Language, Agency, and Politics in a Constructed World [1 ed.] 0765610825, 9780765610829

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction • François Debrix
Part I. The Linguistic Turn: Theories and Concepts
1. Language, Nonfoundationalism, International Relations • François Debrix
2. Parsing Personal Identity: Self, Other, Agent • Nicholas Onuf
3. Constructivist International Relations Theory and the Semantics of Performative Language • Harry D. Gould
4. Breaking the Silence: Language and Method in International Relations • K.M. Fierke
5. Three Ways of Spilling Blood • Kennan Ferguson
Part II. Language, Agency; and Politics: Cases and Applications
6. Real Interdependence: Discursivity and Concursivity in International Politics • Timothy W. Luke
7. Criticism and Form: Speech Acts, Normativity, and the Postcolonial Gaze • Siba N’Zatioula Grovogui
8. The Difference that Language-Power Makes: Solving the Puzzle of the Suez Crisis • Janice Bially Mattern
9. Conflicting Narratives, Conflicting Moralities: The United Nations and the Failure of Humanitarian Intervention • Anthony F. Lang Jr.
10. Language, Rules, and Order: The Westpolitik Debate of Adenauer and Schumacher • Katja Weber and Paul A. Kowert
11. “Ce n’est pas une Guerre/This Is Not a War”: The International Language and Practice of Political Violence • Franke Wilmer
Bibliography
About the Editor and the Contributors
Index

Citation preview

LANGUAGE,AGENCY,

AND POLITICS IN A CONSTRUCTED WORLD

International Relations in a Constructed World Commonsense Constructivism, or The Making of World Affairs Ralph Pettman Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization Mahmood Monshipouri, Neil Englehart, Andrew J. Nathan, and Kavita Philip, editors Constructing International Relations:

The Next Generation Karin M. Fierke and Knud Erik J(Jrgensen, editors

Constructivism and Comparative Politics Daniel M. Green, editor Foreign Policy in a Constructed World Vendulka Kubalkovti, editor International Relations in a Constructed World Vendulka Kubalkova, Nicholas Onuf, and Paul Kowert, editors

Language, Agency, and Politics in a Constructed World Franrois Debrix, editor Series Editors Vendulka Kub4lkova. University ofMiami Nicholas Onuf, Florida International University Ralph Pettman, Victoria University ofWellington Editorial Advisory Board Emanuel Adler, Hebrew University ofJerusalem David Blaney, Macalester College Kurt Burch, University ofDelaware Stuart Corbridge, University ofMiami Fran~is Debrix. Florida International University Gavan Duffy, Syracuse University Karin Fierke, Queen's University ofBelfast Rodney Hall, University ofIowa Ted Hopf, Ohio State University Paul Kowert, Florida International University Lily Ling, Institute ofSocial Studies. The Hague Cecelia Lynch, University ofCalifornia. Irvine Elisabeth PrUgI, Florida International University Wayne Sandholtz, University ofCalifornia. Irvine lutta Weldes, Bristol University

LANGUAGE,AGENCY,

AND POLITICS IN A

CONSTRUCTED WORLD FRANC;OIS DEBRIX EDITOR

First published 2003 by M.E. Sharpe Published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OXI4 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2003, Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PubJication Data Language, agency, and politics in a constructed world! edited by Fran~ois Debrix. p. cm. - (International relations in a constructed world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7656-1081-7 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-7656-1082-5 (pbk.: a1k. paper) 1. Language and international relations. 2. Discourse analysis. I. Debrix, Fran~ois. II. Series JZ1253.5.L36 2003 327.1 '01' 4---dc21

2003041558

ISBN 13: 9780765610829 (pbk) ISBN 13: 9780765610812 (hbk)

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction Franfois Debrix

ix

Part I. The Linguistic Turn: Theories and Concepts

1. Language, Nonfoundationalism, International Relations Franfois Debrix

3

2. Parsing Personal Identity: Self, Other, Agent Nicholas Onu!

26

3. Constructivist International Relations Theory and the Semantics of Performative Language Harry D. Gould

50

4. Breaking the Silence: Language and Method in International Relations K.M. Fierke

66 v

vi CONTENTS

5. Three Ways of Spilling Blood Kennan Ferguson

87

Part II. Language, Agency; and Politics: Cases and Applications 6. Real Interdependence: Discursivity and Concursivity in International Politics Timothy W. Luke

101

7. Criticism and Form: Speech Acts, Normativity, and the Postcolonial Gaze Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui

121

8. The Difference that Language-Power Makes: Solving the Puzzle of the Suez Crisis Janice Bially Mattern

143

9. Conflicting Narratives, Conflicting Moralities: The United Nations and the Failure of Humanitarian Intervention Anthony F. Lang Jr. 171 10. Language, Rules, and Order: The Westpolitik Debate of Adenauer and Schumacher Katja Weber and Paul A. Kowert

196

11. "Ce n'est pas une Guerreffhis Is Not a War": The International Language and Practice of Political Violence Franke Wilmer

220

Bibliography

247

About the Editor and the Contributors

273

Index

277

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the support and dedication of all its contributors. For providing early encouragements with the project, I must convey my appreciation to Vendulka KubaIkova and the members of the Miami Group. It is in the context of this scholarly forum that for many years has allowed students and professors from Florida International University and the University of Miami to critically engage constructivist international relations that the project took shape. Words cannot begin to describe the gratitude lowe to my dear friend and colleague Nick Onuf who believed in the volume's concept from the beginning, offered sage technical and conceptual advice throughout the project, generously read all the chapters in the book, and provided the contributors with invaluable input. Finally, I want to recognize my wife and colleague Clair Apodaca for her loving assistance, care, and encouragement through the years.

vii

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Introduction Franr;ois Debrix In the field of International Relations (IR), post-positivisml can be credited for bringing the issue of language and the use of linguistic practices to the forefront of the discipline. The interest in language in post-positivist IR emerged in the 1980s when critically inclined scholars began to refer to a rhetorical or linguistic turn in International Relations. This linguistic turn influenced several critical and theoretical tendencies within the post-positivist movement, among which were constructivism and poststructuralism, which had already made an impact on humanistic fields (literature, cultural studies, art, architecture) and other.social sciences (sociology, philosophy, religious studies) in the 1970s. But for IR it took the publication of several key books in 1989 for constructivism and poststructuralism finally to become recognized modes of social, political, and cultural inquiry. Among these books were Nicholas Onuf's World of Our Making, Friedrich Kratochwil's Rules, Nonns, and Decisions, and James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro's InternationallIntertextual Relations. These path-breaking studies were followed a few months later by the publication of a special issue of the journal International Studies Quarterly (1990), which further established the "turn to language" in IR. Today, about fifteen years after constructivist and poststructuralist treatments of international affairs were first offered, their respective strategies of language, their discourses, and their writings and readings are allegedly known and often reproduced. They have become fairly common methodological tools in contemporary publications. Terms like "narrative," "language game," "speech act," "discursive formation," "sign," "text," and so forth have been mobilized extensively in International Relations since the advent of the linguistic turn. Often, these terms are used by nonconstructivist and nonpoststructuralist scholars too. Sometimes, IR researchers and practitioners (post-positivist or not) are not always aware of or simply do not care about the motivations that first compelled post-positivist scholars to turn to ix

x

INTRODUcnON

language as a critical mode of analysis and to remobilize language so that different stories about international relations could be written and narrated. I believe that of late it has become all too common to deploy linguistic and rhetorical strategies, or to refer to discourse or textual analyses, or to make use of speech-act theories without questioning what these techniques of/about language are, whether they may be needed at all, and which objective(s) they seek to achieve. Put simply, the role and place oflanguage in post-positivist IR, even to post-positivist scholars sometimes, are rarely reasons for concern anymore. More important, the relation among linguistic strategies, the identity of international agents, and the meaning of global politics is often taken for granted too. Constructivist scholars, for instance, repeatedly claim that international social practices are the result of the way agents narrate history and produce discourses about themselves and the world (Milliken 1996; Fierke 1996; Weldes 1999). By contrast, poststructuralists in IR have internalized semiological modes of interpretation and techniques of literary criticism to the point that they find it difficult to read international political situations, and the place of social agents in politics, in any way other than as .textual artefacts, artefacts that often build upon one another in endless chains of signification/meaning. Students interested in the post-positivist episteme often confuse constructivist purposes and poststructuralist endeavors, as the contemporary publications they tum to increasingly blur the distinction between constructivist uses of language and poststructuralist linguistic and discursive techniques in particular. The deplorable result--sometimes confirmed and championed by leading figures in the discipline (Ruggie 1998b; Wendt 1999}-is that it looks as though any of the many postpositivist language strategies, terminologies, and uses could do the trick. They all appear to be complementary, compatible, and interchangeable. Language, Agency, and Politics in a Constructed World earnestly seeks to return to the question, place, and role of language in post-positivist International Relations. This volume starts from the assumption that language in contemporary international relations is an inescapable component of the life, behavior, and identity of international actors/agents, and that language is crucial in shaping the contemporary outlook of global politics. Diplomatic events generally have a way of reminding us how central language is in everyday international affairs if one cares to pay attention to its meaningful presence. Take, for example, the April 2001 diplomatic crisis between China and the United States over the collision between a US surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter plane, and the subsequent release of the US crew by Chinese authorities (for more on this incident, see Timothy Luke's chapter in

INTRODUCTION

xi

this volume). While few mscholars actually noted this point, the solution to the alleged crisis hinged on language, its meaning, transmission, and reception. Whether the US President had actually apologized to the Chinese authorities when he uttered the words "I am very sorry," whether the context in which this somewhat apologetic speech-act took place was appropriate for rules of diplomatic engagement, whether the Chinese government would perceive and interpret the specific utterance as an official apology were all crucial to the outcome of the crisis and bore consequences for the future relations between both nations. Of equal importance was the fact that both parties chose to turn to linguistic strategies (letters, open declarations, translated apologies) to mediate this so-called crisis and produce a semblance of agreement/understanding in the end (Debrix 2002). Language does matter in international relations (as a domain of social activity) and International Relations (the academic discipline). Language, Agency, and Politics in a Constructed World is not the first study that attempts to evaluate the role and place of language in m and international affairs. Beer and Hariman, for instance, have sought to emphasize what they call the "rhetorical turn in m" in order to remedy political realism's "systematic inattention to the role of words in foreign affairs" (Beer and Hariman 1996, 1). Their important volume makes a conscious effort to place debates. It also language at the forefront of international practices and offers a variety of linguistic techniques that may be used to challenge the traditionally dominant realist paradigm. Still, by situating the epistemological thrust of their study in relation (and opposition) to realism mostly, Beer and Hariman have limited the scope of their study. They have not consistently sought to address the impact oflanguage on contemporary issues and events, specifically those situations and conditions studied by post-positivist scholars (such as the return of culture, the construction of agency, the meaning of identity, the development of social networks, the problematization of gender, etc.). Another relatively recent volume, Jim George's Discourses of Global Politics (1994), can be credited for taking language seriously. In this book, George seeks to "offer a comprehensive reassessment of a range of ideas, issues, events, and perspectives that have already been addressed in the m literature" by bringing them into contact with the notion of discourse (1994, ix). For George, m is not simply full of discourses about politics. Rather, the field of m is itself a "discursive microcosm" whose boundaries are linguistically set so that certain political processes and interpretations can be privileged to the detriment of others. George's study is more of a critical (and necessary) look into mainstream as it unfolds as a discourse of power and knowledge. His compelling approach legitimates the deployment of postmodernlpost-positivist methodologies in m, particularly to counter the

m

m

xii

INTRODUCTION

claims to knowledge deployed by mainstream IR discourses. But to the scholar interested in the issue of language in post-positivist IRIinternational relations, George's otherwise excellent analysis has two main limitations. First, similar to Beer and Hariman's approach, George's reading of IR as a discourse of powerlknowledge is a retrospective endeavor: it looks back at how long-standing IR theories have created discursive, linguistic, and textual boundaries to justify certain claims to truth. Second, it fails to discriminate among post-positIvist linguistic instruments and tends to imply that postpositivist language is unifonn and unaffected by its own internal debates. Language, Agency, and Politics in a Constructed World goes beyond Beer and Hariman's study and George's analysis ofIR as a discourse by (1) addressing contemporary debates and practices of international relations and (2) refusing to accept that the question of language, in IR and beyond, has already been answered. This volume seeks to explicate the importance of language. in post-positivist IRIinternational relations as, once again, such a concern has somehow been placed out of sight lately. The contributors to this volume believe that, in general, constructivist and poststructuralist endeavors will benefit from a reconsideration of the place, role, and meaning of language in international relations and in the discipline of IR at the dawn of the twenty-first century. But more important perhaps--and despite the fact that terms like "constructivism" and "poststructuralism" have somewhat unproblematic ally been used in this introduction so far-4his volume also wishes to offer IR students/scholars the possibility to appreciate the role and place oflanguage in contemporary international representations, productions, constructions, and simulations beyond necessarily having to mobilize or subscribe to specific disciplinary labels (like constructivism and poststructuralism too) to make sense of language and its epistemological challenges. While there are valid motivations for distinguishing constructivism and poststructuralism within the discipline of IR, particularly at a time when some claim the two ought to be fused or bridged (see Debrix's subsequent chapter in this volume for more on this matter), the distinction is less urgent, relevant, and meaningful when it comes to offering post-positivist analyses of international relations (as a social domain). There, the use of jargon, internal labels, and disciplinary code names simply runs the risk of narrowing down the scope of the investigation and of confining the debate over language and its divergent strategies to petty academic quibbles. As much as possible and to make good on the challenge to think and speak about language and post-positivism beyond labels and catchwords, this volume also attempts to offer a wide array of linguistic approaches, of definitions/ interpretations of language, and of understandings of what constitutes

INTRODUCTION

xiii

international relations (agency and politics in international relations) too. For instance, the volume purposely refuses to privilege written language (textuality) over verbal language (speech), or vice versa. Additionally, Language, Agency, and Politics in a Constructed World is not concerned with the epistemological positioning of the contributors to the volume. Each contribution to this volume is included in here because of the richness, originality, and relevance of its analysis of/about language, not because of any disciplinary allegiance of its author to a preferred subfield of IR scholarship, to a fashionable academic debate, or to a recognizable label. Put differently, Language, Agency, and Politics in a Constructed World gathers together the work of scholars who are willing to dialogue with one another about language, beyond positivism for the most part, not because such a thing is epistemologically trendy but because it is epistemologically meaningful. Of crucial importance to the contributors of this volume is the relationship among language, agency, and politics. The relationship between agency and politics has been a recurrent theme in international relationsllR over the past ten years. Following the path traced by the post-positivist challenge, students and scholars with a critical mind have been eager to question the ideas of rationality and scientific objectivity that dominated the IR literature of the 1960s and 1970s. These students/scholars have attempted to reassess the central position given by structural realism to so-called rational, powerful, and self-willed actors (mostly states) in IR and, by the same token, they have started to shatter the "naturalness" of concepts like power, sovereignty, and anarchy. This "freeing" of IR from the rationality postulate has allowed scholars to think about agency differently. Constructivists, in particular, have attempted to place the agent-structure debate (at the core of structural realism) in a new light (Wendt 1987, 1992b; Dessler 1989; Hollis and Smith 1994). In so doing, they have helped to pluralize the concepts of agent and agency to the point that the agent that matters in IR no longer has to be the self-fulfilling rational sovereign state. Similarly, if the concept of agency (where it comes from, what it can do) can be pluralized, the idea and practice of politics (the public life and interactions of the agents) can be transformed too (see Walker 1993; Ashley 1996). International politics does not have to reproduce the same old formulations about relations between surviving units. It does not have to replicate principles of structural anarchy. It no longer has to be characterized by the eternal recurrence of similar patterns, actors, and realities. Thus, the relation between agency and politics has been revisited and continues to be. But this volume demonstrates that the opening up of agency to new meanings and the discovery of new possibilities for politics cannot be dissociated from the rediscovery of language as an investigative and

xiv

INTRODUCTION

transformative tool, something that post-positivism in the mid to late 1980s revealed. In a sense, the pluralization of agency and politics is an effect of language and its uses. Conversely, new approaches to agency and politics affect the way language is being deployed in IR. This double move is at the heart of the relationship among language, agency, and politics in a constructed world. The chapters contained in this volume are, in their own ways, representative of these connections. Although some of the contributors choose to privilege the link between language and agency and others look more attentively at the relation between language and politics, all the authors in Language, Agency, and Politics in a Constructed World recognize that the nexus language-agency-politics is central to (their) critical investigations. It is also my hope that Language, Agency, and Politics in a Constructed World will be used as an analytical tool for advanced undergraduate and graduate research in IR. As indicated above, this volume takes seriously its mission of offering beneficial knowledge to international relations students and practitioners. For these readers, the volume has a twofold pedagogical purpose. First, it seeks to explain to IR students why certain uses oflanguage (and certain discursive styles as well) are necessary to constructivism, poststructuralism, and other post-positivist endeavors (see for example Siba Grovogui's chapter about post-colonialism). Second, it teaches IR students what critical linguistic/discursive techniques are available for exploring contemporary international relations from a post-positivist perspective. It reveals how these (at times compatible, sometimes divergent) tools can be deployed. Teaching future practitioners/scholars in the field the importance of language in use is necessary if post-positivism's challenge to structures of power and knowledge, in IR and beyond, is ever to yield practical results and bring a less reductionist understanding of social relations in general. The volume is divided into two main sections. Part I, "The Unguistic Tum: Theories and Concepts," seeks to explain how and why attending to linguistic constructs is necessary to conduct critical reappraisals of the place and meaning of political agency in IR and beyond. This section starts with my own chapter, which suggests that it is crucial to contemporary post-positivist endeavors that a distinction be maintained between constructivist scholarship and poststructuralism. This distinction is all the more important as it is derived from divergent understandings of language and different linguistic tools. In the end, different language uses of constructivism and poststructuralism in IR give rise to incompatible social outcomes: normative reconstruction for constructivism and textual deconstruction for the poststructuralists. Chapter 2 by Nicholas Onuf goes on to reevaluate the signification of the concepts of "agent," "person," and "other" as these terms are too often, and inaccurately, taken to be synonyms in contemporary IR

INTRODUCTION

xv

analyses of global politics. Tracing the lineage of these concepts/terms to early liberal thinking in the West, Onuf encourages IR scholars (postpositivist or not) to revisit contemporary international social practices as part and parcel of the making of modem selves in the modem world. This first section continues with an essay by Harry Gould (chapter 3), which offers a "critique from within" by attempting to challenge the understanding of language (and speech-act theory in particular) necessary to Onufs version of constructivism. Turning to Donald Davidson's philosophy and his notion of performative language (situated somewhere between constructivist accounts of language and the poststructuralist notion of textual performance), Gould provides analytical ways by which constructivist IR scholars can improve their rule-oriented interpretations of international relations. Similar to Gould, K.M. Fierke in chapter 4 presents a careful study of twentieth century philosophy of language and shows its relevance for International Relations. In this chapter, Fierke revisits the seminal work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (on language games in particular) to argue that the field of IR is bedeviled by a central misconception, which unfortunately over-determines contemporary epistemic positionings and debates in the discipline. The misconception is that language, in IR and beyond, is only an issue/concern for those who occupy what she refers to as the "margins of postmodernism." Because of this conditioning misconception, a disciplinary silence has been imposed onto language-based analyses of international relations. Fierke's chapter is an attempt to "break the silence" by speaking of and about language beyond disciplinary labels. The first section of the volume ends with a chapter by Kennan Ferguson titled "Three Ways of Spilling Blood." This chapter's critical impulse (as well as its title) is indebted to J.L. Austin's short essay "Three Ways of Spilling Ink" (1979). In that essay, published posthumously, Austin detailed the linguistic distinctions between the terms "intentional," "purposeful," and "deliberate," three terms crucial to the practice/philosophy of responsibility and justification. Because of their linguistic differences, divergent meanings of action (proper to each term) are developed. Ferguson shows how the field of international relations, so reliant upon conceptions of responsibility and justification, would benefit from a sustained introspection into the type of linguistic differences highlighted by Austin. In international relations, "intention," "purpose," and "deliberation" are closely associated with the practicellanguage of warfare. Ignoring the linguistic and conceptual differences between these key terms, Ferguson concludes, amounts to disregarding the specific objectives of those who perpetrate the actions (including warfare) that these terms justify. Part II, "Language, Agency and Politics: Cases and Applications," offers a series of chapters that combine theoretical insight with case-based

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INTRODUCTION

illustrations of critical arguments about language. The chapters in this section develop the connections between language in use in various approaches to post-positivist scholarship and the question of how social/textual agents deploy or are constrained by political claims in the global polity. In this section, the nexus language-agency-politics is investigated but also challenged. The links among language, agency and politics are explored in different contexts such as the global political economy and its circulation of objects/signs/commodities (Luke), postcoloniality in the late-modem world (Grovogui), Western powers' alliances, friendships, and rivalries during the Cold War (Bially Mattern), United Nations led humanitarian interventions after the Cold War (Lang), foreign policy-making and ideology in post World War II Germany (Kowert and Weber), and violence and warfare (Wilmer). The chapters in this section highlight the complex relationships between political agency and language, and they reveal how transformed notions of politics and agency can in tum modify language and linguistic productions. Timothy Luke's chapter reminds us that discourses, speech acts, and language productions in general are crucial to the way people do things in the global polity (what Luke calls the "works of the world"). But Luke pushes the language/discursivity postulate further by suggesting that discursivity always already presumes concursivity. Concursivity is what, in the material world of global exchange of goods, objects, and signs, "unfolds together," coincides, or is combined in action. Often, this concursivity of the global polity is revealed by incident (or co-incidence rather). In this chapter, Luke reviews one such co-incidence: the April 2001 collision in mid-air between a US military surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet occurring at the same time that United Parcel Service (UPS) launched its first regular air-cargo shipments to China. Through a close reading of this co-incident encounter, Luke argues that, while discursive analyses are still worthwhile in IR (they reveal how language organizes or prevents action), considerations of concursivity demonstrate how action is "yet another form oflanguage," one that enables or on the contrary obliterates different linguistic possibilities. Similar to Luke, in chapter 7 Siba Grovogui closely relates the use of language to political action and the affirmation/rejection of political agency. Grovogui investigates how certain types and styles of speech acts authorize, or on the contrary negate, political presence and agency in the context of French (post)colonial relations in the 1950s and 1960s. Grovogui's analysis of the speech acts of French "colonial" parliament members reveals that what bothers the West in general about postcoloniality (then and now) is the practice of "reverse ethnography." Reverse ethnography, a method chosen by many postcolonial authors, consists of demonstrating that the so-called global moral universe championed by the West (i.e., Europe mostly) and the

INTRODUCTION

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political and cultural structures derived from such universal moral visions are merely particularistic, historically limited, and provincial accounts of (certain) values, norms, and subjectivities prioritized by the West. Reverse ethnography is rejected by Western intellectuals and politicians on the ground that the postcolonial discourses that support this critical practice are nonnormative and thus cannot find a place in global political debates and academic discussions. By focusing on the methods used by Western intellectuals/politicians to dismiss the speech acts of postcolonial critics (rejected for being sarcastic, revisionist, and antihumanist, for example), Grovogui shows how the West tries to "banish postcoloniality" from the discursive domains where international knowledge is being produced. Chapter 8 by Janice Bially Mattern is, at first glance, more traditional ih its approach to the study of international relations as it purports to examine the relationship (and particularly the threatened political alliance) between the United States and Great Britain, two close Cold War friends, in the context of the Suez crisis of 1956. As previous IR studies have argued, this crisis could and in fact should have put these two powers' mutual friendship in jeopardy. While IR has long tried to understand why the diplomatic conflict between the United States and Great Britain over Suez actually did not damage the friendship and in a sense reinforced it, none of IR's traditional accounts of the situation have been fruitful. Bially Mattern explains that the failure of previous accounts of the crisis is due to the fact that, up to this point, IR has neglected to explore the role of language, and specifically, the fact that language itself is a form of power. To remedy this problem, Bially Mattern develops the notion of language-power, which she applies to an analysis of the Suez crisis. Her notion of language-power is derived from Jean Franc;ois Lyotard's idea of "narrative" and/or "representational force." Bially Mattern uses Lyotard's work to showcase the fact that specific language-power plays (purposefully mobilized by the main actors in the crisis through the use of certain phrases/sentences) were able to achieve a modicum of coercion (with desirable outcomes for the United States, but less so for the British) without placing the basic terms of the amicable relationship between the United States and Great Britain in danger. Bially Mattern concludes her chapter by stating that in order to understand the sometimes nonviolent outcomes of otherwise tense crises, it would be better to take into consideration the political dynamics of language-power. While language can sometimes be strategically mobilized to achieve nonviolent yet forceful results (as chapter 8 suggests), language can also play an important part in the development (although perhaps unintended) of violent political situations. Sometimes, political agents whose function it is to alleviate suffering and reduce violence (like the United Nations for instance)

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INTRODUCTION

are themselves responsible for the exacerbation of certain crises/conflicts. In chapter 9, Anthony Lang examines this somewhat paradoxical situation and argues that the way international actors use language to justify their claims to political agency and legitimate their place/mission in international affairs explains why conflicts, diplomatic incidents, or military interventions take place the way they do. Lang's chapter presents the case of the United Nations' humanitarian mission in Somalia in the early 1990s to show that the definition by nation-states and international organizations of what they perceive to be their moral and political agency directly affects politics. By closely analyzing the failure of the UN humanitarian mission in Somalia, Lang affirms that this operation could not have succeeded (and perhaps was doomed even before UN peacekeepers and later US troops were deployed) because both the United Nations and the United States had grounded their agency in a discourse that eliminated any linguistic possibility for other agents (particularly the leaders of the Somali factions) to voice their own political claims and represent their political choices. According to Lang, "narration of agency" by political actors in international relations holds much explanatory power for IR scholars who try to figure out why some crises are resolved while others continue. In cnapter 10, Katja Weber and Paul Kowert also indicate that narration of political agency (actual or sought after) is at the heart of foreign policy visions and enterprises. Weber and Kowert carefully detail the post-WWII ideologies and policy preferences of West Germany's two most prominent leaders, Konrad Adenauer and Kurt Schumacher, to show how the political debate in the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) at that time (and perhaps still today) was dominated by the central debate over Germany's proper role and place in Europe. As Weber and Kowert make clear, this debate was fundamentally a controversy over which version of political order to privilege: one that posits the existence of political rights before a sense of communal/collective obligation (Schumacher's preferred vision); or one that assumes that only by joining new institutiona1/legal arrangements and fulfilling one's political obligations within such structures, one can achieve political autonomy and a meaningful sense of agency (Adenauer's view). But this debate over which version of order would be more likely to grant Germany political agency was not just the product of these two leaders' respective ideas and ideologies. Rather, Weber and Kowert explain, it is through languag~nd particularly through a series of speech acts giving rise to distinct forms of rules/rule-that these alternate visions of political order materialized for the German population, the international community (including European neighbors), and the two leaders themselves. By empha-

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sizing the (linguistic) logic of speech acts and their relation to order/rules, Weber and Kowert's chapter provides a clear illustration of the way rule- and language-oriented constructivism can make sense of past, present, and future international relations problems. Chapter 11 by Franke Wilmer offers yet another illustration of the power and utility of language and discursive analyses in IR. Unlike Weber and Kowert though, Wilmer does not use rule-oriented constructivism as her methodological model. Instead, she borrows critical insight from the work of Michel Foucault on discourse and discursive formations. In this essay, Wilmer examines how certain texts representative of international relations discourses on war (by academics and foreign-policy makers) present warfare and its violence in ways that are totally removed from the direct experience of war. Using notions and terms that de-realize war and rationalize its violence, International Relations (as an academic field and as a policy practice) cannot make sense of the ways people who have lived in times of war represent its drama. Most of the time, these discourses of war are meant to normalize its practice and justify its political finality. By contrast, Wilmer offers other discourses and narratives of war and violence emanating from individuals who have been directly involved (as actors or victims, but not as decisionmakers) in a conflict. Using many direct interviews conducted in the mid1990s in the former Yugoslavia, Wilmer reveals the discursive gap that exists between those who theorize about warfare and those who talk about it as a firsthand experience. Because the discourse of those who have lived in times of war is ignored by the discipline of International Relations, defining war in a way that would recognize, plainly address, and perhaps denounce the senseless violence it creates is not a possibility as such a definition would not make (linguistic and conceptual) sense to those who take part in war making, war theorizing, and war rationalizing.

Note

1. I borrow the term "post-positivism" from Lapid (1989). While not always accurate and often restrictive (as most labels are) since the term "postpositivism" fails to denote the multiple issues and debates the scholars of the so-called "post-movement" (Kubalkova, Onuf, and Kowert 1998) are concerned with, post-positivism is at least convenient. It is sufficiently generic and yet not overtly vague and as such can be found useful to signify the general epistemological tendencies its proponents wish to challenge and resist, namely the positivist dispositions found in mostly realist and neorealist studies in IR.

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Part I The Linguistic Turn

Theories and Concepts

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1 Language, Nonfoundationalism, International Relations Fran(ois Debrix

The 1980s saw the field of futernational Relations (IR)l increasingly wracked by controversy over its presumed foundations. This growing controversy culminated at the end of the decade with the publication of two books claiming that a systematic redescription of the world does not depend on secure philosophical foundations but, instead, on language as a common feature of human experience. On the one hand, Nicholas Onuf (1989) showed how self-conscious, yet socially constrained, constructions of everyday practice are inseparable from language in use. On the other hand, James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro (1989) introduced the possibility of interpreting international political phenomena as textual representations of everyday practice? What made the "spirit of 1989" so unique for IR was that, for the first time, nonfoundationalise scholarship had made its entrance into the discipline by offering unconventional ways of describing international realities. What was distinct about this nonfoundationalist wave was that its philosophical engagement sprang from the margins of the positivist state-centric analyses that were usually taken to fonn the mainstream of IR. My use of the tenn "nonfoundationalist" may be found to be controversial since, after all, several scholars of the "third debate" (a more common label for these challenging scholars; see Lapid 1989) have been unwilling to abandon the search for philosophical foundations. Let me start by justifying my use of the tenn. As the scholars of the "third debate" developed their research in the field in the 1980s, they expressed a desire 3

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