR seems to share the pessimism towards sea-crossings evident in philosophy, poetry and literature. If we question what makes humans embark on a sea voyage, poets, authors and philosophers answer with recklessness (Robinson Crusoe), sin against the gods (Ulysses, Jonah), or some other kind of disrespect, a refusal to abide by the laws of nature, the attraction of easy profit or a disdain for agrarian hard work, for land and its offerings.33 IR responds with push (sub-standard levels of living, food, land or job scarcity, famines or droughts) and pull factors (availability of career opportunities, abundance of food, provision of healthcare). It deems some of these factors, like political and religious persecution, more worthy than others, such as economic self-sustenance. This can be seen in the Geneva and other hospitality convention codifications, but also in the concessions mainstream IR theories seek to make to foreign others for them to be accepted. In the case of the Mediterranean in the current refugee ‘crisis’, but also elsewhere, the sea is constructed either as a non-space, an apolitical space or a domain under a state of exception, where state and violent state border practices are reified. The production of the crisis as a spectacle is crucial here: it serves to support an ongoing process of legitimation of the state’s migration management measures, which often entail violence, militarisation of border enforcement and disregard of international humanitarian law and its obligations. At the same time, it allows for the exclusion and denial of legitimacy of other actors at sea: the criminalisation of rescue and research operations led by NGOs and other individual actors, which is directly linked to increasing fatalities and the sea-strife of migrants, is a case in point.34 Yet, the sea is constructed as apolitical and shipwrecks as eventualities at the mercy of forces over which states have no control. Responsibility is also impossible to assign for IR: states and their instruments (national coastguards, border officers, Frontex) bear none. The deaths are attributed to the rough seas, to the backlash of violent conflicts, in some cases to irresponsible migrant smugglers, even to the migrants themselves due to their imprudence in crossing illegally. The shipwreck becomes a locus of convergence for man-made and natural disaster and for pessimism and political theorising. It is a symbol of pessimism overpowering philosophical thought.

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Such symbolism coincides with the Enlightenment, where the shipwreck becomes ‘the second most evocative figure of catastrophe, after the earthquake’.35 The earthquake reference in this quote from Alain Corbin’s account of the changing perception of the sea and the seaside over time in the West, is not accidental: it refers to the Lisbon earthquake of the same period (1755), which, in Walter Benjamin’s words, ‘excited and preoccupied the entire world like few other events in that century’.36 The earthquake and what followed it—fires, tsunami, shipwrecks—caused the death of approximately 50,000 people, provoking an unprecedented reaction in Europe, and great soul-searching in its political, philosophical, religious, literary and artistic circles.37A formative event for the philosophers of the European Enlightenment, the Lisbon earthquake symbolised for some ‘the death of optimism’.38 ‘[I]nstigating a number of debates about fundamental questions of good and evil, the nature of the universe and the existence of god, of belief in providence and the possibility of progress’, conceptual approaches were formed: from the young Kant who wrote three essays about it for a local newspaper, to Voltaire and Rousseau’s quarrel over the former’s poem on the Lisbon disaster, the ensuing crisis and doubt ‘affected the best minds in Europe’, undermining Enlightenment thinkers’ belief ‘in the ability of reason to understand and master the world’.39 ‘The earthquake of Lisbon reached far enough to cure Voltaire of Leibniz’s theodicy’, argued Adorno.40 Indeed, a few years later, in 1759, Voltaire published Candide, or Optimism, in which he famously satirised the philosophy of optimism and the belief in Providence in the face of Professor Pangloss, a follower of Pope and Leibniz like Voltaire himself in the past.41 After a series of calamities, Candide and Pangloss are shipwrecked in the port of Lisbon. During the shipwreck, Candide watches his friend and benefactor, Jacques the Anabaptist, drowning. Preparing to jump after him, he is stopped by Professor Pangloss, ever the Leibnizian optimist, with the explanation that ‘the roadstead of Lisbon had been made on purpose for the Anabaptist to be drowned there’.42 While the joke is obviously on the optimist professor and his Leibnizian belief that ‘all is for the best’ in the ‘best of all possible worlds’,43 the fact that this stance is solely identified with optimism is perplexing. Indicative perhaps of the unfair and fuzzy optimism—pessimism binary to which Lebow draws attention (Chapter 2), the moment of Candide abandoning a dear friend to drown betrays Voltaire’s recently found pessimism: the knowledge and acceptance that the world is illogical, disordered and

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contradictory, and there is nothing humans can do to change or resist it. Despite Voltaire’s much spoken-of attack against the idea of Providence, something of it remains: embracing the absurdity of the world order and the inability of man to stand against it, the new eighteenth-century pessimist accepts suffering and death as inescapable and a given, leaving far more in God’s hands than he purports to do.44 While this may not be Providence anymore, it still constitutes a different—secular this time— teleology. With Jacques the Anabaptist symbolising in Candide the ideals of solidarity and selfless assistance (he is drowned while assisting an ungrateful sailor), his abandonment at sea underlines pessimism’s, or at least Voltairian pessimism’s, disregard of kindness, resistance and assumption of responsibility in the face of the world’s harsh realities. Adorno seems to point to this when, referring to Voltaire’s abandonment of the philosophy of optimism following this monumental event, he speaks of a disaster even greater than the ‘first’ Lisbon disaster itself: it is a catastrophe of a second, social nature, ‘which defies human imagination since it readied real hell from human evil’.45 Pointing at Auschwitz, but also applicable to other man-made catastrophes and suffering, this social nature involves the reification of human social relations. The reification of social relations is present in IR and international political theory in what are seen and theorised as immutable and timeless laws (state sovereignty, rights of the community), which in reality belong to specific historical contexts, are defined by power hierarchies and are, after all, ‘human and thus, alterable’.46 The social relations governing perceptions of responsibility in mainstream theories of migration, as well as the set-up of the debate of how individual suffering should be dealt with (asylum granting for specific kinds of suffering with respect to pre-assigned quotas, issues of domestic politics, etc.), is permeated with pessimism, disastrous in the way Adorno argues. Susan Neiman also makes a link between the Lisbon disaster and Auschwitz. She considers them the two critical moments in European history, with Lisbon seen as the beginning of the modern and Auschwitz the end. These critical events, or ‘central poles’, challenge Western philosophical inquiry and its assumptions, bringing along ‘the collapse of the most basic trust in the world, the grounds that make civilisation possible’.47 These bookends of modernity are, however, essentially different in Neiman’s account: Lisbon symbolises the evil and human suffering due to natural disasters, while Auschwitz the human suffering brought about by human wrongdoing. The development of philosophical

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thought during the intervening three centuries focuses on the way evil can or cannot be intelligible, and whether it needs to be accepted as part of a disorderly world. This latter point reflects the evolution of the optimism—pessimism debate briefly explored previously. This distinction between natural and moral evils, a philosophical undertaking that becomes more urgent with Kant onwards and reaches its peak with the inscrutability of the Holocaust, is crucial, but also problematic. As IR scholars we need to ask how this distinction allows us to comprehend and theorise human suffering caused by non-intentional agency (or, at least, agency unclear in its intentions), especially in migration. The discursive construction of the man-made evil and natural disaster binary, I argue, becomes muddled in the case of suffering, drowning and deaths in border-crossing. Politicians’ speeches and decision-making constantly present these as unintentional and unavoidable, as does mainstream IR. The former does so by opting over the years, for instance, to replace expensive marine search-and-rescue operations with smaller and cheaper ones, focusing on deterrence rather than rescue, or even blocking humanitarian assistance altogether, as happened in 2018 in the Central Mediterranean. The latter eschews earnest engagement with state and institutional responsibility. Marginalising theorising that focuses on the importance of resistance and solidarity, IR’s pessimism goes even further by helping to preserve state power from scrutiny, while also muting the ethical importance of what is occurring. IR’s indifference towards theorising responsibility in the cases of migrants’ shipwrecks in the Mediterranean is striking. Apart from migrant smugglers that may have abandoned migrants at sea, no one else is ever to blame. The ambivalent semantic nature of the shipwreck for mainstream IR further aggravates the precariousness of Neiman’s distinction discussed above. The categorical split between ‘nature’ and the ‘political’ inherent in the distinction of man-made and nature-caused suffering, effectively erases both their discursively constructed status and their geopolitical imbrications and effects. Such a distinction paves the way also for another founding differentiation that will prove critical in the ensuing era: between those who are the subjects of their own suffering, and those who simply suffer.48

Mainstream IR’s identification in the current refugee ‘crisis’ with the ‘we’ who define whose suffering matters is problematic. In essence,

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it seems to adopt a Foucauldian understanding of sovereignty, whose ‘ultimate expression resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die’.49 The paradox of the colonial wars observed by Achille Mbembe, where death scenes exiled from the European imaginary for European citizens become unproblematic when they involve the lives of foreign others, replicates itself in the current refugee ‘crisis’. The way the unspeakable suffering and violence involved in shipwrecks and drowning in the Mediterranean is relegated to state-centred discussions of flows and migration management assigns to otherwise well-meaning theorising an insurmountable inhumanity and cynical pessimism in practical terms.

Philosophers: To the Ships! Accepting evil and suffering as unavoidable in a cruel world, as pessimism invites us to do, prevents us in the cases of suffering at border-crossing from inquiring into its causes and assigning responsibility appropriately. A pessimist IR theory is a prime example of that, where ‘violence and death are naturalised through an economy of the unavoidable-though-regrettable’.50 It accepts that in the real world death is inevitable, laws will be flouted, while addressing responsibility beyond the calls of community as utopian. This is not to say that IR theorising on migration is cynical or fatalist. Nor is it deterministic. However, it often theorises in such ways. The agency of migrants and foreigners is often patently ignored in mainstream IR thinking, while their lives are disregarded. Like pessimist thinkers that, as Lebow notes earlier in this volume, accept ‘the limitations of human agency in achieving stipulated goals and the impossibility of fundamentally improving the human condition’ (p. 20), IR mainstream scholarship prioritises states and communities as the actors whose agency is to be accounted for, in a universe where communities’ rights are immutable. Instances of IR pessimism expressed in relation to border-crossing discussed in this chapter are really statements on whose life and suffering matters. IR’s fixation with state sovereignty but not state responsibilities, with readings of migration through the lens of the economy but not through that of justice and humanity, perpetuates global political and economic systems of privilege as well as violence, all the while undermining the complexity and nuanced theorising migration and migrant others demand of us.

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According to historian Carol Gluck, we found ourselves, as scholars, ‘after the shipwreck’. Used here as a metaphor for the destruction of the major metanarratives and paradigms in the humanities and social sciences, the shipwreck ‘may create a sense of loss and helpless floating for the scholar but it also represents a moment of great opportunity’.51 What might this opportunity for IR be? The opportunity for IR is to accept the theoretical challenges border-crossing poses and reconsider its approach to migration and its ‘crises’, focusing on the human aspect and suffering beyond state- and Western-subject-centred orthodoxies. The well-documented experiences of dehumanisation, harm and even deaths of migrants demand a critical inquiry into the IR pessimist discourse itself and a possible reconsideration of theorising at the border. The answer is not, of course, a call for optimism, ‘as if optimism and pessimism were now virtually transposable conceptual terminology’.52 However, it may have to be admitted that a productive pessimism of the kind discussed earlier in this volume may not be enough unless the ramifications of said productivity become more specific. If pessimism’s suggestion is that we must accept our limitations and learn to live with uncertainty, mainstream IR needs to imbue this pessimism with the energy of resisting and challenging current state migration management practices by refocusing on the importance of migrants’ agency and lives. A truly energetic and productive pessimism entails the mistrust of state narratives and of so-called pragmatist decision-making. It also entails the need for mainstream IR to engage with the ethics of uncertainty and vulnerability embraced by critical, post-structuralist and more activist approaches to migration, putting the lives and suffering of migrants at the centre of its inquiry. Remaining sceptical in best Enlightenment fashion, but avoiding the cynicism bred by conceptual and theoretical fixations, mainstream IR needs to engender a different kind of energetic pessimism where human life is not just ‘an academic matter’.53 In the afterword to his book on pessimism, Dienstag argues that pessimists embody a freedom that ‘can only appear on a landscape (or seascape) of radical indeterminacy’, where the individual other is strengthened to cope with the limitations political life may impose. But who are these pessimists? Dienstag himself, after a whole treatise full of nuance and detail, still needs to qualify this sub-group as ‘antimisanthropes’ among the wider community of pessimists.54 It is necessary to develop a pessimistic, anti-misanthropic, empathetic, hospitable and responsible IR that addresses the foreign other in energetic fashion.

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Notes

















1. Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 18. 2. Dienstag, Pessimism; Alain De Botton, “The Consolations of Pessimism,” City Journal, Spring 2009, https://www.city-journal.org/html/consolations-pessimism-13163.html (accessed 3 January 2019). See also Lebow’s and Stevens’ chapters in this volume 3. Joshua Foa Dienstag, “Nietzsche’s Dionysian Pessimism,” The American Political Science Review 95, no. 4 (2001): 923–37. 4. Lebow, this volume. 5. De Botton, Consolations of Pessimism. 6. Stevens, this volume. 7. Translated as ‘may they perish so that I do not’, this inscription is part of a set of seventeenth-century emblems in the cloister of the former Augustinian monastery of Wettenhausen in Bavaria, illustrating the crew of a little boat lost among towering waves, throwing overboard their cargo and possessions. 8. David Miller, “How Political Philosophy Helps Us Respond to Europe’s Migration Crisis,” The Oxford University Politics Blog, 14 December 2015, https://blog.politics.ox.ac.uk/how-political-philosophy-helps-us-respond-to-europes-migration-crisis/ (accessed 28 March 2019). 9. David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) 10.  David Miller, “Cosmopolitanism: A Critique,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 5, no. 3 (2002): 80–85. 11.  See Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, “Non-refoulement and the New Asylum Seekers,” in D.A. Martin, ed., The New Asylum Seekers: Refugee Law in the 1980s, International Studies in Human Rights. (Dordrecht and Boston, MA: Springer, 1988), 103–21; Alexander Betts, Survival Migration (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013). 12. Heaven Crawley, “Named and Shamed: EU Countries are Failing to Share Responsibility for Refugees,” The Conversation, 19 July 2017, https:// theconversation.com/named-and-shamed-eu-countries-are-failing-toshare-responsibility-for-refugees-80918 (accessed 28 March 2019). 13. Crawley, Named and Shamed. 14. Peter G. Brown and Henry Shue, Boundaries, National Autonomy and Its Limits, Maryland Studies in Public Philosophy (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981); Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983): 33–34. 15. Suvendrini Perera, “Torturous Dialogues: Geographies of Trauma and Spaces of Exception,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 24, no. 1 (2010): 36.

152  M. FOTOU 16. Joseph H. Carens, Ethics of Immigration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 17. Betts, Survival Migration. 18. Ibid., 23. 19. Matthew J. Gibney, “Refugees and Justice Between States,” European Journal of Political Theory 14, no. 4 (2015): 453. 20. Gibney, “Refugees.” 21.  J. David Cisneros, “Contaminated Communities: The Metaphor of ‘Immigrant as Pollutant’ in Media Representations of Immigration,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11, no. 4 (2008): 569–601; see also, David Shariatmadari, “Swarms, Floods and Marauders: The Toxic Metaphors of the Migration Debate,” The Guardian, 10 August 2015, https://www. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/10/migration-debate-metaphors-swarms-floods-marauders-migrants (accessed 28 March 2019). 22. Miller, “How Political Philosophy.” 23.  Marius Clemens and Janine Hart, “Migration, Unemployment and the Business Cycle: A Euro Area Perspective,” The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), https://www.diw.de/documents/vortragsdokumente/220/diw_01.c.592946.de/v_2018_clemens_migration_eea.pdf; Hein De Haas, “International Migration, Remittances and Development: Myths and Facts,” Third World Quarterly 26, no. 8 (2005): 1269–84. 24. Oliver Bakewell, “Research Beyond the Categories: The Importance of Policy Irrelevant Research into Forced Migration,” Journal of Refugee Studies 21, no. 4 (2008): 432–53. 25. Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London: Verso Books, 2009), 167. 26. Alain Corbin, The Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World, 1750–1840 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994). 27.  Richard D. McKirahan, Philosophy Before Socrates (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2010), 29. 28. Hans Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 8. 29. John, The Book of Revelation, Chapter 21, verse 1; Virgil, Virgil Works (London: Heinemann, 1916), Eclogue IV. 30. Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator, 4. 31. Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958), 489. 32. Angela Smith, Risky Bodies Offshore: Spatialisation, Securitisation and Visual Regimes of Migration, Master’s Thesis, Center for Migration and Refugee Studies, American University in Cairo (2015), 5. 33. Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator, 9. 34. Perera, Tortuous Dialogues, 37.



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35. Corbin, The Lure of the Sea, 234. 36. Walter Benjamin in a 1931 radio talk, cited in Gene Ray, “Reading the Lisbon Earthquake: Adorno, Lyotard, and the Contemporary Sublime,” The Yale Journal of Criticism 17, no. 1 (2004): 7. 37. Alvaro S. Pereira, The Opportunity of a Disaster: The Economic Impact of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, Discussion Paper 06/03, Centre for Historical Economics and Related Research at York, York University (2006); Richard Hamblyn, “Notes from Underground: Lisbon After the Earthquake,” Romanticism 14, no. 2 (2008): 108–18. 38. Theodore Besterman, Voltaire (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), 365, cited in Ray, “Reading the Lisbon Earthquake,” 8. 39. Perera, Tortuous Dialogues, 36; Susan Neiman, “Undeniable Evil,” New England Review 23, no. 4 (2002): 5. 40. Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 361, translation modified, cited in Ray, “Reading the Lisbon Earthquake,” 11. 41.  Edgar S. Brightman, “The Lisbon Earthquake: A Study in Religious Valuation,” The American Journal of Theology 23, no. 4 (1919): 516. 42. Voltaire, Candide, or Optimism (London: Penguin, 2006), chapter 5. 43. ‘Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles’ is the mantra expression of Professor Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide. The second part of the expression belongs to Leibniz’s 1710 Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil. 44. Neiman, Undeniable Evil, 7. 45. Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 361, translation modified, cited in Ray, “Reading the Lisbon Earthquake,” 11. 46. Ray, “Reading the Lisbon Earthquake,” 12. 47. Neiman, Undeniable Evil, 6. 48. Pereira, The Opportunity of a Disaster, 36. 49. Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11. 50. Pereira, The Opportunity of a Disaster, 36. 51. Carol Gluck, “After the Shipwreck: New Horizons in History-Writing,” audio document, conference presentation in Maison, Conférence donnée le 25 octobre 2012 dans le cadre du séminaire sur l’histoire connectée de la Maison de l’histoire, Université de Genève, https://mediaserver.unige. ch/collection/VN4-1bb7-2012-2013-A (accessed 28 March 2019). 52. Greg Thomas, “Afro-Blue Notes: The Death of Afro-pessimism (2.0)?,” Theory & Event 21, no. 1 (2018): 285. 53. “I can’t be a pessimist. Because I’m alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter” James Baldwin, in WGBH programme “The Negro and The American Promise” (1963) excerpt of which appears in I Am Not Your Negro, dir. Raoul Peck (2016). 54. Dienstag, Pessimism, 267.

CHAPTER 10

The Pessimism Traps of Indigenous Resurgence Sheryl R. Lightfoot

The body of Indigenous political theory that emerged in the late 1960s and has blossomed since the late 1990s speaks directly to the colonial assumptions of mainstream International Relations (IR), revealing a problematic global state of what may be called incomplete post-colonialism resulting from the erasure and exclusion of Indigenous peoples. The challenge is how to remedy the exclusion and accommodation of Indigenous peoples, especially Indigenous nations, in existing systems that were designed to exclude them. The main focus of Indigenous political theory is the assertion of Indigenous nationhood with the twin goals of removing Indigenous nations from their forcible, and humiliating, subjugated position as ‘domestic dependent nations’, or even as ‘wards’ of the state, and returning them to their rightful position as international political actors. Thus, in both its emancipatory frame and its orientation towards future re-visioning, Indigenous political theory is inherently about re-thinking and re-imagining what we typically mean by relations international. In spite

S. R. Lightfoot (*)  University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_10

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of this seemingly positive orientation, however, a branch of Indigenous political theory is caught in a series of three ‘pessimism traps’ which limits its ability to create better future relationships between Indigenous peoples and states, or between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. While settler colonial states (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States) may consider themselves to be ‘post-colonial’ in the sense that they separated from Great Britain many years ago, Indigenous political theory argues the contrary: that Indigenous-state relationships remain deeply colonial, and the structures of those relationships remain not only unjust, but they also retain all the elements of the same nineteenth-century colonialism that these settler colonial states used to forcibly dispossess, domesticate and assimilate Indigenous nations into their newly formed nation-states. While the form of the oppression may have changed face over time, the fact of oppression itself remains unchanged. One particular branch of Indigenous political theory often referred to as ‘Indigenous resurgence’, draws heavily from Franz Fanon, who argues that colonial rule is based in coercion and ‘pure violence’ and ‘does not alleviate oppression or mask domination’.1 Further, Fanon also points out that in settings where colonial rule is not held and reproduced through force alone, the hegemony of the colonial state engages in the production of ‘colonized subjects’, meaning specific forms of colonised thought and behaviours that implicitly and explicitly create and maintain subject positions which produce and reproduce conditions of domination/subordination.2 Following Fanon, the Indigenous resurgence school thus holds, simultaneously, two inter-related goals: (1) to illuminate the multitude of ways that settler states have retained and continuously reproduce colonial political, legal and material structures in their relationships with Indigenous peoples which create an ongoing system of structural domination and subordination; and (2) to assume an active anti-assimilationist and decolonising set of politics. Meanwhile, most settler colonial states are currently engaged in some type of reconciliation discourse, designed to deal with a widely acknowledged problematic past relationship by setting a new tone for future relations between states and Indigenous peoples. With the exception of the United States, each of these settler colonial states has an active reconciliation agenda intended to rewrite its relationship with Indigenous peoples. In Canada, this has taken the form of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that was mandated to explore the truth about the

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century-long Indian residential school policy that forcibly removed Indigenous children from their homes and communities with the intention of assimilating them into white society. In June 2015, at the end of its six-year mandate, the TRC issued its final summary report including 94 Calls to Action for the Canadian state and civil society.3 Central to these 94 Calls to Action is Call 43, which states, ‘We call upon federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments to fully adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (the UN Declaration) as the framework for reconciliation’. As I have argued elsewhere, full implementation of the UN Declaration, if achieved, would necessarily bring about deep transformations in the structure and form of Indigenous-state relations, with implications for a wider global politics since the implementation of Indigenous rights necessarily involves the re-thinking of various fundamentals of the international system like Westphalian sovereignty, liberalism, decolonisation, and the state form itself.4 In Australia, reconciliation discourse has defined official Indigenoussettler relations discourse for about a generation. In New Zealand, agreements to settle violations of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi have been ongoing for decades. The treaty settlements process has, since the 1980s, completed treaty settlement agreements with many iwi (tribal groups), and the government has stated its intention to complete settlement agreements with all iwi in the coming years. Despite all of these activities designed to re-write the relationship between states and Indigenous peoples, some high-profile critical Indigenous political theorists reject all state overtures towards reconciliation and take extremely pessimistic approaches towards future Indigenous-state relations. They advocate that Indigenous resurgence through a return to Indigenous land-based forms of governance is the only path to decolonisation. I argue that while resurgence school theorists are strong advocates for Indigenous nations and bring focus and clarity to a set of issues about power structures and dynamics, they are all caught in the same set of three ‘pessimism traps’ that unnecessarily limit their capacity to contribute to improved Indigenous-state relationships. These pessimism traps emanate from a reliance on Fanonian revolutionary thought and a problematic application of Fanonian theory from French-colonised North Africa to an entirely different context in the English-speaking settler states. Finally, I argue, these pessimism traps are diametrically opposed to the work and vision of Indigenous organisations

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who have been working on the ground for decades to assert Indigenous nationhood both domestically and internationally, in ways that often assertively and creatively challenge and shift the existing system of sovereign states. In sum, because the resurgence school remains trapped in a pessimism box of its own making, it remains significantly out of step with Indigenous movements and actually risks harming their efforts to advance Indigenous self-determination in creative and innovative ways.

Pessimism Trap 1: A Clear Demarcation of Indigenous Individuals into Only Two Categories, ‘Authentic’ and ‘Co-Opted’ For Indigenous resurgence theorists, these two categories are the only possibilities, and there is no grey area in-between. In their view, Indigenous peoples are co-opted if they hold elected office, make land claims or economic development agreements with governments or industry, or even sign treaties. Furthermore, co-opted Indigenous peoples are so co-opted, that they do not even recognise how they are being used and colonised by the state and its private-sector partners. On the other hand, authentic Indigenous peoples live on their traditional lands, speak their Native languages, practice their culture and govern themselves in traditional fashion. They are the only ones that have successfully resisted the overwhelming forces of colonisation and its powers of cooptation, and the only ones with the power to do so into the future. In his 2005 book, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom, Taiaiake Alfred calls on the original people, what he calls Onkwehonwe in the Mohawk language, to unify in resisting the colonial structures that continue to oppress them.5 Relying on warrior imagery in the Mohawk tradition, Alfred confronts Indigenous people to recognise Western domination in our communities and resist it. He argues forcefully that Indigenous peoples have become overly complacent on, and even dependent upon, Western social, economic and political structures. He calls for a resurgence in Indigenous spirituality and political structures in Indigenous communities. As he sees it, a strong Indigenous warrior is not one that necessarily engages in war and violent resistance but, rather, is one that shows real courage by living a daily life grounded in the spiritual teachings and practices of our ancestors. The decolonising revolution he calls for is rooted within the peaceful resurgence of

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traditional spirituality and governance. As he writes, ‘There are people in all communities who understand that a true decolonization movement can emerge only when we shift our politics from articulating grievances to pursuing an organized and political battle for the cause of our freedom. These new warriors understand the need to refuse any further disconnection from their heritage and the need to reconnect with the spiritual bases of their existences’.6 While at first glance, this book represents a powerful and compelling call to action by Indigenous communities and leaders, a closer examination reveals all three pessimism traps in play throughout the text. Alfred draws a sharp line between authentic Indigenous approaches and co-opted ones. As he puts it, ‘Not all of us have been conquered. There are still strong Onkwehonwe who persevere in their struggle for an authentic existence and who are capable of redefining, regenerating, and reimagining our collective existences’.7 Yet, he warns, ‘The colonizers stand on guard for their ill-gotten privileges using highly advanced techniques, mainly co-optation, division and when required, physical repression’ and ‘with its massive resources, the state can co-opt leadership and movement successes’.8 Furthermore, Alfred notes, the authentic Indigenous peoples and leaders are no longer the majority, as the co-opted ones seem to occupy most of the leadership roles in organisations and communities. Lamenting the constant temptations for co-optation on offer, from land claims agreements, to casino capitalism, to chief and council salaries, Alfred writes, ‘Working for a cause that has indigenous integrity means sacrifice. …This is the reality of an authentic indigenous existence in political terms. And, evidently, in our communities today, there are only a few people who are convinced that taking on the psychological and financial burden of being really indigenous is worth the fight’.9 Similar patterns appear in Alfred’s follow-up 2009 book, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto.10 In this work, Alfred walks the reader through Indigenous values, weaving a thesis that a new kind of Indigenous leadership, characterised by the resurgence of Indigenous forms of self-determination, is the only way to resist colonialism and preserve what still exists of Indigenous culture and lifeways today. In a Fanonian spirit, he challenges Indigenous peoples, and particularly leaders, professionals and academics, to be aware of how colonialism has impacted them and their communities on every level, including and especially, psychologically. He challenges Indigenous leadership and

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communities to recognise these multiple layers of colonialism in current contemporary practice, and to resist them. As in his earlier work, Alfred divides Indigenous peoples, communities and leadership into two stark categories: authentic and co-opted. Indigenous leaders, he says, either actively resist, or they co-operate with the state. When they co-operate with the state, they ‘rationalize and participate actively in their own subordination and the maintenance of the Other’s superiority’ and therefore become co-opted.11 Further, he sees that as states have moved away from overt violent control of Indigenous communities, co-option has become the preferred method of control and subordination: The fact is that neither the state-sponsored modifications to the colonial-municipal model …nor the corporate or public-government systems recently negotiated in the North constitute indigenous governments at all. Potentially representing the final solution to the white society’s ‘Indian Problem,’ they use the co-operation of Native leaders in the design and implementation of such systems to legitimize the state’s longstanding assimilationist goals for indigenous nations and lands.12

One of the deepest problems, according to Alfred, is that co-opted communities, leaders and professionals do not often even realise that they are, in fact, co-opted. Co-option, he says, ‘is a subtle, insidious, undeniable fact, and it has resulted in a collective loss of ability to confront the daily injustices, both petty and profound, of Native life’.13 As a case in point, Alfred engages in a substantial discussion of how the concept of sovereignty itself is Western in focus and therefore, when Indigenous leaders advocate for it, on behalf of their nations and communities, they are unwittingly engaging in a politics of co-optation. ‘Shallow-minded politicians’, Alfred writes, ‘are unable to grasp that asserting a right to sovereignty has significant implications’. When they assert a claim to sovereignty but not to resist the state itself, ‘they are making a choice to accept the state as their model and to allow indigenous political goals to be framed and evaluated according to a “statist” pattern’.14 Another prominent member of the Indigenous resurgence school, Glen Coulthard (Yellowknives Dene), was mentored by Taiaiake Alfred and their common philosophy is immediately apparent. As Alfred writes in his foreword to Coulthard’s 2014 book, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, ‘Coulthard is talking about

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rising up, …about resurgence and the politics of self-affirmation. This is a call to combat contemporary colonialism’s objectification and alienation and manipulation of our true selves’.15 Coulthard critiques the current Canadian policy atmosphere of reconciliation as contemporary colonialism, ultimately the same as the old colonialism, but with a new mask. He argues the structure of the settler colonial invasion continues to dispossess and oppress Indigenous peoples, as it always has, but it now has a new face: the disingenuous liberal politics of recognition—which includes such current policy initiatives as the delegation of self-determination, economic development and the settlement of land claims. He begins by noting that over the past forty years or so, there has been an ‘unprecedented degree of recognition for Aboriginal “cultural” rights within the legal and political framework of the Canadian state’.16 Coulthard acknowledges that the increase in recognition demands coming from Indigenous intellectual and community leaders are largely responsible for these changes to the structure of the Indigenous-state relationship in Canada. Yet, Coulthard’s goal in this work is to challenge the notion that ‘the colonial relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state can be adequately transformed via such a politics of recognition’.17 Rather than ushering in a new relationship, he argues, the ‘politics of recognition in its contemporary liberal form promises to reproduce the very configurations of colonialist, racist, patriarchal state power that Indigenous peoples’ demands for recognition have historically sought to transcend’.18 In other words, all of the work and struggle by Indigenous leaders and advocates in the past four decades to advance self-government, recognition of Aboriginal rights and title and economic development for their communities has not only been futile, but damaging to what would or should have been an ‘authentic’ struggle for Indigenous self-determination. Further, all of these advocates and leaders do not even realise how co-opted they have become in the ongoing structures of colonialism. Citing Alfred, and echoing Fanon, Coulthard notes that the dominance of the recognition approach over an extended period of time has produced a class of ‘Aboriginal “citizens”’ who have come to define themselves in terms of the colonial state and its institutions rather than the culture and political traditions of their own Indigenous nations. He identifies a similar process with capitalist economic development initiatives that have created an ‘emergent Aboriginal bourgeoisie whose thirst for profit has come to outweigh their ancestral obligations

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to the land and to others’.19 Unfortunately, Coulthard pessimistically views Indigenous rights advancement as ‘bleak’, since ‘so much of what Indigenous peoples have sought over the last forty years to secure their freedom has in practice cunningly assured its opposite’.20 In a 2007 article, Cherokee political scientist Jeff Corntassel takes the co-option argument to the international level.21 Corntassel acknowledges that UN fora do provide opportunities for strategising and diplomacy among Indigenous actors from diverse parts of the world, especially important in storytelling, information sharing and building solidarity. Corntassel also acknowledges that there were a handful of instances in the First UN Indigenous Decade (1995–2004) where Indigenous peoples were able to successfully challenge UN protocols and procedures and insert themselves into the UN ‘on their own terms’. However, despite these acknowledgements, Corntassel concludes that the UN system, being made up of states, aims to co-opt Indigenous peoples into the norms and mores of the state, thereby distracting them from their proper focus on advancing their own nationhood. Like Alfred and Coulthard, Corntassel falls into the first pessimism trap which demarcates Indigenous political leadership into ‘authentic’ and ‘co-opted’ categories.

Pessimism Trap 2: The State is Unified, Deliberate and Unchanging in Its Desire to Dispossess Indigenous Peoples and Gain Unfettered Access to Indigenous Lands and Resources In other words, colonialism by settler states is a constant, not a variable, in both outcome and intent. Further, the state is not only intentionally colonial, but it is also unified in its desire to co-opt Indigenous peoples as a method and means of control. In 2005’s Wasase, Alfred presents the state as unitary, intentional and unchanging in its desire to colonise and oppress Indigenous peoples noting, ‘I think that the only thing that has changed since our ancestors first declared war on the invaders is that some of us have lost heart’.22 Referring to current state policies as a ‘self-termination movement’, Alfred states, ‘It is senseless to advocate for an accord with imperialism while there is a steady and intense ongoing attack by the Settler society

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on everything meaningful to us: our cultures, our communities, and our deep attachments to land’.23 Alfred’s Peace, Power, Righteousness (2009) also argues that the state is deliberate and unchanging, stating quite plainly that ‘it is still the objective of the Canadian and US governments to remove Indians, or, failing that, to prevent them from benefitting, from their ancestral territories’.24 Contemporary states do this, he argues, not through outright violent control but ‘by insidiously promoting a form of neo-colonial self-government in our communities and forcing our integration into the legal mainstream’.25 According to Alfred, the state ‘relegates indigenous peoples’ rights to the past, and constrains the development of their societies by allowing only those activities that support its own necessary illusion: that indigenous peoples today do not present a serious challenge to its legitimacy’.26 Linking back to the aim of co-option, Alfred argues that while the state’s desire to control Indigenous peoples and lands has never changed, the techniques for doing so have become subtler over time. ‘Recognizing the power of the indigenous challenge and unable to deny it a voice’, due to successful Indigenous resistance over the years, ‘the state has (now) attempted to pull indigenous people closer to it’.27 According to Alfred, the state has outwitted Indigenous leaders and ‘encouraged them to reframe and moderate their nationhood demands to accept the fait accompli of colonization, (and) to collaborate in the development of a “solution” that does not challenge the fundamental imperial lie’.28 In a similar vein, Coulthard’s central argument is centred on his understanding of the dual structure of colonialism. Drawing directly from Fanon, Coulthard finds that colonialism relies on both objective and subjective elements. The objective components involve domination through the political, economic and legal structures of the colonial state. The subjective elements of colonialism involve the creation of ‘colonized subjects’, including a process of internalisation by which colonised subjects come to not only accept the limited forms of ‘misrecognition’ granted through the state but can even come to identify with it.29 Through this dual structure, colonial power now works through the inclusion of Indigenous peoples, actively shaping their perspectives in line with state discourses, rather than merely excluding them, as in years past. Therefore, any attempt to seek ‘the reconciliation of Indigenous nationhood with state sovereignty is still colonial insofar as it remains

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structurally committed to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples of our lands and self-determining authority’.30 Concerning the state in relation to Indigenous peoples on the international level, Corntassel argues that states and global organisations, for years, have been consistently framing Indigenous peoples’ self-determination claims in ways that ‘jeopardize the futures of indigenous communities’.31 He claims that states first compartmentalise Indigenous self-determination by separating lands and resources from political and legal recognition of a limited autonomy. Second, he notes, states sometimes deny the existence of Indigenous peoples living within their borders. Thirdly, a political and legal entitlement framing by states deemphasises other responsibilities. Finally, he claims that states, through the rights discourse, limit the frameworks through which Indigenous peoples can seek self-determination. Like Alfred and Coulthard, Corntassel has concluded that states are deliberate and never changing in their behaviour. With this move, Corntassel limits and actually demeans Indigenous agency, overlooking the reality that Indigenous organisations themselves chose the human rights framework and rights discourse as a target sphere of action precisely because, as was evident in earlier struggles like slavery, civil rights or women’s rights, these were tools available to them that had a proven track record of opening up new possibilities and shifting previous state positions and behaviour. Indigenous advocates also cleverly realised, by the 1970s, that the anti-discrimination and decolonisation frames could be used together against states. States did, in no way, nefariously impose a rights framework on Indigenous peoples. Rather, Indigenous organisations and savvy Indigenous political actors deliberately chose to frame their self-determination struggles within the human rights framework in order to bring states into a double bind where they could not credibly claim to adhere to human rights and claim that they uphold equality while simultaneously denying Indigenous peoples’ human rights and leaving them with a diminished and unequal right of self-determination. But, because he is caught in the pessimism trap of seeing the state only as unified, deliberate and unchanging, Corntassel overlooks and diminishes the clear story of Indigenous agency and the potential for positive change in advancing self-determination in a multitude of ways.

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Pessimism Trap 3: Engagement with the Settler State is Futile, if Not Counter-Productive Since the state always intends to maintain, if not expand, colonial control, and is seeking to co-opt as many Indigenous peoples as possible in order to maintain or expand its dispossession and control, it is therefore futile, at best, and actually dangerous to Indigenous existence to engage with the state. Furthermore, all patterns of engagement will lead to co-optation as the state is cunning and unrelenting in its desire to co-opt Indigenous leaders, academics and professionals in order to gain or maintain control of Indigenous peoples. Alfred argues, in both his 2005 and 2009 books, that any Indigenous engagement with the state, including agreements and negotiations, is not only futile but fundamentally dangerous, as such pathways do not directly challenge the existing colonial structure and ‘to argue on behalf of indigenous nationhood within the dominant Western paradigm is self-defeating’.32 Alfred states that a ‘notion of nationhood or self-government rooted in state institutions and framed within the context of state sovereignty can never satisfy the imperatives of Native American political traditions’33 because the possibility for a true expression of Indigenous self-determination is ‘precluded by the state’s insistence on dominion and its exclusionary notion of sovereignty’.34 Worst of all, according to Alfred, when Indigenous communities frame their struggles in terms of asserting Aboriginal rights and title, but do so within a state framework, rather than resisting the state itself, it ‘represents the culmination of white society’s efforts to assimilate indigenous peoples’.35 Because it is impossible to advance Indigenous self-determination through any sort of engagement with the state, Coulthard also advocates for an Indigenous resurgence paradigm that follows both his mentor Taiaiake Alfred but also Anishinaabe feminist theorist Leanne Simpson.36 As Coulthard writes, ‘both Alfred and Simpson start from a position that calls on Indigenous peoples and communities to “turn away” from the assimilative reformism of the liberal recognition approach and to instead build our national liberation efforts on the revitalization of “traditional” political values and practices’.37 Drawing upon the prescriptive approach of these theorists, Coulthard proposes, in his concluding chapter, five theses from his analysis that are intended to build and solidify Indigenous resurgence into the future:

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1. On the necessity of direct action, meaning that physical forms of Indigenous resistance, like protest and blockades, are very important not only as a reaction to the state but also as a means of protecting the lands that are central to Indigenous peoples’ existence; 2. Capitalism, No More!, meaning the rejection of capitalist forms of economic development in Indigenous communities in favour of land-based Indigenous political-economic alternative approaches; 3. Dispossession and Indigenous Sovereignty in the City, meaning the need for Indigenous resurgence movements ‘to address the interrelated systems of dispossession that shape Indigenous peoples’ experiences in both urban and land-based settings’38; 4. Gender Justice and Decolonisation, meaning that decolonisation must also include a shift away from patriarchy and an embrace of gender relations that are non-violent and reflective of the centrality of women in traditional forms of Indigenous governance and society; and 5. Beyond the Nation-State. While Coulthard denies that he advocates complete rejection of engagement with the state’s political and legal system, he does assert that ‘our efforts to engage these discursive and institutional spaces to secure recognition of our rights have not only failed, but have instead served to subtly reproduce the forms of racist, sexist, economic, and political configurations of power that we initially sought…to challenge’.39 He therefore advocates expressly for ‘critical self-reflection, skepticism, and caution’ in a ‘resurgent politics of recognition that seeks to practice decolonial, gender-emancipatory, and economically nonexploitative alternative structures of law and sovereign authority grounded on a critical refashioning of the best of Indigenous legal and political traditions’.40 Corntassel also demonstrates the third pessimism trap, that all engagement with the state is ultimately futile. For the most part, however, Corntassel’s observation is that the UN system operates like a reverse Keck and Sikkink ‘boomerang model’ and ‘channels the energies of transnational Indigenous networks into the institutional fiefdoms of member countries’, by which an ‘illusion of inclusion’ is created.41 He argues that, in order to be included or their views listened to, Indigenous delegates at the UN must mimic the strategies, language, norms and modes of behaviour of member states and international

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institutions. Corntassel finds that ‘what results is a cadre of professionalized Indigenous delegates who demonstrate more allegiance to the UN system than to their own communities’.42 In his final analysis, he charges that the co-optation of international Indigenous political actors is highly ‘effective in challenging the unity of the global Indigenous rights movement and hindering genuine dialogue regarding Indigenous self-determination and justice’.43 Finding that states deliberately co-opt and provide ‘illusions of inclusion’ to Indigenous political actors in UN settings, Corntassel comes to the same conclusion as Alfred concerning the futility of engagement, arguing that because transnational Indigenous networks are ‘channeled’ and ‘blunted’ by colonial state actors, ‘it is a critical time for Indigenous peoples to rethink their approaches to bringing Indigenous rights concerns to global forums’.44

Imagining a Post-Colonial Future: Pessimistic ‘Resurgence’ Versus the Optimism and Tenacity of Indigenous Movements on the Ground All of these writers advocate Indigenous resurgence, through a combination of rejecting the current reconciliation politics of settler colonial states, coupled with a return to land-based Indigenous expressions of governance as the only viable, ‘authentic’ and legitimate path to a better future for Indigenous peoples, which they refer to as decolonisation. While inherently critical in their orientation, these three approaches do make some positive and productive contributions to Indigenous movements. They help shed light on the various and subtle ways that Indigenous leaders and communities can become co-opted into a colonial system. They help us to hold leadership accountable. They also help us keep a strong focus on our traditional, cultural and spiritual values as well as our traditional forms of governance which then also helps us imagine future possibilities. As I have pointed out here, however, all three theorists are also caught in the same three pessimism traps: authenticity versus co-option; a vision of the state as unified, deliberate and never changing in its desire to colonise and control; and a view of engagement with the state as futile, if not dangerous, to Indigenous sovereignty and existence. When combined, these three pessimism traps aim to inhibit Indigenous peoples’

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engagement with the state in any process that could potentially re-imagine and re-formulate their current relationship into one that could be transformative and post-colonial, as envisioned by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The pessimism traps together work to foreclose any possibility that there could be credible openings of opportunity to negotiate a fairer and just relationship of co-existence with even the most progressive state government. This pessimistic approach is not innocuous. By overemphasising structure and granting the state an enormous degree of agency as a unitary actor, this pessimistic approach does a remarkable disservice to Indigenous resistance movements by proscribing, from academia, an extremely narrow view of what Indigenous self-determination can and should mean in practice. By overlooking and/or discounting Indigenous agency and not even considering the possibility that Indigenous peoples could themselves be calculating, strategic political actors in their own right, and vis-à-vis states, the pessimistic lens of the resurgence school unnecessarily, unproductively and unjustly limits the field of possibility for Indigenous peoples’ decision-making, thus actually countering and inhibiting expressions of Indigenous self-determination. By condemning—writ large—all Indigenous peoples and organisations that wish to seek peaceful co-existence with the state, negotiate mutually beneficial agreements with the state, and/or who have advocated on the international level for a set of standards that can provide a positive guiding framework for Indigenous-state relations, the pessimistic lens of resurgence forecloses much potential for new and improved relations, in any form, and is very likely to lead to deeper conflicts between states and Indigenous peoples, and potentially, even violent action, which Fanon indicated was the necessary outcome. The pessimism traps of the resurgence school are therefore, likely self-defeating for all but the most remote and isolated Indigenous communities. Further, this approach is quite out of step with the actions and vision of many Indigenous resistance movements on the ground who have been working for decades to advance Indigenous self-determination, both domestically and globally, in ways that transform the colonial state into something more just and may eventually present creative alternatives to the Westphalian state form in ways that could respect and accommodate Indigenous nations. Rather, it aims to shame and blame those who wish to explore creative and innovative post-colonial resolutions to the colonial condition.

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The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (the Declaration or UN Declaration) was adopted by the General Assembly in 2007 after 25 years of development. The Declaration is ground-breaking, given the key leadership roles Indigenous peoples played in negotiating and achieving this agreement.45 Additionally, for the first time in UN history, the rights holders, Indigenous peoples, worked with states to develop an instrument that would serve to promote, protect and affirm Indigenous rights, both globally and in individual domestic contexts.46 Many Indigenous organisations and movements, from dozens of countries around the world, were involved in drafting and negotiating the UN Declaration and are now advocating for its full implementation, both internationally and in domestic and regional contexts. In Canada, some of the key organisational players—the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee), the Assembly of First Nations, and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, or their predecessor organisations—were involved in the drafting and lengthy negotiations of the UN Declaration during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. In the United States, organisations like the American Indian Law Alliance and the Native American Rights Fund have been involved as well as the Navajo Nation and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, who represent themselves as Indigenous peoples’ governing institutions. From Scandinavia, the Saami Council and the Sami Parliaments all play a key role in advancing Indigenous rights. In Latin America, organisations like the Confederación de Nationalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE) and the Consejo Indio de Sud America (CISA) advocate for implementation of the UN Declaration. The three, major transnational Indigenous organisations— the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, the International Indian Treaty Council and the Inuit Circumpolar Council—were all key members of the drafting and negotiating team for the UN Declaration, and the latter two, which are still in existence, continue their strong advocacy for its full implementation. Implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires fundamental and significant change, on both the international and domestic levels. Because implementation of Indigenous rights essentially calls for a complete and fundamental restructuring of Indigenous-state relationships, it expects states to enact and implement a significant body of legal, constitutional, legislative and policy changes that can accommodate such things as Indigenous land rights, free, prior and informed consent, redress and a variety of self-government,

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autonomy and other such arrangements. States are not going to implement this multifaceted and complex set of changes on their own, however. They will require significant political and moral pressure to hold them accountable to the rhetorical commitments they have made to support this level of change. They will also require ongoing conversation and negotiation with Indigenous peoples along the way, lest the process becomes problematically one-sided. Such processes ultimately require sustained political will, commitment and engagement over the long term, to reach the end result of radical systemic change and Indigenous state relationships grounded in mutual respect, co-existence and reciprocity. This type of fundamental change requires creative thinking, careful diplomacy, tenacity, and above all, optimistic vision, on the part of Indigenous peoples. The pessimistic approaches of the resurgence school are ultimately of little use in these efforts, other than as a cautionary tale against state power, of which the organisational players are already keenly aware. Further, by dismissing and discouraging all efforts at engagement with states, and especially with the blanket accusations that all who engage in such efforts are ‘co-opted’ and not ‘authentically’ Indigenous, the resurgence school actually creates unnecessary negative feelings and divisions amongst Indigenous movements who should be pooling limited resources and working together towards better futures.



Notes







1. Franz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (Boston, MA: Grove Press, 2005). 2. Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markman (Boston, MA: Grove Press, 1991 [1967]). 3. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Winnipeg, 2015), http://nctr.ca/ assets/reports/Final%20Reports/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf (accessed 1 November 2016). 4. Sheryl Lightfoot, Global Indigenous Politics: A Subtle Revolution (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). 5. Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005). 6. Ibid., 22. 7. Ibid., 45. 8. Ibid., 25, 209. 9. Ibid., 181.



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10. Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, Second edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 11. Ibid., 97. 12. Ibid., 27. 13. Ibid., 97. 14. Ibid., 80. 15. Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), x. 16. Ibid., 2. 17. Ibid., 3. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 42. 20. Ibid. 21. Jeff Corntassel, “Partnership in Action: Indigenous Political Mobilization and Co-optation During the First International Decade (1995–2004),” Human Rights Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2007): 137–66. 22. Alfred, Wasase, 37. 23. Ibid., 36–37. 24. Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness, 27. 25. Ibid., 10. 26. Ibid., 83. 27. Ibid., 84. 28. Ibid. 29. Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, 16–17. 30. Ibid., 151. 31. Jeff Corntassel, “Toward Sustainable Self-Determination: Rethinking the Contemporary Indigenous Rights Discourse,” Alternatives 33, no. 1 (2008): 107. 32. Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness, 82. 33. Ibid., 96, emphasis added. 34. Ibid., 96. 35. Ibid., 83. 36. Leanne Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Press, 2011). 37. Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, 154. 38. Ibid., 176. 39. Ibid., 179. 40. Ibid. 41. Corntassel, “Partnership in Action,” 161. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 162.

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44. Ibid., 164. 45. James Youngblood Sa’ke’j Henderson, Indigenous Diplomacy and the Rights of Peoples: Achieving UN Recognition (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008). 46. S. James Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Dalee Sambo Dorough, Gudmundur Alfredsson, Lee Swepston, and Petter Wille, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in International Law: Emergence and Application (Kautokeino and Copenhagen: Gáldu Čála, 2015); Paul Joffe, Advancing Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights: New Developments in the Americas, 2017,  http://quakerser vice.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ Advancing-IPs-Human-Rts-New-Devts-in-the-Americas-Joffe-FINALJan-4-17.pdf (accessed 3 April 2019); Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, Summary Report on Implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in British Columbia (Vancouver: Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, 2018), http://irshdc.ubc.ca/files/2018/12/IRSHDC_UNDRIP_Report_ Dec2018.pdf (accessed 3 April 2019).

CHAPTER 11

After Pessimism? Affirmative Approaches to the Anthropocene David Chandler

Introduction Philosophical pessimism does not relate to an emotional state of mind—feeling good or bad about something, or the possibilities of its success—but to a philosophical or political perspective, which is critical of contemporary or modern understandings of progress. From the birth of modernity, at least from Jean-Jacques Rousseau onwards, it could be argued that there has been a pessimistic reaction against the Enlightenment telos of reason, rationality and progress, and a romantic desire for the ‘return’ of humanity to a more ‘natural’ or less ‘corrupted’ state.1 This chapter engages with the possibility that the great age of philosophical pessimism, as a powerful critique of modernity, is reaching its end. It explores the possibility that pessimism is no longer so attractive to critical theorists in the contemporary era of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene understood, not merely as a geological marker of human impact upon the earth but as the end of modernist assumptions of a human/nature divide, seems to close off the possibility D. Chandler (*)  University of Westminster, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_11

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of disenchantment with the human condition. What could pessimism mean today, if, after the separations of modernity, humanity can never be returned to the world or somehow reunited with nature? This chapter seeks to analyse the discomfort with pessimism today and to suggest that perhaps we should not rush to celebrate the more affirmative frameworks of critique, which are beginning to supplant it.2 Today it appears that pessimism was perhaps an unchecked privilege of the moderns. To be more precise, perhaps pessimism was the privilege of critical theorists, influenced by the work of the Frankfurt School and spurred by an imaginary of modernity as the process of the disenchantment of the world: a product of the myths of the Enlightenment3 and the modernist divide between culture and nature?4 As a number of important contemporary theorists inform us, the Anthropocene condition can be read as removing the illusion that the world was ever there ‘for us’ or that we can commune in non-modern ways to hear and heed the ‘voices’ of non-human others.5 There can be no pessimism once the world no longer is imagined to have sense or purpose or meaning that can be restored or regained. The Anthropocene can thus be imagined as a gain in intelligibility6 at the price of the eclipse of both the modernist imaginary (with its optimistic telos of universal knowledge and progress) and its romantic critical counterpart of disenchantment and philosophical pessimism. This chapter is organised in three sections. The first section draws out the importance of understanding the distinct mode of contemporary critique, which, rather than seeking to return humanity to the world, emphasises the impossibility of finding meaning in the world. It is this inversion of critical understandings that enables an affirmative approach to the Anthropocene. The second section expands on this point to consider how contemporary theoretical approaches articulate the transvaluation of critique as the guide to life without pessimism. The final section summarises five key aspects of Anthropocene affirmation, which enables this framing to have such a powerful appeal, increasingly marginalising the value of pessimism as a contemporary philosophical stance.

Pessimism and the Critique of Modernity For many critical theorists, the Anthropocene is a time of experimentation and affirmation and easily counterposed to the pessimism that loomed over twentieth-century critical approaches, which were

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disillusioned with modernity and its dull, repetitive, alienating, bureaucratic, rationalist, technological and individualising assumptions. The desire for affirmation and rejection of pessimism takes a particular and highly contemporary form. Unlike earlier critiques of modernity,7 the affirmative framings of the Anthropocene do not seek to return the human to the world, to ‘re-enchant’ the world after modernity’s passing. Rather than becoming ‘at home’ in the Anthropocene, the opposite movement is at play: the earth is understood to be more alien to us, more inaccessible and stranger than we could have imagined. Counterintuitively, it is this alienation from the world, the world as lacking in meaning for humanity (the world as a ‘desert’ in Arendtian terms),8 which provides the affirmation of the Anthropocene and distinguishes it from the philosophical pessimism of late-modernist critique. The new epoch of the Anthropocene can be seen as a continuation of a trend towards a more pessimistic view of the possibility of progress on behalf of radical or critical theorists and commentators. To the point where, today, it is no longer necessary for critical approaches to promise even the possibility of an alternative ‘happy ending’.9 Thus pessimism itself has reached a state of exhaustion. This radical malaise is captured well in Fredric Jameson’s often cited observation, ‘that the end of the world is more easily imaginable than the end of capitalism’.10 Thus to understand the affirmation of the Anthropocene it is necessary to understand how this pessimistic observation could have been turned from a negative into a positive. As far as there is a shift from a critical focus on capitalism as a specific system of social relations to the problem of reflection upon human forms of social existence more generally, the affirmation of the Anthropocene seems both to build on and, importantly, to differ from the pessimism of the critical theory tradition inspired by the Frankfurt School. Perhaps the classic work of critical pessimism and the problematisation of modernist assumptions is the one that established the reputation of critical theory and the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947).11 For them, modernist thinking was dehumanising: the Enlightenment was problematic in denaturalising the world and the human, and for reducing, universalising and equalising the experience of the world. For philosophical pessimism, the Enlightenment was problematic and oppressive rather than liberating. The Enlightenment view of reason contained the seeds of its own destruction. Enlightenment was seen as a history of

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the separation of humanity from nature through the power of rationality—based on the subsumption of difference to the rule of equivalences, casting the Enlightenment as a totalitarian project with no inherent limits: ‘Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities’.12 For Adorno and Horkheimer: What was different is equalized. That is the verdict which critically determines the limits of possible experience. The identity of everything with everything else is paid for in that nothing may at the same time be identical with itself. Enlightenment… excises the incommensurable… [u]nder the levelling domination of abstraction.13

Rather than a process of progress and reason, the Enlightenment was seen as a machinic, deadening reduction of the world and of the human individual. For Adorno and Horkheimer, this was a world with no possibility of an outside as everything was subsumed into equivalence through conceptual abstraction.14 In other words, this meant that nothing new could ever occur as ‘the process is always decided from the start’; even unknown values could still be put into equations, dissolving the world into mathematics. Everything new was thus already predetermined, producing a world of ‘knowledge without hope’.15 Thus the history of civilisation was turned into a negative: the attempt to bring the outside under control through the extension of equivalence, Mauss’s gift economy and pre-modern magic and sacrifice being early versions of the exchange of non-equivalents.16 The performative exchange of non-equivalents then led to the reflection of equivalence in thought—conceptual subsumption—through the ratio, that is, the proportion of conceptual equivalence. Under capitalism this process was formalised further, in both practice and in thought, through money as the universal equivalent of exchange and through the abstractions of democracy and universal rights and the development of science and the digital.17 The modernist project was thus one of the extension of the imaginary of control, with the development of subject/object and human/nature binaries. Critical theory and its inheritors were the flag-bearers of philosophical pessimism, seeking to challenge the dominance of the modernist imaginary, questioning hierarchies of reason and progress, and contesting the grounds upon which equivalences and subsumptions of difference were established.

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The Frankfurt School sought to address the crisis of modernist thinking understood as a crisis for the Left, for those who aspired to critically advocate alternative worlds and social progress. The question at the heart of their work was the possibility for critical thought after the Holocaust and Hiroshima. If the Holocaust and Hiroshima were symptoms of rationalist thinking and technological progress, what possibility was there for critique? The pessimism of critical theory can, of course, still be applied to the Anthropocene era. Bonneuil and Fressoz, for example, seek to do this, critiquing modernist/Enlightenment thought for failing to appreciate humanity as part of a material, natural world and seeking to heal the ‘metabolic rift’18 caused by the extraction of ‘cheap nature’,19 restoring a more holistic framework for politics.20 For these critical thinkers, the political struggle against modernist thought is the emancipatory aspect of the Anthropocene. This pessimistic approach to modernity seeks to bring humanity back to the world, through its emphasis on lived experience, the body, affect, ethical entanglements, and so on. Other examples can be found in the situated ‘biopolitical ethics attuned to naturecultural awareness’ of María Puig de la Bellacasa, where care of the self ‘is not separable from peoplecare and Earthcare’.21 Also in the work of posthumanist theorist Rosi Braidotti, who seeks to develop a posthumanism that can ‘actualize the virtual possibilities of an expanded, relational self that functions in a nature-culture continuum’, expressing an ‘affirmative, ethical dimension of becoming-posthuman’ as a community bound ‘by the compassionate acknowledgement of their interdependence with multiple others’.22 Perhaps, in his more recent work, Bruno Latour could be seen to best symbolise the last gasp of philosophical pessimism in his attempt to return humanity to a world of meaning, with his conception of the Earth in terms of the complex adaptive system of Gaia, where there is nothing ‘natural’ about the interactive agencies of the planet, which together produced life.23 For Latour, like Bonneuil and Fressoz, the problem is the divide between culture and nature: a product of modernist human invention.24 Like other philosophical pessimists, and despite his claim that ‘critique has run out of steam’,25 Latour seeks to heal the rift that modernity is held to have opened and restore the ‘Earthbound’ to their true home.26 This chapter therefore does not seek to claim that philosophical pessimism is dead or non-existent, merely that it relies on understanding the Anthropocene as an extension of the modern condition that calls for a ‘return’ from or a rolling-back of modernity, rather

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than as a fundamental break taking us beyond the modernist problematic. Pessimism is thereby always looking backwards, whereas the Anthropocene can be read as a chance to escape the hold of critical romanticism and disillusionment, taking a more affirmative approach to the present. The next section seeks to focus on theorists who reject philosophical pessimism and develop an affirmative approach to the Anthropocene. Thus, critical frameworks of philosophical pessimism are transvalued taking critical theorising well beyond neo-Marxist and cultural critiques of classical Enlightenment or modernist thought. In order to illustrate this and to draw out the underlying sentiments behind the affirmative approaches to the Anthropocene it is useful to highlight the role played by the imagination of extinction: the assumption that there can be ‘no happy ending’.27 This provides a clear intimation of the desire to free social and political thought not just from its modernist legacies but also from any legacies of pessimism. As long as climate change is viewed pessimistically as a problem to be mitigated, adapted, managed, controlled or ‘solved’ in some way, then contemporary theorists argue that the Anthropocene is not properly understood or affirmed.

Affirmation Versus Pessimism It is important to emphasise that philosophical pessimism seeks to critique the modernist episteme in order to have a happy ending— in order to save humanity and the planet rather than to affirm the Anthropocene.28 These authors, considered briefly above, seek to return the human to an original relational, embodied and entangled existence. Thus philosophical pessimism could be accused today of seeking to extend the modernist will to govern and problem-solve—on the basis of intervening, adapting and being resilient in the face of non-linear or complex life, which is seen to set new norms for governance and problem-solving. This approach of romantic problem-solving through returning humanity to the world is lacking in contemporary affirmations of the Anthropocene. For these critical theorists, we need to affirmatively be at home in a world without meaning ‘for us’, where what is important is the lack of stable relations and the lack of intentionality. Claire Colebrook would appear to hit the nail on the head:

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Humanism posits an elevated or exceptional ‘man’ to grant sense to existence, then when ‘man’ is negated or removed what is left is the human all too human tendency to see the world as one giant anthropomorphic self-organizing living body… When man is destroyed to yield a posthuman world it is the same world minus humans, a world of meaning, sociality and readability yet without any sense of the disjunction, gap or limits of the human.29

For Colebrook, the approaches of philosophical pessimism offer a narrative of redemption: after the detour of modernity, humanity is returned to the world. The Anthropocene would thus be no different to the critical pessimistic response to the horrors of the Holocaust or Hiroshima, seen as products of modernist rationalism. In which case, the rejection of the foundational assumptions of modernity would enable humanity to find other modes of reasoning in the world. Colebrook asserts powerfully that: The problem with humanism, so it seems, is that it is deemed to be rather inhuman. The Cartesian subject of calculative reason, along with computational theories of mind or representation, including both older humanisms of man as supreme moral animal and posthumanisms envisioning a disembodied world of absolute mastery, cannot cope with the complexity and dynamism of affective life.30

Thus for Colebrook, philosophical pessimism lacks a critical edge, continuing to counterpose the present reality to a metaphysics of harmony and conciliation, a secular vision of heaven on earth. In essence, we continue the path of ‘progress’, ‘learning our lesson’ and swearing ‘never again’, on the basis of improving upon modernity’s errors. The problem is that: ‘All our talk of mitigation and stability maintains a notion of stabilised nature, a nature that is ideally there for us and cyclically compatible with production’.31 The affirmation of the Anthropocene is, in this respect, the inverse of philosophical pessimism. For affirmative approaches the slogan of ‘never again’ still places the human at the centre of the world. ‘Never again’ is always therefore just the prelude to the next hubristic assertions of human-centred solutions, leading to the next claims of ‘never again’ in an ever-repeating cycle of imaginaries of human mastery.

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For affirmative approaches to the Anthropocene, this cycle can be broken, and declarations of ‘never again’ become an impossibility, precisely through the imagination of the extinction of the human as a securing subject. As Audra Mitchell states, it is ‘because IR [international relations] is so invested in human survival that it renders the assumption of its possibility unquestionable—and therefore renders extinction unthinkable’.32 Following Colebrook, she argues that instead of seeing the problems as solvable on the basis of alternative forms of securing, it is the drive to secure itself which is problematic; ‘only questioning the dogma of survival can enable us to critique this condition, and possibly (although not necessarily) to transcend it’.33 It seems clear that the positive affirmation of the Anthropocene completes the process of the rejection of modernist and Enlightenment thought but only through the inversion or transvaluation of the Frankfurt School’s critical project of philosophical pessimism. The Frankfurt School was caught in the trap of modernist thinking, in that they looked for reason in the world, rather than looking to the world to critique the possibility of reason. Thus philosophical pessimism falls into the trap, increasingly highlighted by alternative radical approaches, of repeating a subject-centred attempt to ‘restore’ humanity to a world of meaning. Pessimism is thereby condemned for failing to deliver on its promise to overcome humanist and modernist approaches which treat the world as compliant object. Thus the conceptual focus upon extinction is post-pessimistic, freeing, as Mitchell argues, ‘the political possibilities of becoming [that] are precluded by the imperative to survive “as we are” at all costs’, enabling ‘new modes of ethico-political action and forms of life’.34 The affirmation of the Anthropocene is an inversion of the focus upon finding reason or meaning in the world, instead seeking to push or enlarge the rift between the human and the world. The rift is naturalised or reified: the world is not and never was there for us, so there can be nothing to be healed or to be overcome. Without another world for us to return to, there can be no basis for philosophical pessimism. Any imagination of a scientific, a technological or a political solution to the problematic of the Anthropocene, would be to pessimistically reject the world that exists and to reproduce the modernist failure to accept reality. This is illustrated by Bruno Latour through the example of Benjamin’s ‘Angel of History’, which Latour compares to the ‘Modern’, flying backwards but, in this case, not able to see the rubble of destruction piling

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up behind him, until the ecological crisis makes him realise, too late, that it was precisely ‘His flight that has created the destruction He was trying to avoid in the first place’.35 It is precisely the flight from reality of both modernity and its pessimistic romantic counterpart that the Anthropocene is held to bring to an end. For the affirmative theorists of the Anthropocene, the Anthropocene is not a problem to be solved: it is an opportunity to be grasped. While, for the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School the Enlightenment resulted in a failure that needed to be addressed. Modernity has only failed if the reader still holds on to the promise of an alternative happy ending held out by philosophical pessimism. The affirmative approaches to the Anthropocene free us from the promise of a happy ending and in so doing transvalue the aspirations of modernity and of philosophical pessimism, especially the promise that human reason could emancipate humanity. Theorists who affirm the Anthropocene state that neither modernist reason nor critical reason can operate today. Science itself is held to have proven that the world is not there for our benefit, to enable humanity to ‘progress’ in line with the imaginaries of either optimistic modernisers or their pessimistic critics for whom ‘another world is possible’. To put this in another way—science reveals that the world does not care about us, that it is not there for us, to provide us with meaning. The world is not a set of scientific and political puzzles set for us to solve; it is no longer ‘all about us’, about what cultures, beliefs, politics, institutions, policies, education systems are better to access the world of reason and progress. Without a world that is there for our benefit, problems can no longer be understood as epistemological: problems of the social, cultural, economic or political barriers to our knowing and understanding. The flip side of this is that the modernist or Enlightenment drive to separate the subject from the object of knowledge is revealed to be an error or mistake only inasmuch as it has not been pushed far enough. There is no such thing as an Enlightenment subject—a subject that imagines itself as separate to other beings, somehow capable of eventually building up more and more universal knowledge of an external world so as to control, direct and to dominate this world—but there is no such thing as the embedded and entangled subject living in harmony through ‘naturecultural awareness’. There is nowhere to go to and nowhere to return to, in order to live happily ever after. There is no world ‘for us’ and therefore no possibility of a happy ending. As Ray Brassier puts it: ‘Science subtracts nature from experience, the better

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to uncover the objective void of being’.36 The only thing certain is the ‘necessity’ of contingency itself.37

Affirmation in the Anthropocene The affirmative approaches to the Anthropocene pose a fundamental break with modernist conceptions of the human subject and with critical philosophical pessimism’s attempts to posit alternative possibilities for finding meaning in the world. As suggested above, the key move in the transvaluation of critical pessimism and the affirmation of the world that exists is in the metaphysical assertion that there is no reason in the world, and that the positing of reason in the world prevents rather than enables its governance. It might not appear immediately obvious why this grounding assertion has become increasingly accepted by contemporary theorists. There are five logically interlinked reasons for this rejection of philosophical pessimism, and any challenge to affirmative approaches to the Anthropocene will therefore have to take up these five claims: 1. No More ‘Never Again’: The Holocaust/Hiroshima Firstly, the projection of unreason onto the world itself transforms the modernist/Enlightenment problematic. While philosophical pessimism attempted to rescue reason and the world for humanity, approaches that affirm the Anthropocene seek to go beyond this. The assertion that reason can no longer seek to solve problems, or to impose itself upon the world, is the key ‘liberating’ or ‘emancipatory’ aspect of the affirmation of the Anthropocene. Thus there is no longer any need for a defensive or speculative history of the failure of modernity or the Enlightenment. The transvaluation of critique—its disconnection from the search for ‘truth’ or for ‘knowledge’—means that the spectres of the Holocaust and Hiroshima haunting critique in modernity are excised at last. This is no small achievement.38 When the theorists that affirm the Anthropocene emphasise that we are now ‘after the end of the world’, ‘after progress’, ‘after theory’ or ‘after critique’ they mean that critical theorists are now freed from the tainted baggage of modernist failures. Reason, free from its modernist task of discovering meaning in the world, is free to ‘discover the great outdoors’39; critical theorists are free to explore, to go out and to play40: to discover a new world of strangeness, hope and possibility.

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Once critique can no longer be held responsible for the aspirations of reason and science and their failures—whether it is Stalinist gulags, the Holocaust or even the war in Iraq—critique is free of any connections to the past. The discovery that unreason is in the world itself, rather than a product of a lack of human reasoning, thus absolves critique of any and all responsibilities. In a world where the Anthropocene has been scientifically ratified as the truth of the end of modernist truth (in all its forms), any attempt to restore critique can only be a sign of a hubristic desire to return to a world of repression and hierarchical exclusions. 2. Everything Is Appreciated In a world without the modernist drive to equivalences, to theory and abstraction, everything in the world is finally alleged to be ‘given its due’.41 Everything is treated on its own terms, as identical with itself and as incommensurable, non-reducible. As Deleuze and Guattari suggest, everything is a singularity, ‘a continuous variation of variables’.42 No longer is the rich plurality of the world reduced to constancies and to ratios of equivalences, or to inherent drives of autopoietic ordering from chaos. This is what gives the affirmation of the Anthropocene its real purchase, very much in the spirit of Nietzsche’s ‘eternal return’.43 As Brassier notes, Nietzsche’s transvaluation of the will to know is crucial to the affirmative force of the Anthropocene. Once the idea of knowledge-in-itself is rejected as impossible in a world of becoming, the will is no longer suborned to the world through a process of ‘evaluating and interpreting under the aegis of truth and knowledge’, whether this is constructed as transcendental or as immanent.44 The will-to-know becomes affirmative and creative rather than negative and oppressive. The creative power of affirmation is the will to life itself, ‘affirming the invaluableness of meaningless life as an end in itself’.45 3. The Dissolution of the Subject The third point is that the flip side to everything being appreciated is that the subject dissolves back into the world, without the separations of the process of modernist reason. If there is no God’s eye view, there is no God. If there is no ratio of equivalence, there is no knowing rational subject. As Deleuze and Guattari highlighted, the act of abstraction and equivalence-building separates the subject ‘implying the permanence

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of a fixed point of view that is external’ to the phenomena, ‘constantly reterritorializing around a point of view’.46 A world in which nothing can be reduced to anything else is a world where the subject can no longer be separate from the world acting according to the hubristic imaginary of the Enlightenment. As decolonial theorist Walter Mignolo argues, the colonial imaginary of the universal subject of knowledge reduces the other to its object, thus the task is a ‘new politics of knowledge rather than new contents’.47 This new politics of knowledge is taken up by contemporary philosophical trends such as speculative realism and object-oriented ontology, Graham Harman and Levi Bryant providing leading examples of phenomenological understandings of the withdrawn nature of objects from each other and themselves.48 Instead of separating itself from the world, or imagining to know itself as the world, the knowing subject of the Anthropocene is drawn into the world itself, following the world, being drawn into it, instead of acting above it. It is precisely this division that Tim Ingold makes in the distinction between seeing the world as a maze and seeing it as a labyrinth. Whereas a journey through a maze is a strategic struggle based on sequential intentional decision-making in order to reach a predetermined goal, in a journey through a labyrinth it is the path that leads and there is no goal beyond carrying on the journey.49 In the maze it is intentionality that is key, whereas in the labyrinth of the Anthropocene it is attentionality that is important: the necessity of paying attention to the world in its concrete specificity. This is not the subject at one with non-human others but always aware of the infinite depth and contingency of relationality in the world. 4. Keeping It Real The fourth key point to stress about the affirmative approach to the Anthropocene is that although there is no reason in the world, there is still a world external to us. However, the world is shorn of its illusory ‘solutionism’50; of an imaginary of a ‘happy ending’—whether this is constituted as a technological fantasy or a return to nature’s loving embrace. The world is there, it just cannot be thought about in modernist or critical ways, as if there was a truth waiting to be revealed. As if, as American comedian Bill Hicks argued, in another context, there was a ‘prankster God’ testing our faith.51 This point is emphasised in the

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‘non-philosophy’ of François Laruelle, who argues that thought is an object of the world; it does not represent it, but it does tell us things, provides an indication or a sign, like any other object. Although there is no relation between the world and thought, as reality is foreclosed to thought, reality constitutes or determines thought. Thus, while reality cannot be objectified, thought can be.52 Thought does not mediate between the subject and the world. There is no such thing as a world in this (modernist) sense. Thus: …the object is no longer conceived of as a substance but rather as a discontinuous cut in the fabric of ontological synthesis. It is no longer thought that determines the object, whether through thought or intuition, but rather the object that seizes thought and forces it to think it, or better, according to it… this objective determination takes the form of a unilateral duality where by the object thinks through the subject.53

The object or the world ‘seizes thought’ once it is realised that the world without reason is not open to the implementation of instrumental calculation. In affirmative approaches to the Anthropocene it becomes clear that policy-making needs to start with the world rather than from hubristic imaginaries of modernity. Like a carpenter, humanity realises that it cannot impose forms upon the world but has to work with, instead of against, the grain, listening to the object-other, allowing itself to be seized: thus the carpenter, the painter, the musician, even the academic, allow their subject matter to ‘think’ through them, and so should the town planner, the doctor or the engineer. In fact, it now appears clear that the dangerous world was the modernist one, which the Anthropocene takes us beyond. In fact, for many writers, the relationship between thought and world is inverted in the Anthropocene: ‘synchronicity confirms that the Anthropocene has become our interlocutor, that it is indeed thinking “through” us’.54 5. The Return of Creativity and Innovation Fifth and finally, the affirmation of the Anthropocene is precisely the affirmation of this world ‘after the world’. In the modernist world of reason, there was nothing new or creative in the world: the agential power was the human subject’s attempt to find or to discover hidden reason

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in the world. The Anthropocene promises a world without modernist optimism or philosophical pessimism; a world that, in its affirmation of what exists, has no more need for optimism or pessimism than for progress towards an alternative future. As Claire Colebrook argues, rejecting philosophical pessimism forces us to ‘stay with the trouble’ without ‘bestowing an epic agential power in “man”’.55 For the affirmative theorists of the Anthropocene, there can be no return to the imaginaries of philosophical pessimism: of the world as a complex self-adapting system, as a unified whole or Gaia, somehow being disrupted by human error. The Anthropocene finds affirmation not in the human-centred discovery of new ‘solutions’ but in the inability to ever grasp the world as more than a ‘continuous variation of variables’. As William Connolly argues: ‘the contending senses of belonging to an organic world, being detached masters of a blind world, or sinking into passive or aggressive nihilism in an empty, meaningless world may now devolve toward pursuit of reflective attachments to a multifarious, entangled, dangerous world’.56 In other words, both modernist thought and its pessimistic counterpart were too much about us. Affirmative approaches rebalance the scales and lighten the load, enabling us to accept that there is much more to explore in many ways without the responsibilities of the past. As Timothy Morton states: What is left if we aren’t the world? Intimacy. We have lost the world but gained a soul – the entities that coexist with us obtrude on our awareness with greater and greater urgency. Three cheers for the so-called end of the world, then, since this moment is the beginning of history. We now have the prospect of forging new alliances between humans and nonhumans alike, now that we have stepped out of the cocoon of the world.57

Conclusion For the philosophical pessimists, such as the neo- and post-Marxist critical theorists considered above, the Enlightenment or modernist episteme was problematic because it alienated humanity from itself and from the world, opening up a separation between humanity and the natural world, which narrowed and reduced the world (including the vast majority of humanity) to passive objects for instrumental manipulation. The modernist regime was problematic because its hierarchies of power and knowledge rationalised and reproduced this desire for regulation

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and control, excluding and oppressing whatever could not be compliantly included. Both humanity and nature were excluded from realising their potential and suborned to the rule of technocratic rationality. This romantic and backward-looking perspective, of ‘return’ through the ‘rehumanising’ of critique, rejuvenated philosophical pessimism through its problematisation of the modernist assumptions of the autonomous human subject and of the world as object, external to it. As Stephen White notes, the pessimism of the ‘ontological turn’ against rationalist understandings in late-twentieth century political theory and its wider influence across the social sciences reflected the decline of ‘modernity’s self-confidence’, which increasingly engendered diverse discourses of ‘ontological reflection’.58 Today, in the affirmation of the Anthropocene we are witnessing the rejection of the philosophical pessimism that so distinctly marked critical thinking in late modernity. This is not necessarily a shift to be celebrated. Today, there is a real danger of intellectual and critical closure marked by the turn from critique to affirmation. For the new metaphysics of the Anthropocene, it would appear that ‘renaturalising politics’, to make life the ontopolitical grounding of its governance, is only oppressive if nature is seen as fixed and linear rather than as lively excess and creativity. Thus for Elizabeth Grosz, becoming suborned to ‘life’ is not necessarily a matter of ‘a rational strategy for survival, not a form of adaptation, but the infinite elaboration of excess’ and experimentation.59 In a world of becoming, beyond the binaries of ‘man’ and ‘nature’, submission can thus be a creative and enabling perspective that sees contingency as an opportunity rather than as a constraint on human freedom. For Claire Colebrook and other theorists, critical of this appeal to ‘life’ as an ontopolitical ground, ‘this too would be a metaphysics, with the same structure of the subject’.60 As Lynne Huffer describes in her critique of the trend towards ‘renaturalizing politics’, there seems to be a slippage towards a new metaphysical construction of ‘life’, which forgets the ‘temporal contingencies through which epistemes emerge and topple’.61 The Anthropocene-affirming discourses all take the contingent flux of ‘life’ as their starting point. Thus it would appear that our contemporary condition expresses both the exhaustion of modernist understandings of reason and progress and of critical and post-foundational attempts to keep open alternative possibilities. It is not just that ‘the end of the world is more easily imaginable than the end of capitalism’: it would appear that ‘after the end of the world’ it is no longer possible

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even to imagine any alternative. If no alternatives are possible, even in the imagination, then pessimism is no longer possible.

Notes

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980), 49: ‘Man Was Born Free, and He Is Everywhere in Chains’. 2. See also the special issue of Global Society 33, no. 1 (2019), “Critique and Affirmation in International Relations,” eds. Pol Bargues-Pedreny and Peter Finkenbusch. 3.  Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (London: Verso, 1997). 4. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 5. Levi Bryant, The Democracy of Objects (Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press, 2011); Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Claire Colebrook, Death of the Posthuman: Essays on Extinction, vol. 1 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2014); Elizabeth Povinelli, Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016). 6. Brassier, Nihil Unbound, 238. 7. Jane Bennett, “Modernity and Its Critics,” in Robert E. Goodin, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 8. See Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 201–14. 9. Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 10. Fredric Jameson, “Future City,” New Left Review 21 (2003): 73. 11. Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment. 12. Ibid., 6–7. 13. Ibid., 12–13. 14. Ibid., 16. 15. Ibid., 27–28. 16. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Routledge, 2002). 17. See also, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978). 18. Mackenzie Wark, Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (London: Verso, 2015).

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19.  Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (London: Verso, 2015). 20.  Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene (London: Verso, 2016). 21. María Puig de la Bellacasa, Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 150. 22.  Rosi Braidotti, “Four Theses on Posthuman Feminism,” in Richard Grusin, ed., Anthropocene Feminism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 34, 39. 23. Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia, Six Lectures on the Political Theology of Nature: Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion, Edinburgh, 18th–28th of February 2013, draft version 10-3-13, 62–63, https:// macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/wakefield15/files/2015/01/LATOURGIFFORD-SIX-LECTURES_1.pdf (accessed 1 April 2019). 24. Ibid., 67. 25. Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004): 225–48. 26. Latour, Facing Gaia. 27. Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World; Brassier, Nihil Unbound. 28. See, for example, Anthony Burke, Stefanie Fishel, Audra Mitchell, Simon Dalby, and Daniel J. Levine, “Planet Politics: A Manifesto from the End of IR,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44, no. 3 (2016): 499–523. 29. Colebrook, Death of the Posthuman, 163–64. 30. Ibid., 173. 31.  Claire Colebrook, “We Have Always Been Post-Anthropocene: The Anthropocene Counterfactual,” in Grusin, ed., Anthropocene Feminism, 18. 32. Audra Mitchell, “Is IR Going Extinct?” European Journal of International Relations 23, no. 1 (2017): 12. 33. Ibid., 17. 34. Ibid., 18. 35.  Bruno Latour, “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto’,” New Literary History 41, no. 3 (2010): 485–86. 36. Brassier, Nihil Unbound, 25. 37. Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (London: Continuum, 2008). 38. Considering the centrality of the Holocaust in discussions of the limits of modernist reason, its absence from the Anthropocene problematic is quite striking. 39. Meillassoux, After Finitude.



190  D. CHANDLER 40. Ian Bogost, Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, The Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games (New York: Basic Books, 2016). 41. Latour, Facing Gaia, 126. 42.  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 434. 43. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (London: Wordsworth, 1997), 312. 44. Brassier, Nihil Unbound, 215. 45. Ibid., 216. 46. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 433–434. 47. Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (London: Duke University Press, 2011), 58. 48. Graham Harman, Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures (Winchester: Zero Books, 2010); Levi Bryant, The Democracy of Objects (Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press, 2011). 49. Tim Ingold, The Life of Lines (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 130–33. 50. Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here: Technology, Solutionism and the Urge to Fix Problems That Don’t Exist (London: Allen Lane, 2013). 51. Bill Hicks, Relentless (DVD) (Salem, MA: Rykodisc, 1992). 52. See, Alexander Galloway, Laruelle: Against the Digital (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014). 53. Brassier, Nihil Unbound, 149. 54. Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 83. 55. Claire Colebrook, “Introduction: Anthropocene Feminisms: Rethinking the Unthinkable,” Philosophia 5, no. 2 (2015): 176. 56. William E. Connolly, Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 120. 57. Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 108, original emphasis. 58. Stephen K. White, Sustaining Affirmation: The Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 4. 59. Elizabeth Grosz, Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics, and Art (London: Duke University Press, 2011), 119. 60.  Claire Colebrook, ‘Not Symbiosis, Not Now: Why Anthropogenic Change Is Not Really Human’, The Oxford Literary Review 34, no. 2 (2012): 192. 61. Lynne Huffer, “Foucault’s Fossils: Life Itself and the Return to Nature in Feminist Philosophy,” in Grusin, ed., Anthropocene Feminism, 67.

CHAPTER 12

Afterword: The New Pessimism in Twenty-First-Century World Politics Philip G. Cerny

Introduction As the authors of this book demonstrate, pessimism is an enigmatic concept. It ranges from the workings of individual brain and group consciousness and identity, to reflections on the underlying material— economic and sociological—infrastructure of particular life experiences within the wider structures and processes of the surrounding world, on the other. In this afterword, I will address principally the second of these dimensions. In the case of ‘international relations’—which I prefer to call ‘world politics’—there have been two predominant underlying structural changes over the past two centuries that have evoked quite different forms of pessimism, optimism and interactions of the two. In this afterword, I identify two distinct forms of what has been called the ‘structuration’ and/or ‘restructuration’ of world politics: the quasiinstitutionalisation of the nation-state system, on the one hand, and what I call the ‘dialectic of globalisation and fragmentation’, on the other.

P. G. Cerny (*)  University of Manchester, Manchester, UK © The Author(s) 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8_12

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The first was the political construction of the nation-state and the interstate system. This system was characterised by various processes of stabilisation and destabilisation at two overlapping levels: domestic Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, usually translated as ‘community’ and ‘society’1; and international or interstate conflict and coalition-building. Together they constituted the core of the process of modernisation from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. I deal with some of these processes and their implications for pessimism and optimism in the first section of this afterword. The second section addresses what I call the ‘New Pessimism’ of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, characterised by a dialectic of globalisation and fragmentation and the resulting restructuration and transformation of world politics. This approach was originally introduced by James Rosenau and further pursued by Ian Clark.2 I have attempted to develop it in a range of works, most recently with Alex Prichard.3 Will this process lead to the disintegration of the ‘international’ system; to dystopia and anomie; to more comprehensive global governance; or to what has been called ‘neomedievalism’ or ‘durable disorder’?4 Each of these possible and competing outcomes involves complex and problematic implications for pessimism—and optimism—in a restructuring of world politics.

Pessimism and Optimism in a State-Centric World International Relations (IR) theory since its inception as a field of study at the University College of Wales Aberystwyth (now the University of Aberystwyth) in 1919 has overwhelmingly been concerned with relations among states. The nation-state as a uniquely modern political and governing structure and the interstate—or international—system has been too often taken for granted as the underlying infrastructure of world politics. While this has been most clearly evident in the paradigms of realism and neorealism, it is also true of liberalism and constructivism and even various forms of post-Marxism. Other less dominant paradigms also assume the structural predominance of states and the interstate system, for example the English School, which posits the existence of an international ‘society of states’.5 State structural predominance has involved both empirical and normative theorisations—i.e., that states have been dominant because other structures have failed as attempts by agents to institutionalise their predominance, or material conditions have

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undermined the alternatives, or both. At the same time, states since the late Middle Ages have been seen as embodying the normative values associated with the public interest or common good in domestic politics and the ‘national interest’ in international politics, often traced back to the influence of political philosopher Jean Bodin’s theory of sovereignty in the sixteenth century. In practical terms, states have been seen to embody so-called ‘two-level structures’ and ‘games’ that have evolved since the Middle Ages to subsume and incorporate other structures and processes, whether in terms of domestic politics or international relations.6 In domestic terms, as Max Weber wrote in 1919, the state is ‘that human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence within a given territory’.7 This factor is seen in turn to form the basis for the state’s much wider internal structural and institutional power at both levels, what the neorealist theorist Kenneth Waltz called hierarchy. In the international arena, states were seen to operate as ‘unit actors’ in a system of anarchy without an overarching governing structure.8 Robert Putnam argued that the relationship between the domestic and the international consisted of states operating at the intersection of the two levels, connecting them but approaching them in contrasting ways analogous to Waltz’s hierarchy/anarchy dichotomy.9 In other words, the evolution of both the domestic and the international in recent centuries has been seen by more optimistic IR theorists—and other political theorists—to converge to create an ordered system in which the state is expected to continue to develop as the core structure for the pursuit of the public good and the national interest.10 The state’s system gave rise to quite specific forms of pessimism and optimism. In the first place, the internal cohesion or domestic conformity of state-defined societies was always fragile and under challenge everywhere. The most cohesive and long-lasting states in the world, mainly the European nation-states, were forged out of the medieval world through conquest by aristocratic and monarchical elites which were able not only to assemble dominant armies and navies but also to accumulate capital from industrialising cities, growing foreign trade routes, and eventually imperial control.11 Borders, regions and conflicting ethnicities were integrated by force as late as the mid-twentieth century. Extreme forms of nationalism such as fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, racism, religious conflicts, and regional, local and cross-border identitarianisms, created vast reservoirs of pessimism

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in different ways at both elite and mass levels. These nationalisms have sometimes been seen as the result of state failure, not merely in liberal and democratic terms but in terms of ultra-nationalistic aspirations of a range of groups, perceived as ways to correct and improve on underlying state failings and inadequacies. Pessimisms thus interacted to undermine domestic legitimacy and to reimagine the sovereignty of nation-states. These internal developments, along with system-wide changes, gave rise to ruinous international conflicts. The height of nationalism came with the two World Wars of the twentieth century. Economically, the historical development of nation-states depended on the large ‘Fordist’ industries of the Second Industrial Revolution. These economic processes helped give rise to a range of pessimistic reactions: fear of the ‘outside’, a willingness to sacrifice lives for one’s ‘country’, deep distrust of foreigners. International optimism has been associated with developments like democratisation and the welfare state, however problematic within different states and across diverse parts of the world, as the interstate system faced the consequences of economic crises, wars and decolonisation. Class analyses, studies of racism, religious and ethnic conflict, regionalism both domestic and cross-border, and an extensive literature on special interests and pressure groups have challenged the effectiveness of the state system as means to resolve the challenges it faced during the twentieth century. Probably the most manifest example of the fragility of the states system has been the fake and failed states of the postcolonial world.12 The nation-state and the states system have not responded to evidence of their underlying and growing weaknesses with optimism. On the contrary, globalisation and fragmentation are leading to a complex range of new pessimisms, as recounted in the chapters of this volume. As Anderson so famously wrote in the 1980s, nation-states are ‘imagined communities’.13 Today those imaginaries are fragmenting, identities are coming under pressure, transnationalising private-sector interests are consolidating, and state capacity is eroding. Optimism about globalisation reached its height in the 1990s; pessimism has now overtaken it as the predominant reaction to the restructuring of the twenty-first-century world.

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The New Pessimism in a Globalising and Fragmenting World In recent decades, a number of variables and processes have been seen to circumscribe and restrict the workings of the international system but without changing the basic superstructure of the system itself. Two of these are predominant: globalisation and fragmentation, and the interrelationships between them. Globalisation leads to a range of supranational structural developments, usually called global governance. In the case of global governance, a range of institutions and processes at economic, sociological and political levels incorporate states into an increasingly interconnected system, whether quasi-democratic or quasi-authoritarian. This system is seen as potentially enabling states to adjust and cope more effectively with challenges from a global economic system rooted in technological change, multinational corporations, global supply chains and, in particular, international/transnational finance. Globalisation in this context is the capacity of states and interstate negotiations and organisations to manage and deal with the challenges of economic transnationalisation. So-called ‘global governance’ approaches are viewed as constructive and more effective in the medium and long term, despite or even because of countervailing trends and occasional crises. Convergence around emerging and consolidating international organisations and regimes composed of state actors cooperating to deal with the problems of globalisation will increase the effectiveness of public policy and social cohesion.14 In the late twentieth century, globalisation was therefore often a source of optimism rather than pessimism. However, at the same time, globalisation is increasingly perceived as undermining the capacity of states to cope with these challenges. Indeed, these challenges are no longer merely economic but involve a range of sociological, political and personal issues such as identity, equality and even modernisation and progress. There are several complex and intertwined aspects to this process. The first of these is what Jan Aart Scholte has called the ‘multiscalar’ characteristic of the problems and issues that state decision-makers face in a globalising world.15 In other words, both the challenges facing state—and global governance—policymakers are less controllable and manageable than Weberian bureaucrats and other state actors can handle because of their very complexity above, below and cutting across state borders.

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Not only are economic borders being circumvented by transnational structural trends, geographical borders themselves are also growing increasingly porous, coming under populist pressure to control migration, leading to manifold attempts to fortify them. These include Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico, or a growing number of hard borders between European states, and more demanding criteria for entry into Europe.16 These trends have in turn have contributed to what Anne-Marie Slaughter has called the ‘disaggregation of the state’, inasmuch as the bureaucratic and political processes that make up the state are increasingly disassociated and disconnected from each other.17 This process leads to various consequences. First, different branches of the state, operating according to the particular issues they are allocated, are focused on their specific endogenous policy problems, undermining the state’s capacity to produce effective overall policymaking strategies. As a consequence, diverse branches of the state increasingly develop special relationships with two sorts of regular interlocutors: the special interests that inhabit the private sectors with which they deal, and analogous public-sector interests too. This leads to what has been called ‘regulatory capture’, where the regulatory body is beholden to and absorbs the values and interests of the economic sectors they are charged with regulating in the public interest, often privileging private-sector interlocutors. This has also sometimes been called sectoral corporatism. The second is that special relationships develop with disaggregated regulatory and policymaking bodies in (a) other states where interaction is frequent, and (b) particular branches of international institutions and regimes of supposedly global governance. Such regimes are increasingly disaggregated too, leading to ‘forum shopping’, where special interests look around for friendly branches of the regimes, a key element in what is called ‘regime complexity’.18 The third is that globalisation inherently leads to policy as well as social and political fragmentation. The result is that the notion of an ‘international system’ composed of nation-states is increasingly unable to produce effective policies that promote public interests, the production of public goods and the provision of public services. In particular, the global financial crisis of 2008 produced not a comprehensive reform of the global or even national financial sectors but a process of bailing out that sector and, indeed, increasing its transnationalisation and oligopolisation.19 States are undermined by a range of interconnected, multilevel and multinodal structural trends. The result is what can be called a reactive state, in which a range

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of policymakers and regulatory bodies are embedded in regularised relationships between public and private sectors, where the latter are able to both set the agenda for policymaking and systematically avoid outcomes that restrict their activities, for example by shifting their activities across borders. I have elsewhere dubbed this process ‘transnational neopluralism’, referring to what is essentially plural elitism, which embeds what Lindblom terms ‘the privileged position of business’.20 This system goes well beyond economics, and is central to the rise of new pessimisms in the twenty-first century. As noted previously, the development of the nation-state system was inextricably intertwined with the first two industrial revolutions, especially the Second Industrial Revolution. The First Industrial Revolution was at the root of British domestic political development, Britain’s dominance of the expansion of international trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the British Empire. The consolidation of largescale mass-production factories producing both primary, secondary and tertiary products, especially the second and third of these in the Second Industrial Revolution—what has been called Fordism—was at the core of industrialisation, expansion and national consolidation in the United States, Germany, Japan, to a lesser extent France, Russia and later the Soviet Union, and other nation-state empires at the heart of the nationstate system. Monopolisation, special interest corporatism and regulatory capture (in both directions) were all organised at the nation-state level and through national empire-building between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. However, since the mid-twentieth century the world has seen the transformation of these economic structures with the digital and information technology revolutions, the growth of transnational monopolies and oligopolies, extensive interlinked supply chains, the almost complete transnationalisation of finance capital, the ongoing development of artificial intelligence and robotics, and so on—what has been called the ‘intangible economy’.21 Probably the best known example is the financial sector, where what has been called ‘fiat money’ is created by states and private credit is created by banks, financial markets and the like, leading to a transnational ‘debt economy’ that replaces the productive economy of the first two industrial revolutions.22 Relatedly, the high-tech sector,23 known colloquially as the FAANGs—Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google—has recently been critiqued for its monopolistic practices and for its extensive and

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complex social impact on consumers and data.24 Not only is the world economy becoming more intersecting and interdependent, but the combination of technological transformation, consumerism, debt, increasing inequality and threats to employment, especially as older sectors languish, is widely thought to lead to ‘secular stagnation’ in the longer term.25 Indeed, as profits rise due to corporate tax cuts in the United States, debt is also rising as those profits are shifted into shareholder payouts, buybacks, mergers and acquisitions, rather than capital investment.26 These global economic processes are a major dimension of the rise of the New Pessimism, leading especially to what is known as the ‘populist backlash’ across the world. The political sociology of the world is also changing. National identities are caught in the crossfire of revived and new identities based on ethnicity, race, religion, region—including cross-border regions— and attempts to mobilise a wide range of quasi-local, quasi-state and cross-border loyalties. This has been referred to as a new ‘tribalism’, with twenty-first-century politics becoming increasingly about conflicts between the ‘centralising elites’ of states and international organisations and new tribal affinities of many kinds that undermine both states and international organisations.27 What were once apparently consolidating nation-states with elites striving to construct Waltzian hierarchies and unit actors have become regional complexes—and are now seen to have always been that way— including the supposed international hegemon, the United States.28 It is unlikely that America can be made great again, as Father Charles Coughlin, the pro-Fascist mouthpiece of the America First movement in the 1930s and Donald Trump today would like. At least a new world war does not appear to be at hand, despite antagonisms between the United States and China and in other parts of the world. International security is simply no longer about interstate wars and the massive deaths characteristic of the period from the decline of the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. It is about ongoing ethnic, religious, economic, cross-border and local conflicts that are becoming more complex, embedded and endemic. The war in Afghanistan has been longer-lasting than any other war in the modern age, and involves multilevel relationships among the United States, Russia, several bordering states, and a range of complex and conflicting internal players at the crossroads of south-central Asia.29 Patterns of violence are changing dramatically.30

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In a different context in another key part of the world, the contemporary contentious politics in the United Kingdom and Europe over British exit from the European Union (Brexit) raise analogous issues of globalisation and fragmentation. A range of supranational and sub-national issue areas only beginning to take shape will dominate world politics in the future and will be increasingly difficult to control and manage given the dislocations already mentioned. Probably the most significant of these is climate change. Another is the future of democracy itself in a world characterised by a combination of neoliberalism and Durkheimian anomie.31 Whether the kind of optimisms (and pessimisms) that characterised earlier phases of nation-state-building can be reconstructed to sufficiently control and manage the globalisation/fragmentation dialectic seems unlikely at this point in time.

Conclusion All over the world, pessimism and populism are essentially backlashes against the diverse impacts, both material and psycho-sociological, of the erosion of the nation-state system and the lack, at this point at least, of viable alternatives in a globalising and fragmenting world. Of course, there are optimists too, of whom the best known and most widely cited is probably Steven Pinker. In his well-documented book on war and international security, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker demonstrates that international wars and deaths from war have dramatically declined since the middle of the twentieth century.32 However, he regards the reconsolidation of states as one of the key means necessary to continue this trend; furthermore the book was written before the full impact of ethnic, religious and civil wars, especially in Syria and the Middle East, had erupted to their current extent. Today, despite much lower death tolls overall in these very different kinds of wars, the impact of such conflicts on strategic and tactical measures and, even more importantly, on media reporting and human consciousness, are perhaps even greater than in the world prior to the Vietnam War, when for the first time war could be seen in the home on television on a daily basis. Pessimism is the natural reaction to such information spread. In Enlightenment Now, Pinker makes the case for greater human progress in the coming century, with respect to life expectancy, health, wealth, inequality, the environment, peace, safety, terrorism, democracy, equal rights, knowledge, the quality of life, happiness and existential

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threats.33 Whether we are heading into such a world of greater progress, and therefore ought to be optimistic about the future of that world, does not match with wider perceptions of all of these issues. A revival of leadership or hegemony of leading nation-states is not only unlikely because of the reluctance of the United States and China to try to exercise it,34 but also because of the wider structural trends I have discussed here. Complexity rules in an unpredictable world of globalisation and fragmentation. The New Pessimism is predominant and, given the breadth and depth of the transformations described in this afterword, there seems to be more and more scope, whether in empirical reality, normative values, or perception for it to increase in the future. As the old saying goes, ‘only time will tell’.

Notes





1. Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag, 1887). 2. James N. Rosenau, “The Governance of Fragmegration: Neither a World Republic Nor a Global Interstate System,” Paper Presented at the World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Quebec City, 1–5 August 1990; Ian Clark, Globalization and Fragmentation: International Relations in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 3. Philip G. Cerny and Alex Prichard, “The New Anarchy: Globalisation and Fragmentation in 21st Century World Politics,” Journal of International Political Theory 13, no. 3 (2017): 378–94; Philip G. Cerny, “Heterarchism: Globalization, Fragmentation and Paradigm Shift in 20th Century World Politics,” Paper Presented at the Interim Conference of the International Political Science Association Research Committee no. 3, Political Power, Moscow, 22 May 2019. 4. See Philip G. Cerny, “Neomedievalism, Civil War and the New Security Dilemma: Globalisation as Durable Disorder,” Civil Wars 1, no. 1 (1998): 36–64. 5. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Palgrave, 1977). This assumption has also dominated major political philosophy textbooks including Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960, expanded ed. 2004); Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, third edn. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987 [1963]). With regard to IR theory, see Pierre Renouvin and Jean-Baptiste Duroselle,

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201

Introduction to the History of International Relations (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967). 6. For a critique of the state-centric approach, see Cerny, “Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action,” International Organization 49, no. 4 (1995): 595–625. 7. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” Lecture given to the Free Students Union of Bavaria, Munich, 28 January 1919. 8. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: AddisonWesley, 1979). 9.  Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427–60. 10.  Hendrik Spruyt, “Institutional Selection in International Relations: State Anarchy as Order,” International Organization 48, no. 4 (1994): 527–57. 11.  See Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing, 1965). 12. These structural trends are analysed in greater depth in Philip G. Cerny, The Changing Architecture of Politics: Structure, Agency and the Future of the State (London: Sage, 1990). 13. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 14. For example, Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992), which links globalisation to the spread of liberal values and democracy. 15.  Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 16. Martin A. Schain, The Border: Policy and Politics in Europe and the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). 17. Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 18.  Karen J. Alter and Kal Raustiala, “The Rise of International Regime Complexity,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 14 (2018): 1–21. 19. Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (London: Allen Lane, 2018). 20. Cerny, Rethinking World Politics; Charles E. Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1977). 21. Jonatan Haskel and Stian Westlake, Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

202  P. G. CERNY 22. For example, Josh Ryan-Collins, Tony Greenham, Richard Werner, and Andrew Jackson, Where Does Money Come From? A Guide to the UK Monetary and Banking System (London: New Economics Foundation, 2017); David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (New York: Melville House, 2011); Tim de Muzio and Richard H. Robbins, Debt as Power (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). 23. Tom Wheeler, From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2019). 24. Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (London: Profile Books, 2019). 25. Larry Summers, Secular Stagnation (London: Penguin Books, 2019). 26. Gillian Tett, “Corporate America Is Failing to Invest,” Financial Times, 11 April 2019. 27. Akhmar Ahmed, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013). 28. Colin Woodward, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (New York: Penguin Books, 2011). See also Philip G. Cerny, “Dilemmas of Operationalizing Hegemony,” in Mark Haugaard and Howard H. Lentner, eds., Hegemony and Power: Force and Consent in Contemporary Politics (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 67–87. 29. Georges Lefeuvre, “Back to the Great Game,” Le Monde diplomatique, April 2019, pp. 4–6. 30. Ilan Zvi Baron, Jonathan Havercroft, Isaac Kamola, Jonneke Koomen, Justin Murphy, and Alex Prichard, “Liberal Pacification and the Phenomenology of Violence,” International Studies Quarterly 63, no. 2 (2019): 199–212. 31. Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015). On the role of neoliberalism, see Philip G. Cerny, “Neoliberalism in Theory and Practice: The Paradox of Neoliberal Hegemony,” in Benjamin Martill and Sebastian Schindler, eds., Theory as Ideology: The Politics of Knowledge in International Relations, in preparation; Philip G. Cerny, “In the Shadow of Ordoliberalism: The Paradox of Neoliberalism in the 21st Century,” European Review of International Studies 3, no. 1 (2016): 78–91; John G. Glenn, Foucault and Post-Financial Crises: Governmentality, Discipline and Resistance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 32. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes (New York: Allen Lane, 2011).



12  AFTERWORD: THE NEW PESSIMISM … 

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33. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress (New York: Allen Lane, 2018). 34.  Mark Beeson and Nathan Watson, “Is International Leadership Changing Hands or Disappearing? China and the USA in Comparative Perspective,” Asian Perspectives 43 (2019): 389–417.

Index

A Abraham, 25 Abramson, Lyn Yvonne depressive realism hypothesis, 18 Adam, 25 Adams, Henry, 15 Adorno, Theodor, 2, 14, 105, 112, 146, 147, 175, 176 Aeschylus, 24 affirmation, 20, 102, 107, 182, 183, 187 Anthropocene, 174, 178, 179, 182, 183, 185, 186 mass, 56 self-affirmation, 161 Afghanistan Operation Enduring Freedom (2001–14), 198 agency, 4, 20, 27, 71, 84, 125, 131, 140, 148–150 indigenous, 8, 164, 168 obstructed, 7, 108 subjective, 125 Alfred, Taiaiake, 159–161, 164, 165

Peace, Power, Righteousness (2009), 159, 163 Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (2005), 158 Alloy, Lauren depressive realism hypothesis, 18 Alt-Right, 5, 8, 119–125, 127, 128, 130, 131 American, 125 feminism, 126 pessimism, 8 use of memes, 123 Amazon.com, 197 America First movement, 198 American Indian Law Alliance, 169 Améry, Jean, 107 anarcho-capitalism, 131 Andersen, Hans Christian, 19 Anthropocene, 2, 5, 7, 9, 83, 84, 91, 92, 177, 178, 181, 182 anti-liberalism, 3 anti-Semitism, 57, 69, 72, 74 apocalypse, 89, 129

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 T. Stevens and N. Michelsen (eds.), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21780-8

205

206  Index racial, 8, 129, 131 Apple Inc., 197 Arendt, Hannah, 46, 47, 69, 72 Aristotle: ‘De Interpretatione’, 19 Aron, Raymond, 5, 7, 68, 70, 74–78 Opium of the Intellectuals, The, 71, 75 Assembly of First Nations, 169 Australia, 8, 156, 157 Axelrod, Bob, 29 B Bacon, Francis, 16, 18 Bannon, Steve, 3, 130 Bauman, Zygmunt, 69 Beck, Aaron hopelessness scale, 18 Bell, Duncan, 70 Benjamin, Walter, 111, 146 ‘Angel of History’, 180 Bergson, Henri, 59 Berlin, Isaiah, 70, 72 Roots of Romanticism, The, 42 Bernard Shaw, George, 5 Betts, Alexander, 142 Bloomberg, 102 Blumenberg, Hans Shipwreck with Spectator, 144 Bodin, Jean, 193 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 43 Bonneuil, Christophe, 177 Braidotti, Rosi, 177 Brassier, Ray, 181 Breitbart, Andrew, 123 Brexit, 122, 199 British Empire, 197 Brown, Wendy, 107 ‘Resisting Left Melancholy’ (1999), 112 Bryant, Levi, 184 Buchwald, Art, 19

Burgess, Anthony A Clockwork Orange (1962), 17 Burke, Edmund, 41, 43 C Camus, Albert, 15, 19, 137 Canada, 8, 156, 161, 163, 169 capitalism, 17, 23, 63, 176, 187 casino, 159 Carens, Joseph, 142 Carr, E.H., 27, 46, 47, 84, 102 Twenty Years’ Crisis, The, 39 Cassirer, Ernst, 5, 6, 53, 55, 59, 61, 63, 64 Davos debate (1929), 60 Logic of the Cultural Sciences, The, 59 Myth of the State, The (1946), 54, 56, 57, 59, 62 Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, The, 54, 60 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 129 Charlottesville Terror Attack (2017), 124 Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally (2017), 127 Cherokee, 162 China, People’s Republic of, 198 Hong Kong, 130 Christianity, 21, 25, 30, 40 Book of Revelations, 120 evangelical, 21 iconography of, 144 mysticism, 122 New Testament, 25 Churchill, Winston, 19 Clark, Ian, 192 climate change, 199 Cold War, 7, 20, 37, 40, 48, 49, 68, 70, 71, 74, 77

Index

end of, 28, 102 Colebrook, Claire, 178, 186, 187 colonialism, 159, 161–163 communism, 21, 71, 112 complexity, 6, 30, 38, 47, 113, 149, 195, 200 regime, 196 Congress of Cultural Freedom, 71 Connolly, William, 107, 186 Consejo Indio de Sud America (CISA), 169 conservativism, 4, 71 Corntassel, Jeff, 162, 164, 166, 167 Coughlin, Father Charles, 198 Coulthard, Glen, 160, 161, 163–165 Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, 160 critical theory, 3 critique, 1, 4, 9, 60, 61, 71, 78, 85, 111, 122, 124, 130, 174, 177, 178, 180, 182, 187 late-modernist, 175 modernity, 105, 109, 173 rationalism, 43 cynicism, 19, 20, 63, 109 D Dark Enlightenment, 122 Darwin, Charles On the Origin of the Species (1859), 58 David, 25 de Benoist, Alain, 124, 130 decolonisation, 167 Deleuze, Gilles, 108, 183 de Mesquita, Bueno War Trap, The, 27 democracy, 23, 45, 130, 199 liberal, 77, 102, 119 de Montaigne, Michel, 144 Denmark, 140

  207

depression diagnosis of, 18 Desch, Michael, 93 destiny, 6, 40, 41, 45, 48, 57, 76, 109 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 17, 20 Deutsch, Karl, 27, 28, 84 developmentalism, 70 Dewey, John, 22 Dienstag, Joshua Foa, 13, 19, 23, 137, 150 diplomacy American, 40 Cold War, 40 disenchantment, 7, 9, 59, 61, 62, 102, 103, 108, 174 sentiments of, 105, 106, 111, 113 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 15 Dubnov, Arie, 73 Dylan, Bob, 19 dysphoria, 104 dystopia, 17, 101 E Einstein, Albert, 110 Elias, Norbert, 106 Eliot, T.S., 15 emancipation, 4, 78 Left, 8 political, 62 emotions, 104, 106, 114 dysphoric, 104 negative, 8, 103, 105, 113 political, 105 Enlightenment, 2, 4, 6, 18, 30, 42, 109, 127, 143, 146, 150, 175, 177, 180, 181, 186 ethics, 15, 20, 26, 28, 39, 41, 44, 57, 63, 109, 137, 139, 140, 148, 150 affirmative, 93 biopolitical, 177 consciousness, 56

208  Index dilemmas, 48 migration, 141 survival, 84, 88 ethnocentrism, 70 Euripides, 24 European Coal and Steel Community, 26 European Union (EU), 140, 199 evil, 16, 20, 21, 39, 69, 120, 144, 146–149 exhaustion, 9, 175, 187 existentialism, 109 Extinction Rebellion establishment of (2018), 83 F Facebook, 197 Fanon, Franz, 156, 157, 161, 163 fascism, 47, 71, 127, 198 Fassin, Éric Populisme: le grand ressentiment, 108 fatalism, 19, 55, 56 feminism, 165 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 42 Fidesz, 122 First Industrial Revolution, 197 First UN Indigenous Decade (1995– 2004), 162 Fisher, Mark Capitalist Realism, 112 Fordism, 197 Foucault, Michel, 14, 77, 149 fragmentation, 9, 192, 194, 195, 199, 200 political, 196 France, 75, 197 Frankfurt School, 9, 105, 120, 174, 175, 177, 180 Free French Forces, 75 Fressoz, Jean-Baptiste, 177

Freud, Sigmund, 14, 25, 40, 109–111 Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), 109 Civilisation and its Discontents, 109 Mourning and Melancholia (1917), 110 Timely Reflections on War and Death (1915), 110 Totem and Taboo, 110 Fromm, Erich, 70 Frost, Bryan-Paul, 75 Frost, Mervyn, 28, 38 Fukuyama, Francis, 75 G Gemeinschaft, 192 Genération Identitaire ideology of, 125 German Communist Party, 21 Germany, 57, 58, 75, 85, 197 Gesellschaft, 192 Gibney, Matthew J., 142 Girard, Réne, 107 Global Financial Crisis (2008), 196 global governance, 195 globalisation, 9, 191, 194–196, 199, 200 process of, 26 globalism, 128, 129 Gluck, Carol, 150 Golding, William Lord of the Flies (1954), 17 Google, 197 Gorbachev, Mikhail perestroika, 22 Gramsci, Antonio, 123 Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee), 169 Graves, Robert Seven Days in New Crete (1949), 17

Index

Gray, Alexander, 18 Greece, 13, 24 Athens, 29 Grosz, Elizabeth, 187 Grotius, Hugo, 106 Guattari, Félix, 183 H Harman, Graham, 184 Haudenosaunee Confederacy, 169 Hay, Colin, 57 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 14, 18, 26, 42, 75 Heidegger, Martin, 6, 14, 56, 57, 59, 61, 62 Being and Time, 57 Davos debate (1929), 60 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 42, 58 Herz, John, 7, 27–29, 84, 86–88, 91–93 background of, 85 diagnostic themes of, 89 Survival Research, 5 Hicks, Bill, 184 Hitler, Adolf, 85 rise to power (1933), 21, 75 Hobbes, Thomas, 16, 23, 27, 43, 104 Hoffmann, Stanley, 27 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 42 Holloway, John, 105 Holocaust, 21, 71–74, 76, 77, 107, 147, 177, 183 Horace, 144 Horkheimer, Max, 2, 176 Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), 175 Huffer, Lynne, 187 Hungary, 122, 140 Huxley, Aldous, 15 Brave New World (1932), 17 Island (1962), 18

  209

I Icarus, 41 ideology, 24, 47, 55, 70, 71, 73, 76, 90, 122 dominant, 123 liberal, 8, 123, 128 modernist, 128 modernity, 131 Indigenous land rights, 169 Indigenous peoples, 155 Indigenous political theory, 155 resurgence school, 156 Indigenous theory, 8 industrialism, 18 Ingold, Tim, 184 International Commission on Stratigraphy, 92 International Indian Treaty Council, 169 International political theory, 147 International Relations (IR), 1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 13, 21, 67, 84, 91–94, 120, 138–141, 143, 144, 147–149, 155, 191, 192 disciplinary, 87 pessimist, 149 post-war, 1 realist, 49 Inuit Circumpolar Council, 169 Iraq Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003– 11), 183 Iron Curtain, 2 Islamic State (ISIS), 120 Israel, 73, 74 Italy, 122 Florence, 39 iwi (tribal groups), 157 J Japan, 197

210  Index Jesuits, 23, 30 Jesus Christ, 25 Johnson, Samuel, 19 Judaism, 72, 110 K Kafka, Franz, 15 Kant, Immanuel, 15, 20, 25, 75, 146, 148 Kennan, George, 47 Kierkegaard, Søren, 59 Kissinger, Henry, 40, 47 Klee, Paul, 15 Kojève, Alexandre, 75 L Lady Gaga, 19 Land, Nick, 123, 130 Laruelle, François, 185 László, Ervin, 88 Latour, Bruno, 177 Lazarus, Emma poetry of, 16 League of Nations, 1 Leave.EU, 122 Lebow, Ned, 39 Le Pen, Marine, 128 Lewes, George Henry, 19 liberalism, xi, 3, 8, 14, 24–27, 30, 37, 41, 42, 45–47, 62, 68–71, 74, 77, 78, 84, 90, 120, 122, 124, 157, 192 Cold War, 77 Kantian, 59 post-Cold War, 49 realist, 87 Liebensphilosophie, 59, 60 Lisbon Earthquake (1755), 146, 147 Locke, John, 15 Logan, George, 16

Lovelock, James, 88 Lucretius, 144 M Machiavelli, Niccolò, 23, 41, 76, 104 Marcuse, Herbert, 105, 112 Marxism, 14, 23, 71 post-Marxism, 186, 192 Marxism-Leninism, 21 Marx, Karl, 14, 18, 19, 68 Mauss, Marcel gift economy, 176 Mayall, James, 28 Mbembe, Achille, 149 McQueen, Alison, 23 Mearsheimer, John, 28, 38 melancholia, 8, 109, 111–113 Mexico, 196 Midgley, Mary, 58 Mignolo, Walter, 184 migration, 5, 8, 128, 138–140, 147–150, 196 labour, 142 management, 139, 143–145, 150 mass, 101 survival, 142 Miller, David, 140, 141 Mill, John Stuart, 15, 19, 22 mimetic, 103, 108, 114 Mitchell, Audra, 86, 180 mnemotechnics, 129 modernist, 9, 85, 93, 122, 124, 173, 175, 177, 178, 180–183, 186, 187 Mohawk, 158 Moldbug, Mencius (Curtis Yarvin), 122 moral, 38, 44, 56, 86, 107, 139, 141, 170 autonomy, 55 corruption, 45

Index

debasement, 59 evils, 148 rights, 39 rules, 41 Morelly, Étienne-Gabriel, 74 More, Thomas, 16, 18 Morgenthau, Hans, 22, 23, 27, 28, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 46–48, 84 Politics Among Nations, 20, 26, 47 Scientific Man Versus Power Politics, 39, 44 Morton, Timothy, 186 multiculturalism, 128 Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), 76 myth, 6, 40, 45, 46, 48, 54, 60, 61, 143, 174 political, 54–57, 62, 63 N narrative, 40, 45, 48, 54, 56, 64, 70, 85, 121, 127, 142, 179 civilisational, 69 counter-narrative, 106 dystopian, 46 metanarratives, 68 progressive, 18 realist, 39 romantic, 41, 49 state, 150 tragic, 6, 38 National Front (FN), 122 nationalism, 3, 68, 69, 78, 102, 124, 194 ultra-nationalism, 194 Native American Rights Fund, 169 Navajo Nation, 169 Nazism, 6, 54, 56, 57, 61, 72, 110, 193 negative thinking, 7, 105, 113 Negri, Antonio, 105

  211

Neiman, Susan, 147 neocameralism, 130 neoliberalism, 8, 108, 112, 114, 199 Netflix, 197 New Pessimism, 192, 198 New Right, 123, 125, 128 New York Times, 18 New Zealand, 120, 156, 157 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 14, 15, 18, 20, 22, 26, 30, 59, 107, 113, 137, 144, 183 Birth of Tragedy, The, 24 concept of pessimism, 20 nihilism, 22, 54, 106, 112, 113 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 145 Norem, Julie, 19 normativism, 88 nostalgia, 6, 38, 49 Nussbaum, Martha, 106 O oligarchy, 45 optimism, 9, 13–15, 21, 25, 28, 29, 76, 109, 138, 146, 192, 199 optimism–pessimism, 29 Orbán, Viktor, 3, 130 Orwell, George, 15, 69 1984 (1949), 17 Overy, Richard, 3 P Palantir, 129 Palestine, 73 Pareto, Vilfredo, 76 PayPal, 129 Peale, Norman Vincent Power of Positive Thinking, The (1952), 18 Peloponnesian Wars (431–404BC), 26

212  Index pessimism, 2–5, 7, 9, 13–15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 28, 29, 45, 54, 60, 62, 63, 67, 68, 75, 78, 92–94, 103, 104, 108, 109, 112–114, 119, 120, 127, 128, 131, 137, 139, 141–143, 150, 168, 173–175, 178, 179, 182, 187, 193, 194, 199 Cold War, 71 cultural, 2, 109 ‘Dionysian’, 22 epistemological, 121 indigenous, 9 liberal, 70, 77 productive, 85 racial, 2, 121 realist, 46 pessimism-optimism, 6 pessimism traps, 8, 157, 158, 162, 165, 167, 168 Pinker, Steven Better Angels of Our Nature, The, 199 Enlightenment Now, 199 Plato, 24, 25, 41, 46 cave allegory, 47 Republic, The, 45 Poe, Edgar Allan, 102 Poland, 140 political messianism, 72 populism, 198, 199 use of pessimism, 2 Portugal Lisbon, 146 postcolonial, 194 literature, 105 posthumanism, 177 post-structuralism, 18, 62, 63, 150 pragmatism, 6, 139, 142, 143, 150 Prichard, Alex, 192

progress, 3, 7, 9, 13, 15, 27, 30, 40, 49, 59, 68, 69, 76, 93, 121, 126–128, 146, 173, 175, 176, 181, 186, 187, 195, 199 failures of, 119 Propertius, 144 Puig de la Bellacasa, María, 177 Putin, Vladimir, 3 Putnam, Robert, 193 R race, 8, 56, 63, 70, 124, 127–131, 198 racial animosities, 74 war, 120, 121, 126, 127 racism, 193 Rand, Ayn, 130 rationalism modernist, 179 Rawls, John, 45, 46 reactionary, 3, 4, 58, 59, 62, 103, 105, 109, 119, 129 Reactionary Internationalism, 121 Reagan, Ronald, 29 realism, 3, 6, 25, 27, 28, 37, 43, 45, 47, 49, 90, 92, 138 Christian, 46 classical, 20, 28 political, 88 romance of, 45 realpolitik, 87 Refugee Crisis (2011–), 139, 140 Rengger, Nicholas, 48 Rengger, Nick, 28 Republic of Ireland, 140 resentment, 103, 104, 107, 108, 113, 114 ressentiment, 107, 113 retrotopia, 6, 38, 48 Richardson, James, 70

Index

Ricoeur, Paul, 68 romance, 6, 38, 41, 48, 49 Romanticism, 42, 43, 45, 48, 68, 72, 178 Roosevelt, Theodore, 40 Rorty, Richard, 77 Rosenau, James, 192 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 14, 16, 18, 24, 72, 137, 146, 173 Russian Empire, 197 Russian Federation, 198 S Saami Council, 169 Salvini, Matteo, 128 Sami Parliaments, 169 Scheler, Max, 59 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 42 Schiller, Friedrich, 42 Schmitt, Carl, 43, 128 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 14, 15 science, 40–42, 46, 54, 88, 92, 176, 181, 183 natural, 60 political, 41, 46 social, 3, 4, 40, 53, 59, 62, 69, 150, 187 Second Industrial Revolution, 194, 197 sectoral corporatism, 196 Seidel, Peter, 88 shipwreck, 8, 139–146, 148, 150 pessimism of, 8 Simmel, Georg, 59, 60 Simpson, Leanne, 165 Singapore, 130 Skinner, B.F. Walden Two (1948), 17 Slovakia, 140

  213

Smith, Adam, 106 socialism, 17, 24, 25, 27, 30, 68, 71, 73, 74 Socrates, 16 solipsism, 63 Solomon, Robert, 107 Sophocles, 20, 24, 26, 29 sôphrosunê concept of, 29 Soros, George, 128 Soviet Union (USSR), 21, 70, 71, 76, 197 Spengler, Oswald, 6, 15, 56, 57, 61, 62 Spinoza, Baruch, 108, 113 Stalinism, 47, 68, 74, 183, 193 Stalin, Josef, 21, 72, 74, 76 state, 9, 141, 142, 155, 160, 162, 164, 165, 167 capacity, 194 democratic, 8, 121 narratives, 139 settler, 156 settler-state, 8 sovereignty, 138, 139, 147, 149, 158, 163 Stoicism, 22 Strauss, Leo, 18, 19, 38, 40, 41, 46, 47, 77 Surrealism, 15 Survival Research, 84, 85, 88–91, 93, 94 symbolic, 8, 54, 60 Syria, 199 T Talmon, Jacob, 5, 7, 68, 70, 71, 74, 76–78 Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, The (1952), 70, 72, 74

214  Index Thalis of Miletus, 144 Thiel, Peter, 129 Third Reich (1933–45), 90 Thucydides, 20, 24–27, 29, 35, 39, 40, 48, 50 History of the Peloponnesian War, 38 timarchy, 45 totalitarianism, 68, 72, 73, 77, 125 left-wing, 72, 76 total war, 76 tragedy, 1, 6, 15, 21, 26, 27, 29, 38, 41, 42, 44, 47–49, 67, 138 Greek, 24, 39, 40 romantic, 44 Traverso, Enzo, 112 Treaty of Waitangi (1840), 157 Treaty of Westphalia (1848), 9 tribalism, 198 Trump, Donald, 102, 124, 128, 130, 198 political rhetoric of, 196 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 156 tyranny, 45 U unhappiness, 15, 16, 19, 104 Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, 169 United Arab Emirates (UAE) Dubai, 130 United Kingdom (UK), 120, 140, 156, 199 United Nations (UN), 128, 167 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 168, 169 General Assembly, 169 Geneva Conventions, 145 Refugee Convention (1951), 142

United States of America (USA), 8, 18, 85, 113, 119, 120, 156, 163, 197, 198, 200 Chicago, IL, 22 New York, 16 universalism, 128, 131 University of Aberystwyth, 192 utopias, 16–18, 37, 102, 140 V Vietnam War (1955–75), 199 Virno, Paolo, 105, 106, 114 Voltaire, 19, 30, 137, 144, 146 Candide, or Optimism (1759), 23, 146 von Clausewitz, Carl, 38, 43 von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 42, 43, 58 von Humboldt, Wilhelm, 58 W Wachowski Siblings Matrix, The (1999), 122 Waltz, Kenneth, 27, 29, 39 theory of hierarchy, 193 Walzer, Michael, 141 Weber, Max, 14, 25, 26, 28, 193, 195 Weimar Republic, 58 Westphalian, 9, 168 sovereignty, 157 White, Stephen, 187 Wight, Martin, 46, 87 Wilson, Woodrow, 40 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 25 World Council of Indigenous Peoples, 169 World War I (1914–18), 1, 28, 109, 110, 194

Index

World War II (1939–45), 1, 2, 4, 18, 28, 69–72, 75–77, 84, 85, 109, 110, 194 Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945), 177 Y Yale University, 54

Z Zamyatin, Evgeny We (1924), 17 Zeitgeist, 28 Zionism, 73, 77

  215