Watson Events

David Mutimer -- From Arms Control to Denuclearisation: Governmentality and the Abolitionist Desire

From Arms Control to Denuclearisation: Governmentality and the Abolitionist Desire 

David Mutimer, Associate Professor, Political Science, Arts, and Deputy Director, Centre for International and Security Studies, York University

In 2009 US President Obama committed the United States 'to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.' He has subsequently begun
to fulfill that pledge by reinvigorating the arms control process with Russia, resulting earlier this year in the New START agreement. Mutimer will examine this desire for a nuclear free world, and argue that arms control, understood as a social practice, is ill-suited to the pursuit of nuclear disarmament; that while arms control can produce limits and even reductions in nuclear weapons, it works against the overall elimination of arms.

David Mutimer is the Deputy Director of the York Center for International and Security Studies and Associate Professor of Political Science at York University. His research considers issues of contemporary international security through lenses provided by critical social theory, as well as inquiring into the reproduction of security in and through popular culture. Much of that work has focused on weapons proliferation as a reconfigured security concern in the post-cold war era, and has tried to open possibilities for alternative means of thinking about the security problems related to arms more generally.

Location: McKinney Conference Room, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street