Devetak: Postmodernism

Devetak, R. 1996. “Postmodernism.” Theories of International Relations.

This chapter attempts to present a positive account of post-modernism in IR. It begins by claiming that many see it as a bete noir, but this is because it is just poorly understood. It is also poorly defined from within: many proponents disagree about exactly what postmodernism means.

Power and Knowledge:

The treatment of knowledge is not devoid of political movements, according to post-moderns. This point is most clearly made by Foucault. For Foucault, power and knowledge implied one another, and thus they could never be separated. The scientists’ goal should be to explore the interaction of these two variables, as he did in a variety of books. For example, in Discipline and Punish, Foucault traced the exertion of power from a pre-modern state to a modern state, from the sovereign’s direct imposition onto the body of the criminal, to the clean, clinical approach to modern incarceration. Examples are drawn from the study of sovereignty and its overdetermined characteristics.

Genealogy:

This is a methodological approach of tracing histories of domination from the “perspective of nowhere”. The point is to decenter the traditional historical tellings of events away from narratives of truth and right and towards a narrative that embraces context and contingency. The work of Nietzsche and Campbell are highlighted.

Textual Strategies:

“The ‘reality’ of power politics (like any social reality) is always already constituted through textuality and inscribed modes of representation” (186). This focus on text-based interpretations of politics presents two questions: “…what is meant by textual interplay?...and…how, by using what methods and strategies, does postmodernism seek to disclose this textual interplay?” (186). The focus on textuality stems from On Grammatology. The world is like a text in the sense that it must be interpreted by subjects for it to be real.

Deconstruction:

This is a method that is meant to disrupt previously “settled” understandings of things (histories, meanings, identities, etc.).

Double Reading:

“Derrida seeks to expose this relationship between stability-effects and destabilizations by passing through two readings in any analysis. As expressed by Derrida, double reading is essentially a duplicitous strategy which is ‘simultaneously faithful and violent’. The first reading is a commentary or repetition of the dominant interpretation…the second, counter-memorializing reading unsettles it by applying pressure to those points of instability within a text, discourse or institution” (187-8).

Violence, boundaries, identity, statecraft, are seen as tools in the making of a sovereign state system. What might ethics say about this situation? Post-modern scholars are interested in and find questions like the above stated to be fruitful areas of inquiry. The discussion of ethics moves to Levinas.