Join this event for a discussion on the fractures, conflicts, and wars that are currently shaping the capitalist world system.

Sandro Mezzadra will introduce the notion of multipolarity to make sense of such predicament, critically discussing different uses of it and emphasizing the need to rethink the relations among what G. Arrighi calls "territorialism" and capitalism. This discussion will provide the background for a rethinking of internationalism, going beyond the pitfalls and shortcomings that characterized its history in the 20th century. The importance of social movements and struggles as a key factor in the production and constitution of political spaces will be stressed by Professor Mezzadra, contrary to most approaches in IR and "geopolitics". Additionally, the need to rethink internationalism will be emphasized, even though it may be necessary to invent another name for it. In doing so, Professor Mezzadra will be in dialogue with feminist, antiracist, and postcolonial thinkers and will tackle a whole set of theoretical questions - ranging from the relation between internationalism and "cosmopolitics" to the vexed issue of the universal.

Speaker: 

Sandro Mezzadra is Professor of Political theory, University of Bologna, Department of Arts. Sandro teaches political theory at the University of Bologna and is adjunct fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society of the Western Sydney University. He has been visiting professor and research fellow in several places. His recent work has centered on the relations between globalization, migration and capitalism, on contemporary capitalism as well as on postcolonial criticism. He participates in the ‘post-workerist’ debates being one of the founders of the website www.euronomade.info. Among his books: Diritto di fuga. Migrazioni, cittadinanza, globalizzazione (2006), La condizione postcoloniale. Storia e politica nel presente globale (2008), Nei cantieri marxiani. Il soggetto e la sua produzione (2014; English edition In the Marxian Workshops, 2018) and Un mondo da guadagnare. Per una teoria politica del presente (2020). With Brett Neilson he is the author of Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (Duke University Press, 2013) and of The Politics of Operations. Excavating Contemporary Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2019).

Chair:

Ayça Çubukçu is Associate Professor in Human Rights; Co-Director, LSE Human Rights.