Textualising British Politics: Deconstructing the subject of British foreign policy

British politics has been described as a sub-discipline crying out for methodological and ideational cross-fertilisation. Where other areas of political science have benefited from new ideas, British politics has remained largely atheoretical and underdeveloped. This has changed recently with the rise of interpretivism but the study of British politics would also benefit from more serious engagement with poststructuralism. With this in mind, I examine how the thought of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction could be useful for thinking through the foundations of British politics, re-examining what appears natural or given and revealing the problematic and contradictory status of these foundations. After suggesting the need to 'textualise' British politics', I illustrate how deconstruction operates in a specific context, that of British foreign policy since 1997. This exploration reveals how certain decisions (such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003) became possible in the first place, and how their basis in an idea of an 'us' and a 'them', a coherent, autonomous subject separate from its object, is deeply problematic. Such a critical reading of British politics is impossible within the dominant interpretivist framework, and opens up new possibilities for thought which form an important supplement to existing ways of studying the field.

Justice as Improvisation:The Law of the Extempore

Justice as Improvisation: The Law of the Extempore theorises the relationship between justice and improvisation through the case of the New York City cabaret laws. Discourses around improvisation often imprison it in a quasi-ethical relationship with the authentic, singular ‘other’. The same can be said of justice. This book interrogates this relationship by highlighting the parallels between the aporetic conception of justice advanced by the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida and the nuanced approach to improvisation pursued by musicians and theorists alike in the new and emerging interdisciplinary field of Critical Studies in Improvisation (CSI). Justice as Improvisation re-imagines justice as a species of improvisation through the formal structure of the most basic of legal mechanisms, judicial decision-making, offering law and legal theory a richer, more concrete, understanding of justice. Not further mystery or mystique, but a negotiation between abstract notions of justice and the everyday practice of judging. Improvisation in judgment calls for ongoing, practical decision-making as the constant negotiation between the freedom of the judge to take account of the otherness or singularity of the case and the existing laws or rules that both allow for and constrain that freedom. Yes, it is necessary to judge, yes, it is necessary to decide, but to judge well, to decide justly, that is a music lesson perhaps best taught by critical improvisation scholars.

The Paradox of Performative Immediacy: Law, Music, Improvisation

In a 1999 essay, J.M. Balkin and Sanford Levinson called for law to be considered as a performing art. Against or perhaps going further than Balkin and Levinson, this commentary claims that while engagement with performance practices in the arts, such as music, is of the utmost value to law and legal theory, we must not take for granted what it means to ‘‘perform’’. Uniting Jacques Derrida’s la Villette performance (with jazz legend, Ornette Coleman) with his writings on performativity in law, this commentary looks to the musical practice of improvisation to trouble the notion of performance as immediate and singular and to question taken for granted distinctions between text and performance, writing and music, composition and improvisation. The consequence of this refined understanding of the performative on legal theory and the actual practice of law is a reconceptualization of law as improvisation, that is, both singular and general, pre-existent and immediate, and a refocusing on the creativity that lies at the heart of law’s conservativism.

Time Out of Time: Derrida, Cixous, Improvisation

This article considers the paradox of improvisation as a gift out of time, which is completely in tune with time, subject to time. It does so through an alignment of Jacques Derrida’s philosophy and the poetic writings of Hélène Cixous. Ever mindful of the possible impossibility of improvisation in Derrida’s work, improvisation here is given over to Cixous, to the side of life, and is theorised as a type of ‘feminine writing’, as an inventive strategy that calls forth the unknown other and dreams of a gift in life that is out of time.

Ethics, power and space: International hospitality beyond Derrida

This article argues for the importance of hospitality in discussions of international ethics, suggesting that, while Jacques Derrida’s thought on the concept ought to be central, we also need to go beyond it. In particular, Derrida’s focus on the threshold moment of sovereign decision has the effect of reinforcing International Relations’ focus on the state as the only ethical actor and space. In contrast, this article suggests that we think of hospitality as a spatial relation with affective dimensions and a practice that continues once the guest crosses the threshold of the home. Conceived as such, hospitality reveals a constitutive relation between ethics, power and space, which directs us to the way hospitality produces international spaces and manages them through various tactics seeking to contain the resistant guest. This argument is illustrated through an examination of perhaps the most urgent of contemporary international ethical spaces: the refugee camp.

The Irish hospitals sweepstake in the United States of America, 1930-1939

The Irish hospitals sweepstake was established by statute in the Irish Free State in 1930 to fund the state’s hospital service. The vast majority of tickets were sold outside Ireland, particularly in countries where such gambling was illegal at the time. Initially the largest market was in the United Kingdom, but following the introduction of restrictive legislation there in 1934, the promoters of the sweepstake turned their attentions to North America and after 1936 the United States became the largest source of contributions to the Irish sweep. This article examines a number of factors concerning the relationship of the Irish sweep with the USA, including: an effort to estimate the amount of money contributed to the sweep by Americans; the role of the Irish diaspora and of prominent republicans, including Joseph McGarrity and Connie Neenan, in the illegal ticket distribution network; the efforts of American Federal agencies and government departments to disrupt the sweepstake organisation in America; how the sweep was used by those who sought to legalise gambling in the USA; the attitudes of both the Irish and American governments to the sweep’s activities in America; and how the legalisation of gambling in America brought about the demise of the Irish sweep.

Risk versus National Pride. Conflicting discourses over the construction of a High Voltage Power Station in the Athens Metropolitan Area for demands of the 2004 Olympics

This paper first explores the conflictual discourses employed by government agencies, citizens’ initiatives, and environmental organizations over the construction of a High Voltage Power Station (KYT) for demands of the 2004 Olympic Games, as presented in media reports and movement literature over a period of one year. Having in mind recent criticisms targeting the lack of empirical evidence in Ulrich Beck’s risk theorization, this exploration is of distinct importance. Secondly, it takes into account that both the defensive character of societal action and mistrust to expert authorities have been confirmed as prevalent characteristics of both the Greek and the general risk social context. The paper attempts to re-evaluate and/or complement existing perspectives of societal activism in general and environmental mobilizations in particular within the confines of the Greek social context. As a tentative conclusion, it is suggested that the risk perspective offers a novel prism for the examination of societal activism without confining it to the characteristics of individual national contexts.