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| 1 |
ID:
117206
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
While the recent interest in affects and emotions in world politics is encouraging, the crucial relationships between affect, emotion, and discourse have remained largely under-examined. This article offers a framework for understanding the relations between affect and discourse by drawing upon the theories of Jacques Lacan. Lacan conceptualises affect as an experience which lies beyond the realm of discourse, yet nevertheless has an effect upon discourse. Emotion results when affects are articulated within discourse as recognisable signifiers. In addition, Lacanian theory conceptualises affect and discourse as overlapping yet not as coextensive, allowing analyses to theoretically distinguish between discourses which become sites of affective investment for audiences and those that do not. Thus, analysing the mutual infusion of affect and discourse can shed light on why some discourses are more politically efficacious than others. The empirical import of these ideas is offered in an analysis of American affective reactions to 11 September 2001.
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| 2 |
ID:
113747
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
International Relations (IR) has seen renewed interest in the nuanced insights of Hans Morgenthau which had long been obscured by neorealism. This new "reflexive realism," however, far from exhausts the range of Morgenthau's thinking about politics or social theory. In the 1960s, Morgenthau lamented the inability of modern thinking to recognize the connections between power and love, which he argued was symptomatic of the inability to fully understand either one. For Morgenthau, both power and love were rooted in the need to overcome the loneliness of the human condition. Through pursuits of both power and love, people seek, through others, to avoid the self's insufficiency. Yet, these pursuits are mutually subversive. The frustration of love blends into the imposition of power, and the pursuit of power is ultimately an extension of the search for love. In exploring these issues, this paper argues that Morgenthau's insights have implications for at least three core issues of contemporary concern in IR. First, they suggest fresh perspectives on recent discussions of human nature in IR. Second, Morgenthau's analysis contributes to the burgeoning interest in emotions in IR, pointing to the neglect of love in this literature, and illustrates his attempt to theorize what may be called the affective limits of the self. Third, these insights can be used to enrich recent discussions of realist constructivism in IR.
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| 3 |
ID:
119232
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since 2003, scholars and pundits alike have vigorously debated the role of neoconservatism in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. Few, however, have examined the power of neoconservatism in terms of its resonance on an affective level. To more fully understand the influence that neoconservatism has had in recent US foreign policy debates, this article argues that scholarly analyses should also examine what could be termed its discursive efficacy. Neoconservatism incorporates many images and symbols of what many Americans would consider as being 'American', and the affective force of this discourse is vital in understanding its resonance with audiences. Employing insights from psychoanalytic theory, this article argues that a critically under-examined aspect of neoconservatism's varying influence on US foreign policy debates is found in the kinds of identifications that it offers audiences. The article, in this sense, contributes to the growing literature on neoconservatism, and raises the under-explored issue of resonance for the study of security discourses.
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| 4 |
ID:
170020
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International Relations (IR) has rarely considered rhythm as a topic of analytical attention. Yet rhythms permeate many social and political phenomena, and their study contributes to core debates and empirical insights in contemporary IR. Rhythms are similar to but distinct from other forms of repetitive, iterative social action that have garnered increasing interest in IR, such as practices, habits, and routines. Each of these phenomena has rhythmic elements, but not all rhythmic phenomena are practical, habitual, or routine. Rhythm, then, is a distinct category of iterative action that is effectively positioned to unpack a wider array of practices in a broader range of cases. Moreover, contrary to common conceptions as simple repetition, the multiplicity and dynamism of social rhythms hold the potential to produce novel political formations. This article outlines a framework for the study of rhythms in IR by delineating some key features of social rhythms and three kinds of sociopolitical effects that they have in collective contexts. These theoretical developments are empirically applied to understand neglected aspects of mass mobilization during the Arab uprisings of 2011.
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| 5 |
ID:
136604
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Critically inclined International Relations (IR) scholars have recently turned to examining the issue of time and its implications for world politics. However, there has yet to be a thorough account of how a focus on temporality deepens our understanding of one of the field's core concepts: subjectivity. Drawing upon insights from psychoanalytic theory, this paper argues that the discursive decentering of subjectivity (long a focus in poststructuralist IR) is bound to the subject's temporal decentering. Moreover, conceptualizing these together helps to account for the underexplored role of desire in subject formation. The paper thus draws together insights regarding discourse, desire, and identity to offer a more comprehensive theory of the subject in IR and a richer account of the social construction process in general. The empirical import of these ideas is illustrated with regard to the function of temporality and desire in the politics of the US-led war on terror.
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| 6 |
ID:
139580
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| Summary/Abstract |
We seek to reinvigorate and clarify the Copenhagen School's insight that ‘security’ is not ‘a sign that refers to something more real; the utterance [‘security’] itself is the act’. We conceptualise the utterances of securitising actors as consisting not in arguments so much as in repetitive spouting of ambiguous phrases (WMD, rogue states, ethnic cleansing). We further propose that audience acceptance consists not in persuasion so much as in joining the securitising actors in a ritualised chanting of the securitising phrase. Rather than being performed to, the audience participates in the performance in the manner in which a crowd at a rock concert sings along with the artists. We illustrate our argument with a discussion of how the ritualised chanting of the phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ during the run-up to the Iraq War ultimately produced the grave Iraqi threat that it purportedly described.
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