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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to bring into conversation two apparently disparate debates in the fields of politics and International Relations. The first is a debate over celebrity humanitarianism that is divided between optimistic scholars, who see in it an enhancement of democracy, and pessimistic scholars, who link it to capitalist imperialism or a throwback to older colonial tropes. The second is a debate over a (new) American empire which has prompted scholars in IR to redress IR’s historic ‘elision’ of empire and to offer new network theories of empire. The paper argues that these two debates each address the shortcomings in the other and offers speculation on what celebrity humanitarianism might have to do with empire by bridging the connections between structuralist political theories of empire and the cultural accounts offered by postcolonial theory.
Notes
1. Ignatieff, Empire Lite.
2. Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire.
3. Harvey, “The ‘New’ Imperialism.”
4. Layne and Thayer, American Empire.
5. Fergusson, Colossus.
6. Lal, In Praise of Empires.
7. Meiksins Wood, Empire of Capital.
8. Hardt and Negri, Empire.
9. Elision is ordinarily a grammatical term but is commonly used by Post-colonial theorists following Edward Said to refer to the suppressing or writing out of empire, or other historical information for political and ideological purposes.
10. Featherstone, Global Culture.
11. Street, “‘Prime Time Politics’”; and Inthorn and Street, “‘Simon Cowell for Prime Minister’?”
12. Beck, Risk Society.
13. Bang, Governance.
14. Spruyt, “‘American Empire’.”
15. Said, Culture and Imperialism.
16. Nexon, The Struggle for Power; Munkler, Empires; Motyl, Imperial Ends; and Spruyt, Ending Empire.
17. Said, Orientalism.
18. Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire; Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire; McClintock, Imperial Leather; and Guha and Spivak, Selected Subaltern Studies.
19. Colas, Empire.
20. Munkler, Empires.
21. Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy.
22. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism.
23. Inthorn and Street, “‘Simon Cowell for Prime Minister’?”; and Busby, “Bono made Jesse Helms Cry.”
24. Street, “Celebrity Politics”; Wheeler, “The Democratic Worth of Celebrity”; and Marsh et al., “Celebrity Politics.”
25. Street, “Do Celebrity Politics?”
26. Wheeler, “The Democratic Worth of Celebrity,” 410.
27. Ibid.
28. West, “Angelina, Mia, Bono.”
29. Holloway et al., Independent Review; Moyo, Dead Aid; and Collier, The Bottom Billion.
30. For a defence of Schiller, see Morely, “Globalisation and Cultural Imperialism.”
31. Magubane, “The (Product) Red Man’s Burden,” 102.10.
32. Yrjola, “From Street into the World,” 6.
33. Clarke, Celebrity Colonialism, 6.
34. Richey and Ponte, “Better (Red) than Dead.”
35. Goodman, “The Mirror of Consumption.”
36. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 33.
37. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 31.
38. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 29–32.
39. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 39.
40. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 89.
41. Eisenstadt, The Political Systems.
42. Doyle, Empires.
43. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism.
44. Nexon and Wright, “What’s at Stake?”
45. Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition.
46. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.
47. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
48. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States; Badie, The Imported State; Bayart, The State in Africa; and Mbembe, On the Postcolony.
49. Yrjola, “From Street into the World.”
50. Rojek, Celebrity.
51. Van Kriekan, Celebrity Society.
52. Morgan, “Historicising Celebrity.”
53. Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown.
54. Inglis, A Short History of Celebrity.
55. Garland, “Celebrity Ancient and Modern.”
56. Wanko, “Celebrity Studies.”
57. Hollander, “Why the Celebrity Cult?,” 390.
58. Lawler, “Celebrity Studies Today,” 419.
59. Innis, Empire and Communications.
60. Marshall, The Celebrity Culture Reader.
61. Littler, “Introduction,” 1.
62. Leaver, “A Different Take,” 457.
63. Leaver, “A Different Take,” 457–458.
64. Leaver, “A Different Take,” 472.
65. See an episode of Oprah Winfrey, excerpts from which can be found at http://www.oprah.com/showinfo/Will-Smith-Jada-Pinkett-Smith-and-the-Whole-Family_1.
66. Two articles in Forbes Magazine detail Jay-Z’s entrepreneurial and political position. See “Jay-Z’s Occupy Wall Street Problem is Hip-Hop’s Occupy Wall Street Problem,” Accessed January 6, 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2012/09/10/jay-zs-occupy-wall-street-problem-is-hip-hops-occupy-wall-street-problem/; and “The Forbes Five: Hip Hop’s Wealthiest Artists 2011,” Accessed January 6, 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2011/03/09/the-forbes-five-hip-hop-wealthiest-artists/.
67. Adorno, The Culture Industry.
68. Marsh et al., “Celebrity Politics”; Brockington, “The Production and Construction”; and Brockington, “Signifying the Public.”
69. Brockington, “The Production and Construction,” 100.
70. Brockington, Celebrity Advocacy.
71. Nexon and Wright, “What’s at Stake?”; and Spruyt, “American Empire.”
72. Nexon and Wright, “What’s at Stake?,” 266.