A Genealogy of Resilience

Abstract

A great deal has been written about the role of resilience in world politics in recent years. But where does resilience come from? From which discipline was it “imported” into world politics? A particular genealogical analysis of resilience is structuring much of the literature: resilience was born in system ecology in the 1970s. On the basis of this particular genealogy, many critical theorists argue that resilience is a form of reasoning that participates in a neoliberal rationality of governance. For them, resilience is a by-product of a neoliberal mode of governance; seen in this light, resilience is lamentable. In this article, I propose a different, more extensive genealogy of resilience. I argue that before we can conduct an analysis of the application of resilience in world politics, we must understand the diverse paths through which resilience has percolated into international politics. By tracing the diverse expressions of resilience in world politics to various markers within the history of resilience, this article contends that this is an opportune moment to move scattered scholarships on resilience a step further and better theorize the relationship between resilience and world politics.