Revolutionaries and Global Politics : War Machines from the Bolsheviks to ISIS

This is a book about discontents of the global order. Building on the innovative reading of ISIS as an international revolutionary actor, it explores the movement’s everyday political practices and confronts them with other global revolutionaries to arrive at a novel understanding of revolutionary agency in global politics. Benefiting in particular from Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of war machine and understanding of hybridity, the book shows how modern revolutionaries seek to disrupt the existing Westphalian order of modern states, yet are inevitably entangled with it and even reproduce in their conduct its founding principles. Including discussions on movements ranging from the Bolsheviks and Palestinian revolutionary groups to Khomeinists, to insurgents in Iraq and ISIS, the book pushes forward debates informed by critical social theory of revolution, violence, resistance and global order.