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Postmodernism, ethics and international political theory*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Molly Cochran
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Extract

A group of writers have taken up Nietzsche's hammer against the constructions of contemporary international theory. Postmodern approaches problematize the dominant understanding of international relations as a world of sovereign states which demarcate inside from outside, order from anarchy, identity from difference. More generally, they challenge the notion of sovereignty as an ahistorical, universal, transcendent concept, be it applied to the sovereign state, the sovereign individual or a sovereign truth. Sovereignty and the dichotomies regulated by its power are mechanisms of domination and closure which limit the play of political practice. It is the aim of these writers to hammer away at these limitations, opening space for plural and diverse practices in world politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , July 1995 , pp. 237 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1995

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References

1 Nietzsche, F., Twilight of the Idols (New York, 1968), p. 21Google Scholar.

2 This is but a short list of a growing body of postmodern IR literature: Ashley, R., ‘The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Toward a Critical Social Theory of International Polities’, Alternatives, vol. 12 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique’, Millennium, vol. 17, 2 (1988)Google Scholar; R. Ashley and R. B. J. Walker (eds.), Special Issue ‘Speaking the Language of Exile: Dissidence in International Studies’, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 34, 3 (1990)Google Scholar; Campbell, D., Writing Security (Manchester, 1992)Google Scholar; Connolly, W., IdentitylDifference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca, 1991)Google Scholar; Derian, J. Der, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar and Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed and War (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar; Derian, J. Der and xysShapiro, M. (eds.), Internationalllntertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington, 1989)Google Scholar; George, J., Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations (Boulder, CO, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shapiro, M., Reading the Post-Modern Polity (Minneapolis, 1992)Google Scholar; Sylvester, C., Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar; Walker, R. B. J., Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar; Weber, C., Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State and Symbolic Exchange (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar.

3 I have limited the scope of this paper to the work of three writers in order to explore the contributions of postmodern theory to ethics and IR in more depth than would be possible consulting the large body of work by those writing in this area. I have selected these three writers in particular, one IR critic of neo-realism-Ashley, one associate of WOMP-Walker, and one Foucauldian political theorist-Connolly, because their views do vary and they represent a reasonable sample of the postmodern literature. Although none of these writers labels their work as ‘postmodern’, it remains an easy term of reference which is commonly used with the qualifier that postmodernism and poststructuralism are not synonymous. Also, I take the positions of Campbell, Der Derian, George and others listed above as not necessarily outside of the argument to be presented here.

4 For an introduction to these practices see the Foreword and Prologue to Der Derian and Shapiro (eds.), Intemationalllntertextual, pp. xiii-22.

5 Connolly, IdentitylDifference, pp. 13–14, 56.

6 Ashley, ‘Untying’, p. 228. There is a significant difference between the position represented here and the way in which Ashley writes as if he were speaking outside of modernist confines in ‘Living on Borderlines: Man, Poststructuralism and War’ in Der Derian and Shapiro (eds.), International!Intertextual, pp. 259–321.

7 Foucault, M., ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in Rabinow, P. (ed.), The Foucault Reader (New York, 1984), p. 50Google Scholar. It is worthy of mention that Foucault offers a more antagonistic representation of the attitude of modernity in his earlier work, see The Order of Things (New York, 1973)Google Scholar.

8 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 18.

9 Ashley, ‘Living’, p. 272.

10 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 34.

11 Ashley, ‘Geopolitics’, p. 409.

12 Walker, InsidelOutside, p. 18 (emphasis added).

13 Connolly, Identity!Difference, p. 38.

14 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 16.

15 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 20.

16 Ashley, and Walker, , ‘Reading Dissidence/Writing the Discipline: Crisis and the Question of Sovereignty in International Studies’, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 34, 3 (1990), p. 381CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Ashley, ‘Untying’, p. 229.

18 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 78.

19 Walker, Inside/Outside, pp. 62–3.

20 Ashley, ‘Untying’, p. 231.

21 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 13.

22 Connolly Identity/Difference, p. 21.

23 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 14.

24 Ashley, ‘Untying’, p. 255.

25 Connolly, Identity I Difference, p. 24.

26 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 27.

27 Walker, Inside!Outside, p. 14

28 Ashley, ‘Untying’, p. 253.

29 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 162.

30 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 59.

31 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 24.

32 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 206.

33 George, J., ‘Of Incarnation and Closure: Neo-Realism and the New/Old World Orders’, Millennium, vol. 22, 2 (1993), p. 233CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 These two ethical theories are elaborated in Brown, C., International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York, 1992)Google Scholar and Thompson, J., Justice and World Order: A Philosophical Inquiry (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

35 See Beitz's, Charles use of Rawls' veil of ignorance to build a global theory of justice in part three of Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, 1979), pp. 125–83Google Scholar.

36 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 8.

37 Ashley, ‘Geopolitics’, p. 410.

38 Ashley, ‘Geopolitics’, p. 410.

39 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 21.

40 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 28.

41 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 28.

42 Ashley, ‘Geopolitics’, p. 409.

43 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 77.

44 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 16.

45 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 59.

46 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 50.

47 Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading’, p. 390.

48 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 79.

49 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 12.

50 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 79.

51 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 10.

52 Connolly, Identity!‘Difference, pp. 11–13.

53 Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading’, pp. 367–16.

54 Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading’, p. 388.

55 Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading’, p. 391.

56 Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading’, p. 395.

57 Connolly, Identity I Difference, p. 67.

58 Ultimately, it is because of this difference regarding a counter-ontological possibility through opening multiple practices that I am more sympathetic to Connolly's project. Yet, while Connolly is more cautious in his claims regarding the violence of societal determinations and remains a democratic theorist, however radical, I maintain that the tenor of his writings has a Foucauldian suspicion of social commitments that warrants his inclusion in the following argument regarding the possibility of a postmodern ethics.

59 Walker, InsidelOutside, p. 80.

60 Ashley, ‘Untying’, p. 254.

61 Connolly, Identity I Difference, p. 34.

62 Connolly, IdentitylDifference, p. 60.

63 Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading’, p. 375.

64 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 25.

65 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 198, in footnote 2.

66 These arguments are similar to the cosmopolitan position of Luban, David. See ‘Just War and Human Rights’ and ‘Romance of the Nation-State’, in Beitz, , Cohen, , Scanlon, and Simmons, (eds.), International Ethics (Princeton, 1985), pp. 195–217Google Scholar and 238–7.

67 Connolly, W, ‘Democracy and Territoriality’, Millennium, vol. 20, 3 (1991), p. 479CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 For each of these ethical aims, see respectively, Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 52; Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 14; Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading’, p. 394.