The Duck of Minerva

Dillon Tatum

Dillon Tatum is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Geography at Francis Marion University. His research and teaching focuses are at the intersection of international relations and political theory—with a specific interest in the international liberalism, military intervention, and global ethics. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled Liberalism and Transformation: The Politics of Violence in World Politics, which is a critical history of international liberalism’s relationship with military intervention from the nineteenth century to present. He can be found on twitter at: @dstonetatum

Recent Posts

America’s Gun Crisis and the Politics of Securitization

America’s Gun Crisis and the Politics of Securitization

by Dillon Tatum | 6 November, 2017 | ,

It is not easy waking up in America these days. Sunday morning I woke up from a lazy weekend morning to see that a shooter had committed mass murder at a church in Sutherland Springs, TX. The shooter killed 26 people, including several children; the youngest victim was just fourteen months old (for latest updates, see here). Besides my outrage as a citizen, as a social scientist I want to understand how we can explain why gun violence in the United States is not being taken as seriously as it should by both politicians and the broader public. Here are some stats on the scope of the problem...

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Liberal World Order, Redux

Liberal World Order, Redux

by Dillon Tatum | 27 October, 2017 | , ,

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece for Duck regarding “declinist” arguments about liberal world order under Trump. I don’t think these arguments are going away, and in fact—just this week—they are in the news, and on our blog/twitter feeds (including a great piece posted just last week here on Duck). I want to reiterate, and elaborate on some earlier points I have raised about these kinds of arguments. In the first place, they deserve reiterating and elaborating. In the second place, I just got back earlier this week from an illuminating conference at University College Dublin called “John...

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Writing in Exile: A Belated Birthday Card

Writing in Exile: A Belated Birthday Card

by Dillon Tatum | 16 October, 2017 | ,

“In the first place, we don’t like to be called ‘refugees’.” ~Hannah Arendt This past weekend was a weekend full of birthdays. Hannah Arendt’s 111th birthday fell on Saturday (October 14th), and—in an interesting coincidence—Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche share a birthday (October 15th). I teach and write about Foucault and Arendt, and there is a Nietzschean spirit in both, though Arendt’s engagement with his work ended abruptly with her death. In honor of all three, I want to make some notes—sketches really—of what it means to write in exile, and, by extension, to teach in exile. I...

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Teaching about Death and Violence: Thoughts from a Professor Who Calls Nevada Home

Teaching about Death and Violence: Thoughts from a Professor Who Calls Nevada Home

by Dillon Tatum | 4 October, 2017 | ,

After the horrific attack in Las Vegas on Sunday, 1 October, the question of knowledge should be key to our understanding of this event. What do we know? What can we recall? The first thing that comes to mind is likely numbers, statistics, values attributed to life. We know now that the death toll is at 59. The injured number 527. The killer had 18 guns at his home. He shot from the 32nd floor at a rate of 400-800 rounds per minute (6-13 rounds per second). We know numbers. Surely, this quantification of death gives us important information, but what does it do in regards to the way we...

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Decolonizing IR: A Response to Gilley

Decolonizing IR: A Response to Gilley

by Dillon Tatum | 18 September, 2017 | ,

The past week has seen a boiling-over of controversy regarding a publication by Bruce Gilley entitled “The Case for Colonialism,” appearing in the journal Third World Quarterly, leading some to even begin petitions to the journal to retract. As of the writing of this post, the journal has not retracted the article. In this post, I would like to reflect on this piece as both a part of a scholarly conversation: showing how its claims are the result of poor methodology, a bad reading of the existing literature on colonialism in political science and other fields, and a general glossing-over of...

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Five Things Everyone Should Know about Totalitarianism

by Dillon Tatum | 6 September, 2017 | ,

It seems that “totalitarianism” is everywhere these days. I suppose that is the point of totalitarianism. Nonetheless, the buzzword has seen a remarkable resurgence in popular usage and misusage in the context of domestic and international politics. The number of articles comparing Trump to a totalitarian ruler are not easily countable (though here and here are some examples). Some, have attributed current US foreign policy issues related to North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons as relating to a battle against a totalitarian regime. And others—notably from the conservative side of the...

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