Sensible politics: visualizing International Relations
No TL;DR found
Abstract
Sensible Politics: Visualizing International Relations, by William A. Callahan, explores the newer dimensions of world-ordering theories. The author approaches these theories in a pragmatic way to engage with enmeshed social practices. The mutual exchanges of multisensory experiences give meaning and value to performatives such as garden-building or film-making. The book meanders through a nonlinear, nonverbal, and nonnormative mode, rather than a naïve West-to-East or Right-to-Left analysis. Callahan shies away from a mere Eurocentric analysis of ‘visual IR’ and tries to incorporate methods of the non-Western ‘Other.’ He introduces critical aspects of civility/martiality, barbarism/civilization, and Chinese practices and experiences as alternate ways to deliberate on comparative international politics from the vantage point of visuality. This productive tension between various dyads allows the reader to engage with visuality, affect, and artifacts instead of the more pronounced civility, ideology, and images that have occupied center-stage in the existing literature on the subject. The book’s chapters deconstruct how concealed power is rendered visible or invisible by certain ideologies promoted by the corporate sector and mainstream political understanding.