poststructuralism Flashcards
poststructuralist view of the state
state is at the centre of world politics
state is a particular way of understanding political community (who we can trust and who we feel we have something in common with)
if the world system is anarchic, it is because states and other actors reproduce this system
principle of the state tells us why the forms of governance that are in place are legitimate, who we can trust, who we have something in common with, and who we should help if they are under attack, suffering, or hungry
origins/history poststructuralism
philosophy, sociology, linguistics
1980s : worried that the second cold war would lead to a nuclear holocaust (main problem cold war: enemy constructions)
political community
who we can trust and who we feel we have something in common with
ontology
what is the world
- Poststructuralism calls attention to how much the ontological assumptions we make about the state actually matter for how we view the world.
epistemology
how we can know what is in the world
e.g. realists/liberalists look at variables to explain why ethnic wars occur, poststructuralists asks what calling something an ‘’ethnic war’’ implies
two types of epistemology
positivist epistemology = strive to find the causal relations that rule world politics, working with dependent and independent variables
post-positivist epistemology = social world can’t be understood through causality
- social world shaped by human interaction, can’t be seen as independent variables
influential concepts of poststructuralism
discourse
deconstruction
genealogy
intertextuality
discourse
Michel Foucault
discourse = a linguistic system that orders statements and concepts
o E.g. discourse that sees the US leaving Afghanistan as handing the country to an unsafe regime OR a discourse that explains that the US should not fight on endlessly in another country’s civil war
Words we use are not neutral, choice of one term over another has political implications.
Language produces meaning: things do not have an objective meaning independently of how we constitute them in language
deconstruction
- Words make sense only in relation with other words
- We know what something is only by comparing it to something it is not
- Connections among words are never given once and for all (e.g. different meaning human now than it used to be)
Jacques Derrida:
language is made up of dichotomies (tegenovergestelden), these aren’t neutral, because in each case one term is superior to the other (at least in the way we see/construct it)
- easily make something look like an objective description, while they are in fact structured sets of values.
- poststructuralism wants to problematize these dichotomies
geneaology
history of the present: looks at history by beginning in the end and going back
- looks at alternative understandings and discourses
- looks at what political practices have formed the present
knowledge and power
power = making a specific view/discourse/concept ‘natural’
actors don’t exist outside of discourse: discourse creates actors and their powers
knowledge is integral to power itself: to speak from a position of knowledge is to exercise authority`
intertextuality
Julia Kristeva
texts are connected to text that came before them: some things are written so often that they become common knowledge
texts are always unique, even when quoting, because you can’t read them in the same way as when they were first published
popular culture
poststructuralists claim that we should pay attention to popular culture:
- states take it seriously (e.g. response of hacking Sony Pictures after comedy featured assasination plot against Kim Jong Un)
- popular culture reaches millions of people across the world
- popular culture provides us with complex, critical and thought-provoking visions of world politics
inside-outside distinction
R.B.J. Walker
state sovereignty (westphalia) implies a division of the world into inside the state and outside the state
- inside/national = order, trust, loyalty, progress
- outside/international = conflict, suspicion, self-help, anarchy
this dichotomy isn’t natural, it’s held in place by constant reproduction and other dichotomies
*inside-outside distinction succesfull: the fact that there are many states that don’t have order, trust, loyalty and progress at the national level is forgotten
to move beyond the inside-outside distinction it is important to rethink all dichotomies around which the dichotomy resolves
Ashley: realism’s double move
to ensure that we can only understand community in one way (domestic politics)
arguing that such a community is possible only within the territorial state
universal principles
overlook the power involved in defining what is universally good and right
claim to be global/universal solutions always imply something particular
agree with realism on
state as central actor
should take power seriously
foreign policy objectives
security policies to defend the state
economic policies to help it financially
development policies make it do good in the world
identity and foreign policy
foreign policies aren’t decided by state identity, they constitute state identity
and vise versa
Identities are socially real, but they can’t maintain that status if they aren’t reproduced
There is a constitutive relationship between identity and foreign policy, there is no cause and effect, they are intertwined
Subjectivities / subject positions = Identity isn’t something someone has, it is a position that one is constructed as having.
criticism to poststructuralism
3
- dense philosophical vocabulary makes it almost incomprehensible + without this vocabulary there is little of substance left
- Fails to account adequately for material processes (what happens outside of discourse)
- Some don’t accept that poststructuralism makes no causal claims
main thinkers constructivism
Foucault
Derrida
Giddens
Subjectivities / subject positions
Identity isn’t something someone has, it is a position that one is constructed as having.
