Nicholas Kiersey
Biographic Data
| ID | 1370076 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicholas Kiersey |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicholas |
| FAMILY NAME | Kiersey |
| SIGNATURE | KIERSEY N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ohio University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1067-6664 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Russia and the war in Ukraine
Though often framed as a conflict between an autocratic regime and a liberal democracy, the Russo-Ukrainian War also represents a direct challenge to the post-1989 global order and its cosmopolitan norms. Paradoxically, many Critical International Relations (IR) theorists—once skeptical of Western militarism—now align with liberal interventionist responses to the war. Drawing on Cunliffe’s concept of the “utopianism of unipolarity,” this article …
Left anti-politics or left populism? Political distinctions at the end of the end of history
This review essay argues that once a fuller genealogy of populism is presented, Hochuli et al.’s rationale for attempting to corral the left into an embrace of nationalism begins to look suspicious. Despite the authors’ claims, the genealogy of American left populism reveals a political project that is not at all aligned with the virtue-hoarding desires of the left flank of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC). To the contrary, it is a politic…
The Question of Tactics in an Age of Authoritarian Neoliberalism
Narrating Crisis in Ireland’s Great Recession
Foucault and Marx in International Relations
A debate about “global governmentality” has been bubbling away in International Relations (IR) for some time now (see Kiersey, Weidner, and Rosenow 2010). Drawn originally from the work of Michel Foucault, the concept of “governmentality” arrived within the discipline in the context of a marked shift away from the more postmodern “first wave” engagement with his work. That earlier project had turned to scholars like Foucault, and Jacques Derrida,…
A convergent genealogy? Space, time and the promise of horizontal politics today
While the surge in horizontalist activism of the last few years has drawn upon both Marxist and anarchist traditions, post-Marxist literature offers a useful guide for evaluating the strategic opportunities available to the movements today. Focusing on the camp and the event as its conceptual reference points, this article contrasts the relative merits of the spatial and chronological strategies of the movements, concluding ultimately in favour o…
Violent neoliberalism
While the 2008 financial crisis may have been the first time European critics of neoliberalism were ever confronted in any immediate sense with an experience of the authoritarian consensuality of c
Austerity
Additional informationNotes on contributorsNicholas KierseyNicholas Kiersey is Associate Professor in Political Science at Ohio University. His work focuses on the place of crisis and subjectivity in the reproduction of capitalist power. Recently published articles of his can be found in the Journal of Critical Globalization Studies, Global Society, and Global Discourse. He recently co-edited the volume Battlestar Galactica and International Rela…
Slaves to love
Slaves to love: Marx, Spinoza and the surprising longevity of crisis capitalism Frederic Lordon Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire, Verso: London, 2014; 224 pp.: 9781781681602, 16.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) Debates concerning the tendency of the working class to betray itself are a mainstay of Marxist scholarship. That this tendency can be all the more pronounced in times of financial tumult, however, runs contrary to its more …
Occupy Dame Street as slow-motion general strike? Justifying optimism in the wake of Ireland’s failed multitudinal moment
Discussing their hopes for a horizontalist mode of politics, Hardt and Negri envision a grand, kairotic event that will announce the ‘becoming prince’ of the multitude. This article reflects on this idea in light of the strategies and discourses of Ireland's Occupy Dame Street (ODS) activists. Starting with a brief account of the rise and fall of the ODS movement, as it struggled to engage the political imagination of a nation beset by financial …
Retail Therapy in the Dragon's Den”
A range of scholars embrace the concept of economic subjectivity in their analysis of relations of economic power and knowledge. They tend to do so, however, in a way that focuses on the inculcation of norms of individual accountability and self-empowerment. Addressing cases drawn from Irish ‘Reality TV’ programming in the context of the current financial crisis, this article seeks to expand our understanding of the stakes of economic subjectific…
Autonomy
Battlestar Galactica and International Relations
Looking at a television franchise like Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is no longer news within the discipline of International Relations. A growing number of scholars in and out of IR are studying the importance of cultural artifacts – popular or otherwise – for the phenomena that make up the core of our discipline. The genre of science fiction offers the analyst an opportunity that cannot be matched by more mimetic genres, namely the chance to look …
Foucault and International Relations
Foucault and international relations
1. Editorial Introduction Nicholas J. Kiersey and Jason R. Weidner 2. Neoliberal Political Economy and the Subjectivity of Crisis: Why Governmentality is Not Hollow Nicholas J. Kiersey 3. Governmentality, Capitalism, and Subjectivity Jason R. Weidner 4. Governmentality of What? Populations, States and International Organisations Jonathan Joseph 5. Foucault's Concept of Power and the Global Discourse of Human Rights Ivan Manokha 6. Hobbes, War, Mo…
Love is a Battlefield
Nancy Fraser, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, 224 pp. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, Cambridge, MA
Response to Chandler
Neoliberal Political Economy and the Subjectivity of Crisis
This paper revisits Foucault's understanding of the importance of subjectivity for politics, focusing in particular on his claims concerning the sorts of demands placed on the subject by contemporary capitalism. Moves to extend the application of Foucault's analysis of liberal modernity to the realm of world politics have met with heavy criticism lately. According to David Chandler, for example, the idea of a “global governmentality” rests on the…
Scale, Security, and Political Economy
Critical scholarship in Political Science and International Relations (IR) theory is turning increasingly to Michel Foucault’s writings on governmentality and biopolitics to explore the complex discursive interdependencies between transnational governance and the War on Terror. Marxist critics have assailed this effort recently, however, for its premature assumption that the practices of governmental power can simply be “scaled” without the inter…
World state or global governmentality? Constitutive power and resistance in a post-imperial world
This article addresses recent theoretical discussion about the state under conditions of globalisation, focusing in particular on recently popular ‘world state’ theory, as articulated by Martin Shaw and Alexander Wendt. It suggests that while world state theory is useful to the extent that it historicises the function of the state, it can be challenged for its uncritical approach to the question of how state power is actually constituted. To make…
Neoliberal Political Economy and the Subjectivity of Crisis
This paper revisits Foucault's understanding of the importance of subjectivity for politics, focusing in particular on his claims concerning the sorts of demands placed on the subject by contemporary capitalism. Moves to extend the application of Foucault's analysis of liberal modernity to the realm of world politics have met with heavy criticism lately. According to David Chandler, for example, the idea of a “global governmentality” rests on the…
Scale, Security, and Political Economy
Critical scholarship in Political Science and International Relations (IR) theory is turning increasingly to Michel Foucault’s writings on governmentality and biopolitics to explore the complex discursive interdependencies between transnational governance and the War on Terror. Marxist critics have assailed this effort recently, however, for its premature assumption that the practices of governmental power can simply be “scaled” without the inter…
Retail Therapy in the Dragon's Den”
A range of scholars embrace the concept of economic subjectivity in their analysis of relations of economic power and knowledge. They tend to do so, however, in a way that focuses on the inculcation of norms of individual accountability and self-empowerment. Addressing cases drawn from Irish ‘Reality TV’ programming in the context of the current financial crisis, this article seeks to expand our understanding of the stakes of economic subjectific…
Response to Chandler
Occupy Dame Street as slow-motion general strike? Justifying optimism in the wake of Ireland’s failed multitudinal moment
Discussing their hopes for a horizontalist mode of politics, Hardt and Negri envision a grand, kairotic event that will announce the ‘becoming prince’ of the multitude. This article reflects on this idea in light of the strategies and discourses of Ireland's Occupy Dame Street (ODS) activists. Starting with a brief account of the rise and fall of the ODS movement, as it struggled to engage the political imagination of a nation beset by financial …
World state or global governmentality? Constitutive power and resistance in a post-imperial world
This article addresses recent theoretical discussion about the state under conditions of globalisation, focusing in particular on recently popular ‘world state’ theory, as articulated by Martin Shaw and Alexander Wendt. It suggests that while world state theory is useful to the extent that it historicises the function of the state, it can be challenged for its uncritical approach to the question of how state power is actually constituted. To make…
Neoliberal Political Economy and the Subjectivity of Crisis
This paper revisits Foucault's understanding of the importance of subjectivity for politics, focusing in particular on his claims concerning the sorts of demands placed on the subject by contemporary capitalism. Moves to extend the application of Foucault's analysis of liberal modernity to the realm of world politics have met with heavy criticism lately. According to David Chandler, for example, the idea of a “global governmentality” rests on the…
Scale, Security, and Political Economy
Critical scholarship in Political Science and International Relations (IR) theory is turning increasingly to Michel Foucault’s writings on governmentality and biopolitics to explore the complex discursive interdependencies between transnational governance and the War on Terror. Marxist critics have assailed this effort recently, however, for its premature assumption that the practices of governmental power can simply be “scaled” without the inter…
Response to Chandler
Foucault and international relations
1. Editorial Introduction Nicholas J. Kiersey and Jason R. Weidner 2. Neoliberal Political Economy and the Subjectivity of Crisis: Why Governmentality is Not Hollow Nicholas J. Kiersey 3. Governmentality, Capitalism, and Subjectivity Jason R. Weidner 4. Governmentality of What? Populations, States and International Organisations Jonathan Joseph 5. Foucault's Concept of Power and the Global Discourse of Human Rights Ivan Manokha 6. Hobbes, War, Mo…
Love is a Battlefield
Nancy Fraser, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, 224 pp. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, Cambridge, MA
Battlestar Galactica and International Relations
Looking at a television franchise like Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is no longer news within the discipline of International Relations. A growing number of scholars in and out of IR are studying the importance of cultural artifacts – popular or otherwise – for the phenomena that make up the core of our discipline. The genre of science fiction offers the analyst an opportunity that cannot be matched by more mimetic genres, namely the chance to look …
Foucault and International Relations
Occupy Dame Street as slow-motion general strike? Justifying optimism in the wake of Ireland’s failed multitudinal moment
Discussing their hopes for a horizontalist mode of politics, Hardt and Negri envision a grand, kairotic event that will announce the ‘becoming prince’ of the multitude. This article reflects on this idea in light of the strategies and discourses of Ireland's Occupy Dame Street (ODS) activists. Starting with a brief account of the rise and fall of the ODS movement, as it struggled to engage the political imagination of a nation beset by financial …
Retail Therapy in the Dragon's Den”
A range of scholars embrace the concept of economic subjectivity in their analysis of relations of economic power and knowledge. They tend to do so, however, in a way that focuses on the inculcation of norms of individual accountability and self-empowerment. Addressing cases drawn from Irish ‘Reality TV’ programming in the context of the current financial crisis, this article seeks to expand our understanding of the stakes of economic subjectific…
Autonomy
Violent neoliberalism
While the 2008 financial crisis may have been the first time European critics of neoliberalism were ever confronted in any immediate sense with an experience of the authoritarian consensuality of c
Austerity
Additional informationNotes on contributorsNicholas KierseyNicholas Kiersey is Associate Professor in Political Science at Ohio University. His work focuses on the place of crisis and subjectivity in the reproduction of capitalist power. Recently published articles of his can be found in the Journal of Critical Globalization Studies, Global Society, and Global Discourse. He recently co-edited the volume Battlestar Galactica and International Rela…
Slaves to love
Slaves to love: Marx, Spinoza and the surprising longevity of crisis capitalism Frederic Lordon Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire, Verso: London, 2014; 224 pp.: 9781781681602, 16.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) Debates concerning the tendency of the working class to betray itself are a mainstay of Marxist scholarship. That this tendency can be all the more pronounced in times of financial tumult, however, runs contrary to its more …
A convergent genealogy? Space, time and the promise of horizontal politics today
While the surge in horizontalist activism of the last few years has drawn upon both Marxist and anarchist traditions, post-Marxist literature offers a useful guide for evaluating the strategic opportunities available to the movements today. Focusing on the camp and the event as its conceptual reference points, this article contrasts the relative merits of the spatial and chronological strategies of the movements, concluding ultimately in favour o…
Foucault and Marx in International Relations
A debate about “global governmentality” has been bubbling away in International Relations (IR) for some time now (see Kiersey, Weidner, and Rosenow 2010). Drawn originally from the work of Michel Foucault, the concept of “governmentality” arrived within the discipline in the context of a marked shift away from the more postmodern “first wave” engagement with his work. That earlier project had turned to scholars like Foucault, and Jacques Derrida,…
Narrating Crisis in Ireland’s Great Recession
The Question of Tactics in an Age of Authoritarian Neoliberalism
Left anti-politics or left populism? Political distinctions at the end of the end of history
This review essay argues that once a fuller genealogy of populism is presented, Hochuli et al.’s rationale for attempting to corral the left into an embrace of nationalism begins to look suspicious. Despite the authors’ claims, the genealogy of American left populism reveals a political project that is not at all aligned with the virtue-hoarding desires of the left flank of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC). To the contrary, it is a politic…
Russia and the war in Ukraine
Though often framed as a conflict between an autocratic regime and a liberal democracy, the Russo-Ukrainian War also represents a direct challenge to the post-1989 global order and its cosmopolitan norms. Paradoxically, many Critical International Relations (IR) theorists—once skeptical of Western militarism—now align with liberal interventionist responses to the war. Drawing on Cunliffe’s concept of the “utopianism of unipolarity,” this article …
Political science (19 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Political economy (12 works) · History (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Economics (6 works)