| ID | 134271 |
| Title Proper | Diplomatic imaginations |
| Other Title Information | mediating estrangement in world society |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Banai, Hussein |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | This article is an inquiry into the relationship between diplomacy and public imagination in world politics. Neither the conventional conceptions of diplomacy as the art or practice of negotiations among groups or states, nor more critical meditations on the mediation of conflictual narratives, it is argued, can adequately explain the very subjective foundations of diplomacy as a normative practice in world politics. This glaring oversight is in large part due to the lack of engagement with the varied contours of historical meaning and memory that condition human thoughts and relations in world society. Diplomacy, I argue, is very much implicated in the normative dictates of public imagination: namely, the public understanding of history which arises from the exclusionary—and hence often conflicting—cultural narratives about nationhood, justice, language, rights, personhood, et cetera that remain the perennial facts of human relations in world society. As such, the practice of diplomacy can be reconceived as a paradox: an intervention into, and an enabler of, exclusivist narrations of public imagination in world society. |
| `In' analytical Note | Cambridge Review of International Affairs Vol.27, No.3; Sep.2014: p.459-474 |
| Journal Source | Cambridge Review of International Affairs Vol: 27 No 3 |
| Standard Number | Diplomacy |