The Rest and the West

"Praise for Border as Method: Mezzadra & Neilson's refuse to treat liberal political thought and its analytical pendants as so many unfulfilled promises, yet to be realised by a more critical version of the doctrine. There is no progressive dialogue to be had with liberalism. Drawing the line was what it was all about anyway. Drawing the line is what gives us 'liberties' if they are any to be had. So let's talk, Mezzadra & Neilson propose, about what really matters in life. Let's talk about drawing the line. -- Rogier van Reekum * Krisis: Journal for contemporary philosophy * Praise for Border as Method: A difficult book? Perhaps. Difficult - we would say - as Max Weber's books were for his contemporaries. Extraordinary similarities appear here between this Border as Method and Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - or even more so with Weberian sociological field research writings. But the difference is also extraordinary. This by Neilson and Mezzadra is a handbook for a new global vision. -- Antonio Negri * Il Manifesto * Praise for The Politics of Operations: What can we learn about a system by examining not what it is made of but how it works? In medicine, such a shift in perspective from form to function has paved the way to important advances. Modern medicine has traditionally focused on structural disorders, or diseases that have a basis in the structure of bodily systems. In recent decades, though, increased attention to functional disorders-which have a basis in the way organs work- has led to improvements in the understanding and treatment of a number of chronic conditions. Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson propose a similar reorientation to the study of global capitalism in The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism. Whereas social and political theory has long concerned itself with the description and analysis of structures-states, classes, national economies-Mezzadra and Neilson ask what we might learn about contemporary capitalism by instead studying its operations. How are the global workings of capital reshaping the state and its institutions? What are the implications of these processes for the continued encroachment of capitalism on new spaces and new realms of social life? And crucially, what kind of politics is best equipped to confront capital's predatory operations and open up ""new vistas of liberation and life beyond the rule of capital""? -- Martin Danyluk * Society & Space * Praise for The Politics of Operations: The authors craft an analysis aimed at understanding capital's rationality (and the possibilities of resistance therein) that emerge from the very infrastructures, networks, and protocols that capital requires to continue its shaping of the social fabric, its shaping and terraforming of the world. It is, at its most lucid, a large-scale analysis of capitalism's processes and functions explained through a multiplicity of examples: from the mutations of the state, to empire-making in historical perspective, to long-term global financialization, this work exposes the extractions (as both a material and subjectivity-making process) central to the making of capitalism today vis-à-vis its multiple outsides - the differing cultural, racial, economic, and terrestrial materials necessary for its operation. -- Jorge E. Cuéllar * Journal of Cultural Economy * Praise for Border as Method and The Politics of Operations: It's a viable, powerful and original response to the threats posed by interlocking crises - financial and social, political and economic, environmental and health-related. -- Davide Gallo Lassere * Actuel Marx * Praise for The Politics of Operations: Given the enormity of the task it sets for itself, it is little surprise that this text seems to stage the concretion of critical theory into a general intellect. Encyclopaedic in its theoretical apercus, the book at times reads like a lengthy literature review intent on synthesizing the entirety of the critical academic catalogue, from the canonical repertoire - Althusser, Arendt, Gramsci, Harvey, Lefebvre, Lukacs, Luxembourg, Weber, etc. - to more recent contributions by media and postcolonial theorists such as Jussi Parikka and Verónica Gago. Closer inspection, however, reveals a well-crafted organization of the argument that proceeds from the general to the concrete, and back again. -- Juan Pablo Melo * tripleC * Praise for The Politics of Operations: Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson outline a novel perspective on the startling disjunctive synthesis of homogenization and heterogenization processes that characterize the global expansion of capitalist economy. Their second collaborative, book-length study offers a compelling account of the economic, political, and social relations to which these movements respond. -- Nicolas Schneider * Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal * Praise for The Politics of Operations: Offering an ambitious lens through which to view the politics, temporalities, spaces, and struggles that constitute contemporary capitalism, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson creatively conceptualize the problems and possibilities that emerge out of the current moment's multiple forms of crisis. Their emphasis on capital as a set of relations has enormous stakes for how we understand the world and orient ourselves to the possibility of transformation. An important work, The Politics of Operations should be widely read and debated. -- Deborah Cowen, author of The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade Praise for The Politics of Operations: The Politics of Operations is a vital book in every sense. It is a lively and important account of the ways in which value materializes in the extractive, logistical, and financial operations of contemporary capital. Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson provide us at once with analysis, diagnosis, and prescription. Grounded in solidarity with labor movements around the world, this book serves both as critique and as manifesto. Its provocative conclusions open up essential debates for praxis today. -- Kaushik Sunder Rajan, author of Pharmocracy: Value, Politics, and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine Praise for Border as Method: In this important book, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson re-examine some of today's most debated and commented upon processes and practices (migration, globalization, neoliberalism) as well as some of the most naturalized of state categories (citizenship, illegals). In linking what they call the proliferation of borders with the expansion and intensification of competition within a labour market that encompasses the entire world, they provide new insights to the ways in which practices of bordermaking and maintenance are essential to the production of labour power as a commodity and hence to capitalism. Most refreshingly, their aim is to not only reveal the significance of bordering practices to the creation of current ruling relations but also to argue for the creation of new political spaces-and subjectivities-necessary for the possibility of living a life without the sorts of exploitative and destructive social relations organized by capitalism. -- Nandita Sharma * Labour/Le Travail * Praise for Border as Method: Through its focus on differential inclusion and the production of subjectivity through the border, this book is an antidote to the expanse of literature that aimed to understand the operation of the border in terms of the sovereign exception. -- Kate Hepworth * City * Praise for Border as Method: An ambitious work of politically engaged social theory that attempts to reconceptualize issues of labor, migration, sovereignty, and governmentality. -- Jeffrey Kahn * PoLAR * Praise for Border as Method: As both a scholarly and political contribution, Border as Method is concerned with positing a 'new theoretical approach' for understanding the materialisation, proliferation and contestation of borders in contemporary processes of what they term 'postcolonial capitalism'. -- Sara Dehm * London Review of International Law * Praise for Border as Method: The book's engagement with a vast array of debates, discourses, theories and political and geographical contexts raised different sets of questions, challenges and issues of concern/matters of interest which prompted highly stimulating and insightful discussions among the group as a whole. The book thus proves capable of inspiring and enriching cross-disciplinary debates as well as infusing fresh perspectives into critical and politically engaged research in human geography. This is enabled not least by the intimate connection between activist and scholarly traditions evident throughout the text. -- Jan S. Hutta, Sandra Sosnowski, Nicolai Teufel, Matthew G. Hannah, Jeanne Cortiel and Julian Hollstegge * Progress in Human Geography * Praise for Border as Method: For scholars and activists alike, this is a great book that offers a social theory of the border drawing from rich empirical, historical and theoretical work. -- Henrik Lebuhn * International Journal of Urban and Regional Research * Praise for Border as Method: Border as Method is a very ambitious project. Its scope and reach are truly impressive, and it is a timely contribution to anyone thinking about borders,migration and labor in political theory, mobility studies, geography, and many other disciplines and interdisciplinary fields. -- Hagar Kotef * Migration Studies * Praise for Border as Method: Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson illustrate the fecundity of the unity of opposites. Arriving from two extremities of the global world, using the border as a ""method"", they analyze how the antithetic patterns of ""border crossing"" and ""border reinforcement"" generate ""border struggles,"" hence subjectivities, intelligibilities, commonalities. The threshold to justice is shifted, as are the articulations of violence and language which build a new humankind. The book asks not who we are, but who we become. -- Étienne Balibar, author of Equaliberty: Political Essays Praise for Border as Method: Their sights set on global movements of labor-skilled or unskilled, legal or illegal-Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson mount the most ambitious attempt yet to leverage the idea of the border into a major theoretical tool for the study of global capital. They add a rich and powerful voice to contemporary debates on globalization. -- Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference Praise for Border as Method: This is an agenda-setting book that brings together issues of migration, labor, sovereignty, and the common into a coherent and powerful theoretical and political vision. By treating the border not as a site but as a method, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson demonstrate both that borders are not isolated at the margins of social space but instead run through it, and that borders have become the privileged lens through which to view contemporary politics. -- Michael Hardt, coauthor of the books Declaration, Commonwealth, Multitude, and Empire"