Powers of War: Fighting, Knowledge, and Critique1

Abstract

This paper approaches the ontology of war by asking why, despite its constitutive function for politics and society, has war never been made the object of an academic discipline? Through an analysis of the relationship between war and knowledge about war, we argue that the ontology of war is such that it disrupts foundational claims of the kind necessary for conventional forms of academic disciplinarity. At the center of the ontology of war is fighting, an idea we recover from Clausewitz. A moment of radical contingency, fighting both compromises knowledge about war and forces the unmaking and remaking of social and political orders. These generative powers of war operate through the production of systems of knowledge and their institutionalization in the academy, the state and wider society. Although of existential significance for political authority, these knowledges are vulnerable to the very contingency of war that produces them. This complex of relations between war, knowledge, and power we term War/Truth. As such, an analytical framework adequate to war requires a reflexive relation to truth claims. We clear the ground for such a “critical war studies.”

Reconsidering Categories of Analysis: Possibilities for Feminist Studies of Conflict

“…In a recently published article, Tarak Barkawi and Shane Brighton illustrate that within the social sciences, war is primarily believed to be a destructive force, and this 'antimilitarist' stance has historically limited domains of enquiry. 31 From a different angle that also speaks of the importance of recognising the emotional labours of research for methodological purposes, Cyrus Schayegh asserts that the complexities of statesocietal relations during the Pahlavi Monarchy, which ruled over Iran prior to the 1979 revolution, have yet to be adequately addressed in Iranian studies. Schayegh argues that this is because 'in the West, many historians of Iran are Iranians, for whom monarchy and revolution were deeply personal experiences'.…”

War, ‘strategic communication’ and the violence of non-recognition

“…The final section addresses the broader question of how we might think of the study of war in critical terms: here, I turn to calls by Tarak Barkawi and Shane Brighton for enquiry into the ontology of war, and ask how we may understand this call in light of a Butlerian critical ontology of 'the human' (Barkawi 2011;Barkawi and Brighton 2009;Brighton 2011). This closing discussion of ontologies in and of war thus anchors the present discussion of the discursive structure of SC in a wider debate about how the phenomenon of war may be critically studied.…”

Of bats and bodies: methods for reading and writing embodiment

“…It is increasingly being recognised within 'critical war studies' and 'critical military studies' that humans, with all their variable compositions, emotions, and experiences should be central when studying war and militarism (Sylvester, 2013;Parashar, 2013;McSorley, 2013;Åhäll and Gregory, 2015;Wilcox, 2015; also see articles in this issue). This not only does important political work in opposing a disembodied and disconnected analysis of war, but centralising human experiences, embodiment and corporeality can also help us analyse more fully how war is 'generative' of far more than states, borders and particular policies (Barkawi and Brighton, 2011;Brighton, 2011;Dyvik, 2016). This Special Issue extends this call to the level of the researcher and invites us to reflect on our own situatedness in relation to the spaces, subjects and phenomena studied and to try to tease out the range of embodiments these hold.…”