1 See, for example, Brigg, Morgan and Bleiker, Roland, ‘Expanding Ethnographic Insights into Global Politics’, International Political Sociology, 1:2 (June 2007), pp. 89–90Google Scholar ; Doty, Roxanne Lynn, ‘Maladies of Our Souls: Identity and Voice in the Writing of Academic International Relations’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 17:2 (July 2004), pp. 377–392CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Aydinli, Ersel and Rosenau, James N., ‘Courage versus Caution: A Dialogue on Entering and Prospering in IR’, International Studies Review, 6:3 (November 2004), pp. 511–526CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Hill, Christopher, ‘“Where Are We Going?” International Relations and the Voice From Below’, Review of International Studies, 25:1 (January 1999), pp. 107–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Ken Booth, ‘Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist’, Paper prepared for presentation at the conference Strategies in Conflict: Critical Approaches to Security Studies, convened by the Centre for International and Strategic Studies, York University, Toronto (12–14 May 1994). Available at: {http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP26-Booth.pdf}.

2 Aydinli and Rosenau, ‘Courage versus Caution’, pp. 517–8.

3 Rosenau, James N., Distant Proximities: Dynamics beyond Globalization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 405Google Scholar .

4 Doty, ‘Maladies of Our Souls’, p. 378.

5 To the best of my knowledge, the only volume in IR that is devoted to autobiographies and personal reflections of central IR scholars is: Kruzel, Joseph and Rosenau, James N. (eds), Journeys through World Politics: Autobiographical Reflections of Thirty Four Academic Travelers (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989)Google Scholar . An ISA panel in New York, 2009, was titled ‘Autobiography as a Source for Exploring the Past and Anticipating the Future’. That panel resulted in a book manuscript edited by Pervez, Kiran and Inayatullah, Naeem, titled, ‘I, the IR’. Another related volume is Neumann, Iver B. and Wæver, Ole (eds), The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making? (London: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar ; but this volume does not deal specifically with the personal dimensions of the authors surveyed. Several senior scholars have been interviewed in IR journals, and in these interviews they tell something about themselves. Besides the interview with Rosenau mentioned above, see also: Jones, Adam, ‘Interview with Kal Holsti’, Review of International Studies, 28:3 (July 2002), pp. 619–633CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Rosenberg, Fred Halliday and Justin, ‘Interview with Ken Waltz’, Review of International Studies, 24:3 (July 1998), pp. 371–386Google Scholar . See also the ‘Theory Talks’ interviews at {www.theory-talks.org}.

6 See, for example: Popkin, Jeremy D., History, Historians, and Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)Google Scholar ; Nora, Pierre (ed.), Essais d'ego-histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1987)Google Scholar ; Aurell, Jaume, ‘Autobiographical Texts as Historiographical Sources: Rereading Fernand Braudel and Annie Kriegel,’, Biography, 29:3 (Summer 2006), pp. 425–445CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

7 Popkin, ibid., pp. 58–9. See also: Reynolds, Henry, Why Weren't We Told? A Personal Search for the Truth About Our History (Camberwell, VIC: Viking, 1999)Google Scholar .

8 See: Richardson, Laurel, Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997)Google Scholar .

9 See: Holt, Nicholas L., ‘Representation, legitimation, and autoethnography: An autoethnographic writing story’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2:1 (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Article 2, retrieved from {http://www.ualberta.ca/∼iiqm/backissues/2_1final/html/holt.html}, p. 2.

10 See: Anderson, Leon, ‘Analytic Autoethnography’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35:4 (August 2006), pp. 373–395, p. 390CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

11 Mykhalovskiy, Eric, ‘Reconsidering Table Talk: Critical Thoughts on the Relationship between Sociology, Autobiography, and Self-Indulgence’, Qualitative Sociology, 19:1 (March 1996), pp. 131–151CrossRefGoogle Scholar , at p. 140 and p. 141. See also: Giddens, Anthony, Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 12Google Scholar .

12 According to Deborah E. Reed-Danahay, autoethnographers vary in their emphasis on auto- (self), -ethno- (the cultural link), and -graphy (the application of a research process). See: Reed-Danahay, Deborah E., ‘Introduction’, in Reed-Danahay, D. E. (ed.), Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social (Oxford: Berg, 1997), pp. 1–19Google Scholar .

13 Edkins, Jenny and Zehfuss, Maja, ‘Generalising the International’, Review of International Studies, 31:3 (2005), pp. 451–472Google Scholar , at pp. 454–5. On the relations between theory and practice in International Relations see: Shalom, Piki Ish, ‘Theory Gets Real, and the Case for a Normative Ethic: Rostow, Modernization Theory, and the Alliance for Progress’, International Studies Quarterly, 50:2 (June 2006), pp. 287–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

14 Mcilveen, Peter, ‘Autoethnography as Method for Reflexive Research and Practice in Vocational Psychology’, Australian Journal of Career Development, 17:2 (June 2008), pp. 13–20, p. 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

15 Richardson, Laurel, ‘Writing: A Method of Inquiry’, in Denzin, N. and Lincoln, Y. S. (eds), Handbook of Qualitative Research (Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage, 1994), pp. 516–529Google Scholar , at p. 517.

16 See: Popkin, Jeremy D., ‘Is Autobiography Anti-academic and Uneconomical? Some Thoughts on Academic Autobiography’, History of Political Economy, 39 (annual suppl., 2007), pp. 30–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar , at p. 33.

17 See: Wendt, Alexander, ‘What is International Relations For? Notes Toward A Postcritical View’, in Jones, Richard W. (ed.), Critical Theory and World Politics (Boulder CO.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), pp. 205–224Google Scholar .

18 On this aspect see Faizullaev, Alisher, ‘Diplomacy and Self’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 17:3 (2006), pp. 497–522CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Although not ‘pure’ IR, see also: Kampelman, Max M., ‘Politics and the Human Dimension: Hubert Humphrey and Ronald Reagan’, PS: Political Science and Politics, 38:3 (July 2005), pp. 387–390Google Scholar .

19 See: Edkins and Zehfuss, ‘Generalising the International’.

20 See: Reus-Smit, Christian, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)Google Scholar , chap. 6.

21 See: Bukovansky, Mlada, Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar .

22 See: Bühler, Ute, ‘Who Are We Talking To? An Addendum to Recent RIS Contributions on Discourse Ethics’, Review of International Studies, 28:1 (2002), pp. 191–197CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

23 See in this context the brilliant work of Haffner, Sebastian, Defying Hitler: A Memoir (New York: Picador, 2003), especially pp. 181–186Google Scholar .

24 See, for example, these two notable works: Rose, Nikolas, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Dean, Mitchell, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage, 1999)Google Scholar . For applications of this approach in IR see, for example: Löwenheim, Oded, ‘The Responsibility to Responsibilize: Foreign Offices and the Issuing of Travel Warnings’, International Political Sociology, 1:3 (September 2007), pp. 203–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Larner, Wendy and Walters, William (eds), Global Governmentality: Governing International Spaces (London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar . See also: Salter, Mark, Rights of Passage: The Passport in International Relations (Boulder: Lynn Rienner, 2003)Google Scholar ; Hindess, Barry, ‘Citizenship in the International Management of Populations’, American Behavioral Scientist, 43:9 (2000), pp. 1486–1497CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

25 The term ‘conduct of conduct’ as a description of modern governmental power comes from Foucault, Michel, ‘The Subject and the Power’, in Dreyfus, Hubert and Rabinow, Paul (eds), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Brighton: Harvester, 1982), pp. 208–226, at pp. 220–221Google Scholar .

26 I understand subjectivity as related to being a subject of power. See: Michel Foucault, ‘The Subject and Power’, in Dreyfus and Rabinow (eds), Michel Foucault, pp. 208–26, p. 208.

27 Berlin, Isaiah, ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History’, in Hardy, Henry and Kelly, Aileen (eds), Russian Thinkers (London: The Hogarth Press, 1979), pp. 22–81Google Scholar , p. 33.

28 Ellis, Carolyn, ‘Creating Criteria: An Ethnographic Short Story’, Qualitative Inquiry, 6:2 (2000), pp. 273–277, p. 273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 275. See also: Patton, Michael Quinn, Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2002), p. 87Google Scholar ; Medford, Kristina, ‘Caught With a Fake ID: Ethical Questions About Slippage in Autoethnography’, Qualitative Inquiry, 12:5 (October 2006), pp. 853–864CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

30 Couser, G. Thomas, Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), p. xGoogle Scholar .

31 Ellis, Carolyn, ‘Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research With Intimate Others’, Qualitative Inquiry, 13:1 (2007), pp. 3–29, p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

32 Cahill, Caitlin, ‘Repositioning Ethical Commitments: Participatory Action Research as a Relational Praxis of Social Change’, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 6:3 (2007), pp. 360–373Google Scholar , p. 361.

33 See also Dvora Yanow's and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea's criticism of IRBs as protecting power holders by setting ever more stringent criteria for what counts as ‘evidence’: ‘Reforming Institutional Review Board Policy: Issues in Implementation and Field Research’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 41 (2008), pp. 483–94.

34 Ellis, ‘Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives’, p. 26.

35 However, according to Couser, ‘the ethical stakes are proportionate to the centrality (and vulnerability) of the figure involved and the intimacy and interdependence between the writer and the subject.’ Couser, Vulnerable Subjects, p. 19.

36 Yet Couser notes that ‘one cannot libel a dead person, and the right to privacy is also held to terminate with death.’ Vulnerable Subjects, p. 6.

37 See: Richardsom, Fields of Play, pp. 9–10.

38 See: Ellis, The Ethnographic I.

39 Arthur Frank, quoted in Ellis, ‘Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives’, p. 23.

40 See: White, Hayden, ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’, Critical Inquiry, 7:1, On Narrative (Autumn, 1980), pp. 5–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Metahistory. The Historical in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973).

41 Clifford, James, ‘Introduction: Partial Truths’, in Clifford, James and Marcus, George (eds), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 1–21Google Scholar , at p. 4.

42 Richardson, Fields of Play, p. 18. For a similar critique of the alleged objectivity of scientific writing see: Roth, Wolff-Michael, ‘Editorial Power/Authorial Suffering’, Research in Science Education, 32:2 (June 2002), pp. 215–240CrossRefGoogle Scholar . For the classic argument about the presence of the poetic in scientific thought and writing see: Vico, Giambattista, New Science (New York: Penguin, 2000)Google Scholar .

43 This is a paraphrase of Cynthia Enloe's title to chap. 9 of Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Relations (Berkley: University of California Press, 2000).

44 Doty, ‘Maladies of Our Souls’, p. 377.

45 See: Wendt, ‘What is International Relations For?’

46 On such scholars, not in IR, see: Pelias, Ronald J., ‘The Academic Tourist: An Autoethnography’, Qualitative Inquiry, 9:3 (2003), pp. 369–373CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

47 See, for example, Buzan, Barry, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security in the Post-Cold War Era (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991)Google Scholar . The various works of Ole Wæver on securitisation are also important in this regard.

48 See: Knutsen, Torbjørn L., A History of International Relations Theory. Second edition (Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 101Google Scholar .

49 On how the Israeli-Arab conflict is reflected in Israeli school textbooks see: Bar-Tal, Daniel, ‘The Rocky Road toward Peace: Beliefs on Conflict in Israeli Textbooks’, Journal of Peace Research, 35:6 (November 2007), pp. 723–742CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Podeh, Elie, The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Israeli History Textbooks 1948–2000 (Westport CT.: Greenwood, 2002)Google Scholar .

50 Fear, of course, was the result of many of the ‘objective’ realities I described. But it should be noted that at least in Israel the ‘security network’ consciously inflates threats in order to augment its interests and position in society. See: Barak, Oren and Sheffer, Gabriel, ‘Israel's “Security Network” and Its Impact: An Exploration of a New Approach’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 38:2 (May 2006), pp. 235–261Google Scholar .

51 Shmuel Hasafri, ‘Winter ’73'. Composed by Uri Vidislavski. Performed by the Israel Defense Forces Education Corps Band, available at: {http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ_z11muYKs&feature=related} This song was one of the symbols of the Oslo Agreements period in Israel. There are several videos of the song on the ‘YouTube’ website. Some of them show pictures or scenes from military life. I have chosen to refer readers to this version, in which a girl translates the lyrics into sign language and the soundtrack ceases in the middle of the song. The use of sign language carries, for me, a universal meaning for the song, and the sudden stop of the sound in the middle symbolises the decline of hope, which this song tells about.

52 Ron, James, ‘Savage Restraint: Israel, Palestine and the Dialectics of Legal Repression’, Social Problems, 47:4 (November 2000), pp. 445–472CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

53 On this aspect in war see: Hillman, James, A Terrible Love of War (New York: Penguin Press, 2004)Google Scholar . See also: Bourke, Joanna, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (London: Granta Books, 1999)Google Scholar .

54 I do not want to imply that all these soldiers died in militaristic adventures. Some of Israel's wars were Just Wars. But many conflicts and wars were not. On Israeli militarism, revenge, and the Second Lebanon War see: Löwenheim, Oded and Heimann, Gradi, ‘Revenge in International Politics’, Security Studies, 17:4 (October 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

55 On this aspect in the Israeli-Arab conflict see: Lupovici, Amir, ‘Discourse, Identity, and Security: Israeli Deterrence in the Second Lebanon War’, Politika (in Hebrew) 17:1 (Winter 2008), pp. 73–96Google Scholar . See also: Mitzen, Jennifer, ‘Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma’, European Journal of International Relations, 12:3 (September 2006), pp. 341–370CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Steele, Brent J., Ontological Security in International Relations: Identity, Social Action and the IR State (London: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar .

56 On suicide in the IDF see: Bodner, Ehud, Elisheva Ben-Artzi and Zeev Kaplan, ‘Soldiers Who Kill Themselves: The Contribution of Dispositional and Situational Factors’, Archives of Suicide Research, 10:1 (January–March 2006), pp. 29–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar . They find that excessive motivation to excel in the army mainly accounts for the suicide of combatant soldiers, whereas personality weaknesses may have an impact on suicide among non-combatants. This motivation to excel in service is, of course, greatly a cultural product. See: Klein, Uta, ‘“Our Best Boys’: The Gendered Nature of Civil-Military Relations in Israel', Men and Masculinities, l.2:1 (July 1999), pp. 47–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

57 For a political scientist's account of his own participation in the Iraqi War see: Burgos, Russell A., ‘An N of 1: A Political Scientist in Operation Iraqi Freedom’, Perspectives on Politics, 2:3 (September 2004), pp. 551–556CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

58 On the aspirations of IR scholars to become involved in actual decision making, the ‘Kissinger Syndrome’, see: Krippendorff, Ekkehart, ‘The Dominance of American Approaches in International Relations’, in Dyer, Hugh C., Mangasarian, Leon (eds), The Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 28–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar , at p. 32.

59 Jones, ‘Interview with Kal Holsti’, p. 619. Emphais added.

60 Edkins, Jenny, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

61 For a similar line of thought see Doty, ‘Maladies of Our Soul’, p. 377. See also: Arie M. Kacowicz, ‘The State of International Relations in Israel: The Development of a Discipline in a Unique Setting’. Paper presented at the 48th annual convention of the International Studies Association, Chicago IL. (28 February 2007).

62 Jaroslav Hašek's, The Good Soldier Švejk is an enlightening satiric view of war as it is ‘on the ground’.

63 See: Steve Smith, ‘Singing Our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11: Presidential Address to the International Studies Association, February 27, 2003, OR’, Portland, International Studies Quarterly, 48:3 (September 2004), pp. 499–515Google Scholar .

64 See, for example, Wendt, Alexander, ‘The State as Person in International Theory’, Review of International Studies, 30:2 (April 2004), pp. 289–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations; Faizullaev, ‘Diplomacy and Self’; Löwenheim and Heimann, ‘Revenge in International Politics’.

65 For a discussion of these two novels see: Stern, J. P., ‘War and the Comic Muse: The Good Soldier Schweik and Catch-22’, Comparative Literature, 20:3 (Summer 2007), pp. 193–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

66 See: Löwenheim and Heimann, ‘Revenge in International Politics’. The author of the current text is Oded Löwenheim. Gadi Heimann's motivations for co-authoring ‘Revenge in International Politics’ are to be found with him and are not necessarily similar or identical to mine.

67 Amichai, Yehuda, ‘From Man You Came and to Man You Shall Return’. In, Yehuda Amichai: A Life of Poetry, 1948–1994. Selected and translated from Hebrew by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1994), p. 384Google Scholar .

68 ‘We should ever wonder about that sense of security and gratification that accompanies man in his speech, as if he really passes his thoughts or feelings on […] a bridge of iron, and he does not even know how shaky is this bridge of words, how deep and dark is the abyss beneath it, and how much of a miracle is every safe step.’ Hayyim Nachman Bialik, ‘Exposing and Covering in Language’ in All the Writings of H.N. Bialik (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1937), pp. 191–3, at p. 191 (in Hebrew).

69 McNeil, David, The Grotesque Depiction of War and the Military in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (University of Delaware Press, 1990), p. 25–26Google Scholar .

70 See: Luna, David, Ringberg, Torsten and Peracchio, Laura A., ‘One Individual, Two Identities: Frame Switching Among Biculturals’, Journal of Consumer Research, 35:2 (August 2008), pp. 279–293CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

71 Doty, ‘Maladies of Our Souls’, p. 380.

72 James N. Rosenau, ‘Mapping and Organizing the Journeys’, in Kruzel and Rosenau (eds), Journeys through World Politics, pp. 1–12, at p. 7.

73 See, for instance: Hobson, Christopher, ‘A Forward Strategy of Freedom in the Middle East: US Democracy Promotion and the “War on Terror”’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 59:1 (March 2005), pp. 39–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

74 Doty, ‘Maladies of Our Souls’, p. 381.

75 Cohn, Carol, ‘Nuclear Language and How We Learned to Pat the Bomb’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 12 (Summer 1987), pp. 687–718CrossRefGoogle Scholar , at p. 688.

76 For ‘complaints’ about the limited effect of IR theory on policy see: Buzan, Barry and Little, Richard, ‘Why International Relations has Failed as an Intellectual Project and What to do About it’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 30:1 (2001), pp. 19–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Lepgold, Joseph and Nincic, Miroslav, Beyond the Ivory Tower: International Relations Theory and the Issue of Policy Relevance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Walt, Stephen, ‘The Relationship between Theory and Policy in International Relations', Annual Review of Political Science, 8 (2005), pp. 23–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

77 Richardson, Fields of Play, p. 87. Kal Holsti finds that new generations of IR scholars do not want to be ‘constrained by the intellectual agenda of their predecessors. So it may be that the older issues – the issues of war, peace, and order – which were the normative core of International Relations for 250 years became boring compared to exciting new problems.’ Jones, ‘Interview with Kal Holsti’, p. 622. Holsti also talks about his impression that many young scholars are bored by IR's traditional theories and empirical fields of study in his article ‘Along the Road of International Theory in the Next Millennium: Four Travelogues’, in Crawford, Robert M. A. and Jarvis, Darryl S. L. (eds), International Relations – Still an American Social Science? Toward Diversity in International Thought (Albany: SUNY, 2001), pp. 73–100Google Scholar , at p. 81.

78 See: Patomäki, Heikki and Wight, Colin, ‘ After Postpositivism? The Promises of Critical Realism’, International Studies Quarterly, 44:2 (June 2000), pp. 213–237CrossRefGoogle Scholar , p. 215. On boredom in the IR field see also: Vogt, Henri, ‘On the State of the IR Art: Problems of Self-Positioning and the Absence of Freedom’, Cooperation and Conflict, 43:4 (December 2008), pp. 363–372CrossRefGoogle Scholar , at pp. 364, 370.

79 See: Woolf, Virginia, ‘Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown’, in The Captain's Death Bed and Other Essays (London: The Hogarth Press, 1950), pp. 90–111Google Scholar .

80 On the construction of social science in the nineteenth century as non-polemic and objectivist project see: Hewitt, Regina, ‘Expanding the Literary Horizon: Romantic Poets and Postmodern Sociologists’, The Sociological Quarterly, 35:2 (May 1994), pp. 195–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

81 I pay homage to Stephen Krasner for the term. See his: Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).

82 See: Bull, Hedley, ‘Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations’, in Wight, Martin, International Theory: The Three Traditions (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991), pp. ix–xxiiiGoogle Scholar , at p. xxi.

83 See: McDermott, ‘The Feeling of Rationality’; Mercer, ‘Rationality and Psychology’; Löwenheim and Heimann, ‘Revenge in International Politics’.

84 Yehuda Amichai, ‘Now that the water presses hard’, in Yehuda Amichai: A Life of Poetry, p. 21.