Towards Global IR
I am depressed.
Nothing in the readings this week particularly surprised me - especially with regard to the dearth of 'radical' IR in top syllabii and reading lists in the US (Biersteker). And yet still I am depressed.
Why do I have to be 'radical'? Why do those of us who acknowledge (albeit perhaps imperfectly) that there is an entire world/worlds out there beyond 'Anglo-national' Relations get lumped together in this negatively connoted 'extreme' box? Because I think we can agree that the label as issued from without has the meaning associated with the derogatory synonyms of the definitions below.
Nothing in the readings this week particularly surprised me - especially with regard to the dearth of 'radical' IR in top syllabii and reading lists in the US (Biersteker). And yet still I am depressed.
Why do I have to be 'radical'? Why do those of us who acknowledge (albeit perhaps imperfectly) that there is an entire world/worlds out there beyond 'Anglo-national' Relations get lumped together in this negatively connoted 'extreme' box? Because I think we can agree that the label as issued from without has the meaning associated with the derogatory synonyms of the definitions below.
radical
adjective
1 radical reform is long overdue: thoroughgoing, thorough, complete, total, entire, absolute, utter, comprehensive, exhaustive, root-and-branch, sweeping, far-reaching, wide-ranging, extensive, profound, drastic, severe, serious, major, desperate, stringent, violent, forceful, rigorous, draconian. ANTONYMS superficial.
2 the apparently radical differences between logic and natural language: fundamental, basic, essential, quintessential; inherent, innate, structural, deep-seated, intrinsic, organic, constitutive, root. ANTONYMS minor.
3 a radical political movement: revolutionary, progressive, reforming, reformist, revisionist, progressivist; leftist, left-wing, socialist; extreme, extremist, fanatical, militant, diehard; informal red; derogatory Bolshevik. ANTONYMS conservative, reactionary; moderate.
Personally, I actually like being a 'radical' regardless of connotation. But its use still says a great deal about the state of IR today. Does it have to be the radical's job to 'decenter IR'?
I am also depressed because I find Tickner & Wæver's introduction particularly obtuse and difficult to digest (made even more depressing when I read that they envision it as a perfect reading for undergrads!). If I - as a fellow 'radical' - cannot wrap my head around their discussion of the sociology of science, how are others who do not share my proclivity for language, reflexivity, and social theory going to appreciate this as a viable alternative mindset? Are we becoming so wrapped up in the way we talk ("I can use big words too!") that we forget that the ultimate object is to share insight and communicate with others? Or have we decided to simply talk to those others who already show some understanding of what we're saying?
More and more frequently I get the sense that IR scholars are unintentionally yet ironically (btw, I LOVED Alker's discussion of this and the other three tropes) using completely different languages to bemoan the separation of practices and theoretical baselines within the discipline. We get inculcated into a particular vocabulary and perhaps forget that it isn't as straightforward to other IR scholars as it is to us. I stumble across this in my own work when I [seem to] parrot the discourse lexicon I've been taught and can't quite fathom why others don't totally get what I'm saying. Uh, duh, people: 'discursive commonplaces' are everywhere! What?! you don't use the terms 'subject-positions,' 'imaginaries,' and 'interpolation' in your own writing?! What's wrong with you??
Seriously, though, these internal divisions in IR in some ways also mirror the spacial division that T&W describe in terms of the hegemony of Anglo-national R. Alternative perspectives, alternative theories, get strangled and reformulated to more closely resemble what the Americans and some of their English-speaking or European brethren say it should look like (like what Patrick writes about with regard to the French in Africa). Those that continue exploring different theories of IR then become as 'radical' as those of us within the English-speaking community who think there is more out there than universal Truth, mathematical logic, and statistics, not to mention states, military power, capitalism, institutions, and all the rest.
I like the notion of 'worlding' (though I am in principle opposed to making a noun into a verb after having a very negative experience with 'journaling'). As T&W define it: "worlding is meant to invoke a situation in which we live as neither homogenized and global, nor separate and local, but place-based yet transnational" (9). And yet this makes me think of both Bleiker and Inayatollah/Blaney and their [unsatisfying] attempts to circumvent or in a way destroy the standards upon which IR scholarship gets thought and judged. There doesn't appear to be a good answer to this - or to Patrick's question about whether the colonized should adopt the colonizer's language, mores, conceptualizations of the world in order to participate in some sort of 'international' discussion.
Sometimes I feel lost. I am an American. I care about how the US acts in the world. I don't assume that what the US does matters for EVERYONE else, but I do think that - for better or worse - the US affects a lot of what goes on around the globe. Should this be the case? And if I continue to center my scholarship on the US am I propagating the prominence of the Master's tools and reconstructing the Master's house? Does it matter whether my work has an impact on this decentering or is it enough that I like what I'm doing?
Finally, the one question lingering in my mind after reading Patrick's post is this: Is there a difference between post-colonial and post-imperial? or colonial and imperial? Are we really 'post' either of these things? It seems to me that T&W's point is that not only IR but the sociology of IR is still very much colonized - yet not really acknowledged as such as it is obscured under the universalist rhetoric of rationalism, freedom, national determination, etc.
P.S. Vico's Verum et factum convertuntur is brilliant, and I might have to get this tattooed onto my hand.
posted by adabunny at 5:06 PM
3 Comments:
Part 1:
Reification of particular concepts and applications of concepts through the reproduction of dominant knowledge systems ought to be a perpetual source of discomfort for any scholar who is uneasy about invisible power asymmetry; it is not just a problem with which post-colonialists and feminists must contend. So returning to the question of whether to incorporate the canon in critiques directed against it, or whether to employ the language of the dominant when trying to articulate theoretical visions that deviate from that dominant account of reality, we again see the same recurring question from prior weeks. When we use the language of the dominant to explore alternatives to that dominance, we are in a sense reclaiming the terms of the oppressor and giving them alternative meanings more aligned with the experiences of the subaltern. Although I understand the converse argument, I have not yet been completely convinced that we should disregard the canon and its terminology. It seems necessary to borrow the terminology all the while expanding the conceptualization that constitutes its standard meaning (for instance, a Western notion of security can be replaced or augmented with non-Western concepts, but the term security could be kept to define both/all conceptual iterations).
If, as Biersteker says, "all nationally constituted communities of International Relations scholars are parochial in one way or another" (311), the issue of epistemological hegemony is problematic in each parochial national academic enterprise. The question of what constitutes the global hierarchy of IR scholarship should thus not obfuscate sub-systemic structures that similarly exclude and stratify substantive knowledge-claims and knowledge-production methods. Let's consider what Biersteker claims: "The primary interest in causal explanation (over interpretive understanding or critical theory) conforms to the complex needs of U.S. global hegemony and the challenges of 'managing' the international system. From the vantage point of the state currently residing at the pinnacle of the global hierarchy in structural terms, there is a strong interest in managing economic interdependence and maintaining international peace and security. To managing is to control, and the responsible 'manager' that tries to lead the world needs to understand its dynamics in causal terms" (323). I wonder whether domestic parochialism in other states' academes are related to some degree to a desire to "manage" internal differences (related to Inayatullah's and Blaney's claim that Westphalian sovereignty relegates internal differences to the international sphere). Perhaps internal scholarly parochialism is a manifestation of self/nationalistic attempts to contain the impact of the outside "other" from problematizing internal homogeneity? This is clearer in my mind than in writing. Does this make sense?
… When addressing the question of American parochialism, there are in fact two parallel questions: (1) what is the nature of parochialism within American scholarship (i.e. how does American scholarship omit or relegate to the periphery non-American scholarship?); and (2) what is the nature of global academic hierarchy in which American parochialism is the dominant form of hegemonic scholarship? This comes out in Tickner's & Waever's comment that "the U.S. form of IR is simultaneous a single local instance of the field and an integral component of everyone else's universe" (329).
Part 2:
Biersteker also presents the notion of national parochialism as inherent to knowledge creation systems. As such, it seems impossible to arrive at truly pluralistic consensuses regarding what constitutes appropriate research questions, methods, and topics. That is not exactly the idealist utopian vision I am still cautiously optimistic is possible. One thing about which I am independently pessimistic is Tickner's and Waever's implicit suggestion in their conclusion that universities would somehow be more willing to explore periphery-theory if only think tanks and governments did not meddle in their affairs so much (i.e. "in [some] instance politicians set the academic agenda" (332), "by captivating monies and researchers, the think-tank industry also saps universities' capacity to engage in their own preferred practices" (331), "the autonomy of both disciplines and universities in low in systems providing only limited funding and/or that target specific programs and applied research" (330)). These statements take blame away from universities themselves, as though if they were left to their own devices theoretical and methodological parochialism would be significantly decreased.
On another matter, Tickner & Waever remark that "current dominant forms of U.S. IR do not travel" (339) from the core to the periphery. They use this conclusion to (1) challenge the notion that "dominance automatically [leads] to uniformity" (338) and that relations in the periphery are affected solely by relations among the parts that constitute the core. The inability of certain conceptualizations to travel perfectly from core to periphery (and perhaps the rejection among those of the periphery of an unadulterated set of concepts that originate in the core) seems to work to further marginalize the periphery. Indeed, the great irony for me is that it seems that in preserving even a small iota of difference the periphery retains a little bit of its linguistic, substantive, and stylistic autonomy, further guaranteeing its peripheral placement within the global hierarchy. Tickner and Waever mention two possible outcomes: "either we have a situation of center-periphery, United States dominance and uniformity or one of diversity and increasing pluralism" (338). Neither of these options gives us the tools necessary to empower the marginalized. The first option ignores that the marginalized have anything to contribute and the second mere makes their contribution impossible to translate into the mainstream, thereby making it easy to discount as subjective, unscientific, and all the other disciplining jargon employed by the core's gatekeepers. We seemingly cannot escape Todorov's double movement as per Inayatullah and Blaney.
Here is a link to a music tribute to Hayward Alker:
http://www.kennethkirschner.com/kirschner022408.mp3
I am bringing some computer speakers to class so we can listen to this.
Kenneth is a computer music composer (and Ann Tickner's son-in-law) who gives all his music away- it is all available on his website. What does this approach to ownership have to do with global IR? Many composers in the computer music world are also part of (or aware of) open source communities and philosophies. While operating on many levels and with varying cultures as to how knowledge is shared, open source coders have ethical codes about sharing and building on each other's knowledge. What can we apply from this approach to how knowledge can/should/is produced? I think at a fundamental level, for me, it is about acknowledging that knowledge is an accumulative and collaborative project AND that this knowledge is not from just the west, but from a combination and juxtaposition of many dialogues across time and space. The problem is that while some value getting credited for their work and get recognized/rewarded, there are many who do not have this kind of approach in mind when they create and collaborate. Over time ideas and power gets centered and credited in ways that create visible power assymetries.
Post a Comment
<< Home