Recuperating Logistics in the Critique of the Relational Turn in IR: Towards a Praxis of Refusal

Abstract This article seeks to contribute to critiques of the recently reinvigorated relational turn in International Relations (IR) by exposing a seemingly overlooked logistical dimension of relations in this disciplinary debate. The relational turn in IR has sought to foreground the inevitable ontological entanglement of beings and events as the prime condition for possibility. Challenging an excess of abstraction of this claim, this article first suggests that the material basis for, and actualization of, such entanglements is logistical, concreted in the global flows of capital, knowledge, and information. The article unpacks how agency-driven conceptions of relational connectedness in IR closely parallel a logistical modeling of the world, which materializes things in the world as conduits for its continued generation. Secondly, this article furnishes the concept and praxis of refusal as a mode of response to this totalizing reach of logistical relationality. In thinking with terms of blockages and interruptions that the praxis of refusal offers, the paper explores provisional pathways that interrupt connected flows of relational wholeness. In an attempt to experiment with possibilities of disruptive encounters, we thus seek to push the critiques of celebratory entangled ontologies in IR.