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On Cruelty: Literature, Aesthetics and Global Politics

In recent years there has been compelling debate about the “aesthetic turn” and, more generally, the impact of art in international relations (IR). And yet few, if any, of the discussions and debates related to aesthetics have addressed the issue of cruelty or fully explored the role that literature could play in global politics. The article starts with a preliminary discussion about IR, as part of a broader conversation about inter-disciplinary studies of global politics, alternative knowledge claims, aesthetics and literature. The second part of the article advances a particular set of ideas about imagination, interpretation and intuitive knowledge claims which are presented as methodological and conceptual tools associated with literature, and are thus embedded in the “aesthetic turn”. The third section of the article explicates the three methodological tools through an examination of the politics of cruelty. The final sections of the article turn to work by the Czech-born Paris-based writer Pavel Hak so as to push forward debates about radical creativity in literature, enriching discussions about cruelty and war, and IR and global politics.