1. What is identity?
2. What is post-structuralism (PS)?
3. PS and identity in IR
4. Classic case of identity — exercise
5. Identity and security in PS
6. PS and (classical) realism: overlaps
7. Book review tips
8
...
1. What is identity?
2. What is post-structuralism (PS)?
3. PS and identity in IR
4. Classic case of identity — exercise
5. Identity and security in PS
6. PS and (classical) realism: overlaps
7. Book review tips
8. Summary and seminar exercise
2What is identity?
• Thing?
• Practice?
• Performance?
• State of being?
• Discourse/narrative?
• Exogenous or
endogenous?
• Static or changing?
3What is identity?
• Categories of belonging
• Relational
• Binary
• Establishing, maintaining, negotiating boundaries
and borders
4Identity as multifaceted
• Multiple levels: Local, regional, national…
• Multiple layers: Race, gender, class, nation…
• Shifting meanings: Interests, circumstances
• Shifting importance: Over time and space
5What is identity? Different approaches
Objective?
• Primordialist approach to identity formation
Subjective?
• Constructivist approach to identity formation
6Different approaches in IR
• Silence over role of identity (neo-realism)
VS
• Mutual constitution of identities and interests
(Wendtian social constructivism)
7Problem with constructivist approach(es)?
• Change?
• Multiple identities?
• If not given, then why are ‘friends’ treated as given?
- post-structuralist critique- what is
poststructuralism?
8What is poststructuralism?
• Philosophical movement in the 1960s–70s
• Filtered into IR in late 1980s and early 1990s
• Conceptual basis for much of post-positivist turn in
social sciences (and IR)
– Postcolonialism (and postdevelopment)
– Feminism
– Queer theory
9Poststructuralism
• Understanding the world requires language
• Closely linked to postmodernism
– Often used interchangeably!
– Questioning of ideals of truth, justice, ethics
– Rooted in profound sense of tragedy
– Assault on enlightenment / modernity
10‘ ‘’Virtue,’’ ‘‘duty,’’ ‘‘good for its
own sake’’, goodness grounded upon
impersonality or a notion of universal
validity – these are all chimeras, and
in them one finds only an expression
of decay … What destroys a man [sic]
more quickly than to work, think and
feel without inner necessity, without
any deep personal desire, without
pleasure – as a mere automaton of
duty? That is the recipe for
décadence, and no less for idiocy ...
Kant became an idiot’
Nietzsche in The Anti-Christ
Nietzsche’s assault on Kant and the Enlightenment project
11Knowledge and practice in an incomplete
world
‘there is no ‘being’ behind doing, acting, becoming.
‘The doer’ is merely a fictitious addition to the doing;
the ‘doing’ is all’ Nietzsche in Genealogy of Morals
‘‘The ‘‘apparent’’ world is the only world: the ‘‘true
world’’ is just a lie added to it’ Nietzsche in Twilight
of the Idols
121) Only interpretations, no Truth: doctrine of
perspectivism and ontological pluralism
2) The ‘being’ asserts itself through ‘doing’ and this
constitutes an act of power
- Influence on the French post-structuralists …
Consequences
13Power/knowledge
• Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
• Power and knowledge
• Power/resistance
14Openness, incompleteness and
formation of binaries
• Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)
• Language always open, incomplete: fixates
what cannot be fixed
• Forms binaries that fix meaning:
Self/other, presence/absence
• One privileged but depends on ‘opposite’
15Beyond the French poststructuralists
• Judith Butler (1956 – )
• Identities are performative
– Not something you are but
something you do
– “stylised repetition of acts”
– Disciplined and constrained by
regulatory discourses
16How is this all linked to identity in IR?
• The three problems raised earlier:
- change
- multiple identities
- ‘givenness’
• Three themes:
- Language / discourse
- Incomplete
- Binaries: inside / outside, us / them
17Classic case for identity
18Clash of Civilisations
• Samuel P. Huntington’s (1992) thesis:
1. Western
2. Latin American
3. Orthodox
4. Islamic
5. African
6. Eastern
1920Clash of Civilisations
Many critiques (e.g. (neo)-realist critique)
How would a post-structuralist critique look like
here?
21Identity and Security in PS
‘the identity of any particular state [is]
‘’tenuously constituted in time … through a
stylised repetition of acts’’ ’
‘The constant articulation of danger through
foreign policy is … not a threat to a state’s
identity or existence: it is its condition of
possibility’
E.g. by speaking about ‘national security’ US
policy makers continuously reinforce what
identity the US holds.
NS entails a depoliticising process in a world
full of possibilities of re-articulation
22Identity and security in PS
‘’ discourses of danger and safety seemingly collapse all that ‘we’
are into the naming of who we are and thereby inflict violence on
being with ourselves and with others’ (Stern)
The formula: just like complete containment of identity is not
possible (i.e. identity is fluid, exclusionary etc.), complete security
of this identity is not possible (i.e. also exclusionary). Both commit
violence through imposing rigid boundaries (e.g. contra those not
included).
With security, therefore, always comes insecurity
23Post-structuralism and (Morgenthau’s)
classical realism: key overlaps
• Both rooted post-Nietzschean perspectivism: e.g.
Frei on Nietzsche’s influence on Morgenthau
• (Re)turn of the political: ‘Morgenthau institutes
an understanding of the political as fidelity to
antagonism, expressed in the form of a tension
between man’s inability to ground his own being
in a post-Nietzschean world and the need to
incessantly engage with meaning construction in a
world that defies absolute grounding’ (Paipais
2014)
‘Nations meet under an empty sky from which the Gods
have departed’ Morgenthau, in Politics Among Nations
25Post-structuralism and (Morgenthau’s)
classical realism: key overlaps
• Critique of modernity /depoliticisation
• ‘Morgenthau issued a warning against the
swallowing up of the political either in the
form of a post-political, non-antagonistic
liberalism with illusions of a harmonistic social
and political order or in the guise of an ultrapolitical adoration of pure power politics most
vividly witnessed in fascism’ (Paipais 2014)
• ‘The focus of the theory … was its repudiation of a
liberalism masquerading as value-free social
science and rooted in the tradition of
Enlightenment rationalism’ (Guilhot 2011)Post-structuralism and (Morgenthau’s)
classical realism: key overlaps
• Distinction between ‘politics’ and
the ‘political’
• Morgenthau became trapped twice:
he was embraced by an IR
mainstream which positioned itself
in a manipulated narrative of
‘’realism’’ … and he was largely
chosen as a/the wrong ‘enemy’ by
post-structuralist theorists’ (Roesch
and Behr 2012)What makes a good book review?Book review tips
• 1) have a clear argument that runs through the piece like a thread;
2) summarise /address core/overall argument of the book and not
every single sentence or claim (only core premises/examples upon
which the overall argument is built);
3) keep summary concise and leave about 70% of paper for the critical
analysis. Direct quotes are useful here to summarise the core
argument / premises, followed by brief explanatory notes;
4) cite a good range of literature in IR that the book and its concepts
engage with. These in turn will be used to critically engage with the
book, its contribution to these debates, critiques etc.
- These summarise the criteria for our marking (structure, analysis and
research/referencing) for this assessment and the next.
29Seminar 2: article analysis
• Stern article: identify argument, evaluate the key
premises upon which it is based, situate in broader
debate within IR (e.g. on key concepts used) and
finally form an overall argument yourself and defend
it.
• Skills: review / research — intended as example of
review for the first assessment and research skills
that are useful for essay writing, and later on in
academic career and research / writing generally
30Summary and lessons
• PS on identity: performed through discourse and
actions; power is involved & creates binaries
• Focus on application: CoC but also to USFP /
Security
• Clean division between PS and classical realism is
problematic
• Book review tips
31
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