Joseph MacKay
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lefteleven.bsky.social
Joseph MacKay
@lefteleven.bsky.social
2.5K followers 3.2K following 530 posts
Canadian in Oz. IR academic. History of international ordering, history of international thought. He/him. Book, "The Counterinsurgent Imagination." https://bit.ly/3h86v4Y
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lefteleven.bsky.social
Joseph MacKay @lefteleven.bsky.social · Dec 17
This, with @claroche.bsky.social in @ejir.bsky.social, was the most fun I’ve had writing a paper in years. A quick thread on what we do here. This paper argues IR theories tell stories, and stories get their meaning from their particular endings. /1
ejir.bsky.social EJIR @ejir.bsky.social · Dec 17
Stories derive much of their meaning from how they end. Joseph MacKay and Christoph LaRoche‘s article in EJIR asks how endings shape the historical narratives at the heart of IR theories. Read the full paper here: t1p.de/voqhz

@lefteleven.bsky.social @claroche.bsky.social
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
janeijking.com
📚 Out with OUP this summer: "Experts in a Turbulent World" 📚

An edited volume that connects historical and contemporary perspectives on the role of experts in international organisations. 1/3 👇 #HistIR global.oup.com/academic/pro...
global.oup.com
January 22, 2026 at 8:42 AM
lefteleven.bsky.social
(I’m belatedly reading the Guardian profile) www.theguardian.com/business/202...
The crisis whisperer: how Adam Tooze makes sense of our bewildering age
The long read: Whether it’s the financial crash, the climate emergency or the breakdown of the international order, historian Adam Tooze has become the go-to guide to the radical new world we’ve enter...
www.theguardian.com
January 29, 2026 at 8:20 AM
lefteleven.bsky.social
Tooze has entered his Kermodian phase.
More surprisingly, Tooze said that Anderson's attack helped him clarify his own principles and practices. Anderson used the phrase "in medias res" as a jab at Tooze's neglect, as he saw it, of the deep political and economic forces that shaped his narratives. Yet Tooze has come to embrace in medias res both as "a very succinct summation of the challenge that I'm particularly interested in" and as a simple but profound description of the basic human situation. In his view, there is no escaping the middle of things: every one of us is born, lives and dies in a rushing flow of events that precedes us and will outlast us. He told me that he is not a Marxist in part because he thinks treating a body of theory produced in the middle of the 19th century as "the be-all and end-all" - a stable point from which one might stand outside history and discern its hidden forces and patterns - is "a lazy way of dealing with reality". To accept the radicalism of the present, he says, means acknowledging that you can't understand history before it happens: "If you're in the middle of shit, you don't actually know what the shit is that you're in the middle of."
January 29, 2026 at 8:20 AM
lefteleven.bsky.social
Thanks!
January 27, 2026 at 12:05 PM
lefteleven.bsky.social
Very glad to have published this, at International Affairs. doi.org/10.1093/ia/i...
Historical sources of Russian imperial legitimation claims Joseph Mackay Abstract Russia's war on Ukraine has given rise to a broad debate about Russian imperialism and colonialism. Yet despite Russia's significant imperial history, the field of International Relations has few detailed accounts of its distinguishing historical features. This article builds on existing work to unpack the varied attempts successive imperial projects made to legitimate Russia's rule over other populations and territories. Reconstructing Russia's imperial history, I show its claims to imperial legitimacy, past and present, varied widely. These claims were borrowed or otherwise acquired from an equally wide range of sources. They have tended to accumulate or sediment in Russian discursive practice. To illustrate this, I focus on the period that marked the height of Russian colonialism, the nineteenth century, showing a profusion of practices, styles and ways of speaking. I then argue Russia's wide-ranging claims to imperial legitimacy resurface in contemporary attempts to justify its expansionism. Recognizing the range of attempted imperial justifications helps analysts to better calibrate or specify critiques of Russian imperial ideas today.
January 27, 2026 at 10:14 AM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
whitproject.bsky.social
Global Intellectual History @global-ih.bsky.social organsied a Special Issue on Erased, including a reply. I'm so grateful to Helen M. Kinsella, Joseph MacKay, Christine Sylvester, Immi Tallgren, and Tarak Barkawi for their commentaries. Links to each below...
January 19, 2026 at 3:28 PM
lefteleven.bsky.social
Very glad to have been involved in this forum on Patricia Owens’s excellent book. @whitproject.bsky.social
January 20, 2026 at 2:31 AM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
daviesthomasr.bsky.social
Available now from @millennjournal.bsky.social: "Literary Figures and International Thought: The Archetypal Case of Thomas Hardy" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Literary Figures and International Thought: The Archetypal Case of Thomas Hardy - Thomas Davies, 2026
How may literary figures contribute to international thought? This article addresses this question using the previously neglected yet archetypal case of novelis...
journals.sagepub.com
January 15, 2026 at 10:28 AM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
irhottakes.bsky.social
I think the disconnect between Atlantic elites is that Americans think Donald Trump is a kid getting to drive a monster truck for Make A Wish and Europeans and Canadians think Donald Trump is the president of the United States.
January 14, 2026 at 11:59 PM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
janeijking.com
This looks great 👇 #HistIR
January 14, 2026 at 9:09 AM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
szarejko.bsky.social
The International History and Politics Section of @apsa.bsky.social is accepting nominations for the Jervis-Schroeder Best Book Award and the Outstanding Article Award. Nominations are due by January 31, 2026. More information here: connect.apsanet.org/s34/nominati...
November 18, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
anildash.com
The Iron Front flag, but it’s wine bottles
January 12, 2026 at 12:05 AM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
sarageorgini.bsky.social
🗃️ Psst, friends at #AHA26 #MLA26 and beyond, please share word of the @susih.bsky.social Community Scholars Program, which unlocks library resources for 3 years (onsite + remote) for #contingent faculty & historians at work beyond the traditional academy, due 2/1 s-usih.org/2025/12/cfp-...
CFP: USIH-IU Community Scholars Program | Society for US Intellectual History
In partnership with the Institute for American Thought at Indiana University, the Society for U.S. Intellectual History is pleased to announce the continuation of a new opportunity to support continge...
s-usih.org
January 11, 2026 at 4:56 PM
lefteleven.bsky.social
Hmm. I guess that might be a bit like revolution emerging from (or moving into) gangs of one sort or another. I’d been thinking chiefly of rich world states where hooliganism is a kind of déclassé hobby. In any case, I’m going to hope you’re right.
January 10, 2026 at 6:33 AM
lefteleven.bsky.social
That is, not just America
January 10, 2026 at 6:23 AM
lefteleven.bsky.social
Eyeballing it, there might be a negative correlation between countries with football hooliganism and revolutionary traditions.
merovingians.bsky.social the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 25d
'the modern left's aesthetics of revolution are better represented by the immediate aftermath of a Philadelphia Eagles Superbowl victory than any actual incidence of popular revolt in our history' is one of those things that sounds insane but is hard to argue with.
mkglimpse.bsky.social mkglimpse.bsky.social @mkglimpse.bsky.social · 25d
(those actions also won’t hit the same in the U.S. because they‘re mostly associated with winning/losing sports. Seriously, I’m in Philly, would anyone hear about burning cars or tires in Philly and think “Revolution” rather than “Go Birds”) (I’m not even being flippant—I think it’s an actual issue)
January 10, 2026 at 6:22 AM
lefteleven.bsky.social
Ok, I’m watching Pluribus. It’s fine, but why does Apple keep making shows about philosophy of mind?
January 7, 2026 at 9:58 AM
lefteleven.bsky.social
The one part of the text that has unquestionably aged well
January 7, 2026 at 5:01 AM
lefteleven.bsky.social
I never tire of this
The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and ide-alism, will be replaced by economic calcula-tion, the endless solving of technical prob-lems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer de-mands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again.
January 7, 2026 at 4:48 AM
lefteleven.bsky.social
A case of that odd phenomenon, a negative review that (perhaps despite itself) manages to make the reviewed work sound pretty good.
britjaesth.bsky.social British Journal of Aesthetics @britjaesth.bsky.social · Jan 4
A vindication of literary studies? Nat Hansen reviews Jonathan Kramnick's Criticism and Truth in our latest issue. doi.org/10.1093/aest... #philsky
In Mike Judge’s 1999 film Office Space, two consultants, Bob and Bob, are interviewing office workers […] to determine who should be fired. They bring in a middle manager, Tom, and ask him to explain his role. After Tom gives an unconvincing account […], one of the Bobs asks: ‘What would you say… you do here?’. […] In this short book, Jonathan Kramnick offers a defence of the methods and value of his corner of the humanities—literary studies—but his defence sounds a lot like Tom in front of the Bobs. - Nat Hansen, Review of Jonathan Kramnick’s Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies
January 4, 2026 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
thebeaverton.com
Mark Carney turns off geolocation on phone just in case
Mark Carney turns off geolocation on phone just in case
OTTAWA - This morning, in an unscheduled press statement, the Prime Minister's Office has said that Prime Minister Mark Carney has turned off geolocation services for all his electronic devices "for n...
www.thebeaverton.com
January 3, 2026 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
luinoristoutshield.bsky.social
Jesus Christ @lukeoneil47.bsky.social
December 22, 2025 at 4:42 AM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
lefteleven.bsky.social
This, with @claroche.bsky.social in @ejir.bsky.social, was the most fun I’ve had writing a paper in years. A quick thread on what we do here. This paper argues IR theories tell stories, and stories get their meaning from their particular endings. /1
ejir.bsky.social EJIR @ejir.bsky.social · Dec 17
Stories derive much of their meaning from how they end. Joseph MacKay and Christoph LaRoche‘s article in EJIR asks how endings shape the historical narratives at the heart of IR theories. Read the full paper here: t1p.de/voqhz

@lefteleven.bsky.social @claroche.bsky.social
December 17, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Reposted by Joseph MacKay
piroskadora.bsky.social
My IR department at the CEU in Vienna, Austria is hiring a security scholar. I am happy to answer questions.

careers.ceu.edu/job/Vienna-A...
Assistant Professor (f/m/d)
Assistant Professor (f/m/d)
careers.ceu.edu
December 17, 2025 at 6:07 PM
lefteleven.bsky.social
Thanks!
December 18, 2025 at 4:03 AM