The Palgrave Handbook of Global Politics in the 22nd Century

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The Palgrave Handbook of Global Politics in the 22nd Century is an extraordinarily ambitious and exciting book, which sets academic publications in a quantum state, as it conflates two absolute antinomic identities: speculative fiction and solid scientific research.

The volume, which presents itself as an anthology of academic articles, is edited by three established researchers: Laura Horn is an associate professor at the University of Roskilde, in the department of Social Sciences and Business; Ayşem Mert is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University; and Franziska Müller is Assistant Professor for Globalization and Climate Governance at the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Hamburg. As they state in their introduction, dated some time after 2072, “the book seeks to open up a glimpse into the many worlds, and by extension many futures, of contemporary global politics,” based on a new discipline called “quantum social science,” (2) which appeared, according to the authors, after a scientific breakthrough and a number of related political, social, and climate crises.

The volume is divided into six sections (“Theory and Concepts,” “(In)Security,” “Governance and Technology,” “The Anthropocene,” “Culture and Identity,” “Practices and Reflections”), followed by a conclusion written by the editors. All articles are written from a 22^nd century perspective, reflecting both on the “present” state of the world and events and situations of the past—that is, our very own 21st century. To give an idea of the scope of the book, here are some chapter titles: “The Evolution of Global Society Theory” (Barry Buzan); “Strategic Partnerships in Twenty-Second Century Global Politics: From Weathering Storms to the Politics of Anticipation” (Andriy Tyushka and Lucyna Czechowska); “’Big Daddy Don’t Like That!’ Global Rule by Planetary Algorithm” (Ronnie D. Lipschutz ); The UNCorp Quantum Mechanism for Wellbeing” (Isabella Hermann), just to name a few.

Each part and article focuses on some aspect of socio-economics and political science (in the largest sense possible) as well as methodologies and analysis tools through case studies. Each author uses a blend of contemporary sources (20^th and early 21^st century) and imaginary sources from the future (22^nd century). In the introduction, we learn that this academic revolution is mainly based on two 20^th and 21^st centuries authors, Ted Chiang and Douglas Adams. The double reference is both surprising and amusing, but defines very well the DNA of the book: on the one hand, we find the complex and paradoxical narratives of Chiang and on the other, the extreme (and often comical) relativity of scientific theories found in Adams’s stories.

Concerning the latter, we are told that:

Fundamentally instrumental in this was the revalidation of late twentieth-century philosophical thought, in particular the work of Douglas Adams. His seminal pentalogy HHGTTG did not get recognition upon publication other than as a novel, whereas by the mid-2030s it had been established that it had, in fact, much to say on the subject of parallel universes. (3)

As for Chiang’s influence, it is stated that:

The qurative turn was a natural consequence of the quantum revolution. Social scientists found a starting point in Chiang’s visionary text from 2019, where he posed the questions that would come to define quration… Can a single quantum event by itself lead to visible changes between the two branches? Is it possible for broader historical forces to be studied using prisms? (6)

The essays in this volume are thus extremely interesting quantum objects themselves, as they simultaneously draw on various historical, scientific, and fictional elements. The reader can thus choose to define what they observe according to their own position: political and social fictions, serious predictions, or pure fiction, just to give an idea of the many possible identities that can be affixed to each and every article in the volume.

There is a common trait, however, to all these predictive narratives: like science fiction, they put our present times in perspective and make the reader reflect on the realities that they are confronted with on a daily basis, whether it is geopolitics, religion, society, climate, environment or even academic research and theories. In many ways, this “handbook” will remind many readers of Stanislaw Lem’s “Solaristics,” that is to say the published research on Solaris, the mysterious living planet which is impossible to communicate with, and even define or analyze properly. In Solaris (1961), solaristics are vain and lead nowhere—it’s just an accumulation of hypothesis and useless knowledge. What this volume points at is in many ways the same that Lem does, except that it accepts our reality (the Solaris planet in Lem’s novel) as an ever-changing complexity, in order to playfully (but also seriously) reveal the limits and the flaws of our scientific reflection on the current global state of the planet. By simultaneously de-framing and re-framing our traditional understandings of socio-economics, political science, and sociology, The Palgrave Handbook of Global Politics in the 22^nd Century actually offers us true insights on the world we are living in, as well as possible alternatives to our traditional ways of thinking and—most importantly—implementing solutions to the problems we are confronted with.

As a conclusion, we could say that this volume is a terribly useful book for all those who are tired of the common ideological discourses and are looking for other solutions. If not truly a “Solarpunk” book, it nonetheless gives us a reasonable hope that the academics of the future will prove more imaginative than the dominant schools of today. And “speculative science” would by all means be a welcome and much necessary new field.

Seb Doubinsky is a bilingual French dystopian writer and poet. He is the author of the City-States Cycle, comprising, among others, The Babylonian Trilogy, The Song Of Synth, Missing Signal, The Invisible, and Paperclip. Missing Signal, published by Meerkat Press, won the Bronze Foreword Reviews Award in the Best Science-Fiction Novel category in 2018. He lives in Denmark with his family and teaches literature, history and culture in the French department of Aarhus University.