Affective Politics of the Global Event

Trauma and the Resilient Market Subject

James Brassett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351171380
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Market life is increasingly conducted in the shadow of global events like 9/11, the Sub-Prime crisis and Brexit. Within International political economy (IPE) two broad positions can be discerned: either the event is 'just an event', a superficial spectacle in an otherwise straightforward story of power and hierarchy; or the event is large enough to be considered a 'crisis'.

While sympathetic to such arguments, this book develops a more performative politics of the global event, arguing that the very idea of the event must be placed in question. How is the event constructed? How are market subjects performed in relation to the event? This book argues that emotional and psychological discourses of 'trauma' and 'resilience' provide an important affective register for understanding how the global event is 'known', how it is governed, and how the affective dimensions of market life might be lived. By identifying the contingent rise of these discourses, the author de-stabilises and re-politicises the apparent existential veracity of the global event. The critical possibilities and limits of the affective turn in market life can then be rendered according to classic questions of IPE: who wins, who loses, and how might it be changed?

An important work for advanced scholars and students of international political economy, 'everyday and cultural political economy', crisis and resilience, as well as broader debates on globalisation.

1 Political economy of the global event

Crisis and performance

Introduction: how should we think about the global event?

Recent decades have seen an intensification of media attention paid to, and political interest in, global events. The 24-hour news and social media now run through a seemingly endless stream of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, mass shootings, extreme weather and, of course, economic crises (Dayan and Katz, 1992; Katz and Liebes, 2007). The rise of the global event can be understood as a symptom of the media age (Hepp and Couldry, 2010). For example, the so-called CNN effect has long suggested that global politics is increasingly entwined with the practices of international news reporting, which can sway domestic public opinion to the plight of distant strangers (Robinson, 2002). Moreover, the nature of global events can fit a very neat news story cycle of (more-or-less) nine days, simple narratives of shock, sympathy, moral judgement and requirements to ‘do something’ or ‘learn lessons’. While perceived as disruptive or shocking, event-driven news can actually reproduce a fairly straightforward politics, whereby policymakers are called upon to respond (Livingston and Bennett, 2003). What ethical and political dilemmas do these global ‘media spectacles’ (Kellner, 2002) give rise to? Does the rise of the global event challenge the state-centric ontology of politics? Should global mechanisms of response and governance be established? Given the reactions to certain events – e.g. 9/11 and the Indian Ocean Tsunami – can the global event open a path to new forms of community (Hutchison, 2016)?

One important line of reasoning is that the global event is simply that: an event which is global in scale. For example, Baylis and Smith (1997: 7) define globalisation as the “process of interconnectedness between societies such that events in one part of the world more and more have effects on peoples and societies far away”. In more nuanced terms, Anthony Giddens (1990: 64) suggested, “Globalization can … be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.” For his part, Ulrich Beck went further to situate global events as part of a new world risk society (1999). Indeed, he argued for a form of reflexive learning where the fact of globalisation would – through the gravity of certain ‘cosmopolitan events’ – promote ethical growth (2013). While sceptical of the stronger claims of globalisation theory, this chapter will argue that the politics of the global event is not something peripheral in market life, an interruption to its normal workings, but rather a constitutive element in its emergence. The section on The event of globalisation? will argue that the basic idea of globalisation – interconnectivity, mobility, networks, etc. – can indeed provide a useful context to understand and engage the politics of the global event. However, rather than proceeding with an analytical definition of ‘the global’ in scalar terms – in order to ask questions such as is it a universal event; does it affect everyone in the same way? – I will argue that the political dimensions of the event should be foregrounded, asking how and why particular events are narrated ‘as’ global. The section on The contingency of the global event, therefore, addresses the examples of the Chilean mine disaster and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. In basic terms, it is not at all obvious that either event should have become narrated as ‘global’. The narrative work which underpins this emergence carries a number of loaded qualities: heroism, freedom, civilisation, etc., which might be placed in question. This is a politics of the global. While both events are important, per se, and certainly affected people in grave ways, there is an interesting contingency to how these particular events were narrated as being of wider ‘global’ significance.

This politics of the global event reflects a process of social construction; identifying a story, a set of key protagonists, and a moral arc (Hay, 1996). Importantly, both events reveal a narrative of good and bad subjects that bear upon wider issues of market life; how to achieve development, when to defend civilisation (Browning, 2017). In this way, we begin to see the link between the social construction of the global event and the details of whether and how it resonates with, or affects, market life. The section on The global event as crisis? therefore analyses the work of constructivist and critical scholars for whom the significant question in any crisis is: how is it understood, and how does this understanding perpetuate a transition back to ‘normal’ circumstances? On this view, the way events are constructed as crises is a mechanism for restructuring market life, whether via the exclusion of scapegoats – e.g. corruption and trade unions – or the legitimation of market life by appeals for better transparency, information, or competition. However, while this literature helps to understand how global events might be narrated as political crises, I argue that the nature of market life can be over-determined. Despite a focus on ‘social construction’, it is assumed that a ‘normal’ set of circumstances, however hierarchal and exploitative, can be returned to. This assumption both naturalises a particular form of market life – liberal capitalism – and reduces the role of the global event to a distraction or smokescreen. On some readings, the event becomes an ‘opportunity’ for budding entrepreneurs to exploit the crisis and secure market advantages (Johnson, 2011; Klein, 2008).

In response, I outline a case for the development of a performative approach to the politics of the global event. The section on The global event as contingent performance draws on the IPE literature on performativity and work of Judith Butler (2010) in particular, to argue that we need to take each event in terms of its context, particularities, and contests. The global event is not a universal concept – pace Beck – but neither is it a mere social construction that is amenable to some primordial market rationality. It does not ‘happen’ in a manner that is straightforwardly ‘global’ or an ‘event’; rather, the very process of filling out these concepts is the political question. It is in the manner and the mode of the performance of the global event that its politics can be ascertained. From a performative perspective, the way discourses of the global event are narrated, and how subjects take them on (or not), is the central question. Beyond a vision of emotion as a catalyst for the reconstruction of liberal capitalism, we can question how affective discourses of the global event are performative of new modes of market life.

The event of globalisation?

One way to situate the politics of the global event is to focus on the scalar and sociological dimension in order to provide a definitional take. Indeed, the literature on globalisation provides an important set of co-ordinates for thinking about the basic tenets of the global event: scale, interconnectivity, supra-territorial qualities (Scholte, 2005). Although theories of globalisation have received substantial criticism in IPE for – amongst other things – downplaying the agency of states, and overplaying the political importance of supra-territorial relations (Hirst and Thompson, 2009), it is fair to say that the ‘global context’ of political economy has become an important framework (O’Brien and Williams, 2010; Broome, 2014). Globalisation studies anticipated much of our current conjuncture by focusing on a set of sociological changes associated with technological innovation, geographical mobility, and network forms of organisation (Castells, 2009). With the expansion of technologies like Facebook and iPhones into everyday life, a once controversial social science debate now seems like a rather banal statement of the obvious: we live in a (more-or-less) globally interconnected world.

The political implications of globalisation are more contested, however. A changing geography was held to loosen the hold of sovereign or state-centric accounts of politics, allowing for new forms of political community and supra- territorial governance (Linklater, 1998; Scholte, 2005). A number of scholars took up these empirical trends to develop ethical critiques of sovereignty, methodological nationalism, and related conceptions of modernity (Beck, 2000; Giddens, 1990). It was not simply that globalisation allowed for the growth of supra-territorial communities, but that through such complex entwinements, new forms of knowledge could play a prominent and reflexive role in social change (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994). On this view, the global event can work as both an exemplar of our new global context and a signal point for our emerging global consciousness. What happens when people can ‘see’ events on the other side of the world like the Ethiopian famine or 9/11? For cosmopolitan scholars, and authors associated with the rise of ‘globalisation theory’, a growing consciousness of the interconnectivity of our global lives demonstrated by such events could highlight our emerging ‘communities of fate’; and would necessitate a re-thinking and a re-articulation of rationalities and practices of governance at the global level (Held, 2010; Linklater, 1998).

While elements of the cosmopolitan-globalisation thesis might help to situate and interpret the rise of global events, there is a sense in which the ‘theory’ can over-determine the political content of each event. Indeed, as critics have argued, there is an interesting tautology in globalisation theory, whereby the thing to be explained – i.e. globality – begins to work as the explanation itself (Rosenberg, 2000). By extension, the global event can be rendered as a confirmation of the necessity to think about politics in global terms – i.e. a global crisis necessitates global governance, a global disaster requires global solidarity, etc. Or as Ulrich Beck (2009: 11–12) described the cosmopolitan event of 9/11:

The mass media produce the spontaneous concurrence of the catastrophic event (or its anticipation) in real time in a global scale with active presence and participation of the whole of humanity. It is the traumatic shock experience, this real-life thriller in everyone’s living room that tears down the walls of national indifference, overcomes the greatest geographical distances and creates a kind of cosmopolitan solidarity.

In short, the elision of an empirical claim with a normative vision can make for some grand theory, which may require unpacking in terms of common IPE questions of who benefits, why, and how might it be changed?

By foregrounding the significance of the global event for cosmopolitan ethics, there is a danger that we lose sight of a critical standpoint (Brassett, 2008). Indeed, this can be viewed as symptomatic of wider issues in globalisation theory, which can sometimes downplay question of power and hierarchy. For some globalisation represents a normalizing discourse of power that merely updates capitalist logics of expansion and accumulation (Hay and Marsh, 2000; Weber, 2002). A number of empirically driven critiques identified the material concentrations of trade and financial flows in predominantly Western states (Hirst and Thompson, 2009), raising theoretical questions about the euro-centrism of globalisation studies (Phillips, 2005). More critical scholars have argued that hierarchies in world politics persist because of, not despite, globalisation, and that attempts to sanitise the concept through ‘reform’ distract from its complicity in capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy (Bello, 2005). On this view, the global event may be seen as far more politically contested and problematic than merely recognising our common humanity.

It is not simply that market instrumentalities are intensifying forms of interaction, but that the forms of network organisation are actively shaping modes of market subjectivity. For example, the logic of the social network carries important implications for how we live, think, and present ourselves to others. In a global context, the event is experienced differently; it is more intimately produced, through media images, communicated and discussed through social media. Indeed, it is now common for a good proportion of early footage from disasters or terrorist attacks to be made up of smartphone shots uploaded via social media (Allan and Thorsen, 2009). Events do not simply happen but are produced and mediated. The nature and form of this production is an important element in the politics of the global event that will be discussed in the next section.

Critics rightly question the hyperbole of globalisation theory – as ideology, as analytical inflation, as a sociological front for cosmopolitanism (Rosenberg, 2000). But this should not distract from a wider research problematic to understand the lived experiences of market life as global. Indeed, it is precisely because globalisation is a contested and contestable concept that the politics of what counts as a global event is so important. While one individual in one country might be tapped into global circuits of consumption, borrowing, and media, this does not mean that their experience of globalisation is the same as another person in another place. For example, consuming a global event like the World Cup – on a sofa with a sponsor beer – is a far cry from the experience of migrant workers who produce the event, building the stadiums and infrastructure (Nauright, 2004). On these terms, the differential experience of global mobility highlighted by certain events; between a skilled Western elite and an unskilled, non-Western, marginalised population of migrant workers, is precisely an important and critical concern (Bulley and Lisle, 2012).

Events animate the politics of globalisation. Their production, consumption, and contest illustrate (and produce) the differential levels of inclusion and autonomy that underpin globalisation. Our ability to turn on a TV, or access the Internet; that we very likely already have a market relationship with the people involved in global events (e.g. by consuming their product), point to a range of ethico-political dilemmas. The politics of the global event is therefore an important prism for understanding the emergence of market life as globalised, not its confirmation. We therefore need to begin to unpick the contingency of how events become narrated as global.

The contingency of the global event

While global events are deeply embedded within empirical trends associated with globalisation – interconnectivity, integration, mobility, networks, etc. – the cosmopolitan move to emplace the global event as a signal point of globalisation theory is problematic. Attempts to ascribe a generative power to global events must first engage with the politics of globality: who is included/excluded, on what terms, and how might such hierarchies be contested? On this view, the politics of the global event is better thought of as a fulcrum for engaging the wider dilemmas of globalisation (Brassett, 2008).

This section will introduce and discuss two global events on these terms: the Chilean mine disaster and the Charlie Hebdo attacks. While neither of these events is straightforwardly ‘global’ in significance, I argue that the way they are narrated as global – indeed as events – can raise important dilemmas (Fassin, 2015). In this way, the political construction of each event can illustrate how global market life is portrayed: as brave, as liberal, as rule following, etc. The associations and attachments, solidarities and exclusions that arise are, no doubt ephemeral, even contested. But, to a certain extent, that is precisely the point. There is a productive politics of the global event that can both enchant and perform (new) market subjects (Weidner, 2016). In what follows, I introduce elements of each event and recount how they were narrated as globally significant. The aim is not to provide a definitive statement on their content or meaning, but rather to draw out commonalities and particularities to their representation as global.

The Chilean mine disaster, 2010

How does an event become global? The Chilean mine disaster that began with a mine collapse trapping 33 miners underground could have been a story about poor safety standards, or, indeed, the failure of private mining companies to adhere to such standards. Years of under investment and poor safety regulation had meant that collapses in Chilean mines were relatively common (Pilger, 2010). Indeed, the San Esteban mining company had received numerous warnings and fines regarding safety in the run up to the collapse (Bonnefoy, 2010). However, this was not the narrative that prevailed in the global media.

A stark practicality was that 33 men were trapped around 700 metres down and out of contact. It was a fair expectation that the miners had either been killed in the collapse or that they would likely starve or suffocate in the near term. Initial coverage suggested a straightforward disaster.¹ However, the story quickly changed as widespread public expressions of concern provoked a political intervention: President Pinera rejected advice from his officials and made an impassioned call for their rescue (Carroll, 2010). Somewhat unusually, the government took over control of the faltering search, and very quickly, national media began to show interest in the story. Indeed, cars across Chile began to carry banners that read “fuerza mineros” (be strong miners) (Allen, 2010). With state backing, a number of boreholes were drilled and listening devices deployed. Seventeen days after the accident, on August 22, a note written in bold red letters appeared taped to a drill bit, it read, “Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33” (“We are well in the shelter, the 33 of us”) (Carroll, 2010). Once the rescuers, and the world, knew that the men were alive, Chile implemented a comprehensive plan to both care for the workers during their entrapment and to rescue them. Indeed, the human experience of the miners became a key narrative of news coverage, with their physical and mental survival a source of regular commentary (Franklin, 2010). A media city quickly grew outside the entrance to the mine, and resources started to roll in from state, private donations and international organisations. There was even a school set up for the children of the miners.² After 69 days underground, a TV and Internet audience of around 1 billion people watched the 33 brought safely to the surface on 13 October 2010 by a winching operation that lasted nearly 24 hours.

This remarkable reversal in fortune of the miners was coupled with a rapid mediatisation of the story. From a simple accident, with little hope, the government was able to support and drive a story of emotional intrigue, bravery, hope and fortitude (Jimenez-Martinez, 2014). Numerous na...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction: austerity, affect, event
• 1 Political economy of the global event: crisis and performance
• 2 Everyday politics of the global event: discourse, performance, subject
• Trauma and the global event
• Resilience and the global event
• Bibliography
• Index