R. Guy Emerson

An Art of the Region: Towards a Politics of Regionness

Recent analysis on New Regionalism has, for Björn Hettne, raised important ontological questions over ‘what we study when we study regionalism’. The paper contributes to this debate by focusing on the shared beliefs, norms and rituals that hold a region together. Working between the New Regionalism literature and thinking on international regimes, this paper – to paraphrase Friedrich Kratochwil and John Ruggie – outlines the ‘inescapable inter-subjective quality’ of a region. This focus on inter-subjectivity seeks to improve on existing approaches that consider shared social structures as already fixed, and/or as autonomous constructs operating over and above regional actors. In order to appreciate how inter-subjective structures and regional agents interact with each other, the paper explores the social construction of Latin America. Specifically, it examines the politics of regionness – understood here in relation to identity, space and agents – to demonstrate how various regional actors operate within, and reconstruct, shared meaning. In so doing, it interrogates the practices that govern and continually produce the region.

Post-hegemony and Gramsci: a bridge too far?

This article expands upon the theory of post-hegemony so as to maintain the multitude as an operative political category alongside the State. Ironically, it does so by returning to Antonio Gramsci. It argues that the multitude – or, for Gramsci ‘civil society’ – is constitutive of statal politics in two specific ways: (1) the multitude as a constitutive outside or alterity that the State carries; and (2) constitutive in its positivity, as a productive immanence that affects the social field from which the State is drawn. This relationship of constituent participation – not representation – is demonstrated by investigating changes in politics-as-usual in Venezuela.

Limits to a cyber-threat

ABSTRACT This paper reveals the limits to representing cyberspace as a threat. In contrast to more conventional threats, the suggestion is that the not-immediately-apparent consequences of a cyber-attack make it largely reliant on official practices of representation. Exploring the implications of this reliance, the paper outlines how attributing meaning and culpability – always contested practices – are amplified in the potential absence of a readily apparent attack. Given these limits, does the cyber-threat then require a different lexicon of danger to both educate and engender a sense of caution? Examining the discursive construction of the cyber-threat, the paper demonstrates how this threat draws upon an established economy of danger – likening it to warfare and terrorism – but also suggests a limit to these representations. Specifically, by engaging post-structuralist literature the paper illustrates that these limits are best understood through an appreciation of the performative and the constitutive ‘lack’ in signification. It thus concludes that the value of the cyber-threat is not determined by transparently representing a cyber-attack. Rather, it is drawn from processes of hyper-securitization and through the establishment of institutions like the NATO Center of Excellence in Cooperative Cyber Defense that retroactively bring into existence the very object it purports to defend against.

¿Por qué no les callan? Hugo Chávez’s Reelection and the Decline of Western Hegemony in the Americas

On October 7, 2012, Hugo Chávez was comfortably reelected president of Venezuela. Just days before the vote, the impression given by major international print media was that it would be close, an assessment that proved to be at best optimistic. Western media coverage of the election in Venezuela was designed to skew the result toward the opposition, and this effort singularly failed. The “propaganda model” advanced by Herman and Chomsky is now faltering in the Americas, and the region is acting in a manner that is increasingly free of influence from the United States. Venezuela thus stands as a case of the citizenry actively and independently asserting its political agency despite clear attempts to redirect its thinking and decision making. El 7 de octubre de 2012, Hugo Chávez fue cómodamente reelegido presidente de Venezuela. Justo antes de las elecciones, los principales medios periodísticos internacionales daban por sentado que la votación iba a ser cerrada, una apreciación que resultó ser en el mejor de los casos optimista. La cobertura de las elecciones en Venezuela por parte de los medios occidentales estaba diseñada para sesgar los resultados a favor de la oposición, un esfuerzo que fracasó rotundamente. El “modelo de propaganda” propuesto por Herman y Chomsky está tambaleándose en las Américas, y la región está actuando de una manera cada vez más libre de la influencia de los Estados Unidos. Venezuela, por lo tanto, se erige como un ejemplo de un grupo de ciudadanos que de forma activa e independiente reafirma su voluntad política a pesar de unos claros intentos por desviar su pensamiento y su poder de decisión.

Por qué no les callan

On October 7, 2012, Hugo Chávez was comfortably reelected president of Venezuela. Just days before the vote, the impression given by major international print media was that it would be close, an assessment that proved to be at best optimistic. Western media coverage of the election in Venezuela was designed to skew the result toward the opposition, and this effort singularly failed. The “propaganda model” advanced by Herman and Chomsky is now faltering in the Americas, and the region is acting in a manner that is increasingly free of influence from the United States. Venezuela thus stands as a case of the citizenry actively and independently asserting its political agency despite clear attempts to redirect its thinking and decision making. El 7 de octubre de 2012, Hugo Chávez fue cómodamente reelegido presidente de Venezuela. Justo antes de las elecciones, los principales medios periodísticos internacionales daban por sentado que la votación iba a ser cerrada, una apreciación que resultó ser en el mejor de los casos optimista. La cobertura de las elecciones en Venezuela por parte de los medios occidentales estaba diseñada para sesgar los resultados a favor de la oposición, un esfuerzo que fracasó rotundamente. El “modelo de propaganda” propuesto por Herman y Chomsky está tambaleándose en las Américas, y la región está actuando de una manera cada vez más libre de la influencia de los Estados Unidos. Venezuela, por lo tanto, se erige como un ejemplo de un grupo de ciudadanos que de forma activa e independiente reafirma su voluntad política a pesar de unos claros intentos por desviar su pensamiento y su poder de decisión.

Embracing strangeness: The politics of solidarity

Be it the ideal of liberal democracy, the opening of local markets to the fluctuations of international capital, or the elusive quest for development, the discursive strategies of the North and the policy orientations that they enable toward the South are well explored. Less explored, however, is the way in which the South interacts with this received wisdom. This article explicitly focuses on how Venezuela, as one of the more outspoken southern states, works within and subverts the dominant U.S.-authored tropes in Latin America. It suggests that while U.S. representations of the Chávez administration as a strange anomaly in the America’s resonate in Venezuela and beyond, it is possible for Venezuela to subvert these messages by “embracing strangeness.” That is, by embracing and expanding the difference attributed to them onto the rest of Latin America, Venezuela is able to use “strangeness” to open up possibilities for new meanings and political spaces in the Americas.