What is the conjuncture that we inhabit today and how does conjunctural analysis shed light on the present? How do entanglements of power, culture and politics help us understand continuities and transformations since Policing the Crisis? What practices of reimagining, repairing and rearticulating are possible given current limits on political action, proliferation of enemy figures and racialised (im)mobilities? What epistemic vocabularies and methods are needed to problematise the present differently? These and other questions are tackled in John Clarke’s latest book, The Battle for Britain, published by Bristol University Press.

This round table brings the author into conversation with scholars across disciplines to discuss the diagnosis of the present that the book offers and to explore conceptual and methodological tools that are mobilised to problematise nations, borders, crises and conflicts.

Speakers

• John Clarke, The Open University
• Engin Isin, Queen Mary University of London
• Gail Lewis, London School of Economics and Yale University
• Sharon Gewirtz, King’s College London
• Martina Tazzioli, Goldsmiths College
• Nick Beech, University of Westminster
• Chair: Claudia Aradau, King's College London

About the book

The book addresses the social, political and economic turbulence in which the UK is embroiled. Drawing on Cultural Studies, it explores proliferating crises and conflicts, from the multiplying varieties of social dissent through the stagnation of rentier capitalism to the looming climate catastrophe.

Examining arguments about Brexit, class and ‘race’, and the changing character of the state, the book is underpinned by a transnational and relational conception of the UK. It traces the entangled dynamics of time and space that have shaped the current conjuncture.

Questioning whether increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian strategies can provide a resolution to these troubles, it explores how the accumulating crises and conflicts have produced a deepening ‘crisis of authority’ that forms the terrain of the Battle for Britain.