Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Charlotte Epstein. It is the ninth installment in our “End of IR Theory” companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to Epstein’s article (PDF). A response, authored by Vivienne Jabri, will appear at 10am Eastern.
Other entries in the symposium–when available–may be reached via the “EJIR Special Issue Symposium” tag.
Being invited by the editors of EJIR to engage with the question of whether International Relations (IR) theory has reached is end(s) was, for me, the opportunity to try to take stock of some of the big picture questions that have long concerned our discipline. The first of these is: what exactly is IR’s world? Ours is one of the youngest disciplines in the history of what has classically been called ‘the human sciences’. Yet what we see today is also a discipline that is much surer of itself than it has ever been, because it is surer of what constitutes its intellectual space — something it owes undoubtedly to theory. IR’s owl has well and truly taken off.
This is signalled by the shift in the word ‘international’ from an adjective to a noun, the international, which is to say, a concept, albeit (and indeed, hopefully, forever) a contested one. Systemic theorising, exemplified by Kenneth Waltz, did much to staking out the space of the international and posit IR as a discrete theoretical endeavour. Recast within a broader history of the human science, Waltz’s efforts are comparable to those of Structuralists, such as Claude Levi-strauss (whom Waltz explicitely cites), who sought to uncover the universal laws of human nature that transcended particular cultures.
In this sense, then, it seemed to me fruitful to bring to bear upon the discipline’s trajectory Jacques Derrida’s founding engagement with Structuralist thought in his key 1966 Baltimore lecture ‘Structure, Sign and Play‘; the seminal moment that triggered the moving beyond, the ‘post’ of post-structuralism. Arguably the particular theoretical blossoming of the late 1980s-early 1990s in IR offered a similar opening; although whether it was borne out is precisely something I question in this piece.The second of these big picture questions concerns the nature of IR’s world: given or constructed? On this question, then, the EJIR’s invitation was the chance to work through my disappointment with constructivism’s failure to live up to its promise to theorise the contingency, or constructed-ness, of IR’s world. Indeed, that international politics is socially constructed, rather than given by nature or God(s), surely means that the form of necessity at work here, to dwell with this category (universality), requires finding substantially different terms with which to appraise it than those that have been used to theorise the universal laws of nature.
Yet because it has shied away from exploring these genuinely different, social rather than natural, plural, particular, and localised forms of necessity, constructivism always seems to fall back onto the naturalist fallacy, as Charles Taylor has called it. It seems to me, moreover, that the duty to resist the temptation of universalism is especially incumbent upon us, precisely because the disciplinary space we operate in, the international, is the one that comes closest to what might look like the space of universality. Ultimately constructivism seems to pining after that ever elusive universal human nature, the absent centre that also haunted French structuralist thought. The problem, to be clear, are not structures per se, but rather the reluctance to move beyond a naturalist model that appraises them as centred and stable. The Eiffel tower is a structure (and arguably not much more), yet, as anyone standing underneath it experiences, it is hollow, and it constantly sways in the wind. Hence the need for a post-structuralist moment, one which genuinely marks the break with the naturalist model as a basis for theorising the social, remains just as intact today.
Last but not least, the editor’s invitation opportunity to explore the extraordinary fertility afforded by concept of gender for drawing out these tensions and dialectical movements around universality and human nature as they regularly resurface in social thought. Paralleling Derrida’s, Judith Butler’s engagement with feminist structuralism, which took shape around the same time as IR constructivist theorising, is the pivot upon which hinges the dialectical movement beyond (the ‘post’).
I realise this does not actually say what I have done in the piece. I hope that it has piqued your curiosity; a manner of what Charles Baudelaire called ‘une invitation au lecteur’. So how the heck did I go about my business? I’ll let the abstract say a bit more:
In this contribution I engage with the question of the end of theory from a poststructuralist perspective. I begin by revisiting the making of IR as a discrete theoretical endeavour from Waltz to Wendt, around, respectively, the efforts to unearth the structures of international politics that carved out the international as a distinct site of political analysis (Waltz, 1979), and the appraisal of these structures as social structures (Wendt, 1999). I then revisit the origins of poststructuralism via the works of Jacques Derrida (1966) and Judith Butler (1990), in order to bring its founding moves to bear directly on IR constructivism. Engaging with constructivism’s founding fathers, Nicholas Onuf, Alexander Wendt and Friedrich Kratochwil, I show that the search for unconstructed universals, grounded in an innate ‘human nature’, persistently haunts IR constructivism; even when it foregrounds language as the medium of social construction, and notably when it engages the question of gender. Just as language provided the original site for orchestrating the ‘moving beyond’ (the ‘post’ of poststructuralism) fixed, naturalized structures, I argue that a return to language holds the promise of renewal, and of constructivism’s being able to fulfill its founding promise to theorize constitutivity and the constructed-ness of IR’s world.
This piece illustrates:
(a) that the well of Left Bank-ism or post-ism has run dry (or as Chris Brown said has not advanced). This piece presumes that a dispute between two factions of Parisian intellectuals half a century ago is the lodestone for understanding human nature. The heavy Import agencies from the Left Bank have clearly run out of new product.
(b) that IR really does need to pay a lot more attention to genetics and biology. Contra this piece’s evidence-free assertions, there are a lot of human universals (See eg Donald Brown, Human Universals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Universals). IR needs rethink the blank slatism, DNA-blindness, and human nature denialism that is so prevalent.
1. That’s a *terrible* (and broken) link for the claim you want to make. With so much good stuff on neuroplasticity, behavioral genetics, and other stuff that has moved well beyond the “blank slate” vs. “innate dispositions” debate, I’m puzzled why you’d choose that.
2. I think that you’ve misunderstood Chris Brown’s argument about post-prefixed IR theory.
Link fixed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Universals
1. Why is it *terrible*? I chose it because the piece above wants to deny that there any human universals. Seems a reasonable choice for the purpose. I did not, and do not, deny neuroplasticity etc.
2. How misunderstood? Chris said latepost-ism hadn’t advanced. The above piece illustrates that quite well.
This isn’t my fight, so my intervention may be orthogonal.
1. In part, I’d sat that there’s a bit of a mismatch between a list of common human practices like “hairstyling” and “aesthetics” and the stakes of this particular debate about searching for *a* human universal. Anyway, I suppose I’m more reacting to the fact that your comments here have repeatedly invoked “blank slatism,” a particularly unhelpful caricature that has little to do with the state of the debate over social construction.
2. Chris is calling for more problem-solving engagement by post-prefixed theorists, which suggests the problem isn’t the “well,” but how people are using the water.
The term blank slatism is admittedly polemical but I do not think it a caricature. I think it helpfully captures part of the thinking in this piece and more broadly. As for the “state of the debate” – it largely marginalizes Darwinism. Note the complete absence of it in this forum. (Same with the “state of the debate” in every IR Theory textbook I have seen: Darwin is marginalized.)
What is this thing you call “Darwinism”? I associate the term with people who mount spurious attacks on evolutionary theory.
Carr??
Fair enough. Indeed, a quick search reveals that this association is a complete mental fabrication on my part. :-)
It goes by different names in different areas: literary Darwinism, evolutionary economics, genopolitics, evopsych, and so on.
To get some sense of the breadth try this
https://www.thisviewoflife.com/index.php
In IR I would name Azar Gat as one leading exponent. See his War in Human Civ and his new book Nations.
On the one hand, Darwinian thought is pretty well “baked in” viz. a lot of contemporary work. On the other hand, if you mean specific *kinds* of evolutionary psychology, then my concern is a lack of quality control when it comes to what makes it into IR–compounded by half-baked applications.
But there’s very interesting work on (1) the genetic basis of inputs that we care about (risk aversion, bellicosity), (2) biological dispositions that impact outcomes, e.g., Marcus Holmes work, and (3) complex adaptive systems that applies evolutionary mechanisms at the social level.
I’ve only read Gat’s short policy pieces, so I can’t comment on his work.
Yes, a lot is half baked and low quality. But there’s an old rule that 70% of anything is trash – that includes Darwinian thought. The lesson is to focus on the good fraction.
Yes, there is interesting stuff done eg on risk-taking and overconfidence etc. But, it is still marginalized. Still not a recognized ism in the ism debates. Still not in the textbooks. Still (I’ll wager) not in the IR Theory course reading lists.
Are there any IR Theory course syllabi that include Darwinism (or the same thing under some other name) as one of the contenders in the battle of ideas?
I’m uncomfortable restricting “Darwinism” to, in essence, evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, and cognate pursuits. As I’ve suggested, evolutionary thought is already “baked in” to much international-relations theorizing.
Arguments about biological dispositions are, I believe, common in IR textbooks and syllabi. That work usually doesn’t make claims about the evolutionary origins of such behavior, as whether it was adaptive for our distant ancestors doesn’t have much implication for how it shapes international processes and outcomes today.
We agree on much. I am also uncomfortable with a restrictive view of Darwinism. I also agree that evo ideas have been incorporated into a bit of (not “much of”) IR. Arguments about biological dispositions and human nature go back to Aristotle so they are bound to pop up in textbooks and syllabi here and there.
But why are you so reluctant to accept that a bio or evo or Darwinian (call it what you will) approach be recognized as such: as an approach or way or thinking?
By your logic, there’s no need to recognize any approach or paradigm as such since bits and pieces of it are already “baked in”. Why bother to talk of social constructionism since it’s ideas are already “baked in”? Why even talk of realism or debate it as such since its ideas are already “baked in”?
I’m still unclear what the referent here is. What is the approach you refer to, and what would it entail that would provide distinctive insights from teaching theories of how biological dispositions shape world politics?
You know how the social constructionists don’t like to be reduced to “ideas matter” or how institutionalists dislike being boiled down to “institutions matter”? I don’t want to be reduced to “genes matter”.
Its hard to answer “what is Darwinism?” in a comment post.
How about this: my preferred versions says three things really matter: the deep history of genetic evolution matters, the history of cultural evolution matters, and the biographical history of individual variation matters.
Or how about this: Its the tradition of Aristotle, Hume, Smith, and Darwin namely naturalism, both normative and explanatory.
Other versions are more positivistic with genes as ultimate causes.
Another way of answering:
Craig Parsons in his useful book How to Map Arguments in Political Science distinguishes four types of explanation: structural, institutional, ideational, and biological. He makes a good case for evo as a distinctive explanatory approach.
https://www.oup.com/us/catalog/he/subject/PoliticalScience/DataAnalysisMethods/IntroductiontoMethods/?ci=9780199286683
By the way, the twice repeated question “What is this approach and what are its insights?”
Wasn’t this the initial response to the first attempts to get people to pay attention to social constructionism?: “What the hell is this thing social construction?”
Eventually it came to be accepted as a distinctive approach.
Your ‘preferred version’ is a pretty big tent, ISTM. B.F. Skinner, for ex, wd probably agree w all three of those statements about what matters, while adding a couple of others.
One thing that puzzles me a bit about Skinner, in addition to his treatment of thinking as “covert behavior” (see About Behaviorism), is that he appeals to evolutionary pressures and natural selection to explain why humans find or tend to find, eg, salt and sugar reinforcing, but there doesn’t seem to be an evolutionary reason why, eg, people find praise reinforcing. Though maybe there is and I’m not aware of it.
Sorry, this comment on a bit of a tangent. But so is this whole thread, arguably…
How exactly is Darwin meant to be used? I can imagine many ways in which Darwin/evolutionary biology could be claimed to be relevant to IR, however some of them I’d firmly reject.
I see little value in genetics as an explanatory resource for international politics. Humans are just too similar on a genetic or biological level and in IR we’re interested in differences, comparisons. Genes as explicators of complex social behaviour is a fantasy – and not a particularly wholesome one.
If what we’re meant to get from Darwin is some kind of explanation for why humans fight each other or cooperate, etc. then I don’t really see the point in that either. What does it add? Evolutionary psychology is mostly bogus and mostly just confirms common sense – or whatever you want it to, frankly.
“the deep history of genetic evolution matters, the history of cultural evolution matters, and the biographical history of individual variation matters.”
Genetic evolution matters in general but I don’t see why it matters especially to IR. ‘Cultural evolution’ – that’s just another phrase meaning ‘history.’ History is the study of human cultural evolution isn’t it? I’m not sure what ‘the biographical history of individual variation’ means.
I can see how one could specify a Darwinian theory of history inasmuch as it would focus on mutation, selection, propagation, etc. but that too is already covered within many social sciences/humanities in other ways.
Having said all of that, I’m a big fan of Darwin and his ideas shouldn’t be dismissed easily. In a sense we’re all Darwinian if we understand that simplicity can generate complexity, that mutation is creation, that there is no telos, that everything is natural, that humans are not a unique species, made in god’s image, etc. The philosophical implications of Darwinism are by no means universally accepted but they can hardly have failed to infiltrate the patterns of thought of any of us to some degree.
Also, while I can’t see how genes can explain much in IR they certainly make for a fascinating subject of study. The international nature of the science, the use of biological ideas in political ideologies, all kinds of sci-fi scenarios that are becoming not so fictional, the ways that biology actually contradicts racist, essentialist, chauvinist beliefs, etc.
How is Darwinism to be used? The short answer is in many ways, that’s why I prefer to think of evo-IR as a broad church not a pure sect.
One example is Ralph Pettman, “Biopolitics and International Values: Investigating Liberal Norms.” I mention this book because it is from all the way back in 1981. It seems to have sunk without a trace, says google scholar, confirming my claim that Darwinism has been thoroughly marginalized.
Dan above alluded to work on neuroscience (M Holmes), and overconfidence (DPP Johnston I suspect he had in mind). There’s more.
But what is lacking is a recognition of evo-IR as a distinctive, legitimate approach in the inter-theoretic debate.
Okay, so I suppose we can all agree that Darwinism in the broadest sense is part of the background assumptions that most of us hold and which explicitly or implicitly inform many forms of IR discourse – sometimes to a large degree. I also see no problem in accepting that it’s a distinct way of thinking and reasoning. Therefore, there’s no reason why it couldn’t potentially be ‘a distinctive, legitimate approach in the inter-theoretic debate’.
However, I’m unconvinced that it is, at present. A few scattered texts over the years doesn’t really constitute a paradigm. Maybe I’m ignorant of a large literature, I don’t know. I’m also not entirely convinced that this approach, while legitimate and all, is especially fecund or full of potential. When dealing with complex social phenomena I can’t see how genetic analysis can do much more than confirm common sense. I also can’t see how evolutionary biology-type modes of analysis and reasoning can add anything that’s missing from existing modes.
However, these doubts are open to disconfirmation!
Bradley Thayer’s work seems to be right along the lines you are describing, and he was on a number of syllabi for IR theory courses when I was in grad school.
The referents of social science – states, nations, subjects, the international, national interest, classes, security, etc. – aren’t unproblematic referents or stable structures. They are held together *despite* their essential ‘hollowness’ and incompletion by stabilising forces. Arguably, the uncritical founding assumptions of conventional IR discourses, including constructivism, (vis-a-vis states and the international as actually existing objects) naturalise and reify the referents of IR and, therefore, socio-linguistically stabilise them and mask their hollowness – helping to construct and continuate what they claim to disinterestedly describe.
Yes, indeed. An imperfect paraphrase of the above but I get the gist, no? I agree with the general point. It’s been made many, many times – and well.
However, does this invalidate generalisations and simplifications made in order to attempt cumulative, epistemologically progressive knowledge production? Does the evident impossibility of simply and straightforwardly objective knowledge invalidate the pursuit of objectivity and truth altogether? Does the inherently imperfect nature of knowledge mean that all validational criteria are arbitrary? Does the fact that all judgements of knowledge are imbued with political assumptions mean that all knowledge must be judged according to political or moral criteria rather than any other? Does the fact that IR discourses might play some small part in the reification and reinforcement of the objects that they study mean that they are necessarily complicit in the crimes that these objects commit? Is there any way to describe and explain the world without this complicity? Can critical awareness of the instability of what we study be combined with a commitment to producing informative and objective knowledge (however conceptualised, however imperfect) instead of remaining stuck in a closed, self-referential, auto-critical loop for fear of being ‘uncritical,’ even for a moment?
Are any poststructuralist IR theorists ever going to move beyond stating the by now obvious critical point – that structures are inherently unstable – and ever ask any other questions? It’s been thirty years.
“Are any poststructuralist IR theorists ever going to move beyond stating the by now obvious critical point – that structures are inherently unstable – and ever ask any other questions? It’s been thirty years.”
I actually think this is really unfair on a number of levels.
1. As someone who doesn’t immerse myself in, but does sometimes read literature in this idiom, I can say that post-structural IR has moved far beyond making this point. There’s a tremendous amount of empirical work using post-structuralist modes of inquiry, as well as theoretical debates about a whole set of issues.
2. The contributors to this volume were asked to write about the current state of IR theory. This will inevitably produce reflections and discussions of long-standing issues. That’s the nature of the beast,
3. ‘We’ve heard this before’ doesn’t invalidate an argument. Indeed, if Epstein is right that constructivism #fails because of its ‘quest for universals’ then the fact that this has been said before doesn’t make it untrue or not worth saying. And keep in mind that this is a teaser for the article, not the article itself.
“Are any poststructuralist IR theorists ever going to move beyond stating the by now obvious critical point – that structures are inherently unstable – and ever ask any other questions? It’s been thirty years.”
I actually think this is really unfair on a number of levels.
1. As someone who doesn’t immerse myself in, but does sometimes read literature in this idiom, I can say that post-structural IR has moved far beyond making this point. There’s a tremendous amount of empirical work using post-structuralist modes of inquiry, as well as theoretical debates about a whole set of issues.
2. The contributors to this volume were asked to write about the current state of IR theory. This will inevitably produce reflections and discussions of long-standing issues. That’s the nature of the beast,
3. ‘We’ve heard this before’ doesn’t invalidate an argument. Indeed, if Epstein is right that constructivism #fails because of its ‘quest for universals’ then the fact that this has been said before doesn’t make it untrue or not worth saying. And keep in mind that this is a teaser for the article, not the article itself.
Charlotte, thank you for such an insightful article, and thanks to Dan and fellow Ducks for putting this symposium together.
One area of particular concern in your article is your section on caveats where you highlight two areas focused on the empirical and contingent, but where you think the importance of language may be fading. First, you may want to add a third approach in addition to the practice and new materialism turn: the emotion-based turn. Much of the literature on emotions in IR emphases emotions and as existing beyond articulation (i.e. trauma), embodied affects, and unconscious. Similar to the practice turn, emotions exist in the lived experiences and habits of political life without “acceding to the discursive level” (Pouliot on Bourdieu, 2010). It is this contingent background disposition/habitus/imaginary/schemata which structures which utterances/performances succeed and which fail and to what extent. The point of this work, at least in my reading, is not to degrade the role of language, but to supplement it by providing a richer account of social life.
Second, the way you articles comes across seems reminiscent of the material determinism of earlier social theory. Again this comes up in the caveat section where everything socially constructed, such as practice, is lumped into discourse, which we are then told is language. If discourse is something that ‘eats everything’ then when it comes to discerning why some discursive representations are more politically potent than others there are serious problems. This is exactly the issue with the poststructural study of imagery in international politics which grounds itself on a discursive ontology but then rests the political power of the visual on extra-discursive accounts of emotions.
Finally, your article may give something of a misrepresentation as poststructural theory offering a united philosophical front. I don’t want to diminish your erudite handling of some very difficult intellectual terrain, but as far back as Campbell we were warned that poststructural scholarship is highly fractious. See Chapter 8 footnote 7 Campbell quoting Butler:
“It may come as a surprise to some purveyors of the continental scene to learn that Lacanian psychoanalysis in France positions itself officially against poststructuralism, that Kristeva denounces postmodernism, that Foucaultians rarely relate to Derrideans…”
Evanr, happy to take up this conversation since you are actually engaging with the substance of the argument.
To respond to your two points, in reverse order:
1. I think by now it comes to a surprise to no-one that these guys did not agree. I guess my invitation is precisely to go back to the original(s) and look beyond the facade of these disagreements — and beyond Campbell for that matter. Not to kid ourselves with a false sense of unity (but then approach has ever had or advanced with such unity?), but to mine the substance and dialectics of these disagreements for the real gems they contain that help us think through some of the questions that concern us in IR. I’ve just tried to tease out only a couple in this piece.
2. I’m not sure i really understand this recurrent sense, or indeed fear, that discourse wants to ‘swallow everything’. Discourse allows for the identification of very specific problems; it has never presumed to be able ‘do’ everything. It has never meant to be exclusive — writing a book on something as material and bloody as whaling was meant to show precisely that.
In the same way, I’m not sure i get how ’emotions’ adds an extra-discursive dimension to discourse; if only because they are meaning-ful experiences.
Ultimately it this upholding of this material vs discursive dichotomy, which the practice turn — at least so far — has also taken as its starting point, that i find quite unproductive. It seems to be constantly standing in the way of, indeed, finding ways of giving richer accounts of social life. So i guess my invitation, here, is to move away from that dichotomy, not in the name of somehow claiming a victory for discourse, but really to do just that.
Whether the following is a contribution or an indulgence is an open question (is there any real difference here in the blog-o-sphere?). Here it is, regardless:
I feel myself pulled in two directions when I read poststructuralist texts. I both agree and disagree, profoundly – both nodding and shaking my head all at once! It can be dizzying.
So it is here with this article. The naturalising, universalising, structure-centring propensities of constructivism are well identified and expertly picked apart. The social/natural divide (in its various iterations) is shown, in a whole variety of ways, to be at once foundational to constructivism and also unstable, unreliable and even incoherent – a house built on sand, we might say.
If anything I feel that the article is too kind in some respects; for example to Wendt. As interesting, ambitious and influential as his work is I’ve never read a less coherent attempt at producing a philosophical ontology. He flits between ‘idealism’ and ‘materialism’ from one paragraph to the next not so much oblivious to as uninterested in their inherent contradictions. At once ‘ideas all the way down’ and ‘rump materialism’ – he is seemingly more concerned with producing appealing, quotable phrases than with conceptual coherence. The dialectic between the two is not so much a concept as a ‘get out of jail free’ card. Meanwhile, Onuf’s attempts to de-radicalise his intersubjective linguisticism by giving it biological foundations is a jumbled failure in its own right. And so on.
Poststructuralism’s linguistic theories are altogether more sophisticated than constructivism’s – more difficult to understand perhaps but, as this article shows, by no means beyond the kind of plain speaking explanation that can be understood by any educated, non-specialist reader. In so many ways I am compelled to side with the poststructuralist critique. However, I am, as noted above, also pulled in the opposite direction.
The constructivists fail but theirs is not an entirely ignoble failure. And inasmuch as the poststructuralists ‘win’ theirs is not an entirely noble victory. The outcome of the Language Games (sorry, I couldn’t resist) is far from clear cut.
To explain what I mean by this I should first explain that, as I see it, constructivism and poststructuralism (C and P, let’s say as my fingers are tired) have at least as much in common as they do in difference. Charlotte admits as much when she locates the roots of both discourses in Levi-Strauss, de Saussure, etc. and discerns the different ways in which these original ideas were transformed in intellectual practice.
Both C and P begin from the assumption that language can be radically abstracted from the world; that language is a world unto itself with its own issues, dynamics and modes of analysis. Where they differ is that C attempts to build a bridge between this radically isolated linguistic realm on the one hand and the rest of existence on the other – to join the social (or socio-linguistic) and the natural. P, by contrast, declines to even address the question of what lies beyond the linguistic horizon; it steadfastly refuses to address the natural/material in anything other than the terms of the social/linguistic. All attempts to talk about nature, biology, materiality, etc. are deflected, referred, (dare I say ‘eternally’?) returned, looped back into language. Language becomes ‘the medium for social construction’ – indeed, for everything. It is seemingly all P can ever think about. This is where I feel pulled back towards C.
For all the inadequacies of C’s solutions to the social/natural problem (and there are many) at least it attempts to address the question – at least it recognises it as a question at all. P simply dismisses the question qua a question. There is seemingly no problem for which language is unprepared; there is no situation that calls for anything more than linguistic analysis. And, indeed, wherever anyone attempts to overstep that mark they are wandering into the cross-hairs of (always linguistic) critique.
I am not by any means defending the failed strategies of the constructivists (or the promoters of ‘practice’ that are briefly hinted at towards the end of the article). The arguments that language should not be forgotten, marginalised, naturalised, reified or supposed to be a straightforward, transparent medium for perception are enduringly, urgently relevant. The service that P performs by constantly bringing attention to the complex, unstable, processual, ineradicably opaque character of language (and sociality) is indispensible. P will be relevant for as long as it has reifying, naturalising, universalising discourses to prey on – so it’s not going anywhere any time soon. As one side of a critical, intellectual dialectic it has much to recommend it.
And yet the cost of these virtues is vast. It costs P texts nothing less than the world – or the world besides language, anyway. The P ‘answer’ to the problem of the social/natural divide is to abandon the latter half of the equation entirely and withdraw into the safe, secure shell of language – always already isolated and separated from anything and everything else; a safe, secure base from which to launch critical raids against the naturalising, universalising ‘mainstream.’
Language is the ground of poststructuralism – a ground that is always unstable, complex and in process, yes, but always unstable, complex and in process *in the same way*. A ground, nevertheless.
So, what can be done?
The problem common to C and P is the assumption, as I mentioned above, that language can be radically abstracted from the rest of the world. But what if this is not the case? What if the social makes no sense *opposed* to the natural? What if we dispense with these categorisations altogether? What if the entire schema could be pulled apart and redistributed?
Both C and P take the social-linguistic/natural-material divide in some form as given (I’m sure that this is a contentious assertion but I believe it to be the case). C tries to erect a bridge across the void. It is a vainglorious monstrosity that relies on ornate, imposing ‘universals’ to distract its users from its inherent structural flaws. P, on the other hand, prefers to pretend that there’s nothing on the other side of the river at all – or that whatever is there is literally unspeakable, unimaginable, and every bridge is rickety, so why try?
But what if there is no river to cross as such; no void over which to ‘salto mortale’? What if the traditional concept of ‘nature’ is a sham? What if there is more to the social than language (and vice versa)? What if language, instead of being opposed to the material, *is* material and must be thought as such? What if we dispense with the whole sorry, bifurcated mess?
It is possible. There is a growing movement that is emerging out of some branches of poststructuralism but also science studies, actor network theory and the philosophies of the likes of Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze and William James. Bruno Latour’s ontological sociology is probably the most celebrated, although Manuel DeLanda and others deserve mention too. These scholars are hardly of one mind, far from it, but they share the intuition that the separation of the social/linguistic from the natural/material, far from being foundational, is absurd.
Moreover, they are not seeking to ‘go back to’ the material world or to nature in a reactionary sense. It is not an exercise in saying “yes, yes all that language stuff is interesting and all but let’s get back to talking about what really matters – the material, human nature…” (goodness knows there have been enough of these false friends in the past). They want to maintain the benefits of the poststructuralist critique but without some of the limitations. They want to evolve, to instigate fresh mutations, new translations – to cherish and honour the spoils of hard earned victories but not to remain in thrall to the tactics that won them.
The absurdity is that a poststructuralist (whilst in their scholarly mode, at least) can never really admit to feeling the sand between their toes; they cannot recognise the sand qua material entity, only the sand qua linguistic object – they can interrogate the genealogy of the words and concepts, the tropes, the insinuation of socio-linguistic power relations, etc. And that’s good. That dialectic is worthwhile, indeed essential. But it’s also profoundly limited – immensely claustraphobic and politically and intellectually inadequate. It’s great as far as it goes but it doesn’t go anywhere near far enough.
The insistence that science, for instance, never be thought in isolation from socio-linguistic power relations, from politics, is perfectly valid. However, thinking science *only* in terms of such relations is surely impossible. There is no way to do justice to science without weaving many more materials into the account than just linguistic ones. And science is not a rarefied or unique case. I can hardly think of any area of human existence where linguistic analysis alone is remotely sufficient. Lit crit, perhaps. But even then there are questions of the material infrastructure that enables and affects interpretation – the printing press, the telegraph, ‘new’ media, etc.
There is so much more to be said and done.
As well as continuing the quest to critique reification and naturalisation (which is an enduring valid endeavour, as I have argued) P’s ideas need to evolve and develop. And at present, in IR, they are not doing so (if I may be so bold – and feel to tell me that I may not!). They are at a standstill with old ideas being restated over and over.
The fact that these old ideas are quite good ones is no saving grace. They are as sedimented, institutionalised and routinised as any other discourse IR has to offer. They may not command much respect in the ‘mainstream,’ on the ‘mainland,’ but they have their own outlying strongholds, their own islets and atolls. The cog-grinding, smog-belching industrial monolith of the positivist, naturalist mainstream is as imperious, self-certain and xenophobic as ever – it seeps into and ultimately dominates all attempts to stake out the ‘middle ground.’ And so it continues to beg its dialectical other. Yet we cannot will ourselves blind to the inadequacies of these outlying regimes, these rebels, these insurgents of the discipline. On the margins, yes, but for three decades now. That is more than enough time for traditions to be established and for power structures to get dug in.
Consequently, P’s own founding assumptions are desperately in need of critique of the most forensic and indefatigable kind. It would be best if this critique came from within, although it often seems as though the only founding assumptions that P cannot interrogate are its own.
So, long story short, I do not believe that the retreat into language is an advisable strategy. Or, at least, it is not sufficient on its own. As long as language is denigrated and ignored the poststructuralist critique will be needed. But that is no excuse for standing still.
I must add that, of course, these criticisms are not aimed just at this article in particular – no single instantiation of the theories is at fault. It is a collective problem.
Philip, your diagnosis:
“a standstill with old ideas being restated over and over.” As “sedimented, institutionalised and routinised as any other discourse IR has to offer.”
is well said.
But where to look for new ideas? Lit crit? Literary Darwinism is bringing new ideas there, so why not something similar also in IR?
Maybe! I’m open to that possibility. However, saying ‘what about Darwinism?’ is a bit like saying ‘do you like rock music?’ It’s such a broad genre that it’s really got to be narrowed down a bit.