THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES ST. AUGUSTINE FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE GOVT 2060 International Relations: Theories and Approaches Fall 2017 Topic 10 Postmodernism This is the latest theoretical perspective of International Relations theory (Der Derian & Shapiro 1989). It emerges from the poststructuralist and deconstructionist schools of thought, emphasizes linguistic analyses of knowledge and power and underscores the central importance of identity as a major principle in the globalization and localization of knowledge and power struggles and truth claims. Generally adhering to radical relativism, postmodernism interprets contemporary International Relations as a process of negotiation of knowledge, power and identity through military, economic and cultural arsenals of influence. 1/28
ab1234.yolasite.com 2/28
Readings: 1. Der Derian, James and Michael Shapiro. International/Intertextual Relations: postmodern readings of World Politics. New York: Lexington 1989. 2. Jarvis, Darryl S.L. Toward an Understanding of the Third Debate: International Relations in the New Millennium, Praeger/Greenwood, 2002. 3. Taliaferro, Jeffrey W. International Relations and the Challenge of Postmodernism: Defending the Discipline by D. S. L. Jarvis. The American Political Science Review, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Mar., 2001). pp. 259-260 JSTOR 4. Baylis and Smith, pp.238-242. 5. Burchill and Linklater, Chapter 7 6. Dougherty & Pfaltzgraff. pp162-163 (4 th ed.) 7. Steans and Pettiford, Chapter 5. At the Caspian Sea University: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0b1_z5acd6mbpngjdsujlx2t4zg8?usp=sharing John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens, The Globalization of World Politics: an Introduction to International Relations. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2008 (4th edition), Ch. 10 excerpt 'Post-modernism', pp. 185-187. Robert Jackson and Georg Sørensen, Introduction to International Relations. Theories and Approaches, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013 (5th edition), Ch. 9 excerpt 'Postmodernism.' P. Viotti and M. Kauppi, International Relations Theory: Realism, Pluralism, Globalism, and Beyond. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2012 (5th edition), Ch. 7 excerpt 'Postmodernism,' pp. 333-338. 3/28
Course content The History and Evolution of the International System Levels of Analysis and Foreign Policy MAINSTREAM APPROACHES Liberalism Realism Neorealism Neoliberalism POSITIVIST THEORIES STRUCTURALIST APPROACHES Classical Marxism Dependency Theory Structural Imperialism Worlds System Theory International Society Theory (The English School) POST-POSITIVIST THEORIES Constructivism Postmodernism Critical Theory Feminism Environmental theories 4/28
Postmodernism (has replaced Marxism as the most radical IR theory) Knowledge has no basis. - all claims are rhetorical - all foundations of knowledge are arbitrary Postmodernists: - draw our attention to the ways in which knowledge and power are inextricably connected in the theory and practice of contemporary international relations - present themselves as self-imposed exiles, on the margins of the academic discipline, probing its conditions of possibility and the limits to its authoritative knowledge claims. The modern distinction between theory and practice replaced by discourse = a term which blurs the dichotomy between reality and its textual representation. 5/28
Max Weber (1864-1920) R.B.J. Walker (inspired by Max Weber): Robert B. J. Walker the iron cage of modernity limits our ability to imagine the political possibilities of radical change in the study of international relations. (modernity objective knowledge of social phenomena) 6/28
"incredulity toward metanarratives" metanarrative = a "big story" = a term developed by Jean-François Lyotard to mean a theory that tries to give a totalizing, comprehensive account to various historical events, experiences, and social, cultural phenomena based upon the appeal to universal truth or universal values. Examples: progress, neo-realism, Marxism (see http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/met anarrative) "incredulity toward metanarratives" Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) "evidence", "truth" = meaningless all theories and methodologies = rejected concerned with deconstructing and distrusting any account of human life that claims to have direct access to the truth 7/28
Forerunners Friedrich Nietzsche French post-structuralist philosophers (see http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/post-structuralism): Michel Foucault - genealogy Jacques Derrida - deconstruction Jean Baudrillard - "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place" Jean-François Lyotard - incredulity toward metanarratives Based on the science of language Main authors Richard Ashley Robert B. J. Walker James Der Derian Michael Shapiro First major work James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro, International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (1989) 8/28
James Der Derian Michael Shapiro Key feature Main ideas Claims that knowledge has no basis. Incredulity toward metanarratives (such as IR theories). Denies that a text has an objective meaning. Assigning meanings is an arbitrary and oppressive act of power. Truth = the privileged view of those in power. Power requires knowledge and knowledge relies on and reinforces existing power relations There is no such thing as truth existing outside of power 9/28
Essential = DISCOURSE (or "text"): - it does not describe human relations; it CONSTRUCTS them. Political processes = contests over the alternative understandings immanent in representational practices + There is no objective language by which knowledge can be transmitted The postmodernists' task: to UNMASK power relations hidden within text through the DECONSTRUCTION of texts. E.g. - international anarchy is not a real threat. It is a justification to promote the discourse of fear and legitimate the protective state. IR vision States form hierarchies: privileged states marginalized the other ones. THERE IS NO THEORY. Postmodernist interpretations are as untrue as any other ones. Postmodernism = rooted in epistemology: what can we know? challenge the premise that the social world constitutes an objective, knowable reality amenable to systematic description and analysis Rejects all theories Does not propose an alternative theory: a "postmodernist" theory would be as biased as the other ones 10/28
Postmodernism = criticism fully-fledged theory Objective: to force the IR field to consider the biases within its works ("making use of an insurrectional textuality") REALITY AND TRUTH postmodernists deny that an absolute reality exists in the social world no such thing as a "real world" in the sense of a reality that is not interpreted by us the world is filled with varying realities; none can be considered more "true" then any other we exist in a world of multiple realities postmodernists do not argue that there is no truth but rather that truth is relative to a person's social-historical situation postmodernists view the world as a series of texts. The search for reality has become a search for a conglomeration of multiple stories as opposed to the search for one "true" story 11/28
POWER AND KNOWLEDGE Forerunner - Michel Foucault rejects the notion that knowledge is immune from the workings of power: Power produces knowledge Power requires knowledge and knowledge relies on and reinforces existing power relations There is no such thing as truth existing outside of power ("How can History have a truth if truth has a history?") Truth is not external to social settings but is part of them E.g. Cynthia Weber (1995), Jens Bartelson (1995): Reject the concept of sovereignty as fixed see it as historically variable (changes with time) GENEALOGY Forerunner - Michel Foucault (inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche): 12/28
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Michel Foucault (1926-1984) (http://thenewhydra.blogspot.com/2007/04/foucault-and-genealogy.html) Genealogy appears as an alternative to an historical analysis. Foucault wants to show that historians often burden themselves with a search for origins that do not exist. Why reject the concept of an origin? Because the origin is commonly understood as being the site of truth. The genealogy rejects using history as a search for origin as a means of recovering truth; instead it challenges the very idea of cause and effect in history. "In appearance, or rather, according to the mask it bears, historical consciousness is neutral, devoid of passions, and committed solely to truth. But if 13/28
it examines itself and if, more generally, it interrogates the various forms of scientific consciousnesses in its history, it finds that all these forms and transformations are aspects of the will to knowledge: instinct, passion, the inquisitor s devotion, cruel subtlety, and malice". This insight, that even historical inquiry that purports to be objective is subject to other elemental processes such as the will to knowledge, alerts the reader that what is at stake in this power inquiry is more than just cause and effect. Example: Many dictatorships legitimize themselves on the basis of a revolution. If it did not exist, it is invented. Official propaganda and history manuals present the coup d'état as revolution, the group or party that took power is presented as revolutionary etc. North Korean communists and the Kim familiy were put in power through military occupation by Stalin 70 years ago. They control a totalitarian, conservative and oppressive regime identical to that of the 1950s. Yet, like all communist regimes, they present themselves as revolutionaries and their regime as created by a great revolution. During the anti-communist revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, communist dictators claimed that they were revolutionaries and accused people rebeling against them of being counter-revolutinaries. Genealogy deals with precisely the same substrata of knowledge and culture as archaeology, but Foucault describes it as a level where the grounds of the true and the false come to be distinguished via mechanisms of power. Richard Ashley (1987): 14/28
There is no such thing as truth, only regimes of truth that reflect the ways in which, through history, both power and truth develop together in a mutually sustaining relationship Statements about the world are only true within specific discourses Postmodernism = concerned with how some discourses and therefore some truths dominate others Metanarratives imply that there are conditions for establishing the truth or falsity of knowledge claims that are not the product of any discourse, and therefore not the products of power postmodernists reject metanarratives TEXTUAL STRATEGIES The way in which the social world is constructed is textual ("text" or "discourse" or "institution") Forerunner - Jacques Derrida (1976): the world is constituted like a text in the sense that interpreting the world reflects the concepts and structures of language - "the textual interplay at work" 15/28
Textual interplays can be deconstructed in two ways: - Deconstruction - Double Reading Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) 1. DECONSTRUCTION seemingly stable and natural concepts and relations within language are in fact artificial constructs, arranged hierarchically. One of the two terms in any opposition is privileged over the other as it supposedly connotes a presence, propriety, fullness, purity, or identity which the other lacks (e.g. sovereignty as opposed to anarchy, First World as opposed to Third World). 16/28
Deconstruction showing how all theories and discourses rely on artificial hierarchies produced by the use of seemingly objective and natural opposition in language (rich/poor, good/bad, powerful/powerless, right/wrong). e.g. 'anarchy' is perceived as negative, which makes it inferior to 'sovereignty'. There is no objective language by which knowledge can be transmitted. The choice of language unjustifiably grants privileged positions to one perspective or another. There is no pure stability in the structure of the opposition, only more or less successful stabilizations. The task of the observer is to deconstruct "texts" (or "discourses" or "institutions"): - each text creates a unique "reading" of the matter under consideration - none can ultimately be deemed superior to any other - there are no guidelines for choosing among them 2. DOUBLE READING = showing how stabilizations operate by subjecting the text to two readings: 17/28
First reading = a repetition of the dominant reading to show how it achieves its coherence a commentary of the dominant interpretation which demonstrates how a text achieves the stability-effect recounts the dominant story by - building on the same foundational assumptions - repeating conventional steps in the argument demonstrates how the text appears coherent and consistent with itself shows how the identity of a text (or discourse or institution) is put together or constituted Second reading = points to internal tensions within a text that result from the use of seemingly natural stabilizations show that there is always more than one or correct reading of a text unsettle or deconstruct the text by applying pressure to points on instability the text is never at one with itself, also carries within it elements of tension and crisis expose the internal tensions and how they are incompletely covered over or expelled Richard Ashley a double reading of the concept of anarchy see 'Ashley s double reading of the anarchy problematique' in Scott Burchill et al, Theories of International Relations. 3rd Edition. Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2005. Ch 7 Postmodernism (Richard Devetak), pp. 161-187 (pp.170-171): 18/28
Ashley s double reading of the anarchy problematique Richard Ashley s double reading of the anarchy problematique is one of the earliest and most important deconstructions in the study of international relations. His main target is the conception of anarchy and the theoretical and practical effects. The anarchy problematique is the name Ashley gives to the defining moment of most inquiries in International Relations. It is exemplified by Oye s (1985: 1) assertion that: Nations dwell in perpetual anarchy, for no central authority imposes limits on the pursuit of sovereign interests. Most importantly, the anarchy problematique deduces from the absence of central, global authority, not just an empty concept of anarchy, but a description of international relations as power politics, characterised by self-interest, raison d état, the routine resort to force, and so on. The main brunt of Ashley s analysis is to problematize this deduction of power politics from the lack of central rule. Ashley s many analyses of the anarchy problematique can be understood in terms of double reading. The first reading assembles the constitutive features, or hard core of the anarchy problematique, while the second reading disassembles the constitutive elements of the anarchy problematique, showing how it rests on a series of questionable theoretical suppositions or exclusions. In the first reading, Ashley outlines the anarchy problematique in conventional terms. He describes not just the absence of any overarching authority, but the presence of a multiplicity of states in the international system, none of which can lay down the law to the individual states. Further, the states which comprise this system have their own identifiable interests, capabilities, resources and territory. The second reading questions the 19/28
self-evidence of international relations as an anarchical realm of power politics. The initial target in this double reading is the opposition between sovereignty and anarchy, where sovereignty is valorized as a regulative ideal, and anarchy is regarded as the absence or negation of sovereignty. Anarchy takes on meaning only as the antithesis of sovereignty. Moreover, sovereignty and anarchy are taken to be mutually exclusive and mutually exhaustive. Ashley demonstrates, however, that the anarchy problematique works only by making certain assumptions regarding sovereign states. If the dichotomy between sovereignty and anarchy is to be tenable at all, then inside the sovereign state must be found a domestic realm of identity, homogeneity, order and progress guaranteed by legitimate force; and outside must lie an anarchical realm of difference, heterogeneity, disorder and threat, recurrence and repetition. But to represent sovereignty and anarchy in this way (that is, as mutually exclusive and exhaustive), depends on converting differences within sovereign states into differences between sovereign states (Ashley 1988: 257). Sovereign states must expunge any traces of anarchy that reside within them in order to make good the distinction between sovereignty and anarchy. Internal dissent and what Ashley (1987, 1989b) calls transversal struggles which cast doubt over the idea of a clearly identifiable and demarcated sovereign identity must be repressed or denied to make the anarchy problematique meaningful. In particular, the opposition between sovereignty and anarchy rests on the possibility of determining a well-bounded sovereign entity possessing its own internal hegemonic centre of decision-making capable of reconciling internal conflicts and capable, therefore, of projecting a singular presence (Ashley 1988: 245). The general effect of the anarchy problematique is to confirm the opposition 20/28
between sovereignty and anarchy as mutually exclusive and exhaustive. This has two particular effects: (1) to represent a domestic domain of sovereignty as a stable, legitimate foundation of modern political community, and (2) to represent the domain beyond sovereignty as dangerous and anarchical. These effects depend on what Ashley (1988: 256) calls a double exclusion. They are possible only if, on the one hand, a single representation of sovereign identity can be imposed and, on the other hand, if this representation can be made to appear natural and indisputable. The double reading problematizes the anarchy problematique by posing two questions: first, what happens to the anarchy problematique if it is not so clear that fully present and completed sovereign states are ontologically primary or unitary? And, secondly, what happens to the anarchy problematique if the lack of central global rule is not overwritten with assumptions about power politics? 21/28
AN EXAMPLE OF POSTMODERNIST ANALYSIS The construction of social reality as seen by Jean Baudrillard (1991) "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place" Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991) 22/28
Described the first Gulf War (a 1991 US-led military campaign to free Kuwait, which had been occupied some months earlier by Saddam Hussein's Iraq) as the inverse of the Clausewitzian formula: it was not "the continuation of politics by other means", but "the continuation of the absence of politics by other means": - Saddam Hussein was not fighting the Allied Forces, but using the lives of his soldiers as a form of sacrifice to preserve his power. - The Allied Forces fighting the Iraqi military were merely dropping 10,000 tonnes of bombs daily, as if proving to themselves that there was an enemy to fight. - So, too, were the Western media complicit, presenting the war in real time, by recycling images of war to propagate the notion that the US coalition and the Iraqi government were actually fighting, but such was not the case. - Saddam Hussein did not use his military capacity (the Iraqi Air Force). - His politico-military power was not weakened, since he suppressed internal uprisings after the war. Overall: - little had changed politically in Iraq, - Saddam remained undefeated, - the "victors" were not victorious. - Therefore, there was no war; the Gulf War did not occur. In their analysis of wars, postmodernists deconstruct the texts which present them in order to unmask the relations of power that imposed a certain vision. Real security = resisting dominant discourses, which often are dangerous. 23/28
IDENTITY = not something someone has = a position that one is constructed as having subjectivities or subject positions Individuals and institutions might identify with the positions they are given by others to a greater or lesser extent e.g. "Muslim" in Western Europe some subject positions provide a superior position provides the subject with more room for agency Who can speak within a discourse? How can the subject speak? attention to those who - can not speak - can speak only with limited authority and agency silences and marginalization produced by the reigning constitution of subjectivity e.g. Palestine, non-state actors, stateless individuals 24/28
GLOBALIZATION - Increasingly difficult to convince ourselves that one truth exists - Every person views a situation differently - People les willing to claim their realities as the only correct one - Rise of mass communication and culture Impacted on the textualizing of the world - no escape from representation Makes it difficult to distinguish between reality and text - Deterioration of traditional locations of power fostered postmodern thought 25/28
26/28
CRITICISMS Neo-Realism + Neo-Liberalism Deconstructivism = Postmodernism - too theoretical and not enough concerned with the real world - unwarranted extension of approaches appropriate for literature to fields of human practice more constrained by an objective reality - underestimation of material constraints 27/28
- inconsistency of making its own claims - exceedingly disparate - not a coherent theory - lack of unity makes it a weak theory - concentrates on specialized issues of IR - amoral rejection of any grounds for emancipatory action - insensitivity to the importance of values and consensus - intolerance of theoretical diversity - postmodernism can deteriorate into nihilism - negativism for its won sake 28/28