Dr Flavia Lucenti on "Resentful Narratives: China, Russia and the Reimaginations of International Order"
About the Talk
This talk draws on Dr Lucenti's forthcoming book, Resentful Narratives: China, Russia and the Reimaginations of International Order, which examines the resentment both China and Russia have expressed toward the Liberal International Order (LIO). The book鈥檚 central premise is that, while the two countries are studied as distinct cases, both have long sought recognition within the LIO yet perceived themselves as excluded from it. In this presentation, Dr Lucenti will focus on the case of China and how its perception of exclusion from the dominant social group 鈥� consisting mainly of Western or pro-Western powers 鈥� has fuelled a feeling of deep-seated resentment. Exclusion is therefore a key condition for resentment. Understanding the roots and cognitive dynamics associated with resentment, how they are intertwined with issues of identity, and how they are discursively expressed is at the core of this book鈥檚 research agenda.
In doing so, the book brings together scholarship on identity, status and emotion from IR theory and social psychology. This multidisciplinary approach helps to unpack why and how resentment is fuelled, in response to which events, against whom and with which results. It also shows that resentment can lead to different outcomes, such as fuelling assertive or even aggressive actions that reduce a state鈥檚 willingness to play by rules, but also to more constructive goals. In China鈥檚 case, this is evident in its efforts to build an alternative international order that ensures its inclusion. The book also investigates how resentment is expressed in China鈥檚 official discourses, through both speech acts and visual artefacts. In this respect, it is not important whether the exclusion that China complains about is objectively real, but rather why it triggers the belief that China is marginalised within the LIO, generating resentment. In this way, the book presents an understanding of IR that strikes a balance between raw power politics and cognitive constructions.
Event Details
14 of May 2026
11.15-12.30
FAB 5.01 and online on MS Teams
About the Speaker
Dr Flavia LUCENTI is a postdoctoral research fellow and an adjunct professor at LUISS University, Department of Political Science. Previously, she worked as a research assistant at the University of Oxford and as a postdoctoral research fellow and an adjunct professor at the University of Bologna. She was a visiting PhD candidate at the Hong Kong University, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and the European University Institute. She co-edited, with Cecilia Ducci, Carmen Wunderlich and Jeffrey Lantis, Contestation in Prism. The Evolution of Norms and Norm Clusters in Contemporary Global Politics (Cham: Springer, 2025).