Civilizational discourses in weapons control

This book seeks to decolonize practices of arms control and disarmament. In this endeavor it seeks to problematize our understanding of time and civilization as a rhetorical resource. The need for such an undertaking can be premised on the claim that while problems of modernity, ethnocentrism and universalism are now a central concern within the field of international relations, these ideas are scarcely debated or contested within the field of arms control and disarmament. The singular focus on technological innovations and specific policy-oriented agreements in practices of arms control and disarmament appears to stymie the need for such engagements. This book is an invitation to explore intersecting discourses on colonialism, racialism, nationalism and humanitarianism within a historically grounded terrain of weapons control. An understanding of these practices is vital not to prescribe any standards of civilization or exceptionalism in weapons control but to be cognizant thorough critique of the dangers embedded in any effort at reconstellating the constitutional nuclear order. Ritu Mathur is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Geography at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA.

Intro -- Foreword -- Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: Time and Weapons Control -- Doomsday Clock -- Time and Civilization -- Standardized Time and Race War -- Nationalism and Race -- Linear Time and Cyclical Time -- Evolutionary Time -- Civilizational Time -- Postcolonial Time -- Vulnerability of Time -- Chapter 2: The West and the Rest: A Civilizational Mantra -- Introduction -- Two Images of the West -- Contemporary Civilizational Discourses -- Civilizational Encounters in Africa -- Civilizational Encounters in Asia -- Reciprocity and Rights in Standards of Civilization

Critiques of Civilizational Discourses -- Conclusion -- Chapter 3: Colonial Consciousness and Civilizing Therapy -- Civilizational Consciousness -- Martial Races -- Nationalism -- Colonial Science and Heroic Scientists -- Hybrid Scientists -- Constitutional Order -- War of Civilization -- Conclusion -- Chapter 4: Sly Civility and Institutionalized Humiliation -- Racial Etiquette -- Nuclear Tests and Nuclear Blackmail -- National Science and International Law -- Amnesia, Denials and Abstractions -- Security Culture and Decorative Savages -- Taboos and Norms of Civilization -- Nuclear Apartheid

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