The Power of Lo...er...Language
As a wee undergraduate at the American University of Beirut in the fall of 2000, I wrote a term paper about the United States’ relationship to Israel during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. My main argument was that the United States intervened in the conflict and deployed the U.S. Marines to Lebanon not so much because of materialist interests, but rather as a face saving operation – face saving for Israel, with whom the United States enjoyed ‘special relations,’ and which at the time was in the midst of its dirtiest and most unpopular war to that day.
In essence, I argued, “Israel was exposed to the world as behaving like a threatening Other, rather than as a ‘beacon of democracy,’ which was the official U.S. perception of its ally.” While this paper was seriously flawed in many ways (I seem to remember professor el-Khazen having no tolerance whatsoever for my pseudo-postmodern approach; I naively drew assumptions from postmodernism, constructivism, and even realism, and happily through them into a conceptual blender), it was brought back to my memory when reading Janice Bially Mattern.
What my professor took issue with, among other things, was my answer to the question of what the fundamental forces were that drove the United States to the assumption that it was in its interest to intervene in 1982. In the extension, the question becomes the same as that posed by Bially Mattern in Ordering International Politics: what are the sources of order in international politics? Should we attribute international order to power politics or common interests?
According to Bially Mattern, none of the above. Instead, we need to look to the processes of international identity formation, or ‘identity turns.’ According to Bially Mattern, this is where we find the sources of international order. In distinguishing between sources of international order and factors that contribute to international order, Bially Mattern purports to show that the material interests so often referred to as sources of international order, are in fact nothing more than contributing factors. Interestingly, she doesn’t dismiss the importance of materialist factors all together; there is still room for materialist factors in her view, but they are not capable of imposing order on disorder.
Unlike social constructivist approaches (read: Wendt), Bially Mattern’s “post-constructivist” approach assumes identity formation can take place during crises, thus making identity a possible source of order. Identity during crises, according to Bially Mattern, is produced and reproduced through a “power politics of identity,” rather than through persuasion and dialogue. This use of “representational force,” is a practice of “coercive force” through speech acts. “Representational force, more exactly, works by highlighting the intolerable incongruities and inconsistencies among the multiple, often overlapping identities that make up the rest of the victim’s subjectivity” (98). The victim is presented with a nonchoice, he can either do as he is told, or suffer an identity crisis through the exposure of his intrasubjective inconsistencies.
There are many interesting repercussions of Bially Mattern’s argument to discuss in class, some that even lend themselves to policy prescription! For instance, what does Bially Mattern’s argument mean for the Bush administration and its “global war on terror”? Perhaps it’s time for a nueva strategia por el Presidente Boosh, eh?
In addition, I have a general wondering regarding her choice of words; Bially Mattern consistently refers to international identity (or identity processes, she uses them interchangeably) as “a source” of international order, as opposed to “the source” of international order. Does that mean that there can be other sources of international order? If so, what could they be?
In essence, I argued, “Israel was exposed to the world as behaving like a threatening Other, rather than as a ‘beacon of democracy,’ which was the official U.S. perception of its ally.” While this paper was seriously flawed in many ways (I seem to remember professor el-Khazen having no tolerance whatsoever for my pseudo-postmodern approach; I naively drew assumptions from postmodernism, constructivism, and even realism, and happily through them into a conceptual blender), it was brought back to my memory when reading Janice Bially Mattern.
What my professor took issue with, among other things, was my answer to the question of what the fundamental forces were that drove the United States to the assumption that it was in its interest to intervene in 1982. In the extension, the question becomes the same as that posed by Bially Mattern in Ordering International Politics: what are the sources of order in international politics? Should we attribute international order to power politics or common interests?
According to Bially Mattern, none of the above. Instead, we need to look to the processes of international identity formation, or ‘identity turns.’ According to Bially Mattern, this is where we find the sources of international order. In distinguishing between sources of international order and factors that contribute to international order, Bially Mattern purports to show that the material interests so often referred to as sources of international order, are in fact nothing more than contributing factors. Interestingly, she doesn’t dismiss the importance of materialist factors all together; there is still room for materialist factors in her view, but they are not capable of imposing order on disorder.
Unlike social constructivist approaches (read: Wendt), Bially Mattern’s “post-constructivist” approach assumes identity formation can take place during crises, thus making identity a possible source of order. Identity during crises, according to Bially Mattern, is produced and reproduced through a “power politics of identity,” rather than through persuasion and dialogue. This use of “representational force,” is a practice of “coercive force” through speech acts. “Representational force, more exactly, works by highlighting the intolerable incongruities and inconsistencies among the multiple, often overlapping identities that make up the rest of the victim’s subjectivity” (98). The victim is presented with a nonchoice, he can either do as he is told, or suffer an identity crisis through the exposure of his intrasubjective inconsistencies.
There are many interesting repercussions of Bially Mattern’s argument to discuss in class, some that even lend themselves to policy prescription! For instance, what does Bially Mattern’s argument mean for the Bush administration and its “global war on terror”? Perhaps it’s time for a nueva strategia por el Presidente Boosh, eh?
In addition, I have a general wondering regarding her choice of words; Bially Mattern consistently refers to international identity (or identity processes, she uses them interchangeably) as “a source” of international order, as opposed to “the source” of international order. Does that mean that there can be other sources of international order? If so, what could they be?
posted by Hardig at 8:22 PM
3 Comments:
Hi everyone,
What I’d like to do in this blog, besides raise a few questions, is to outline the Suez Canal argument, and to leave the details, of which there are many important ones, to class discussion. And I think Andy will look more broadly at the text.
In this book, Mattern sets out to demonstrate that a vital source of international order lies in state identities. Following the IR constructivist strand, and poststructuralist social thought in general, identity here is a decentered concept understood as:
-- unstable (“always in progress,” 6),
-- nontangible (“the cognitive, sociological, emotional,” 6)
-- relational (“ intersubjectively held,” 12) yet also
-- agential (“products of authors who choose,” 12), and finally,
-- linguistically constituted
This social phenomenon, politically and internationally manifested, she wants to argue, is a sufficient cause of international order.
The Suez Canal argument
In this US-Britain crisis, the identity that is western, liberal, democratic and friendly is established, maintained, challenged, broken, abused, trapped, and finally reconstituted through a transatlantic dialogical dueling. There are two apparent stages—the first is the breakdown and the second is the make-up. In the first stage, after what the US saw as an unsympathetic move on the part of its long time ally, there began a series of “campaigns” in which the two parties set loose on each other the “linguistic gun” of “representational force.” The parties do this by narrating into existence, so to speak, realities which contradict and destroy linguistically the other side’s realities. This forceful narration threatens the opponent with nonchoice, i.e., subjective death: the US pitched the neo-colonialist reality-net out to trap Britain; Britain pitched the betrayer reality-net to trap the US. The parties’ respective identities are essentially shattered and whatever existing order fell apart: crisis ensues.
In the second stage, the re-production of previously existing order comes about through yet another round of representational force as each party aims to force the other into abandoning its prior non-aligned identity to re-enter the alignment. Both of them, separately, were made to realize that they had dangerously threatened their own identity by allowing for an “ambiguity” to enter the western-democratic order; the other point of identity holding together the global axis being the Soviet Union, the eastern, non-democratic order. Phrases-in-disputes were again deployed, this time to coerce a nonchoice scenario for both parties in which they both realize, separately, that there had been no other possibility besides what had taken place and what must now take place: make-up. Britain had to keep its plan a secret as part of the intention to protect the US peace president; hitherto unsympathetic, the plan now necessarily becomes the very stuff that friendship is made of!
Some questions to start us off:
(1) Is this just epiphenomenon? The problem of epiphenomenon in explaining causation happens when we mistake secondary by-product effects to be the cause of the process. A common example: steam coming off a train is a by-product of the locomotive process, and although it always accompanies the train movement, it does not cause the process. But because it always accompanies the process, it’s mistaken to be a cause. Are these linguistic moves just epiphenomenon of other processes, i.e., material-based?
(2) How convincing is the argument? Was Suez really a break-down to a lack of order? Compare US-Britain relationship to, say, US-North Korea relationship. What would a sociolinguistic analysis of US-North Korea relations look like—is it possible?
(3) In light of the Conclusion chapter, how should we understand this book? As a story, a better story? Does it have metanarrative implications (she openly welcomes a poststructuralist grand narrative, 15)? How is her method to be “useful” to the practice of IR politics?
Sorry to bug you once again, but a couple of things comes to mind as I read the comments posted so far. First, I disagree with Bea that Bially Mattern is trying to make a case that “identity is completely destroyed during times of crisis.” Rather, I see her as making the case that identities are constantly being produced and reproduced, even during times of crisis. Otherwise, international identity could not be a source of international order. Second, on the issue of “representational force” being simply power politics, I believe that, yes, it is power politics – power politics of identity. The difference here is that it is the self-understanding, the intrasubjective identity of states, rather than the physical existence of the state, which is at stake.
What I’m curious about right now – and it may just be a temporary lapse of brain power – is what Bially Mattern would consider the sources of disorder. What causes a breakdown of order in the first place? If international identity is capable of ‘imposing order,’ what is capable of imposing disorder? Is it a result of the conflicting intrasubjective identities? In other words, was it a matter of Britain’s identity as a former colonial power clashing with its ‘newer’ identity as a promulgator of freedom and liberty along with its U.S. ally?
This book offers some really interesting and provocative ideas for how to explore not only order in international relations, but other aspects of IR as well. I found myself thinking how a postconstructivist approach could be a fruitful avenue of inquiry for my own research because of the focus it places on the public representation and collective learning (64). Yet as I read further into the chapters on the Suez crisis itself I became increasingly more skeptical of Bially Mattern’s underlying assumptions and resulting conclusions for this particular event. I have a few significant critiques of this book despite its interesting new twist on constructivism, realism, and the ordering of IR. First, the author seems to take the approach that by saying something enough times makes it true. Her repetitious manner of reiterating her point over and over and over, rehashing the same insights into why primordialism, SIT, and constructivism don’t offer enough explanation. Secondly, she is far too optimistic to begin with about the basis for the Anglo-American friendship and their identities as “freedom-loving democrac[ies]” (79). And third, she is too lenient in allowing the biographies of the “key British and American authors” involved speak for their decisions, yet fails to consider the impact that time and public opinion most certainly had on their narrative of events. Granted many of the sources were primary sources from the time, but she also relies on post-hoc accounts and explanations that have been tainted by hindsight. She also leaves little room for non-white male voices or narratives to surface and does not sufficiently investigate the role of the media and the public, which she attempts to dismiss since she says “it is unclear to what degree popular-level we-ness is autonomous from other levels” (67). The same argument, however, could be applied to the elite individuals (less to the bureaucracy) given that they are for the most part elected individuals, or appointed by elected representatives, and are in theory led by public opinion (why else would they care about polling so much?). The public dimension is arguably more important in other cases than this one, but in terms of shared we-ness it seems like this dimension is crucial.
My major problem with this book is her rosy, democratice, peace-loving, altruistic, good characterization of Britain and the United States. Specifically, the narrative of the Lion and the Eagle, (beyond the tiresome repetition of how they were freedom-loving leaders of the West) bordered on idealistic and completely divorced from a reality in which economic issues like oil and trade would also likely be a part of any narrative or idea of what must be done. Her focus on this Eagle-Lion dichotomy bypasses any consideration of materialist or egocentric considerations that may have informed their respective narratives, and thus actions, attributing very idealistic and unproblematic self-identities to two hegemons that could just as easily have been narrated in a different way by looking at different people. This analysis falls into the same trap as most of IR theory in that it focuses on a few elite leaders . In the end, I am not convinced that idealism and the narrative she describes is anything more than mere rhetoric used to validate less-than-altruistic goals.
Also, when she describes the British as being “pro-Arab but also, given their interests in Palestine, none-too-subtly anti-Semetic” she commits the all-to-common mistake of equating opposition to Israeli policy with anti-Semitism. I lost confidence in her ability to accurately, and without bias, interpret the Suez crisis after reading this characterization. How is one to avoid being taken captive by the deep historical “truths” that characterize ones own experience, for example, as an American who has grown up with the US-Israel special relationship and the rhetoric that invokes?
Bially Mattern also, I believe, misses a key point in her critique of Grieco’s suggestions that allies benefit from the benefit of the doubt in times of crises. This is a small point, but nonetheless an ideal point at which to apply an alternative framework from IR! She claims that this materialist alliance “rests most fundamentally upon we-ness” (84). Yet rational choice game theorists would argue that in fact there is no need for we-ness during crisis, which Bially Mattern characterizes as a situation that “disallow[s] institutional habits” and therefore I would say a “new game” in which previous iterations don’t count, because the best strategy in a Prisoner’s Dilemma type of game (which one could see the Suez crisis as in terms of not knowing if the other country will use force or remain an ally) is Tit-for-Tat. This tactic relies on the benefit of the doubt – per Greico- in the first move in order to encourage reciprocity in subsequent moves.
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