Lacan, Deleuze and World Politics

'Zevnik's book addresses the profound question of how a non-exclusive political may be produced. Her impressive argument draws on the work of Lacan and Deleuze, as well as examples of micro-political practices in Guantanomo, to construct an innovative and provocative answer.' -Professor Kimberly Hutchings, Queen Mary University of London, UK

'The critique of the modern political subject is widely regarded and practiced as a core element of International Relations theory. Yet as these practices gradually settle into mainstream theory, they become less the answer to the questions they originally sought to address, and more part of the problem. Andreja Zevnik’s re-thinking of the political subject as a question of political existence knocks critique out of its comfort zone. By reconstructing the discourse of law in Deleuze and in the later texts of Lacan, she opens up a fundamental set of questions about the ontological foundations of reality and about the theoretical consequences these foundations have for our understanding of subjectivity, demonstrating its timeliness through a deep-going and sustained analysis of the political subject at Guantánamo. The book is made up of a subtle and yet robust set of readings that successfully navigate IR theory’s deeply ingrained assumptions about the foundation and continuity of the Cartesian subject. It is risky enterprise, carried out by the author with an uncommonly steady hand.' -J. Peter Burgess, Free University Brussels (VUB), Belgium

'Zevnik's book addresses the profound question of how a non-exclusive political may be produced. Her impressive argument draws on the work of Lacan and Deleuze, as well as examples of micro-political practices in Guantanomo, to construct an innovative and provocative answer.' - Professor Kimberly Hutchings, Queen Mary University of London, UK

'The critique of the modern political subject is widely regarded and practiced as a core element of International Relations theory. Yet as these practices gradually settle into mainstream theory, they become less the answer to the questions they originally sought to address, and more part of the problem. Andreja Zevnik’s re-thinking of the political subject as a question of political existence knocks critique out of its comfort zone. By reconstructing the discourse of law in Deleuze and in the later texts of Lacan, she opens up a fundamental set of questions about the ontological foundations of reality and about the theoretical consequences these foundations have for our understanding of subjectivity, demonstrating its timeliness through a deep-going and sustained analysis of the political subject at Guantánamo. The book is made up of a subtle and yet robust set of readings that successfully navigate IR theory’s deeply ingrained assumptions about the foundation and continuity of the Cartesian subject. It is risky enterprise, carried out by the author with an uncommonly steady hand.' - J. Peter Burgess, Free University Brussels (VUB), Belgium

'This is a powerful theoretical treatise and compelling application by an author who is peerless among IR scholars in her analyses of ontology's, subjectivity's, and desire's relationships with global politics.' - Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawai'i, Manoa