Resilience and the Rise of Speculative Humanitarianism: Thinking Difference through the Syrian Refugee Crisis

Abstract

This article explores the nature of resilience-informed international interventions today by thinking about ‘difference’. Up to the 1990s, international interventions were often characterised by a patronising tone in which backward others needed help to develop. Some 20 years later, key lessons learned were that others were so fundamentally different that efforts to assist them invariably failed. This article argues that contemporary approaches seeking to foster resilience are simultaneously propelled by both approaches. They are thus underpinned by two conflicting understandings of difference: the other that is in need and the other that cannot be attended. Even more, we contend that this contradiction is put to productive use in resilience-building: protracted crises today demand practitioners to ‘be there’, engaged permanently, to speculate, experiment, and affirm radical uncertainty. In order to analyse the novel features of resilience, we draw on Graham Harman’s speculative realism and look at policy programming of the Syrian refugee crisis.