Author: Nordstrom, Carolyn

Source: Social Analysis, Volume 52, Number 2, September 2008 , pp. 71-86(16)

Abstract:

An explosion in a war zone, no matter how localized and remote to the rest of the world, constitutes a crisis that has dangerous global repercussions. Using Alain Badiou's philosophy of multiplicities to track these repercussions, this article explores international profiteering and extra-legal commodities transfers; forced labor and enforced inequalities; dereliction in providing social, civil, and humanitarian services; and institutionalized injustices that coalesce in war and radiate worldwide. While the politics and economics of these systems of inequality seem to confer power on those who control them (generally, cosmopolitan industrial centers), this article suggests these are loci of vulnerability—`fracture zones'—that, under pressure (e.g., conflict, market crashes, natural disasters), leave even peacetime countries susceptible to collapse.

Keywords: BADIOU; COLLAPSE; CRISIS; FRACTURE ZONES; MULTIPLE MULTIPLICITIES; POLITICAL VIOLENCE; POWER; PROFITEERING

DOI: 10.3167/sa.2008.520205

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