Anarchist Imperium: Postcolonial Gods and Masters

photo of Zaheer Kazmi

Anarchist Imperium: Postcolonial Gods and Masters

Friday, 10 March 2023 - 5:00pm
Venue: 
Syndicate Room
Speaker(s): 
Zaheer Kazmi (Cambridge)
Convenor: 
Axel Rudi & Faisal Devji

The "Stateless Sovereignties" speaker series seeks to explore the concept and practice of sovereignty outside of its traditional euro- and state centric heritage and definitions, by inviting internationally renown scholars to unpack, pluralize and disassemble the concept with perspectives coming from the margins of the global order. By moving sovereignty beyond its conventional connection to statehood, the series aims to adapt the concept to a new set of circumstances, so that it may better account for the many radical experiments with governance across the world, and the rapid changes impacting peoples' ways of relating to each other.

Zaheer Kazmi is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. His main interests are in the global and comparative politics of anarchism and radicalism, including in relation to Islam and the West. He is the author of Polite Anarchy in International Relations Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and co-editor of Islam After Liberalism (Oxford, 2017) and Contextualizing Jihadi Thought (Oxford, 2012) and has published articles in the Review of International Studies, Journal of Political Ideologies and Modern Intellectual History. His essays and reviews have also appeared in The Times Literary SupplementForeign Affairs, Prospect, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon, Open Democracy, The Brooklyn Rail, Tank and 3:AM Magazine. He was formerly a diplomat and Senior Research Analyst at the UK Foreign Office and a Senior Research Fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen's University Belfast and has held research and visiting positions at Oxford University and Sciences Po, Paris.