Poststructuralism PDF

Poststructuralism D AV I D C AM P B E L L A N D R O LA N D B LE I K E R 1 I ntroduction 1 96 The i nterd i s c i p l i n a ry co ntext of poststructu...

Poststructuralism D AV I D C AM P B E L L A N D R O LA N D B LE I K E R 1 I ntroduction 1 96 The i nterd i s c i p l i n a ry co ntext of poststructu ral i s m 201 The react i o n o f I R to poststruct u ra l i s m 202 The critical attitude of poststructu ral i s m 205 U n d e rstan d i n g d i scou rse 208 D i scou rses of wo rld pol itics 21 0 Case study: i m ages of h u man itarian cri ses 21 2 Conclusion 216 Reader's G u ide H ow the d isci p l i n e of I nternational Relations ( I R) 'maps' the world shows the i m por­ tance of representation, the relationsh i p of power and knowledge, and the politics of identity to the prod uction and understand i n g of global politics. Poststructural ism d i rectly engages these issues even though it is not a new parad igm or theory of IR. It is, rather, a critical attitude or ethos that explores the ass u m ptions that make certain ways of being, acting, and knowing possi ble. Th is chapter details how and why poststruc­ tural ism engaged IR from the 1 980s to today. It explores the i nterd isci p l inary context of social and pol itical theory from wh ich poststructural ism emerged , and exa m i nes the misconceptions evident in the reception this approach received from mainstream theorists. The chapter details what the critical attitude of poststructural ism means for social and pol itical i n q u i ry. Focusi ng on the work of M ichel Foucault, it shows the i m ­ portance o f d i scou rse, identity, subjectivity, a n d power t o t h i s approach, and discusses the methodological featu res employed by poststructuralists in their read in gs of, and i nterventions in, i nternational politics. The chapter concl udes with a case study of im­ ages of h u man itarian crises that i l lustrates the poststructural approach. I ntroduction I nterpretation, mapping, and meta-theory Every way of u nderstand i ng i nternational pol itics depends u po n abstraction, representatio n , a n d i nterpretation. That is because 'the wo rld' does not present itself t o u s i n the fo rm of ready- made catego ries or theories. Whenever we write or speak of 'the realm of anarchy', the 'end of the Cold War', 'gendered relations of power', 'global ization', 'h u man itarian i nterven ­ tion', o r 'fi nance capital', w e are engaging i n representation. Even the most 'objective' theory that claims to offer a perfect resem blance of th i ngs does not escape the need for i nterpreta­ tion {Bleiker 2001 ).  P O STS TRUCTU R A L I S M 1 97 Po l itical l ead ers, social activists, scholars, a n d stu d ents are a l l i nvo lved i n t h e i nte rpreta­ tion of 'th e wo rld', whether they engage in the p ractice, theory, or study of i nternational rel ations. This d oes n ot m ean , h owever, that anyo n e can s i m ply make t h i ngs u p and have their perso nal o p i n ions co u nt as l egitimate knowledge. The d o m i nant u n d ersta n d i ngs of wo rld pol itics are both arbitrary, in the sense that they are but one poss i b i l ity among a range of poss i b i l ities, and no narb itrary, i n the sense that certa i n social and h i storical p rac­ tices have given rise to d o m i nant ways of making 'the wo rld' that have very real effects u po n o u r l ives. The d o m i nant i nterpretations of 'the world' have been establ ished by the d isci p l i n e of I nternational Relations (I R), which trad itionally tal ks of states and their policy- makers p u rs u i n g i nterests and provid i ng secu rity, o f economic relations and t h e i r material effects, and o f the rights of those who are being bad ly treated. The 'we' who tal k i n this way do so fro m a particular vantage poi nt-often white, male, Western, affl uent, and comfo rtable. These representations, then, are related to our identities, and they establish a d isco u rse of identity pol itics as the frame of reference fo r wo rld pol itics. This h igh l ights the relations h i p between knowledge and power. While many say 'know­ ledge is power', this assu mes they are synonymous rather than related. The p rod uction of maps i l l ustrates the sign ificance of this relationsh i p between knowledge and power. M aps are not s i m ply passive reflections of the wo rld of o bjects. They favo u r, p romote, and infl uence social relations (Harley 1 988). Co nsider the co m m o n ly u sed Mercato r p rojection ( F igu re 1 1. 1 ). D rafted in 1 569 i n o rder t o p rovide t h e d i rect l i nes n ecessary fo r n avigation, i t p l aced E u rope at t h e centre and put two-th i rds of the wo rld's land mass in the n o rthern h e m i s p here. This rep resenta­ tion s u pported the British E m p i re, and l ater rei n fo rced Cold War perceptio n s of the Soviet th reat ( M o n m o n ier 1 996). Contrast this with the Peters p roj ectio n , d evelo ped i n the 1 970s Figure 1 1. 1 The Mercator projection (Pacific central) Source: Oxford U n i versity Press. 1 98 DAV I D CA M P B E L L A N D R O L A N D B L E I K E R (Figure 1 1.2). This was based o n eq ual-area p roj ection that e m p h asized the South. This p rojection was sign ificant because it emerged with Th i rd Wo rld pol itical assertiveness in the U n ited N atio n s ( U N), and was p ro m oted by UN agencies keen to secu re m o re reso u rces fo r d eve l o p m ent. The Peters p rojection is therefo re a man ifestation of the power relations that chall enged the two s u perpowers i n the 1 970s and a fo rm of knowledge that p ro moted the glo bal South. IR as a d isci p l i n e 'maps' the wo rld. Critical approaches-and poststructural ism i n particu lar­ make these issues of i nterpretation and representation, power and knowledge, and the po l i ­ tics o f identity central. Because o f t h i s poststruct u ral ism is n o t a m o d e l o r theory o f i nter­ national relations. Rather than setting out a parad igm through which everything is u nderstood , poststructu ral ism i s a critical attitude, approac h , o r ethos that cal l s atte nti o n t o the i m po r­ tance of rep resentation, the rel ati o n s h i p of power and knowledge, and the pol itics of identity i n an u n d e rstan d i ng of glo bal affai rs. This means poststructural ism does not fit eas i ly with the conventional view that I R is a d isci p l i n e characterized by d ifferent parad igms co m peti ng i n 'great debates' (discussed i n Chapter 1 ). I nstead o f being another school with its own acto rs and issues t o h igh l ight, post­ structural ism pro motes a new set of q uestions and co ncerns. As a critical attitude rather than theory, poststructural ism, i n stead of seeing a d i stinction between theory and practice, sees theory as practice. This co mes about because poststructural ism poses a series of meta­ theoretical q u estions-q uestions about the theory of theory- i n o rder to understand how particular ways of knowi ng, what co u nts as knowing, and who can know, have been estab­ l i shed over time. Poststructural ism is th us an approach that comes fro m prior and extensive debates in the h u man ities and social science, in a manner akin to critical theory (Chapter 8), fem i n ism (Chapter 1 0), and postcolon ialism (Chapter 1 2). I ;:::::::. - 1 ""\. 7t: /. ' "-' ' ,, l e-" /" v , , o 0 -() ,7 -.;> ? t? ( ' ! v ( \> < rt \ · " " · Q I\,-) \ I )\ r) l I Eq uator j h I Jl7 · / r \ ( ( ( f v L.r- / 11 lJ> l[ --- - (1 - - F'> - Figu re 1 1.2 The Peters projection (Pacific central) Source: Oxford U n iversity Press.  P O STS TRUCTU R A L I S M 1 99 Poststructuralism and I R Poststructuralism's entrance i nto I R came i n the 1 980s thro ugh the work o f Richard Ash l ey (1 981 , 1 984),J ames Der Derian (1 987), M ichael Shapiro (1 988), and R. B.J. Wal ker (1 987, 1 993). Two i m portant co l l ections (Der Derian and Shapiro 1 989; Ash l ey and Wal ker 1 990) bro ught together the early stud ies. These focused mostly on articulating the meta-theoretical critique of realist and neoreal ist theo ries to demonstrate how the theoretical assu m ptions of the trad i ­ tional perspectives shaped what co u l d be said about international pol itics. What d rove many of these contri butions was an awareness of how other branches of the social sciences and h u man ities had witnessed sign ificant debates about how knowledge of the world was co n ­ structed. Recogn izi ng that t h e d o m i nant approaches t o I R were u n aware, u n i nterested , o r hosti le t o s u c h q uestions, t h e above- mentioned authors sought t o connect I R t o its i nterd iscip­ l i nary context by i ntrod ucing new so u rces of theory. The motivation for the turn to poststruc­ tural ism was not p u rely theoretical, however. Critical scholars were d issatisfied with the way realism -and its revivification at that time th ro ugh neo real ism-remained powerfu l i n the face of new glo bal transfo rmations. These scholars felt that real ism margi nal ized the i m po rtance of new transnational actors, issues, and relationsh i ps, and failed to hear (let alone appreciate) the vo ices of excluded peoples and perspectives. As such, poststructu ral ism began with an eth ic­ al co ncern to include those who had been overlooked or excluded by the mainstream of I R. I n focusing on the co nceptual and pol itical p ractices that i n c l u d ed some and excl uded others, poststructu ral approaches were co ncerned with how the relations of inside and outside were m utually co nstructed. Fo r real ism, the state marked the border between i n side/o utside, sovereign/anarchic, us/them. Acco rd i ngly, poststructu ral ism began by q uesti o n i n g how the state came to be regarded as the most i m po rtant acto r in wo rld pol itics, and how the state came to be u nderstood as a u n itary, rational acto r. Poststructural ism was thus co ncerned at the outset with the practices of statecraft that made the state and its i m portance seem both natural and necessary. Th is approach is n ot anti state, it does not overlook the state, nor d oes it seek to move beyo nd the state. I n many respects, poststructu ral ism pays more attention to the state than real ism, because-instead of merely asserti ng that the state is the fo u n d ation of its parad igm - poststructural ism is co ncerned with the state's h i storical and co nceptual p rod u ction, and its pol itical formation, eco n o m i c co nstitution, and social excl usions. After the fi rst wave of meta-theoretical critiques, su bseq uent stud ies e m ployi ng a post­ structu ral approach-wh i l e co nti n u i ng to develop the theoretical basis fo r their alternative i nterp retations-engaged pol itical events and q uestions d i rectly. This research i ncl udes analy­ ses of state identity and foreign po l i cy (Cam pbe l l 1 992, 1 998b, 2005; Bleiker 2005; Steele 2008; Epstein 201 1 ; Solomon 201 4); stud ies of the gendered character of state identity i n the co ntext of U S i ntervention (Weber 1 994, 1 999); stud ies of the centrality of representation in N o rth-So uth relations and i m m igration po l i cies (Doty 1 993, 1 996); i nterpretive read ings of d i plomacy and E u ro pean secu rity (Co nstantinou 1 995, 1 996); the rad ical reth i n king of i nter­ national o rder and secu rity ( D i l l o n 1 996); critical analyses of i nternational law and African sovereignties (G rovogu i 1 996); a recasting of eco pol itics (Kuehls 1 996); the re-articu lation of the refugee regime and sovereignty (Sogu k 1 999); a problematization of the U N and peace­ keeping (Debrix 1 999); a sem iotic read ing of m i l itarism in H awai i ( Ferguson and Tu rn b u l l 1 998); methodological reflections o n autoethnography a n d t h e u s e o f narrative (Dau p h i nee 201 3 , Ed kins 201 3); investigations of contemporary warfare, strategic identities, secu rity 200 DAV I D CA M P B E L L A N D R O L A N D B L E I K E R Featu red art i c l e Richard K. Ash ley (1 984), 'The Poverty o f N eo-Realism'. International Organ ization, 38/2: 225-86. Th is is one of the most i m portant articles in the early development of a critical approach to i nternational relations. Ash l ey did not write of the day-to-day events of i nternational politics. I nstead , he d rew upon European social theory to q u estion how North American I nternational Relations ( I R) theory was begi n n i ng to understand global affairs. Ash ley's concern was with the rise of neoreal ism, as manifested in the work of Robert Keohane, Stephen Krasner, and Robert G i l p i n. H owever, it was the ass u m ptions of a theory, rather than the personal ities of people, that were Ash ley's target. 'My argu ments here, i ntentionally ph rased in provocative terms, are l i ke warn i ng shots, meant to provoke a d iscussion, not destroy an alleged enemy' (p. 229). Ash l ey d rew inspirati on from the h i storian E. P. Thom pson's polemic against the structuralism of Louis Althusser, entitled The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (1 978). Th is book condemned Alth usser's scientific Marxism for its rel iance on positivism. Ash ley thereby noted that, j ust as social theory was cal l i n g structuralism i nto q uesti on, pro mi nent scholars in i nternational relations were d eveloping a new approach rel iant on structuralism. Neoreal ism had emerged as a response to perceived fai l i ngs i n classical realism, Ash l ey argued. In place of the subjectivism of realism, neorealists wanted to emphasize a 'sci entific' approach that wou ld identify the 'obj ective' structu res o f world pol itics. A t th e heart of neoreal ism was a com m itment to th e state-as-actor. A s a result, and especially odd given the neorealist's concern with power pol itics, there was no concept of social power beh i n d or constitutive of states and their interests. The effect of these ass u m ptions, Ash l ey argued, was for neorealists to treat the given i nternational order (with the USA i n a position of hegemony) as the natural order. N eorealism, Ash l ey said , did not expose the l i m its of the given order and thereby denied h istory as process, the sign ificance of practice and the place of politics. Controversial ly, Ash ley cal led this a 'total itarian project of global proportions' (p. 228), although he emphasized this referred to the logic of the theoretical ass u m ptions rather than the pol itics of i n d ivid uals (p. 257). Ash ley's 1 984 article was not j ust a critiq ue; it also proposed that a 'silenced realism' (p. 264) be recovered and a theory of i nternational pol itical practice be developed, d rawin g on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, J u rgen Habermas, and M ichel Foucau lt. Although critics l i ke Robert G i l p i n were scathing i n their responses t o Ash ley's arti cle, it hel ped shape t h e futu re o f critical theory i n I R. landscapes, a n d representations o f sovereignty {Der Derian 1 992, 2001 ; K l e i n 1 994; Dillon and Reid 2001 ; Coward 2002; Dillon 2003; Lisle and Pepper 2005); a rei nterpretation of area stud­ ies {P h i l pott 2001 ) ; engagements with the pol itics of popular culture {Shapiro 2008; Shepherd 201 3); explorations of the performative and aesthetic d i mensions of pol itical events {Bleiker 201 2; Edkins and Kear 201 3; Rai and Rei nelt, 201 4); and a reth i n king of fi nance and the field of i nternational pol itical economy {de Goede 2005, 2006; Brassett and Clarke, 201 2). These are o n ly a few examples meanwh i l e of cou ntless i n novative and i m po rtant post­ structu ral ism-inspired i n q u i res. Wh i l e not all of these authors wo u l d necessari ly label themselves as 'poststructural', thei r work intersects with , and wou l d not have been possible witho ut, an i nterd isci p l i n ary debate that cal led i nto q uestion the authority of the positivist meta-theo retical ass u m ptions that secu red real ist and other trad itional perspectives i n I R. Befo re detai l i ng what a poststructu ral ist perspective i nvolves, it is necessary, therefo re, to outl i n e the key elements of this i nterd isci p l i n ary debate.  P O STS TRUCTU R A L I S M 201 T h e i nterd isci p l i n ary co ntext o f poststructu ralism Positivism and science in question IR has been shaped by the i nfl uence of science and tech nology i n the development of the modern wo rld. The potential fo r contro l and pred ictive capacity that the natural sciences seemed to offer p rovided a model that social scientists sought to e m u l ate. This model, positivism, was fo u nded o n the empi ricist theory of knowledge, which argued that sensory experience provides the o n ly legiti mate sou rce of knowledge (fo r more detail on positivism, see Chapter 1 ). 'Experience' refers to d i rect sensory access to an external real ity com prising material th i ngs. As an epistemology (a meta-theory concern ing how we know), the e m p i ricist co nception of knowledge u n derstands knowledge as derivi ng fro m a relationsh i p between a given s u bject (the person that knows) and a given o bject (that which is known). These theoretical developments were central to a major h i storical transfo rmatio n -the i ntel lectual clash in the Renaissance period between the c h u rch and science, which chal­ lenged the d o m i nance of theology fo r social o rder. These i ntel lectual developments, which c u l m i n ated d u ring the E n l ighten ment, incl uded making 'man' and 'reaso n', rather than 'god' and 'belief', the centre of p h i l osoph ical d isco u rse, and the construction and legitimation of the state, rather than the c h u rch, as the basis fo r pol itical order. It was a mo ment i n which knowledge i ntersected with power to lasti ng effect. Although the E n l ightenment conception of knowledge was i ntended to free h u man ity from rel igious dogma, it was eventually trans­ fo rmed i nto a d ogma itself. By the end of the n i n eteenth centu ry, its d o m i nance meant that knowledge was eq uated with science and reason l i m ited to scientific reason. This dogmatiza­ tion of science meant that social l ife is centred on tec h n i cal contro l over nature and ad m i n is­ trative co ntrol over h u mans, so that pol itical issues became q u estions of order and efficiency. The positivist acco u nt of science at the base of E n l ighten ment thought is fou nded u pon th ree empi ricist assu m ptions: fi rst, epistemic realism: the view that there is an external wo rld, the existence and mean ing of which is i ndependent of anyth i ng the o bserver does; second, the ass u m ption of a universal scientific language: the bel ief that this external wo rld can be descri bed i n a language that does not pres u p pose anyth i ng, thereby allowing the o bserver to remain detached and d ispassionate; th i rd , the correspondence theory of truth: that the o bserver can captu re the facts of the wo rld i n statements that are true if they cor­ respond to the facts and false if they do not. We can see these ass u m ptions in Hans M o rgen ­ thau's classic text when he writes that a theory m ust 'approach pol itical real ity with a k i n d of rational o utl i n e' and d isti nguish 'between what is true o bjectively and rational ly, s u p po rted by evidence and i l l u m i nated by reason, and what is o n ly a s u bjective j udgement, d ivo rced fro m the facts as they are and i nfo rmed by p rej u d ice and wishfu l th i n ki ng' (Morgenthau 1 978: 3 -4). Postempiricism in science A n u m ber of i ntel lectual developments have demonstrated that the positivist u nderstand i ng of scientific proced u re that the social sciences have tried to model does not actually represent the cond uct of scientific i n q u i ry. The 'li ngu istic tu rn' in Anglo-American p h i losophy was a move away fro m the idea that language is a transparent med i u m through which the wo rld can be com p rehended-a view that suggested it was possible to get 'beh ind' language and 'gro u nd' 202 DAV I D CA M P B E L L A N D R O L A N D B L E I K E R knowledge i n the wo rld itself-towards a n acco u nt o f language that u nderstood i t as em bed ­ ded i n social practice and i n separable fro m the world ( Rorty 1 967). Al l ied with the develop­ ment of hermeneutic thought i n conti nental p h i l osop hy-a trad ition origi nally co ncerned with the read i ng of bibl ical, classical, and legal texts which develo ped i nto an acco u nt of the i m portance of i nterpretation to being h u man-these s h ifts co ntri buted to a new u n derstand­ ing of the relations h i p between language and real ity (see Geo rge 1 994). Developments i n the p h i l osophy of science itself-especially what are cal led the postpositivist and postempi ricist debates (see H esse 1 980)-have also challenged the val id ity of the positivist acco u nt. These developments have co ntri buted to a reappraisal of science th rough social stud ies that q ues­ tion the val ue of 'facts' and the mean ing of 'objectivity' fo r social i n q u i ry (Megi l l 1 994; Poovey 1 998). Fi nal ly, the development of co m p l exity science ( i n c l u d i n g chaos theory and other new approaches to regularity) extends even fu rther the chal lenge to 'co m m o n -sense' assu m ptions of what co u nts as science and how it is co nd ucted , and l i n ks contemporary u n derstand i ngs of science with poststructural ism ( D i l l o n 2000). G iven this, poststructu ral ism is i n no sense antiscience. In the p h i losophy of science, the poste m p i ricist debates focused o n the co re of the co n ­ tention between positivists and anti positivists: the E n l ighten ment co nceptio n o f knowledge. For the E n l ighten ment the search fo r truth meant the search fo r fo u n d ations, facts that co u l d 'gro u nd' knowledge. T h e poste m p i ricist perspective is thus co ncerned with t h e rejection of such foundational tho ught (such as the claim that the state is the o rgan izi ng principle of i nter­ national relations, or that eth ical theory req u i res establ ished rules ofj ustice as grounds forj udg­ ing right from wro ng), which it ach i eves th ro ugh a new understan d i ng of the s u bject/object relationsh i p in theories of knowledge. Poste m p i ricists conceive of this relationsh i p as one i n which t h e two terms co nstruct each other rather than t h e fu ndamental opposition o f two pregiven entities. Th is u nderm i n i ng of the separation of s u bjects and o bjects means any claim to knowledge that rel ies o n d ichoto m ies analogou s to the s u bject/object d ualism (e.g. facts against val ues, o bjective knowledge vs s u bjective p rej ud ice, or empi rical o bservation i n co ntrast to normative co ncerns) 'is... epistemologically u nwarranted ' (Bernste i n 1 979: 230, 1 983). The end resu lt is that i n place of the basic ass u m ptions of epistemic real ism, a u n iversal scientific language and the correspondence theory of truth that lay beh i n d positivist u n d er­ standi ngs of science and the E n l ighten ment conception of knowledge, all i n q u i ry- i n both the h u man sciences and the natu ral sciences-has to be co ncerned with the social constitution of mean i ng, the l i ngu istic co nstruction of reality, and the h i sto ricity of knowledge. This reaffi rms the i n d ispensabi l ity of i nterpretation, and suggests that all knowledge i nvo lves a relationship with power i n its mapping of the wo rld. The reaction of I R to poststructu ral ism Critical anxiety As we shal l see, these d i mensions are present i n and help make possible the poststructuralist acco u nts of pol itics and i nternational relations i ntrod uced above, even as those acco u nts go beyo nd the priority given to language in the constitution of real ity that marks co nstructivist approaches to i nternational pol itics. We need to be clear, then, about the s i m i larities and  P O STS TRUCTU R A L I S M 203 d ifferences i n the critical approaches t o I R. A n awareness o f these d isti nctions, however, i s someth ing that has been absent fro m t h e responses the critical approaches have provo ked in the field. Those who have o bjected to the meta-theo retical critiq ues of real ism, neoreal ism, and the l i ke, particularly the way those critiq ues have cal led i nto q uestion the rel iance o n external reality, fou n d ations, objectivity, and the transparency of language, have often cal l ed those critiq ues 'postmodern', even tho ugh there are few, if any, scholars who use that label, and many who expl icitly reject it (see Cam pbel l 1 992: 246-7). In one of the fi rst assessments of the meta-theoretical critiques, Ro bert Keo hane {1 988) d i choto m ized the field i nto 'rationalists' versus 'reflectivists' and castigated the critical ap­ proaches of the latter position fo r lacki ng social scientific rigo u r. Keo hane fau lted the criti­ cal approaches fo r fai l i ng to embrace the empi ricist standards co ncern ing research agendas, hypothesis co nstructio n , and testing that wo u l d (in his eyes) lend them cred i b i l ity. H owever, i n making h i s claims, Keo hane fai led to demonstrate an awareness or u nderstand i ng of the chal lenge posed by postempi ricist developments i n the p h i losophy of science fo r his sup­ posed ly o bjective criteria (see Bleiker 1 997). S u bseq uently accused of 'self- righteousness' (Wallace 1 996), lam basted as 'evil' and 'dangero us' (Krasner 1 996), castigated fo r 'bad I R' and 'meta-babble' (Halliday 1 996), m isread as 'ph i l oso ph ical idealism' (Mearsheimer 1 994-5), and co nsidered congen ital ly i rrational (0sterud 1 996), those named as 'postmodern ists' have been anyth ing but welcomed by the mainstream of I R (see Devetak 201 4 fo r the best review using this term). Aside fro m their u nwi l l i ngness to engage ways of th i n king they regarded as 'fo reign', these critics reacted as if the q u esti o n i n g of critical approaches meant that the trad i ­ tional co ntainers o f pol itics (especially t h e state) a n d t h e capacity t o j udge right fro m wrong were bei ng rejected. I n so doi ng, they m i stoo k arguments about the h i storical p rod uction of fo u n d ations fo r the claim that all fo u n d ations had to be rejected. When theo retical co ntests p rovo ke such vehemence, it i n d icates that there is someth i n g larger a t stake t h a n d ifferent epistemol ogies. A s Co n n o l ly (2004) h a s argued, d ifferent meth ­ odologies express i n one way or another deep attac h m ents- u nderstood as metaphysical co m m itments o r existential faith -on behalf of those who advocate them. Fo r those who take such i ntense o bjection to the critical perspectives they herd together and brand as 'postmodern', their faith is a particular u n dersta n d i n g of science. Their attachment to that faith i n science-desp ite the d ebates i n the p h i losophy of science that demonstrate how their u n d erstan d i ng of science can not be s u p po rted thro ugh reaso n - i n t u rn d erives fro m an anxiety about what the absence of sec u re fo u n d ations means fo r eth ics and pol itics. Bernste i n (1 983) has named this the 'Cartesian Anxiety', because in the p h i losophy of Descartes the q uest was to fi nd a sec u re gro u n d fo r knowledge. The Cartesian Anxiety is the fear that, given the dem ise of o bjectivity, we are u nable to make j udgements that have been central to the u n dersta n d i n g of modern l ife, namely d isti ngu i s h i n g between true and false, good and bad. The chal lenge, however, is to escape fro m the straightjacket in which i ntel l ec­ tual u n d ersta n d i n g and pol itical l ife has to be o rgan ized by reco u rse to either one option or the other. The post-empi ricist debates in the p h i losophy of science have demonstrated that d ual istic or d ichotomous framewo rks are u n stable. We n eed , i n Bernstei n's (1 983) wo rd s, to move beyo nd o bjectivism and relativism. We need to develop modes of i nterpretation that allow j u d gem ents about social and pol itical issues at home and abroad wh i l e accepti ng, fi rst, that such j u dgements can not be secu red by claims about a p re-existi ng, external reality and, 204 DAV I D CA M P B E L L A N D R O L A N D B L E I K E R seco n d , such arguments can not b e l i m ited by i nvo king d i choto m ies such as fact/val u e o r o bjective/su bjective. Poststructuralism misunderstood as postmodernism By label l i ng the critical perspectives that deal with i nterpretation and rep resentation i n i nter national pol itics as 'postmodern', the critics are suggesting that it is modern ity that they bel i eve to be u nder th reat. If we are to u nderstand what is meant by 'postmodernism', we also have to be co ncerned with modern ism. What is meant by this term? 'Modernism' refers to the p red o m i nant cultural style of the period fro m the 1 890s to the outbreak of the Seco nd World War, encom passing the id eas and val ues i n the painting, scu l p ­ tu re, m usic, arch itectu re, d esign, and literature o f that period. Modernism was part o f the great u pheavals i n pol itical, sociological, scientific, sexual, and fam i l ial orders i n E u rope and the U SA. It was also part of co lon ialism and i m perial ism, i n which these aesthetic and tech­ nological transformations rad ical ly affected the pol itical, sociological, scientific, sexual, and fam i l ial o rders of non -Western societies. Modern ism had much to do with large technologi­ cal and scientific transformations which made the early twentieth centu ry a time of both i n ­ fectious o pti mism a n d u nsettled fear. It was an era that saw t h e i n d ustrial revo l ution p rod uce mass rai lways, the fi rst aircraft, automobi les, l ight b u l bs, photography, fi l ms, and a host of other mechan ical i nventions. These mach i n es offered the hope of i m p roved social co n d i ­ tions, increased wealth, a n d t h e poss i b i l ity o f overco m i ng h u man l i m itations. But t h e i r i m pact on premechan ized ways of life made people fear fo r the existi ng social o rder, at the same time as they co m p ressed time and space i n the global o rder. Modern ism was the cultural response to this change, evident in the abstract art of the C u bists ( l i ke Picasso and B raq ue), whose wo rk d i sto rted perspectives and favo u red man ufactu red o bjects over natu ral envi ronments (see Kern 1 983; H uges 1 991 ). Its aim was to rep resent, i nterpret , and provide critical co m m entary on modern l ife. The faith in technology of the early modern ists was soon exti nguished in the Fi rst World War. The great mach i nes of prom ise tu rned i nto technologies of mass slaughter. The futu re lost its al l u re, and art became fu l l of i rony, disgust, and protest. I n the i m perial domain of E u rope the q uestioning of modern ism fuel led anti colon ial nationalism. In this co ntext, 'modernism' was a pol itical intervention i n a specific cultural context that had glo bal affects. But, after fascism i n E u rope, another world war, t h e H o locaust, a n d t h e process o f decolon ization, t h e critical edge of modern ism was spent. M odern ist cu ltu ral forms lost any sense of newness and possibil ity. It is against this backgro u n d that 'postmodern ism' emerged d u ri n g the period after the Sec­ ond Wo rld War, rep resenting and i nterpreting the i n d eterm i n ate, p l u ral istic, and ever more global ized culture of the Cold War wo rld. I n l iteratu re, art, arch itectu re, and music the term 'postmodern' designated a particular, often eclectic, approach to this cu ltu ral co ntext. ( Exam­ ples here i nclude the pai nting of Andy Warho l , the i nterm ingl i ng of styles i n the architecture of Charles Jencks, and the m usic of M adon na.) I n this co ntext, 'postmodern ism' refers to c u l ­ tural forms i n s pi red b y t h e co n d itions o f accelerated time and space and hyper-consumerism that we experience i n the global ized era so me cal l 'postmodern ity'. Many of the p roblems associated with the concept of 'postmodern ism' co me fro m the m i slead i ng period ization associated with the prefix 'post'. M any critics of postmodern ism  P O STS TRUCTU R A L I S M 205 attack i t b y argu ing that i t assu mes a temporal break with modern ity. They argue that the term 'postmodern ity' assu m es that we l ive i n a h i storical epoch that is q u ite d isti nct fro m , and i n some way replaces, 'modern ity'. H owever, as J ameson (1 991 ) has argued , the structu re of postmodern ity that critical, i nterpretive approaches seek to engage h i sto rical ly is not a new o rder that has d isplaced modernity. It is, rather, a cultural, economic, social, and pol itical problematic marked by the rearticulation of time and space in the modern wo rld (see also Harvey 1 989). It is evident i n developments such as fi nancial specu lation and flexible accu ­ m u lation that depart fro m t h e modern, i n d u strial fo rms o f capital ism rooted i n t h e explo ita­ tion of labo u r in the prod uction process. M uch of the co nfusion and hosti l ity s u rro u n d i ng the co ncept of 'postmodernism' in I R stems fro m the m i staken idea that those dep loyi ng a n i nterp retative an alytic to critical ly u nderstand the transformations i n modern ity are celebrating the ap parently shal low and accelerated c u ltu ral co ntext that has challenged many of modern ity's certai nties. Wh i l e 'postmodern ity' is t h e c u ltural, eco n o m ic, social, and pol itical fo rmation within moder­ n ity that resu lts fro m changes i n time-space rel ations, poststruct u ral ism is one of the i n ­ terp retative analytics that critical ly engages with t h e p rod uction a n d i m p l ication o f these tran sfo rmations. The critical attitude of poststructu ral ism Political context I n p h i l osop h i cal terms a n u m ber of the scholars who resist the m i staken label of 'postmod­ ernism' are more co mfortable with the term 'poststructural ism'. 'Poststructural ism' is a d isti nct p h i l osop h i cal domain which has a critical relation to structuralism, modernity, and postmod­ ernity. The 'structural ist' p h i l osop h i cal movement is associated with 'mod ern ist' cultural fo rces. Structu ral ism was a largely French p h i loso ph ical perspective associated with l i nguist Ferd i nand de Sauss u re and cu ltu ral critic Ro land Barthes. Structural ists ai med to study the social and cu ltu ral co nstruction of the various structu res that give mean ing to our everyday l ives. Poststructuralism is eq ually co ncerned with analysing such mean i ng- prod ucing struc­ tu res but in a manner co nsistent with transformations in the social order of the late twentieth centu ry. The events that i nfl uenced poststructu ral ism were associated with the resistance struggles against establ ished and i m perial power blocs, such as the Algerian and Vietnam wars, the Pragu e Spring of 1 968, the M ay 1 968 movement in France, cultural exp ression in Yugoslavia, demands fo r Th i rd Wo rld eco n o m i c j ustice, and the civil rights, enviro n mental, and wo men's movements i n the U SA and elsewhere. Acco rd i n g to the French p h i losopher G i les Deleuze (1 988: 1 50) these events were part of an i nternational movement that 'l i n ked the emer­ gence of new fo rms of struggle to the p rod uction of a n ew s u bjectivity'. I n other wo rd s, these struggles, u n l i ke the revo l utionary movements of the early twentieth centu ry, were not co n cerned with freeing a u n iversal 'man kind' fro m the chains i m posed u po n it by society, but with rewo rking pol itical s u bjectivity given the globalizing fo rms of l ate capital ism. This co ntext means poststructu ral ism has i m po rtant thi ngs to say about the co n cept of identity i n pol itical l ife. 206 DAV I D CA M P B E L L A N D R O L A N D B L E I K E R M ichel Foucault: limits, ethos, and critique The critical attitude of poststructuralism can be fou n d i n the writi ng of n u merous th i n kers. Key contri butors incl ude J ean Baudril lard , Helene Cixous, G i l les Deleuze, J acq ues Derrida, Luce l rigaray, J acq ues Lacan, Em manuel Levinas, J ean - F ran