Discourses of power: Traversing the realist-postmodern divide

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 637-664

  Sterling Folker, Jennifer ^a   Shinko, Rosemary E ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 22544470604     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298050330031801     Document Type: Review

References (105)

1. For their feedback and advice on prior drafts of this paper, the authors would like to thank Millennium's editors and reviewers, and participants at two forums: University of Connecticut's Political Science Brown Bag Series and Millennium's conference on 'Facets of Power,' in particular Winnie King and Véronique Pin-Fat.
2. For an extended discussion of this point, see R.B.J. Walker, 'Realism, Change, and International Political Theory', International Studies Quarterly 31 (1987).
3. The term "structure" is used here in reference to patterns of "transtemporal transpatial abstract universalisms" that would be "distinguished from the mere succession of events," Ibid., 75.
4. Walker observes that structuralism is "guided by a fundamental attachment to the principles of identity and resemblance," so, for example, "by ignoring diversity and particularity, it is possible to establish uniformity and universality in, say, all human myths." Ibid., 76-7. Thus if one assumes that universalisms will be manifest in the collective knowledge practices that constitute stable social structures, the differences in historical collective knowledge practices and social structures become relatively unimportant.
5. See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979);
6. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001);
7. and Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
8. See Richard Ashley, 'The Poverty of Neorealism', in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 255-300
9. and Ashley, 'Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War', in International/Intertextual Relations, eds. James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro (New York: Lexington Books, 1989), 259-321;
10. James Der Derian, 'Post-Theory: The Eternal Return of Ethics in International Relations', in New Thinking in International Relations Theory, eds. Michael Doyle and John Ikenberry (Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), 54-76;
11. R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
12. and Walker 'Polis, Cosmopolis, Politics', Alternatives 28 (2003): 267-287.
13. Walker, 'Realism, Change', 72.
14. Ibid., 82.
15. Ibid., 65.
16. Although Guzzini, Schmidt, and Baldwin argue that contemporary realists rely on material rather than relational perspectives of power (as do neo-classical realists, of which this analysis is an example), material perspectives in fact always assumes that knowledge of material power has a relational effect. For example, although Mearshiemer relies on a material power definition, he clearly intends power to have relational effects when he asserts that 'states pay close attention to how power is distributed among them.' See Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Power Politics, 34;
17. and Stefano Guzzini, 'The Use and Misuse of Power Analysis in International Theory', in Global Political Economy: Contemporary Theories, ed. Ronen Palan (London: Routledge, 2000),
18. and 'Structural Power: The Limits of Neorealist Power Analysis', International Organization 47 (1993): 443-478;
19. Brian Schmidt, 'Competing Realist Conceptions of Power', in this Millennium issue;
20. and David Baldwin, 'Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies', World Politics 31 (1979): 161-95.
21. Guzzini, 'Structural Power', 446, 449.
22. David Campbell has discussed Foucault's understanding of power as an attempt by one person to control another. See D. Campbell, 'Why Fight: Humanitarianism, Principles, and Post-structuralism', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27 (1998): 510.
23. For overviews of neoclassical realism, see Gideon Rose, 'Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy', World Politics 51 (1998): 144-72;
24. Stephen M. Walt, 'The Enduring Relevance of the Realist Tradition, in Political Science: The State of the Discipline, eds. Ira Katznelson and Helen V. Milner (New York: Norton, 2002).
25. Reviews of realist literature which underscore these elements include Stephen G. Brooks, 'Dueling Realisms', International Organization 51 (1997);
26. Michael Spirtas, 'A House Divided: Tragedy and Evil in Realist Theory', in Realism: Restatements and Renewals, ed. Benjamin Frankel (London: Frank Cass, 1996);
27. and Annette Freyberg-Inan, What Moves Man: The Realist Theory of International Relations and Its Judgement of Human Nature (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004).
28. See, for example, Thomas J. Christensen, 'Posing Problems Without Catching Up: China's Rise and Challenges for US Security Policy', International Security 25 (2001): 5-40;
29. and Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Power Politics, ch. 10.
30. See John Copper, Taiwan Nation-State or Province?, 3rd ed. (Colorado: Westview Press, 1999);
31. Suisheng Zhao, ed., Across the Taiwan Strait: Mainland China, Taiwan, and the 1995-1996 Crisis (New York: Routledge, 1999);
32. Thomas J. Christensen, 'The Contemporary Security Dilemma: Deterring a Taiwan Conflict', The Washington Quarterly 25 (2002): 7-21;
33. and Richard L. Russell, 'The 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis: The United States and China at the Precipice of War?', Case 231, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, 2000), 3-6.
34. See interviews with Kurt Campbell, David Sanger, and Joseph Wu on Frontline Special: Dangerous Straits, Exploring thc Future of US-China Relations and the Long Simmering Issue of Taiwan, October 2001 [http://www.pbs.org/wghb/pages/frontline/shows/china/interviews] (14 August 2004).
35. Xiaokun Song, 'Intellectual Discourses in the Taiwan Independence Movement', in Secession, History and the Social Sciences, eds. Bruno Coppieters and Michel Huysseune (Belgium: Brussels University Press, 2002), 228.
36. David Lampton, interview on Frontline Special: Dangerous Straits, Exploring the Future of US-China Relations and the Long Simmering Issue of Taiwan, October 2001 [http://www.pbs.org/wghb/pages/frontline/ shows/china/interviews] (14 August 2004).
37. For a critique of realism see Richard Ashley, 'The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Towards a Critical Social Theory of International Politics', Alternatives 12 (1987): 403-434.
38. Jim George, Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 216.
39. A discussion of the anarchy problematique is found in Richard Ashley, 'Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 17 (1988): 227-262.
40. For a discussion of sovereign certitude, see Richard Ashley, 'The Achievements of Post-structuralism', in International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, eds. S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 240-253.
41. On intertextuality, see Michael Shapiro, 'Representing World Politics: The Sport/War Intertext', in International/Intertextual Relations, 69-96.
42. For a discussion of aesthetic knowledge practices, see Roland Bleiker, 'The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 30 (2001): 509-533.
43. Copper, Taiwan, 178, emphasis added.
44. George, Discourses.
45. Ashley, 'Achievements of Post-structuralism', 244.
46. For a more detailed discussion, see Richard Ashley and R. B. J. Walker, 'Speaking the Language of Exile: Dissident Thought in International Studies', International Studies Quarterly 34 (1990): 259-268,
47. and 'Reading Dissidence/Writing the Discipline: Crisis and the Question of Sovereignty in International Studies', International Studies Quarterly 34 (1990): 367-416.
48. Kurt Campbell, Frontline interview. http://www.pbs.org/wghb/pages/frontline/shows/china/interview
49. One group in particular, the Ping-Pu Ketagalan people, led by Chen Kimman and Lin Sheng-yi, have accused the Taiwanese government of carrying out a genocide policy against them. Jason Pan, 'Ketagalan People Promote Revival of Culture, Traditions', Taiwan News, 9 August 2004 [http://www.etaiwannews.com/Taiwan/2004/08/09] (10 August 2004).
50. Phillip Darby has cautioned against over-valorising the local as a site of resistance and the global as a site of domination. I agree with his observation, but I disagree with his conclusion that postmodernists are unaware of this dynamic. There is a great deal of ambiguity involved in processes of domination and resistance, and that's precisely why I draw attention to issues of identity where closure is being deferred. The point is politicisation, which implies recognition of historical contingency and the relationality of identity in conjunction with an attitude of agonistic respect. Identity is fundamentally paradoxical because any attempt to establish identity necessarily denies difference and yet identity is radically dependent upon difference for its existence. I am arguing that as long as the situation is fluid, power remains relational and the content of freedom remains open to politicisation. See Darby, 'Pursuing the Political', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33 (2004): 10-11;
51. and also William Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (New York: Cornell University Press, 1991).
52. My intent is not to replay the arguments deconstructing the state and sovereignty, but to focus on the more productive and transformative possibilities within a postmodern analytic of power. See William Connolly, 'Democracy and Territoriality', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 20 (1991): 463-483;
53. Michael Shapiro, 'Sovereignty and Exchange in the Orders of Modernity', Alternatives 16 (1991): 447-477;
54. R.B.J Walker and Saul Mendlovitz, eds., Contending Sovereignties, Redefining Political Community (Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1990);
55. R.B. J. Walker, 'On the Spatiotemporal Conditions of Democratic Practice', Alternatives 16 (1991): 243-262;
56. Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
57. and Cynthia Weber, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State and Symbolic Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
58. Ashley and Walker, 'Reading Dissidence', 391.
59. Self-making in a register of freedom transpires on the margins and in the lived experiences of everyday existence. A register of freedom emerges where individuals confront the lack of a universal or totalising narrative that would help them choose between competing and overlapping identities and/ or to permanently secure them. Self-making becomes possible in the space wherein we recognize the 'constructedness' of all our identities. Kimberly Hutchings describes a register of freedom as a celebration of 'the instability of discursively constructed boundaries.' See K. Hutchings, International Political Theory (London: Sage, 1999), 78.
60. Ibid., 394.
61. For a discussion of the radical interdependence of being and our inescapable responsibility to the other, see D. Campbell, 'Why Fight'.
62. Richard Ashley, 'The Powers of Anarchy: Theory, Sovereignty, and the Domestication of Global Life', in International Theory: Critical Investigations, ed. James Der Derian (New York: NYU Press, 1995), 94-128.
63. Xiaobing Tang, 'On the Concept of Taiwan Literature', Modern China 25 (1999): 386.
64. Ibid., 391.
65. Ibid., 406.
66. Ibid., 399.
67. See, for example, William Bloom, Personal Identity, National Identity, and International Relations (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
68. Jonathan Mercer, 'Anarchy and Identity', International Organization 49 (1995): 229-252;
69. and Jennifer Sterling-Folker, Theories of International Cooperation and the Primacy of Anarchy: Explaining US International Monetary Policy-Making After Bretton Woods (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002), ch. 3
70. This is well documented in works as diverse as Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991);
71. Daniel Druckman, 'Nationalism, Patriotism, and Group Loyalty: A Social Psychological Perspective', Mershon International Studies Review 38 (1994): 43-68;
72. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1991);
73. and Franke Wilmer, The Social Construction of Man, the State, and War: Identity, Conflict, and Violence in the Former Yugoslavia (New York: Routledge, 2002).
74. Joseph Kahn, 'Taiwan Voters Weighing How Far to Push China', New York Times, 18 March 2004, A8.
75. Ibid, A1, A8.
76. For example, Liao Dai-chi, a political expert at National Sun Yat-sen University of Kaohsiung argues, 'any politician has to stand with 'Taiwan identity' to win election' (quoted in Kahn, 'Taiwan Voters', A8). It is not surprising, then, that during the 2004 campaign even the Nationalist candidate, Lien Chan, used Minnanese, the Taiwanese dialect, stressed his ethnic Taiwanese background, and rarely mentioned reunification.
77. Quoted in Joseph Kahn, 'Election Fallout: Mounting Tension', New York Times, 22 March 2004, A6.
78. Ashley, 'Powers of Anarchy', 125.
79. See Foucault's 'The Subject and Power', in which he discusses how practices of insubordination are implicated in power relations. In Michel Foucault Power, ed. James Faubion (New York: The New Press, 2000), 326-348.
80. Foucault as quoted in Christopher Norris, 'What is Enlightenment?: Kant According to Foucault', in Cambridge Companion to Foucault, ed. Gary Gutting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 179.
81. Thomas Dumm argues that practices of freedom are enabled by power relations in Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom (California: Sage Publications, 1996);
82. and Norris explores possibilities for autonomy, freedom and self-determination within Foucault's essay 'What is Enlightenment?' in 'What is Enlightenment'. For a discussion of the productive aspects of power, power creating the conditions of possibility for freedom, see Jonathan Joseph, Social Theory: An Introduction (New York: NYU Press, 2004);
83. for an examination of how will and freedom are central to provoking power relationships, see James Faubion, ed., Michel Foucault Power;
84. and for an explanation of how limits imposed within power relations provide the opportunity for acts and moments of transgression, see Jon Simmons, Foucault & the Political (New York: Routledge, 1995).
85. For a discussion of the 2-28 Incident, the Kaohsiung Incident and their role as foundational myths of democratic Taiwan, see Ian Buruma, Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (New York: Random House, 2001);
86. for an examination of the multilayered and synchronic nature of Taiwans cultural scene, see Weiming Tu, 'Cultural Identity and the Politics of Recognition in Contemporary Taiwan', The China Quarterly 148, Special Issue: Contemporary Taiwan (1996): 1115-1140;
87. for an overview of Taiwan's rapid social and political changes and the social cleavages and movements they have spawned, see Thomas Gold, 'Taiwan Society at the Fin de Siecle', The China Quarterly 148, Special Issue: Contemporary Taiwan (1996): 1091-1114;
88. for a postmodern argument against a purified and totalising conception of 'Tawainess', see Sebastian Hsien-hao Liao, 'Becoming Cyborgian: Postmodernism and Nationalism in Contemporary Taiwan', in Postmodernism & China, eds. Arif Dirlik and Xudong Zhang (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000);
89. and for a focus on the cultural implications of Taiwan's move from the periphery of China to the margins of international politics, see Ping-hui Liao, 'Postmodern Literary Discourse and Contemporary Public Culture in Taiwan,' in Postmodernism & China.
90. Tang, 'Taiwan Literature', 401.
91. Ibid., 401.
92. For an examination of ambiguity, contestation and difference relating to the construction of mainland Chinese identity and the writing of history, see Arif Dirlik, 'Reversals, Ironies, Hegemonies: Notes on the Contemporary Historiography of Modern China', Modern China 22 (1996): 243-284;
93. Yingjie Guo and Baogang He, 'Reimagining the Chinese Nation: The "Zeng Guofan Phenomenon"', Modern China 25 (1999): 142-170;
94. and Xiaobin Yang, 'Whence and Whither the Postmodern/Post-Mao-Deng: Historical Subjectivity and Literary Subjectivity in Modern China', in Postmodernism & China, 379-398.
95. Hsien-hao Liao, 'Becoming Cyborgian', 177.
96. Song, 'Intellectual Discourses', 232.
97. Jean Bethke Elshtain, 'Feminist Themes and International Relations', in International Theory, 349.
98. Hans J. Morgenthau, 'The Intellectual and Political Functions of Theory,' in International Theory, 40.
99. Arif Dirlik, 'China's Critical Intelligentsia', New Left Review 28, (2004): 137.
100. I b i d.
101. For a discussion of the interplay between governmental structural pressures and local Yao cultural practices, see Ralph Litzinger, 'Reimagining the State in Post-Mao China', in Cultures of Insecurity, eds. Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson and Raymond Duvall (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 293-318.
102. Saul Newman, 'The Place of Power in Political Discourse', International Political Science Review, 25 (2004): 155.
103. Connolly, Identity/Difference, 2;
104. and Hans J. Morgethau, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1946).
105. Walker, 'Realism, Change', 267.