Description
This panel articulates debates on militarism and militarization as (re)imagined through non-hegemonic theoretical perspectives and experiences. In recent decades, Critical Military Studies (CMS) has provided thoughtful alternative insights into these phenomena. However, much of this scholarship remains anchored in experiences and epistemologies situated in the Global North. Furthermore, by adopting a critical stance on the civilian-military divide, dominant CMS approaches often downplay the power exercised by military institutions diminishing the agency of military figures. The papers in this panel adopt perspectives “from the margins” to establish a critical dialogue with hegemonic CMS approaches. As a starting initiative, it gathers mainly Brazilian perspectives that situate the centrality of militarism and militarization in the constitution of social and political life, and therefore highlight recent phenomena such as far-right politics not as exceptional but deeply embedded in historical development. Specifically, they examine diverse sites of militarism (re)production, repositioning both the role of military institutions and the mechanisms through which military authority is constituted and (re)produced as central to critique. Drawing on a range of thematic, epistemic, and methodological frameworks, these contributions collectively ask how non-hegemonic perspectives can reconstruct and critically contest dominant understandings of militarism and militarization, re-centering the military as agents and ultimate perpetrators in these processes. The panel also aims to advance reflections on resistance and foster critical engagements that move beyond Northern-centered political imaginaries and the immanent martial logics that sustain them.
