Leben wir in einer multipolaren oder in einer post-nationalen Welt? Prof. Dr. Hans-Martin Jäger bietet mit seinem Vortrag eine alternative Konzeption. Alle Interessierten sind herzlich eingeladen!

Taking Mouffe’s discussion of cosmopolitanism and multipolar order as a vantage point, this presentation examines contemporary manifestations of the political and post-political with reference to the global governance projects of the European Union (EU) and the BRICS group. Prima facie, the EU’s commitment to a post-sovereign world of multilateral cooperation appears to contrast with BRICS’ call for a multipolar world order, much like cosmopolitanism and multipolarity in Mouffe’s analysis. Mouffe criticizes cosmopolitanism for its depoliticizing tendencies and advocates multipolar world order as an alternative. This paper complicates Mouffe’s position by mobilizing Foucauldian governmentality analysis and Rancière’s conception of the political (‘politics’). In a first move, it deconstructs the ostensible opposition between the cosmopolitanism of the EU and the multipolar approach of BRICS by unfolding the EU’s ‘governmentality of ambiguity’ and by highlighting ‘bricolage’ in BRICS’ global governance program. In a second move, it suggests that Rancière’s understanding of politics in terms of ‘dissensus’ and ‘subjectivation’ provides a more promising avenue to theorize the political beyond global governmentality in the BRICS-EU dyad. While both the EU and BRICS partake in international ‘police’, BRICS also mobilize a political moment which challenges the imperative to become ‘responsible stakeholders’ in the existing international order.