Thinking Relationally: Round Table and Book launch for The Battle for Britain: Crises, Conflicts and the Conjuncture
27th June 2023; 17:00-19:30
Dockrill Room K6.07, King’s College London, Strand WC2R 2LS
REGISTER here.
What is the conjuncture that we inhabit today and how does conjunctural analysis shed light on the present? How do entanglements of power, culture and politics help us understand continuities and transformations since Policing the Crisis? What practices of reimagining, repairing and rearticulating are possible given current limits on political action, proliferation of enemy figures and racialised (im)mobilities? What epistemic vocabularies and methods are needed to problematise the present differently? These and other questions are tackled in John Clarke’s latest book, The Battle for Britain, published by Bristol University Press.
This round table brings the author in conversation with scholars across disciplines to discuss the diagnosis of the present that the book offers and to explore conceptual and methodological tools that are mobilised to problematise nations, borders, crises and conflicts.
The round table will be followed by a drinks reception (18.30-19.30).
About the book:
The Battle for Britain: Crises, Conflicts and the Conjuncture addresses the social, political and economic turbulence in which the UK is embroiled. Drawing on Cultural Studies, it explores proliferating crises and conflicts, from the multiplying varieties of social dissent through the stagnation of rentier capitalism to the looming climate catastrophe.
Examining arguments about Brexit, class and ‘race’, and the changing character of the state, the book is underpinned by a transnational and relational conception of the UK. It traces the entangled dynamics of time and space that have shaped the current conjuncture.
Questioning whether increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian strategies can provide a resolution to these troubles, it explores how the accumulating crises and conflicts have produced a deepening ‘crisis of authority’ that forms the terrain of the Battle for Britain.
John Clarke is Professor Emeritus at The Open University and a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow.
Speakers:
John Clarke, The Open University
Engin Isin, Queen Mary University of London
Gail Lewis, London School of Economics and Yale University
Sharon Gewirtz, King’s College London
Nick Beech, University of Westminster
Chair:
Claudia Aradau, King's College London
Accessibility:
This event will take place in person in room K6.07 – Dockrill Room at the King’s Building (access via the Strand Building on the Strand Campus). Please register on this page before attending the event.
Address: Dockrill Room K6.07, 6th Floor, King's Building, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS
*Directions to and details of the Strand Campus and can be found here.
**Lifts + accessible toilets are available on the ground and 6th floor.
REGISTER here.
This event is organised by the ERC project SECURITY FLOWS & the Research Centre in International Relations.