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Hi all, and apologies if you've already seen this
Antipode has long been a place where radical ideas not only assemble but also meet with critical responses. The commentaries on David Harvey’s (1972) now-classic "Revolutionary and counter-revolutionary theory in geography and the problem of ghetto formation", for example, were commissioned because of a feeling that '…there is a lack of controversy in most of the geography journals. A journal like Antipode is well suited to commentary and argumentation and we welcome comments on the papers we publish@ (Peet 1972: iv). With AntipodeFoundation.org we hope we can facilitate a lot more commentary and argumentation through which lacunae can be identified, threads drawn out and spun on, and searching questions asked.
We begin with Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann's paper 'Climate Leviathan'. Forthcoming in Antipode 45(1), and available online now, it's a singularly ambitious work; it's original, innovative, tremendously provocative, and it pushes the boundaries of radical scholarship. As such we think it demands, and is deserving of, some open and critical debate, and we'd like to stage a conversation where others can respond to Joel and Geoff and they in turn can reply to the critique levelled. Ultimately we want AntipodeFoundation.org to become a forum where real dialogue happens as a matter of course, where colleagues/comrades feel comfortable discussing each others' work. So, we've made 'Climate Leviathan' freely available (it's open access – no subscription required) until the end of the year and commissioned four responses to it (by Joshua Barkan, Patrick Bigger, Mazen Labban, and Larry Lohmann); we now invite shorter comments from readers, and Joel and Geoff will reply at the end of this month.
Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann (2012) Climate Leviathan. Antipode doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01018.x
Abstract: While there is much justifiable attention to the ecological implications of global climate change, the political implications are just as important for human wellbeing and social justice. We posit a basic framework by which to understand the range of political possibilities, in light of the response of global elites to climate warming and the challenges it poses to hegemonic institutional and conceptual modes of governance and accumulation. The framework also suggests some possible means through which these responses might be thwarted, and political stakes in that construction of a new hegemony – which, to avoid suggesting we know or can yet determine the form it will take, we call ‘climate X’.
Keywords: climate change, Leviathan, political economy, sovereignty, Hegel, Marx, Schmitt
Many thanks,
Andy (on behalf of the Editorial Collective)