Reading Martin Wight's "why is there no international theory?" as history

Alternatives

Volumn 23, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 451-469

  Weber, Cynthia ^a  

^a PURDUE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 24944531857     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437549802300402     Document Type: Review

References (44)

1. Hedley Bull, "Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations," in Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions, Gabriele Wight and Brian Porter, eds. (London: Leicester University Press, 1991), p. xxi.
2. Wight's original article appeared in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), pp. 17-34.
3. On this point, I am paraphrasing Jonathan Culler's argument about the representational disposition of philosophy. Culler writes, "Reality is the presence behind representations, what accurate representations are representations of, and philosophy is above all a theory of representation." In terms of what Wight's essay says about theory, it is "above all a theory of representation." One of the crucial points of my rereading of Wight's essay is to demonstrate that in terms of what Wight's essay does, it exceeds the limitations of representation. See Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 152.
4. Arguing that Wight's essay has foundational signficance for the field of international relations is not the same as saying that Wight's argument was wholely unique. Indeed, as one reviewer pointed out, "The view that diplomatic history offered the only route to clear explanation was so old-hat by the time [Wight wrote] as to be risible" and that it might be more appropriate to view Wight's essay as "intrinsic to the effort to confer academic authority on a particularly narrow line of English thought about international relations." What makes Wight's essay foundational is how international relations scholars return to it as a limiting discourse on what the field can be.
5. How seriously to take this claim is a subject of debate. Chris Brown argues that "Wight's denial of international theory has not been taken seriously by his followers, nor was it intended to be." See Chris Brown, International Theory Today (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), p. 6.
6. Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight wrote of this essay that "its title was intended to be provocative." See preface in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966), p. 13.
7. A host of British and North American textbooks discuss Wight's essay, including James E. Dougherty and Robert L. Pfalzgraff, Jr., eds., Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey, 3d ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1990);
8. Steve Smith, "The Self-images of a Discipline: A Genealogy of International Relations Theory," in Ken Booth and Steve Smith, eds., International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity, 1995), pp. 1-37.
9. Roger Epp, written comments to the author, December 1996.
10. Particularly R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
11. R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory ( 1993). Ibid.,
12. Francois Debrix, "Destabilising Leviathan: A Critical Re-reading of the Order/Anarchy Debate in IR Theory with/against a Postmodern(ized) Hobbes," unpublished MS presented at the 1995 Midwest Political Science Association meeting, Chicago, April 1995;
13. Frederick Dolan, "Hobbes and/or North: The Rhetoric of American National Security," in Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, eds., Ideology and Power in the Age of Lenin in Ruins (New York: St. Martin's, 1991), pp. 191-209.
14. In their interpretations of Wight's essay, Chris Brown and Robert Jackson are illustrative of this point. Brown reads Wight's essay through linear time; Jackson reads it through dialectical time. Neither Brown nor Jackson interrogate their own temporal assumptions and their effects on what international theory and the discipline of international relations can be. See Brown, note 4, and Robert H. Jackson, "Martin Wight, International Theory and the Good Life," Millennium 199, no. 2 (1990): 261-272.
15. Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational Time (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 7 (The material I have placed in brackets is from p. 14). Ermarth continues: "My emphasis on the disappearance of historical thinking does not mean that I advocate overthrowing "history" or rallying to its defence; the state of affairs is far more complex and interesting. . . . The work that undermines history also opens up new questions and provides new opportunities in practice. On the postmodern frame, choice is not a question of either/or but a question of emphasis" (pp. 14-15).
16. Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 205-206.
17. Wight, "Why?" p. 17.
18. Wight's later society-of-states argument enabled him to construct an enclosed space in international politics. It constructed the body that was missing from international politics and from international theory, as the original title of Wight's essay "Why Is There No Body of International Theory?" suggests. Wight's move arguably allows morality back into international politics and international theory because it establishes a community of judgment that can make moral decisions. However, this is not the only way to establish notions of morality and ethics in international relations.
19. On morality and ethics, see, for example, Jim George, "Realist 'Ethics,' International Relations, and Post-modernism: Thinking Beyond the Egoism-Anarchy Thematic," Millennium: 24, no. 2 (1995):195-223.
20. On the original title of Wight's essay, see Der Derian, International Theory, p. 5; and Hedley Bull, note 1, p. xxi.
21. Wight, "Why?" p. 17.
22. See note 5.
23. John Agnew, "Timeless Space and State-centrism: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory,", in Stephen J. Rosow, Naeem Inayatullah, and Mark Rupert, eds., The Global Economy as Political Space (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994), pp. 87-106.
24. Wight, "Why?" pp. 26 and 33.
25. Wight, Why? Ibid., p. 32.
26. On this point, my reading of Wight's essay differs markedly from that of Chris Brown. Brown takes Wight to mean that international theory and history are and should remain two distinct fields of study. According to Brown, that international theory exists for Wight as "a collection of essentially second-rate texts always on the verge of sliding away from theory into historical interpretation" is a problem to be overcome by international theory rather than, as I interpret it, a goal to which international theory should aspire. See Brown, note 4, p. 6.
27. Wight, "Why?" p. 33.
28. Wight, Why? Ibid., p. 29.
29. Wight, Why? Ibid.p. 29.
30. Der Derian makes this claim in a slightly different way, arguing that Wight, like members of the so-called English School, was a philosophical realist in that he "believed theory to reflect 'things as they really are.'" See James Der Derian, introduction to James Der Derian, ed., International Theory: Critical Investigations (New York: New York University Press, 1995), p. 40.
31. On the English School, see Roy E. Jones, "The English School of International Relations: A Case for Closure," Review of International Studies 7 (1981), 1-13.
32. Wight, "Why?" p. 33.
33. This is a quote from The Education of Henry Adams (New York: Modern Library, 1931), p. 442;
34. cited in Wight, "Why?" p. 33.
35. Ermarth points out that it is the neutrality of time that seemingly makes objective comparisons possible, thus giving support to our investment in a construction of historical temporality. However powerful this representation of temporality is, it is but a representation, not a truth. Ermarth writes: "The medium of historical time is a construct and itself a representation of the first magnitude" (p. 26). Ermarth describes "the modern idea of history" as "the view of time as a neutral, homogeneous medium like the space of pictorial realism in painting; a time where mutually informative measurements can be made between past, present, and future, and where all relationships can be explained in terms of a common horizon" (p. 27). Ermarth, note 10.
36. For a discussion of historical time, see Ermarth, note 10, esp. pp. 19-45.
37. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 2.
38. Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, introduction to Parker and Sedgwich, eds., Performativity and Performance (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 2.
39. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 138.
40. Ermarth, note 10, p. 41.
41. Cynthia Weber, "Performative States," Millennium 27, no. 1 (1998), 77-95.
42. Ermarth goes even further on this point. She argues that "time has become reader's time, phenomenal time; in a word, time has become a function of position." See Ermarth, note 10, p. 69.
43. Ermarth, note 10, p. 8.
44. Thanks to Marysia Zalewski for this point. Alternatives 23 (1998), 471-497