This introduction offers a theoretical model for reading the relation between the conditions that determine the possibility of literary expression, and those possibilities that literature itself invents. It is in the relation between these two forms of possibility, the introduction argues, that the politics of literary form resides.

The last two decades of critical thinking have seen a quite radical shift in our understanding of this relationship. The introduction traces these shifts, and places the essays collected in this volume (written over that two decade period) in the context of such theoretical and political transformations. The passage of literary thinking in the current century, the introduction argues, requires a new critical understanding of literary possibility, which it is the task of these essays to perform.

This chapter introduces students to the rich and controversial legacy of Marxism and one of its major offshoots in the twentieth century, Critical Theory. The chapter is presented in two parts. The first part touches on the historical and intellectual context that ‘created’ Marxism, Marx’s notion of historical materialism and the issue of how Marx’s ideas have been received in IR. The second part concentrates on the two strands of Critical Theory that have emerged within IR: one derived from the so-called Frankfurt School and the other from Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci.

This chapter introduces students to the range of theoretical issues that have animated the study of international relations through the years. First, it explains why theoretical reflection is indispensable to explaining and understanding international relations. Second, it addresses unavoidable ontological and epistemological issues in the quest for theoretical understanding. Third, it traces the growth of mainstream International Relations theory up to the present conflict in Ukraine. Finally, it touches on some of the diverse critical approaches to the study of international relations.

This chapter tracks the emergence and acceleration of global environmental problems since the end of World War II and delineates the field of global environmental politics. It also introduces the proposed new geological epoch called ‘the Anthropocene’ and the concept of planetary boundaries along with the key global environmental discourses of limits to growth/degrowth, sustainable development/green growth, ecological security and environmental justice. The chapter then examines how scholars working in the major theoretical traditions of International Relations – realism, liberalism, Critical Theory, constructivism and English School theory – have approached global environmental challenges. The conclusion reflects on the pivotal roles of the United States and China in tackling global warming.

The Poet’s Voice is an intervention in the field of classics and is committed to the slow, close reading of Greek texts. The testing of how critical activity could be transformed by theoretical reflection is to be found in how the texts of antiquity were opened to a transformative exploration of their meaning. The practice of the discipline – how texts are read and understood, what questions are authorized, what sorts of answers countenanced – is what is at stake in such an enterprise. The Poet’s Voice is written from within the discipline of classics, to transform it from within, and hence its focus is on critically reading the texts of the discipline, both the ancient literature and its modern critics. That is how its theoretical commitment is embodied and enacted.

The radical ethics of critical theory, from Marx to Habermas, proposes principles through which ethical deliberations might be pursued. The radical nature of Habermas’s ethics involves a recognition of “the other” as worthy and valid in their own right. Such radical openness to others has the potential of transforming us toward what is better. When an individual’s conception of the good life necessitates an awareness and orientation toward what is good for “others,” ethics converges with the moral point of view through what is just: the good life as synonymous with just living. The chapter begins with a compelling story of a Ugandan peaceworker through which the authors draw out critical ethical principles. Then, the authors apply the radical ethics of Habermas’s critical theory to the contemporary US policy discourse around trans athletes’ participation in school sports. That discourse is analyzed according the principles introduced through the story at the beginning of the chapter.

This chapter provides a chronological review of critical responses to Old Norse-Icelandic literature. The ‘book-prose vs free-prose’ debate is the starting-point for this overview, which then focuses on modern scholarship on sagas. The approach of the Icelandic school is discussed, followed by consideration of theoretical issues such as orality, structuralism, anthropological methods and the influence of non-Icelandic literary forms. Next come post-structuralism and narratology. The diversity of theoretical approaches which grew up towards the end of the twentieth century is documented, including post-colonialism and polysystem theory. Long-held generic distinctions are reviewed, and the development of gender studies with regard to Old Norse is described. Recent developments in the study of orality in prose and poetry are discussed, as are theoretical topics such as memory studies and the role of the paranormal. The chapter concludes with an account of the diversity of critical approaches to Old Norse-Icelandic literature and explains the need to employ integrated theories bringing in research from a number of disciplines, including archaeology, psychoanalysis and sociology.

Ressler introduces a sociological theory of transformative symbolic reality to illuminate a specific, but often overlooked, impact of the nonprofit sector that is directly tied to improving the quality of life for individuals and groups within society. Grounded in the sociology of communities and nonprofit theory, transformative symbolic reality states that society reproduces itself or changes through social reality, and that social reality can be purposefully manipulated to challenge the forces of inequity. Specifically, individuals or organizations can create both the physical and metaphysical spaces in which people manifest and manipulate social norms, expectations, and behaviors in an inter-relational way that generates transformative social capital. Through the lens of transformative symbolic reality, the chapter conceptualizes the nonprofit sector as a wellspring of this overlooked public good and argues that it is this transformative aspect of the nonprofit sector that undergirds connections between nonprofit organizations and any long-term social impact.

This chapter focuses on some of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL)s criticism of investment law and the CIL rules contained therein, and proposes an engagement with this criticism at the stage of interpretation. Based on an examination of the interpretation of the customary minimum standard of treatment, it argues that interpretation plays two roles in relation to CIL – a constructive and an evolutive role. In light of these two roles, interpretative arguments may be deployed strategically so as to flag problematic rationales in the rules and argue for their re-interpretation. In particular, I propose three interpretive strategies which may achieve this goal, which are differentially suited to the different actors who may wish to deploy them. These strategies are limited by the actors who deploy them, the forum where they are deployed, as well as the rules of procedure in which the dispute takes place. Nevertheless, they present an opportunity for a constructive TWAIL engagement with international investment law which does not summarily dismiss the existing system.

Chapter 3 looks at Plessner’s Limits of Community (1924) and Adorno’s Minima Moralia (1951) to show that, despite their conflicting theoretical assumptions, both thinkers arrive at surprisingly similar conclusions. Both fundamentally disagree on various key concepts that shape their theories of tact: alienation, for example, is for Adorno a temporary state of human existence that we need to overcome. For Plessner, by contrast, it is what makes us human in the first place, setting us apart from animals and plants. And yet, both share a suspicion of certain forms of intimacy and touch, and a preference for individual difference over communal identification. In my close analysis of their writing, I argue that Plessner’s and Adorno’s theories of tact contribute to an ethic of indirectness that defies any strategies of incorporation. On a hermeneutic level, they allow us to develop new modes of non-violent contemplation. On a social level, they find their literal realisation in times of a pandemic, when keeping your distance and wearing a mask can be interpreted as a dystopic sign of isolation, while it can also be seen as an expression of cooperation (not fusion), solicitude, and care.

This chapter addresses the book’s first question by focusing on what classical Pragmatism can tell us about constructivist-inspired norm theory. Pragmatism can contribute to a new wave of norm research, which focuses on how normativity (or appropriateness) is established and not just how norms change. Pragmatism finds normativity in experimental processes that test a norm’s ability to ameliorate the lived experience in social and political contexts (rather than in abstract theorizing). This requires a commitment to epistemic fallibilism, deliberation and inquiry. Drawing on the writings of Peirce and Dewey in particular, the chapter argues that this process can only resolve normative doubt and establish epistemic authority if the knowledge of those affected by a practice is included in the community of inquiry that establishes normativity. What Dewey called a ‘stock of learning’ emerges from this process, which can be used as a starting point for acting in uncertain situations and judging the relative strength of the alternatives offered in processes of norm contestation. The chapter relates this argument to important contributions to norm theory, including the Habermasian-inspired ‘logic of arguing’ and Antje Wiener’s ‘theory of contestation’. It illustrates the Pragmatist contribution with reference to the debate on the anti-torture norm.

One of the leitmotifs of W.G. Sebald’s work is his idiosyncratic appropriation of the term Naturgeschichte (natural history). This essay explores the different intellectual traditions from which he borrows to mould this vital subtext. These range from the cultural practice of embedding scientific observations in narratives, evolutionary history, and the entropic cosmology of modern physics to the use of Naturgeschichte in critical theory, the German-Jewish tradition of reflecting on creaturely life, and the perception of warfare as a ‘natural history of destruction’. This overview of Sebald’s diverging concepts of natural history highlights some of the limitations and contradictions inherent in their eclectic narrative employment in works such as After Nature, The Rings of Saturn, A Place in the Country, The Natural History of Destruction, and the abandoned Corsica Project. In so doing, however, evidence is marshalled for the argument that it is precisely this syncretism that allows Sebald to explore the human condition in the Anthropocene, which is marked by the gradual replacement of the biosphere through the technosphere.