The Storm Whale in Winter by Benji Davies ; illustrated by Benji Davies Age Range: 4 - 8 (Henry Holt)(ISBChildrensBooks)

A winter tale of a boy, his dad, and a whale

A little white boy’s love for his fisherman father and an unlikely friendship with a mysterious whale take the forefront in Davies’ sequel to The Storm Whale (2014). The seasons have changed, and little Noi has not seen his friend the whale in quite some time. “Now and then he thought he caught a glimpse of the whale, its tail tipping the waves in the distance. But it was always something else.” When Noi ventures out into a winter storm to help bring his father home to safety, gentle suspense ensues as Noi wanders over the frozen sea and is lost amid the snowflakes in search of his dad. Perhaps his loyal whale friend will intervene….As with its predecessor, the illustrations here capture the feeling of another time, provide a vivid depiction of life by the sea, and contain just the right amount of detail, while clear, descriptive text allows the plot to gracefully unfold. Readers who don’t know the previous selection will enjoy this quiet depiction of the seashore in winter, while those already familiar with Noi and his world will further appreciate this continuation of the earlier story.

A meditative tale of family, friendship and warmth. (Picture book. 4-8)

The Itsy Bitsy Spider Sing Along with Me! by Nosy Crow ; illustrated by Yu-hsuan Huang Age Range: 2 - 3(Nosy Crow / Candlewick) (IBRChildrensBooks)

The itsy bitsy spider scales the water spout again.

Little readers all over know about the itsy bitsy spider’s quest to reach the top of the water spout. This board book features sliding panels that let little ones help the spider along its journey. The song’s four verses are spread over four double-page spreads, with the spider finally achieving the top of the water spout against a rainbow backdrop on the final page. The illustrations boast a color palette that leans heavily on purples, blues, yellows, and greens. The spider is a round, smiling critter with a jaunty cap and high-top sneakers on all eight feet (one pair each of red, orange, yellow, and blue). The first page of the board book holds a QR code for caregivers to download a free version of the song. The sliding panels are sturdily built, and the calm nature of the song will aid their durability. While some little ones will instinctively want to sing the song and go through the accompanying hand motions, they will adapt to the interactive manipulations fairly easily, making this especially well suited to car rides.

Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: Cases in Successful Diplomacy. Robert Hutchings and Jeremi Suri (eds). Oxford University Press.

In Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: Cases in Successful Diplomacy, editors Robert Hutchings and Jeremi Suri focus on a number of diplomatic successes since 1945, arguing that diplomacy not only functions as an adjunct to force, but also as a means of building international networks of cooperation dependent upon necessary compromise and sustainable agreements. This book offers important insights into the intricate methods upon which diplomacy depends through historical case studies that remain highly relevant to contemporary conflicts,.

That a new book on foreign policy successes is a work of history is an unfortunate – but expected – fact of contemporary international relations. For Robert Hutchings and Jeremi Suri, editors of the new volume Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: Cases in Successful Diplomacy, this is partly because ‘diplomatic capability appears most lacking in contemporary foreign policy leadership’ (1). This book examines a number of diplomatic ‘successes’ in the post-1945 era, understanding a success in terms of how diplomacy has increased the options for policymakers to address difficult issues. The result, far from solely being historical in nature, offers us a selection of key insights and principles that could be applied to some of today’s intractable foreign policy problems.

The authors of Foreign Policy Breakthroughs have impressive credentials, including academics, policymakers and diplomats. One of the editors, Suri, has authored a number of books on foreign policy and diplomacy, including one on the profession’s most notable practitioners in Henry Kissinger and the American Century (2009). This new collection focuses on the process of diplomacy and how seemingly unworkable problems have been approached since the Second World War. The reader is left to ponder how these techniques could be applied to modern-day impasses, such as the conflict in Syria; how diplomacy of the past compares with the drawn-out Iran nuclear discussions; or even something more novel like climate change. This is what makes the book so relevant. It is hard not to agree with the authors that – particularly as armed conflict shows no sign of abating – the diplomatic element often attracts less emphasis in the modern analysis of foreign affairs.

Although each chapter indicates a successful process, the book is broadly split into three categories of case studies: outcomes deemed as successful, mixed or unsuccessful. Those in the former category include President George H.W. Bush’s diplomacy at the end of the Cold War; mixed results include the 1978 Camp David Accords; and those deemed unsuccessful include the 1955 Bandung Conference of newly independent states. Also in the latter category are attempts to set up a dialogue, or at least put a process in place, between aid agencies and Taliban-era Afghanistan. Despite the chapter being an interesting take on 1990s Afghanistan, it is quite a stretch to accept that any interaction between the outside world and the Taliban was fruitful during this period.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin engages US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in a game of chess at Camp David (Wikipedia Public Domain)

How a successful process or outcome is gauged is, of course, contentious. The reader is left feeling that little of the actual Camp David process was successful, whereas the chapter examining Bush’s diplomacy is very positive (indeed, the author worked as a US diplomat during those transformational years). The conclusion of the book outlines successful diplomacy as not creating winners or losers, but as finding sustainable ways of improving the positions of as many participants as possible (266). With that in mind, the recent behaviour of Russia calls into question how successful President Bush and his western allies were in creating a durable peace in Europe.

What Hutchings does very well in Chapter Seven, however, is outline empathy as a key characteristic in successful diplomacy and one of Bush’s, and Secretary of State James Baker’s, greatest assets. The consideration of what Ronald Reagan might have done in his place, or a different Soviet leader instead of Mikhail Gorbachev, convincingly outlines how nuanced diplomacy was employed before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The chapter also discusses another of the book’s themes: the ‘two-level games’ that diplomats employ to satisfy or cajole domestic and international opinion. Bush and Baker offered the Soviets something at each stage of the talks regarding Germany’s unification and membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The idea of two-level games is woven into one of the book’s more distinctive chapters, concerning Mexico’s approach to its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations in the early 1990s which, at least for this reader, contained less widely known details.

Kissinger looms large in discussions of diplomacy. Some of the techniques used in the US recognition of China under Richard Nixon – ‘triangular diplomacy’ – are discussed in Chapter Five, such as working on the biggest issues first; using other actors as conduits or ‘backchannels’ (in this instance Pakistan); the use of signals; flexibility; and the importance of finding mutual interests. Kissinger provides the book with its core tenet: successful diplomacy increases policy options (255-56). Of course, many critics have vilified Kissinger’s methods, often shrouded in secrecy, of ‘Realpolitik’, but few politicians have developed strategy on such a grand scale.

Leadership is another theme that runs throughout this book. A favourite point of debate for historians and political scientists is the relative importance of structure and agency. Although not disregarding the former, this book clearly puts emphasis on the importance of statesmanship and individual decision-making. The authors, however, are less interested in leaders of the ‘Great Man’ variety, but rather in restrained, empathetic and far-sighted ones who understand how to use the levers of government and carry public opinion. Finally, and more technically, it explains ‘one of the fundamentals of negotiating strategy is to negotiate interests rather than positions’, which, as Hutchings points out, requires a ‘high level of understanding of the other side’s needs, objectives and likely tactics’ (165).

Foreign Policy Breakthroughs will be of interest to students and academics concerned with foreign policy, international relations, diplomacy and contemporary history. It posits diplomacy not only as a tool of power or adjunct to force, but also as a means of building an international system of mutual coexistence and cooperation. This collection provides the reader with a wider appreciation of what skilful diplomacy aspires to achieve: not zero sum winners and losers, but necessary compromise in serving the interests of individual actors in sustainable agreements. With foreign policy disasters piling up over the last few years, the ideas and principles found in the historical case studies of Foreign Policy Breakthroughs deserve a second look.

Jerusalem: The Spatial Politics of a Divided Metropolis. Anne B. Shlay and Gillad Rosen. Polity Press.

In Jerusalem: The Spatial Politics of a Divided Metropolis, Anne B. Shlay and Gillad Rosen outline the geographic dynamics of contemporary Jerusalem. While the book is occasionally simplistic in some areas of its analysis, I praise the authors for navigating complex terrain with skill and clarity to produce an approachable introduction to the spatial politics of the city.

Violence has come to Jerusalem, again. It erupted during the Jewish and Muslim holidays, which virtually coincided this year. Since the beginning of October, at least 44 Palestinians and eight Israelis have lost their lives. From my home in East Jerusalem, the tension is palpable and the fear is pervasive. How can one move past the shocking headlines to an engaged and thoughtful analysis of the city?

In Jerusalem: The Spatial Politics of a Divided Metropolis, Anne B. Shlay and Gillad Rosen have written a book that attempts to convey the complexity of the city, whilst remaining accessible to a wide audience. This book is about the politics of space and the ‘constellation of competing interests’ over it (13). Shlay and Rosen, a sociologist and geographer respectively, explore the various geographic dynamics of Jerusalem and how the conflict plays out in specific locations. Their goal is not to ‘inflame or incite but to analyze and inform’ (15). It is a worthy goal. In this review I argue that the authors accomplish it, mostly.

The chapters are well organised and the content is accessible. Chapter titles, such as ‘What is Jerusalem?’, ‘Who is Jerusalem?’ and ‘The Palestinian Challenge and Resistance in Arab Jerusalem’, give the reader clear signposts about the presentation and organisation of the book’s content. The narrative flows and readers have a sense of momentum throughout. The concluding chapter is particularly engaging as the authors take readers on a virtual tour of Jerusalem, pointing out key locations and sites of struggle along the way. They navigate complex terrain with skill and clarity.

One point I found astute – and particularly helpful for a wide audience – was that much of the conflict occurs behind closed doors. Masses may be drawn into the spectacle of stabbings and burning tyres; yet, in reality, the bulk of the conflict is played out in policy decisions, budget allocations and the ways that people tell stories about the past. The authors illustrate this point vividly in their discussion of the City of David and Silwan community (5-7, 79, 83-85). As the book highlights this sensitive issue, and others like it, readers are subtly challenged to consider the implications of their own ideologies and narrative histories. Working through this process is essential for anyone wanting to understand the city of Jerusalem.

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Jerusalem, The Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif (Aleksander Miler)

In the chapter ‘Who is Jerusalem?’, the authors discuss the various populations of the city at length. This is very helpful, and written to a level appropriate for a wide audience. Jewish residents are analysed geographically, politically and religiously. Explanations are helpful. The authors also discuss Palestinians in the city. Here, the analysis is primarily geographical. When Palestinian religion and politics are mentioned, the discussion is too simplistic. The Palestinian community of Jerusalem is much more complex and varied than the authors lead their readers to believe. For one, they fail to mention the Islamic Movement in Israel led by Sheykh Raid Salah. This group has explicit religious and political agendas for the city, which directly shape spatial politics at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, among other locales. As Israel has marginalised traditional Palestinian political parties, the Islamic movement has arguably filled the gap. Their role in the city must be understood – even in a mass market publication.

Another shortfall of the book is the neglect of Jerusalem localities behind the barrier/fence/wall [sic]. Readers are given basic information and informed that ‘a significant portion’ of the population live behind the barrier/fence/wall (74-79). But without numbers, readers are left wondering just how ‘significant’ that portion is. Estimates from 2012 put the number around 90,000 (see also Candace Graff). With a total Arab population of approximately 300,000, this means around 25% of Arab Jerusalemites live behind the barrier/fence/wall. This is astounding! The communities of Qafr ‘Aqab, Shuafat Camp, Ras Khamis, Ras al-Shahada and Dahiyat al-Salam are all behind the barrier/fence/wall. They are the most densely populated and impoverished locations in the city, lacking basic infrastructure and municipality services. They have virtually no city planning or law enforcement. Beyond this, the residents of Shuafat Camp are doubly displaced refugees, which makes a difficult living situation more complicated (the refugees in Shuafat camp were expelled from their homes in 1948 and relocated to the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1967, at the completion of the Six-Day War, they were displaced a second time to the Shuafat Refugee camp). Since the barrier/fence/wall was built, the population in these communities has skyrocketed. Beyond this, residents of these communities make up a significant portion of the wage labour force in West Jerusalem (see also Nir Hasson). It comes as little surprise that much of the violence plaguing Jerusalem today originates from behind this wall. How can a book on the spatial politics of the city only mention these communities in passing?

Initially, I was troubled by the authors’ claim that East Jerusalem is an ‘Israeli construction […] an artifact of Israeli power and political domination’ (139). This seemed to qualify, minimise and negate Palestinian claims to the city. However, upon grasping their concept of ‘Arab Jerusalem’, my concerns were assuaged. Arab Jerusalem is not just the status quo boundaries established by the Oslo process; it is the very essence of what Palestinians consider their city to be: the East Jerusalem of today and the West Jerusalem of memory and history. Arab Jerusalem directly challenges the dominant Israeli discourse. The authors are correct in explaining that resistance to Israeli dominance occurs on the ground level among Arab Jerusalemites. What they have missed, however, is the role of the international community in challenging this dominance as well. One concrete expression of this is the US refusal to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem. Another is the international funding that supports Arab Jerusalem from a great number of nations and international organisations. These demonstrate that Israel’s dominance of Jerusalem is not as ‘common sense’ as the authors would suggest (142).

Despite these criticisms, I believe that Shlay and Rosen have crafted an approachable and provocative introduction to the spatial politics of the city of Jerusalem. They have navigated a complex and contentious terrain skillfully. The reader who wants to push beyond headlines will find themselves highly engaged by this book.

Immigration Detention: The Migration of a Policy and its Human Impact. Amy Nethery and Stephanie J. Silverman (eds). Routledge. 2015

The collection Immigration Detention: The Migration of a Policy and its Human Impact, edited by Amy Nethery and Stephanie J. Silverman, gives an overview of the practice and human impact of detention as an integral part of immigration management and control through a series of country case studies. While I would have welcomed more direct engagement with individual detainee experiences and voices, this book gives comprehensive and relevant insight into detention policies and practices at a time when Europe is grappling with how to respond to pressure on its borders.


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If I can’t deport them, I’ll lock them up to make their lives miserable.’

This revealing statement, attributed to one senior government official on the ‘problem’ of immigration, is indicative of state strategies of immigration management the world over. Such an aggressive position, articulated in this instance by a former Israeli Interior Minister (156), encompasses an unspoken position on immigration in several countries – as the chapters in this edited volume demonstrate – and resonates with the British government’s stated ‘hostile environment’ policy on immigration. Indeed, a number of chapters discuss clearly how states have adopted such assertive positions on detention as part of general deterrent policies.

Contributors to Immigration Detention: The Migration of a Policy and its Human Impact are drawn from a diverse range of disciplines, and many combine legal practice or other detainee advocacy work with their academic research. One of the striking features of the different chapters in this book – several covering previously under-documented country case studies of detention regimes – is the way in which they collectively highlight the overwhelming uniformity of the harrowing and distressing conditions within immigration detention centres across continents. Nuances within those conditions are also evident, however, between the different country case studies. The narratives highlight the Orwellian condition that characterises the global detention estate: all detention centres are awful, but some are more awful than others.

Several chapters demonstrate how states are investing heavily in the effort to avoid a breach of their non-refoulement obligations by financing the construction and management of off-shore reception, assessment and holding centres. The authors also discuss how states are then able to manipulate geography and the sovereignty of the state where the centre is located to ‘opt out’ of any responsibility regarding sanitary conditions, healthcare and monitoring of any potential human rights violations onsite. Several case studies also highlight the fluidity between the prison and detention estates. Each chapter is constructed in a similar way, which aids a comparative analysis, and the ground covered for each country case study includes immigration legislation and policy, an overview of the size and nature of the detention estate and a discussion of the human impact of the practice of detention, focusing on the physical and mental health of detainees (see page 86 for some particularly interesting statistics on mental health). The situation of unaccompanied minors and other vulnerable detainees is also examined in each case study. Alternatives to detention are additionally touched upon, although some of the contributors have covered that ground in other publications.

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 Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre (Wikipedia Public Domain)

However, what is missing from the narrative as a whole is the voice of detainees themselves. Amy Nethery and Stephanie J. Silverman state in their introduction that one of their aims through the study is to provide a ‘catalogue of the human impact’ of detention policies. One more effective way of achieving this would have been to dedicate more space within the narrative to a discussion of the individual detainee experience. Some of the chapters read like policy summaries of the state perspective followed by a literature review of the work of NGOs on the conditions within detention and the support needs of detainees. There are some exceptions within the volume: Janet Cleveland’s chapter on detention in Canada and Nicolas Fischer’s discussion of the context in France both draw on their own empirical work within the centres they refer to. In her chapter on Australia, Robyn Sampson also articulates the direct voices of detainees within her narrative, cited from her previous work.

Fischer’s ethnographic work within a French detention centre and, in particular, on efforts by the authorities to prevent detainee self-harm by withholding information about upcoming deportations, raises some interesting questions around state control versus detainee agency over their own bodies. Such questions dovetail with other debates, detailed periodically in the media, around the practice of force-feeding those who have decided to hunger strike within detention.

Those chapters that deal with detention regimes on the fringes of Europe and the Schengen borders – namely, Galina Cornelisse on The Netherlands, Ċetta Mainwaring on Malta and Cyprus and Esra Kayatz on Turkey – make for particularly interesting reading in the context of the migration crises of 2015, especially in the way that such discussions highlight how EU investment in the detention regimes of strategic border states can help to bolster ‘fortress Europe’ or, as is increasingly the case, ‘fortress Schengen’. Mainwaring’s case study in particular emphasises how the detention policies of states deemed to be ‘vulnerable’ to large-scale irregular migration by virtue of their geopolitical locations maximise the ‘crisis narrative’ as a means of encouraging further EU financial investment (55). It will be particularly interesting to follow how such a dynamic plays out as the EU grapples with responding to pressure on its borders and to witness how/whether the narrative of ‘crisis’ is portrayed by European governments in terms of the human crisis and the plight of those seeking refuge or as a crisis of immigration control.

The world of immigration legislation and policy is a fast-moving and complex (some would argue deliberately so) field of study, and the events of 2015 have shown how rapidly the status quo can change as those circumstances that prompt people to move in search of refuge reach a zenith point of tolerability. The contributions to this volume demonstrate, however, how previously under-studied detention regimes, along with those well-documented in the literature, have consistently been developed as an integral part of immigration management and control. The question of extra-territorial detention centres, highlighted in the volume, will be particularly interesting to document in the near future. Further evidence on whether detention can act as an antithesis to a ‘pull’, or as a ‘push away’, factor (5) would be welcome. However, Immigration Detention: The Migration of a Policy and its Human Impact offers a comprehensive overview of the detention policies of a number of states across several continents, and is recommended as a holistic and well-structured insight into the global detention estate for those who have an interest in the policies and politics of immigration control.

The Case Against the Fed Paperback by Murray N Rothbard (Ludwig von Mises Institute )

After 80-plus years of inflation and devastating booms and busts, how do we get rid of the cause of these economic cancers? "The only way to do that is to abolish legalized counterfeiting: that is, to abolish the Federal Reserve System, and return to the gold standard," answers Murray Rothbard in his book The Case Against the Fed.

For students who did not have the opportunity to take United States Economic History from the late Dr. Rothbard, this slim volume will give you an idea of what his classes were like.

Dr. Rothbard never bored his students with sterile graphs or convoluted equations. Neither does this book. This story of the Federal Reserve is about good guys, bad guys, and self-serving politicians helping their rich and famous friends. Also interesting is Rothbard's discussion of nineteenth-century British case law that paved the way for fractional reserve banking. Rothbard points out that, with bailment law undeveloped in the nineteenth century, bankers were able to win three important court cases culminating with the Foley v. Hill and Others case in 1848. In this case, the House of Lords decided that bankers contract for an amount of money, but not necessarily to keep that particular money on hand.

Rothbard lays to rest the myth that the Panic of 1907 led to the creation of the Fed. Bankers began scheming for a central bank after William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 presidential election. Long gone were the days of the hard-money Jacksonian Democratic party, and the populist Democrat Bryan pushed for monetizing silver to increase the supply of money. Wall Street's bankers supported McKinley, not wanting inflation that they couldn't control.

The Panic of 1907 was used to whip up support for a central bank. But, it was the meetings of the Indianapolis Monetary Convention that started the political wheels turning, culminating in the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in December of 1913.

With the system in place, all that was needed was the "right" man to control the money machine. In 1914, that man was Benjamin Strong, then president of J. P. Morgan-owned Bankers Trust and best friend of Morgan partners Harry P. Davison, Dwight Morrow, and Thomas W. Lamont.

Strong ruled the Fed until his death in 1928. During World War I, he engineered a doubling of the supply of money, financing the U.S. war effort.

The continuous Fed propaganda is that a zealous public clamors for more inflation, and only the Federal Reserve's cool heads are standing in the way of a hyper-inflation armageddon. Of course, just the opposite is true. As Rothbard points out, "The culprit solely responsible for inflation, the Federal Reserve, is continually engaged in raising a hue-and-cry about 'inflation,' for which virtually everyone else in society seems to be responsible. What we are seeing is the old ploy by the robber who starts shouting 'Stop, thief!' and runs down the street pointing ahead at others."

Rothbard saves the fun part of dismantling the Fed for last. Liberty lovers are always being told that, "your ideas sound good, but how are you going to get there from here?" Rothbard has given us simple directions for the Fed's liquidation.

With the Fed abolished, banks would be on their own; no more lender of last resort, or taxpayer bailouts. The inflation dragon would be slain. The boom-and-bust roller coaster ride leveled.

The Case Against the Fed is part history, part polemic, and part policy paper, succeeding with all three. Murray Rothbard has written another classic.

Assembly. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Oxford University Press. 2017.

Why is it that so many revolutions and other social movements have seemingly failed to bring their emancipatory ideals into being? In response to this enduring question, Michael Hardtand Antonio Negri offer Assembly, which inverts the traditional division of revolutionary labour to give strategic force to the assembly of the multitude. While the book aims to offer a blueprint for forms of collective organisation that can bring about a more democratic and just society, I am unconvinced that the authors’ hollowing out of the traditional sphere of the political can deliver this social alternative.




Writing in the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848, Karl Marx famously posited that ‘revolutions are the locomotives of history’, its driving force. And yet, looking back from the present day, revolutions and other social movements have largely failed to enact their emancipatory ideals. Hardt and Negri’s newest work of political theory, Assembly, begins by asking why that should be the case: ‘why have the movements, which address the needs and desires of so many, not been able to achieve lasting change and create a new, more democratic and just society?’ (xiii).

Hardt and Negri’s answer to this perennial question for the left involves an ambitious critique of previous theories of revolutionary leadership, represented by the mythical figure of the centaur: the ‘upper, human half’, symbolising the leader, ‘designates the strategic capacities’, while the lower, beast half, representing the multitude, manages tactics (15). Hardt and Negri’s model is instead the inversion of this revolutionary division of labour: leaders will take on a tactical role while the multitude forms strategy ‘from below’ (78). From this new vantage point, the multitude will be free to form an assembly: ‘a constitutive right, that is, a mechanism for composing a social alternative, for taking power differently, through cooperation in social production’ (295). Once the assembly is formed, the promised ‘democratic and just society’ will duly follow.

In issuing a call to the multitude, Assembly follows in the footsteps of Hardt and Negri’s preceding Empire trilogy – Empire (2000), Multitude (2004) and Commonwealth (2009) – and maintains the same structure of their previous collaborations: brief intermezzos, always printed in cursive, punctuate the text and offer musings on ‘The End of Mitteleuropa’ (134-38) and ‘Extremism of the Center’ (245-51). This time, however, the authors use a call and response structure inspired by ‘songs sung by slaves in the plantation fields’ (xxi-xxii). While this is a novel way to structure a work of political theory, it does fragment the narrative cohesion of the text: calls are issued and then forgotten for 70 pages before suddenly receiving their belated and often disjointed response.

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Ultimately, Assembly is a blueprint for empowering the multitude as the means of establishing a more just society – much of the book is devoted to describing ideal forms of collective organisation and decision-making that could democratise social movements. Hardt and Negri stress that once social movements have been sufficiently democratised, they will not only be more effective in obtaining their demands, but they will also produce new forms of democratic subjectivities (231). Furthermore, the authors reject the binary choice between reform and revolution for social movements, instead opting for ‘active counterpowers’: ‘antagonistic formations within and against the state’ (254). The Polish Solidarity movement, the Zapatistas and the Cocaleros are held up as examples of social movements which ‘make a nonsovereignclaim on power’: a claim in which sovereignty will be ‘rendered inoperative or destroyed’ (256). At stake is nothing less than ‘a revolutionary process that makes existing social subjectivities, in all their differences, into a new Prince’ (257).

However, Chapter Seven, ‘We, Machinic Subjects’, provides a glimpse of the resignation and complacency veiled in the paroles of revolutionary activism. The chapter begins with a call to reconceptualise the relationship between humans and machines: ‘Instead of rejecting technology […] we must start from within the technological and biopolitical fabric of our lives and chart from there a path of liberation’ (107). The authors bring together Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer and criticise them for ‘positing an ontological division and even opposition between human life and machines’ (109) in the wake of the Second World War. Instead, Hardt and Negri follow Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in arguing that humans and machines belong on the same ‘ontological plane’ (122) and form ‘machinic assemblages’ (121). This is intended to provide the principles of a ‘humanism after the critical adoption of the Nietzschean declaration of the ‘‘death of man’” (121). The future of revolutionary politics thus resides in properly acknowledging the inseparability of humankind and machine, of accepting our ontological position as ‘machinic subjects’.

For a brief moment during their discussion of new forms of resistance open to ‘machinic subjects’, Hardt and Negri appear not as hardened Marxist intellectuals but rather as members of the Silicon Valley elite, writing:

when we look at young people today who are absorbed in machinic assemblages, we should recognize that their very existence is resistance. Whether they are aware or not, they produce in resistance (123).

That technology can allow for an even more pervasive form of capitalism, that mechanisation facilitates disciplinary control or that resistance itself can by stymied by technological tools – all of this is washed away by a naïve belief that technology will ultimately provide an effective site of political resistance and form a ‘path to liberation’ (107). That Hardt and Negri are willing to accept the intrusion of technology into all aspects of human life, to the point of rejecting any ontological distinction between humans and machines in favour of ‘machinic subjects’, only serves to undercut potential revolutionary forces by subverting the uniquely human nature of political activity.

Yet, subverting the primacy of the political sphere forms an integral part of the agenda laid out in Assembly – Hardt and Negri devote an entire subchapter to arguing ‘against the autonomy of the political’. The underlying justification is that ‘political rationality and political action can no longer be considered autonomous but always completely embedded in the circuits of social and economic life’ (45). Indeed, the authors suggest that politics is just a ‘noisy sphere’ (xv), a distraction from social and economic spheres. Hardt and Negri’s notion of politics as epiphenomenal is both unsatisfactory and counterproductive as it undercuts political life, the very domain where the struggle over the type and form of communal existence takes place.

Aversion to the political sphere ultimately muddies the conceptual analysis in Assembly. For example, Hardt and Negri’s critique of constituent power involves distorting the concept to the point of reducing it to an empty signifier, devoid of any meaning. The pair posits that the concept underwent an ‘immersion in biopolitics’ and that ‘the content of constituent power tends to become life itself’ (36). However, the reader neither learns when this immersion supposedly happened nor how it is conceptually possible. Hardt and Negri have severed the concept from its literal and historical meaning – the act of giving a legal constitution – and instead appropriate it for discussing ‘social behaviors and new technologies of subsistence, resistance, and transformation of life’ (41). Two chapters later, the authors turn again to give the concept an ontological meaning, defining it as ‘constituting new common being’ (68). Both of these appropriations divorce constituent power from its specific legal and political meaning and history within European public law, ultimately stripping the concept of any theoretical import in discussing political life.

Hardt and Negri’s newest intellectual contribution might prove of interest to those who enjoy paragraph-length sentences and the periodic intrusion of auditory hallucinations: ‘and yet – whispers some evil genius in our ears – the conditions of the world today are not propitious’ (xvi). However, as a work of political theory for the present, Assembly, with its hollowing out of the political sphere, only manages to derail the locomotive of history.