Zoom: https://umac.zoom.us/j/98714060738

Password: 895191

Abstract

Departing from the concept of “failed world”, this lecture explores the politics of co-living in the time of uncertainty. The liminal and in-between state of international society is no longer a state of exception, but a state of inception that introduces overlapping layers of hybrid orders and norms. Instead of proposing alternative world orders as attempts to formulate a minimalist morality, this lecture overturns the direction of inquiry and asks how we can manage to live in disorder, in the absence of normative consensus. It proposes a new form of cosmopolitanism, that is built on and adapted to contingencies, risks and ruins of our existing political and ecological disasters, and envisions an emancipatory politics of dissensus.

Bio

Xiaoyu Lu is an Assistant Professor at School of International Studies at Peking University and was a Research Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. Xiaoyu received MSc and DPhil degrees in Politics at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and previously worked at the United Nations Development Programme. His research focuses on conflict and peace, and International Relations theory, with field experience in Syria, Lebanon, Myanmar and Colombia. He is the founding director of PeaceLab that promotes conflict and peace studies and dialogues in China. His monograph titled Norms, Storytelling and International Institutions in China: The Imperative to Narrate is published with Palgrave MacMillan in 2021.