Aggie Hirst
Biographic Data
| ID | 3686494 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aggie Hirst |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aggie |
| FAMILY NAME | Hirst |
| SIGNATURE | HIRST A |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8111-352X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Politics of Play
Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military is the first book in international relations to examine the use of wargames in the world’s most powerful fighting forces. Since 2014, a wargaming renaissance has been under way in which a small but committed wargames community of practice has been empowered to proliferate their craft across the military’s strategic planning, professional education, and training regimes. Drawing in detail upon one h…
Pharmacotic wargames
This article argues that the analytic of pharmacotic war can render visible a logic of ritual sacrifice in the US military’s use of games to attract, produce, and recycle war-fighters. Identifying the ancient framing of the pharmakon – a substance or process that functions as at once drug, poison, and cure – it shows how games function paradoxically to draw in, produce, and rehabilitate military life. The article makes this case by tracing the ro…
Colonial Reminiscences, Colonial Remains
Walter Benjamin published his influential essay ‘Critique of Violence’/‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt’ in 1921, and the work has troubled and provoked thinkers across disciplines for over a century now. This Forum gathers a group of scholars in philosophy, political science, international relations and legal studies to reflect on the actuality of Benjamin’s essay for contemporary critical theory. In Part II of the Forum, Aggie Hirst, Tom Houseman, and Vi…
Wargames Resurgent
While games are commonly viewed as frivolous fun, their rapid proliferation across the US defense establishment compels us to think again. Spanning spheres as diverse as total immersion training, near-peer/cyber conflict, and future force strategies, a gaming renaissance is currently underway across the US military. Surprisingly, given international relations’ (IR) interest in the production and projection of military power, the discipline has ne…
Where do we go when we play?' Realities, renewal, release
States of play
This paper introduces the topic of military wargaming into current critical debates in International Relations (IR) on games and gaming, which to date have focused on civilian, recreational forms. Identifying a renaissance which began in the US in 2014, the core argument developed is that wargaming utilizes key elements of critical/postpositivist theory in its interventions into the 'human training dimension' with the aim of impacting upon the in…
Videogames Saved My Life
While the explosion of videogames as a global entertainment medium has been explored in International Relations (IR) and associated fields in some detail in recent years, the proliferation of games in military settings remains under-researched. This paper examines the uses to which US military veterans put videogames following service, showing that they play an important role in healing and rehabilitation processes through community building, the…
The pathological politics of Covid-19
The emergence and rapid spread of COVID-19 transformed the world at a bewildering pace. Within a few short weeks, the pandemic reshaped lives everywhere. Nevertheless, while global is in its impact
Play in(g) international theory
While the study of games and gaming has increased in International Relations in recent years, a corresponding exploration of play has yet to be developed in the field. While play features in several key areas – including game theory, videogames and popular culture, and pedagogical role-plays and simulations – little work has been done to analyse its presence in, and potentials for, the discipline. The aim of this article is to introduce the study…
Disobeying Marx, Disobeying Derrida-Hopes & Risks
Jacques Derrida delivered the basis of The Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International as a plenary address at the conference 'Whither Marxism?' hosted by the University of California, Riverside, in 1993. The longer book version was published in French the same year and appeared in English and Portuguese the following year. In the decade after the publication of Specters, Derrida's analyses provoked a la…
The legacies and trajectories of poststructuralism
Derrida and Political Resistance
This paper begins from the claim that the currently dominant approaches to the study of political resistance in global politics, namely the (Neo-)Gramscian and Foucauldian traditions, suffer from a common problem in that the forms of resistance they conceptualise are highly susceptible to appropriation by, or reinscription within, prevailing forms of global ordering. In an attempt to respond to this shortcoming, or, more properly, to explore how …
Violence, Self-authorship and the ‘Death of God’
Nietzsche’s heralding of the ‘Death of God’ announces and exposes the condition of foundationlessness underpinning (Western) modernity and provokes the crucial question of the goals and purposes of political life. Without the figure of the divine as sanction and guide, political society lacks a stable foundation upon which to identify and legitimate itself. This paper explores the respective responses of two traditions of critical thought which e…
Introduction
Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclamation of the ‘Death of God’ has come to function as something akin to a heuristic device in International Relations (IR) signifying the shattering of metaphysical and ontological certainty in European (post)modernity. According to Chris Brown, Nietzsche’s declaration is commonly believed to signify a ‘crisis in thought’ which constitutes a ‘genuine danger’ insofar as it risks ‘the collapse of the foundations of the ol…
Leo Strauss and International Relations
States of play
This paper introduces the topic of military wargaming into current critical debates in International Relations (IR) on games and gaming, which to date have focused on civilian, recreational forms. Identifying a renaissance which began in the US in 2014, the core argument developed is that wargaming utilizes key elements of critical/postpositivist theory in its interventions into the 'human training dimension' with the aim of impacting upon the in…
Wargames Resurgent
While games are commonly viewed as frivolous fun, their rapid proliferation across the US defense establishment compels us to think again. Spanning spheres as diverse as total immersion training, near-peer/cyber conflict, and future force strategies, a gaming renaissance is currently underway across the US military. Surprisingly, given international relations’ (IR) interest in the production and projection of military power, the discipline has ne…
Derrida and Political Resistance
This paper begins from the claim that the currently dominant approaches to the study of political resistance in global politics, namely the (Neo-)Gramscian and Foucauldian traditions, suffer from a common problem in that the forms of resistance they conceptualise are highly susceptible to appropriation by, or reinscription within, prevailing forms of global ordering. In an attempt to respond to this shortcoming, or, more properly, to explore how …
Violence, Self-authorship and the ‘Death of God’
Nietzsche’s heralding of the ‘Death of God’ announces and exposes the condition of foundationlessness underpinning (Western) modernity and provokes the crucial question of the goals and purposes of political life. Without the figure of the divine as sanction and guide, political society lacks a stable foundation upon which to identify and legitimate itself. This paper explores the respective responses of two traditions of critical thought which e…
Pharmacotic wargames
This article argues that the analytic of pharmacotic war can render visible a logic of ritual sacrifice in the US military’s use of games to attract, produce, and recycle war-fighters. Identifying the ancient framing of the pharmakon – a substance or process that functions as at once drug, poison, and cure – it shows how games function paradoxically to draw in, produce, and rehabilitate military life. The article makes this case by tracing the ro…
Videogames Saved My Life
While the explosion of videogames as a global entertainment medium has been explored in International Relations (IR) and associated fields in some detail in recent years, the proliferation of games in military settings remains under-researched. This paper examines the uses to which US military veterans put videogames following service, showing that they play an important role in healing and rehabilitation processes through community building, the…
Play in(g) international theory
While the study of games and gaming has increased in International Relations in recent years, a corresponding exploration of play has yet to be developed in the field. While play features in several key areas – including game theory, videogames and popular culture, and pedagogical role-plays and simulations – little work has been done to analyse its presence in, and potentials for, the discipline. The aim of this article is to introduce the study…
Introduction
Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclamation of the ‘Death of God’ has come to function as something akin to a heuristic device in International Relations (IR) signifying the shattering of metaphysical and ontological certainty in European (post)modernity. According to Chris Brown, Nietzsche’s declaration is commonly believed to signify a ‘crisis in thought’ which constitutes a ‘genuine danger’ insofar as it risks ‘the collapse of the foundations of the ol…
The pathological politics of Covid-19
The emergence and rapid spread of COVID-19 transformed the world at a bewildering pace. Within a few short weeks, the pandemic reshaped lives everywhere. Nevertheless, while global is in its impact
Disobeying Marx, Disobeying Derrida-Hopes & Risks
Jacques Derrida delivered the basis of The Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International as a plenary address at the conference 'Whither Marxism?' hosted by the University of California, Riverside, in 1993. The longer book version was published in French the same year and appeared in English and Portuguese the following year. In the decade after the publication of Specters, Derrida's analyses provoked a la…
Leo Strauss and International Relations
Leo Strauss and International Relations
Violence, Self-authorship and the ‘Death of God’
Nietzsche’s heralding of the ‘Death of God’ announces and exposes the condition of foundationlessness underpinning (Western) modernity and provokes the crucial question of the goals and purposes of political life. Without the figure of the divine as sanction and guide, political society lacks a stable foundation upon which to identify and legitimate itself. This paper explores the respective responses of two traditions of critical thought which e…
Introduction
Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclamation of the ‘Death of God’ has come to function as something akin to a heuristic device in International Relations (IR) signifying the shattering of metaphysical and ontological certainty in European (post)modernity. According to Chris Brown, Nietzsche’s declaration is commonly believed to signify a ‘crisis in thought’ which constitutes a ‘genuine danger’ insofar as it risks ‘the collapse of the foundations of the ol…
Derrida and Political Resistance
This paper begins from the claim that the currently dominant approaches to the study of political resistance in global politics, namely the (Neo-)Gramscian and Foucauldian traditions, suffer from a common problem in that the forms of resistance they conceptualise are highly susceptible to appropriation by, or reinscription within, prevailing forms of global ordering. In an attempt to respond to this shortcoming, or, more properly, to explore how …
The legacies and trajectories of poststructuralism
Play in(g) international theory
While the study of games and gaming has increased in International Relations in recent years, a corresponding exploration of play has yet to be developed in the field. While play features in several key areas – including game theory, videogames and popular culture, and pedagogical role-plays and simulations – little work has been done to analyse its presence in, and potentials for, the discipline. The aim of this article is to introduce the study…
Disobeying Marx, Disobeying Derrida-Hopes & Risks
Jacques Derrida delivered the basis of The Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International as a plenary address at the conference 'Whither Marxism?' hosted by the University of California, Riverside, in 1993. The longer book version was published in French the same year and appeared in English and Portuguese the following year. In the decade after the publication of Specters, Derrida's analyses provoked a la…
Videogames Saved My Life
While the explosion of videogames as a global entertainment medium has been explored in International Relations (IR) and associated fields in some detail in recent years, the proliferation of games in military settings remains under-researched. This paper examines the uses to which US military veterans put videogames following service, showing that they play an important role in healing and rehabilitation processes through community building, the…
The pathological politics of Covid-19
The emergence and rapid spread of COVID-19 transformed the world at a bewildering pace. Within a few short weeks, the pandemic reshaped lives everywhere. Nevertheless, while global is in its impact
Wargames Resurgent
While games are commonly viewed as frivolous fun, their rapid proliferation across the US defense establishment compels us to think again. Spanning spheres as diverse as total immersion training, near-peer/cyber conflict, and future force strategies, a gaming renaissance is currently underway across the US military. Surprisingly, given international relations’ (IR) interest in the production and projection of military power, the discipline has ne…
Where do we go when we play?' Realities, renewal, release
States of play
This paper introduces the topic of military wargaming into current critical debates in International Relations (IR) on games and gaming, which to date have focused on civilian, recreational forms. Identifying a renaissance which began in the US in 2014, the core argument developed is that wargaming utilizes key elements of critical/postpositivist theory in its interventions into the 'human training dimension' with the aim of impacting upon the in…
Colonial Reminiscences, Colonial Remains
Walter Benjamin published his influential essay ‘Critique of Violence’/‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt’ in 1921, and the work has troubled and provoked thinkers across disciplines for over a century now. This Forum gathers a group of scholars in philosophy, political science, international relations and legal studies to reflect on the actuality of Benjamin’s essay for contemporary critical theory. In Part II of the Forum, Aggie Hirst, Tom Houseman, and Vi…
Politics of Play
Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military is the first book in international relations to examine the use of wargames in the world’s most powerful fighting forces. Since 2014, a wargaming renaissance has been under way in which a small but committed wargames community of practice has been empowered to proliferate their craft across the military’s strategic planning, professional education, and training regimes. Drawing in detail upon one h…
Pharmacotic wargames
This article argues that the analytic of pharmacotic war can render visible a logic of ritual sacrifice in the US military’s use of games to attract, produce, and recycle war-fighters. Identifying the ancient framing of the pharmakon – a substance or process that functions as at once drug, poison, and cure – it shows how games function paradoxically to draw in, produce, and rehabilitate military life. The article makes this case by tracing the ro…
Political science (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Innovative Teaching Methodologies in Social Sciences (4 works) · Political economy (4 works)