Fabio Petito

The postsecular in international relations: an overview

Over the last few years the notion of postsecularity has gained increasing relevance in the social sciences. This term has been employed in two interconnected but different ways. First, in a more descriptive fashion, it has been used to explain the return or resilience of religious traditions in modern life. This has resulted, on the one hand, in the attempt to develop conceptual frameworks that could account for this unexpected feature of modernity beyond the paradigmatic assumptions of the secularisation theory; and, on the other hand, in a plea for new models of politics able to include religious views. In a second and possibly more innovative meaning, the postsecular has emerged as a form of radical theorizing and critique prompted by the idea that values such as democracy, freedom, equality, inclusion and justice may not necessarily be best pursued within an exclusively immanent secular framework. Quite the opposite, the secular may well be a potential site of isolation, domination, violence and exclusion.

In Defence of Dialogue of Civilisations: With a Brief Illustration of the Diverging Agreement between Edward Said and Louis Massignon

In this article I want to put forward an intellectual defence of the political discourse of dialogue of civilisations by challenging the idea that ‘civilisation-based thinking’ is necessarily a conflict-generating factor and arguing that, contrary to fashionable assumptions, a civilisational dialogue that wants to contribute to a more peaceful world order requires, in a qualified way, ‘stronger’ civilisational identities. In particular, I take issue with the academic criticisms to dialogue of civilisations coming from the camp of the critique of the clash of civilisations and well represented by Amartya Sen’s explicit and Edward Said’s more indirect critiques to ‘civilisation-based thinking’: by unveiling their implicit endorsement of the Westphalian/secularist presumption, I will show the counter-intuitive political implications of a dialogue among ‘strong’ civilisational identities and traditions when framed hermeneutically as ‘fusion of horizons’. Finally I provide a supplementary brief illustration to my defence of dialogue of civilisations by criticising Said’s reading of Louis Massignon — the great 20th century French scholar of Islam — as part of Orientalism and suggesting that ‘in diverging agreement’ with Said, Massignon’s work and life stand as a very concrete proof of the possibility of a ‘dialogue of civilisations’ that escapes the yoke of the Orientalist accusations.

The Return from Exile

The worldwide resurgence of religion seems nowadays to generate repression—at times through the imposition of religious law upon a community of people; at other times, through the association of religion with “terror,” through its supposed inclination to generate extreme—even indiscriminate —political actions; or even in scenarios involving the persecution of members of other religious communities; or, more apocalyptically, as the driving force behind a coming “clash of civilizations.”

Dialogue of civilizations as an alternative model for world order

On November 4, 1998, the General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously adopted a resolution proposed by the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, which designated 2001 as the Year of the “Dialogue among Civilizations.” In the same year, on September 11, the shadow of a future clash of civilizations came looming down with incredible velocity, leaving in its wake an atmosphere of fear, mistrust, and war. At the dawn of the third millennium, this coincidence increasingly appears as a sign of the times, a symbolic indication of the historical epoch we are entering.

ENCOUNTER, DIALOGUE, AND KNOWLEDGE: ITALY AS A SPECIAL CASE OF RELIGIOUS ENGAGEMENT IN FOREIGN POLICY

The “religious turn” in the study of international relations has started to break through and inform concrete policy discussions. The first part of this article briefly explains that breakthrough a...

Introducing the International Theory of Carl Schmitt: International Law, International Relations, and the Present Global Predicament(s)

In this piece we introduce and contextualize the contributions to the special focus on the international theory of Carl Schmitt, and argue that Carl Schmitts much neglected international thought can provide scholars of both international relations and international law with a new common multidisciplinary research platform pivotal in thinking about the present international predicaments of crisis in international order and legitimacy, of contested liberal hegemony, and of the issue of unipolarity and the emergence of new forms of warfare, such as terrorism and the ‘global war on terror’.

Towards a Postsecular International Politics

The postsecular transformation of the international society is the product of a growing dissatisfaction with existing secular arrangements and of an increasing awareness that “values such as democracy, freedom, equality, inclusion, and justice may not necessarily be best pursued within an exclusively immanent secular framework. Quite the opposite, the secular may well be a potential site of isolation, domination, violence and exclusion.”1 The thriving debate on religion in international politics has only in the last few years seen the emergence of the postsecular as a new object of study. Following an initial focus on the “return of religion” and the “power of secularism” in international politics, the focus on the post-secular seems to encompass, at least in its very terminology, the idea of a paradigm shift. This is an attempt to move beyond the secular and thus the secular/religious divide, which can be considered one of the foundational dimensions of Western modernity. The question raised by the postsecular, then, is not just one of incorporation of the presence of religion or of the power of secularism into existing theoretical frameworks, but one of conceptual innovation to account for a transformation that invests the very structures of consciousness and power, and existing understandings of political community.

The renaissance of geopolitics in post-1989 Italy

The revival of geopolitics in post-1989 Italy is at once a rather straightforward and perplexing matter. On the one hand, the renewed appeal that geopolitical thinking has enjoyed in International Relations (IR) circles has been well documented and could hardly be downplayed. On the other hand, however, the recourse to geopolitics has often boiled down to an undifferentiated and often convoluted use of its terms, approaches and theories. In this article we argue that the rationale of such a revival has been less to import geopolitical knowledge into IR and more to confer legitimacy and respectability to the analyses put forward by scholars and practitioners. It is no chance, in fact, that the geopolitics-inspired academic discourse has been progressively recognised as a way, if not the way, to discuss international affairs in post-1989 Italy. The central puzzle to be investigated behind the revival of geopolitics in Italy is thus how such a discourse has managed to gain and retain a powerful status in Italian IR academia and, most importantly, why.

An Italian Foreign Policy of Religious Engagement: Challenges and Prospects

Abstract A new awareness of the role of religion in international relations has started to inform concrete policy discussions in several Western Ministries of Foreign Affairs under the heading of ‘religious engagement’ in foreign policy. Italy is no exception, but as the country which hosts the Holy See, it represents a special case. As the approach to religion found in the historical record of Italian foreign policy shows, Italy has a comparative advantage and could well develop a unique model of religious engagement by strengthening the central structures involved in religious matters and foreign policy, as well as by using the vast network of Rome-based religious non-state actors as a forum of consultation and policy advice.

Imperial Monologue or Civilizational Dialogue

On a brisk autumn afternoon as community activists congregated at the forecourt of the Darebin Town Hall for an interfaith dialogue, few would have noticed the auspicious monument towering over them. Erected in ostentatious Victorian grandeur, steeped in transient nationalist mystique, and draped by the names of young Anglo-Celtic men, the RSL (Returned and Services League of Australia) memorial honors those “whofought (and died) … for King and Empire” during “the Great War 1914–1918.” Some 2400 years earlier, in another encounter of dialogue and empire, Athenian envoys advocated the pervasiveness of power and pragmatism against the besieged Melians’ contestations for justice and neutrality.