British irony, global justice: A pragmatic reading of Chris brown, banksy and ricky gervais

Review of International Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 219-245

  Brassett, James ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 67749101860     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: 14699044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210509008390     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. Kenneth Burke, 'Comic Correctives', in Attitudes Towards History, cited from R. Rorty, 'The End of Leninism, Havel, and Social Hope', in R. Rorty, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 240.
2. C. Brown (1999), 'Universal Human Rights: A Critique', in T. Dunne and N. Wheeler (eds), Human Rights in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 103-27.
3. Molly Cochran, 'The Liberal Ironist, ethics and International Relations Theory', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 25:1 (1996), pp. 29-52.
4. O. Parker and J. Brassett, 'Contingent Borders, Ambiguous Ethics: Migrants in (International) Political Theory', International Studies Quarterly, 49:2 (2005), pp. 233-53.
5. Will Smith, 'Cosmopolitan Citizenship: Virtue, Irony and Worldliness', European Journal of Social Theory, 10:1 (2007), pp. 37-52.
6. Bryan Tuner, 'Cosmopolitan Virtue, Globalization and Patriotism', Theory, Culture and Society, 19:1-2 (2002), pp. 45-63.
7. Marieke De Goede, 'Carnival of Money: Politics of dissent in an era of globalizing finance', in Louise Amoore (ed.), The Global Resistance Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 379-91.
8. See also J. Brassett, 'A Pragmatic Approach to the Tobin Tax Campaign: The Politics of Sentimental Education', European Journal of International Relations, forthcoming (2008).
9. Ernest Gellner (1996), Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Penguin, 1989).
10. J. S. Mill, On Liberty, new edn (London: Penguin Classics).
11. See also C. Brown, 'Universal Human Rights: A Critique', in T. Dunne and N. Wheeler (eds), Human Rights in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 103-27.
12. R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. xvi.
13. Borat: the Movie is only the latest in a long tradition of such racial therapy. See also Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, on anti-Semitism Derek and Clive Ad Nauseam (London: Virgin Records). This approach is of course prevalent in the US also with Lenny Bruce's treatment of the word 'nigger' providing perhaps the most famous example, Let the Buyer Beware (New York: Sony Audio CD, 2004).
14. Stuart Ward, British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 12.
15. Ibid., p. 12.
16. R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
17. R. Rorty, 'The End of Leninism, Havel, and Social Hope', in R. Rorty, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 240.
18. R. Rorty, 'Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality', in Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers Volume 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 172.
19. Quintessentially see R. Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers Volume 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 42-8. Of course, Rorty's grouping of ironist theorists like Nietzsche and Derrida, with what he termed ironist writers like Nabokov is not unproblematic. This might appear as a semantic circumvention of the tough questions posed by post-structural philosophy, a way of placing such insights in the category of 'merely art' or 'merely culture'. In this paper, I proceed against such a view and instead regard philosophy and culture as co-extensive/co-constitutive. Rorty's move against the philosophy-culture distinction was designed to ward against the undue privileging of a 'philosophical' over any other type of argument/ intervention. The pragmatic questions, as Rorty saw it, were how to make social institutions more just and less cruel. It didn't really matter to him whether this was achieved via theoretical tracts or songs, or both, and many other possible resistances besides.
20. R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 73. This point is discussed at some length below.
21. This grouping of political theory with graffiti and humour requires some explanation. On the one hand, it speaks to Rorty's concern with how cultural assumptions permeate knowledge - witness his preoccupation with the Continental/Anglo-Saxon divide in philosophy. As a cultural trait British irony simply infuses the work of the three protagonists in this paper. On the other hand, it is a direct extension of what Rorty meant by the term 'philosophy as cultural politics'. Rorty sought to show how the important aspects of philosophy are not whether it can solve deep philosophical problems about truth or dilemmas between appearance and reality, but rather whether it can affect people's lives. He followed Dewey to suggest that philosophers 'were never going to be able to see things under the aspect of eternity; they should instead try to contribute to humanity's ongoing conversation about what to do with itself. The progress of this conversation has engendered new social practices, and changes in the vocabularies deployed in moral and political deliberation. To suggest further novelties is to intervene in cultural politics'. On this view, philosophy is potentially co-extensive with cultural practices like the novel and art. While some may wish to maintain a separation between the two Rorty argues 'The professionalization of philosophy, its transformation into an academic discipline, was a necessary evil. But it has encouraged attempts to make philosophy into an autonomous quasi-science. These attempts should be resisted. The more philosophy interacts with other human activities- not just natural science, but art, literature, religion and politics as well - the more relevant to cultural politics it becomes, and the more useful. The more it strives for autonomy, the less attention it deserves.' R. Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers, Volume 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. ix-x. What follows should be read as a modest attempt to blur the philosophy-culture distinction.
22. C. Brown, 'Universal Human Rights: A Critique', in T. Dunne and N. Wheeler (eds), Human Rights in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
23. See also 'Selective Humanitarianism: in defense of inconsistency', in D. K. Chatterjee and D. E. Scheid (eds), Ethics and Foreign Intervention (Cambridge: University Press, 2003), pp. 31-50.
24. Banksy, Wall and Piece (London: Century, 2005).
25. See also J. Brassett, 'Cosmopolitanism vs Terrorism? Discourses of Ethical Possibility Before and After 7/7', in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, forthcoming (2008).
26. For instance, it could well be argued that the British sense of humor is the privilege of the English, while the Welsh, the Scots, the Irish, the Cornish, etc. cannot draw, as readily, on the luxury of a colonial history.
27. Within the confines of this article I will use 'pragmatic approach' as a synonym for a 'Rortian approach'. This should not be taken to overlook the complex debates which surround Rorty's place within pragmatist philosophy. See for instance M. Festenstein, Pragmatism and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997).
28. As the final section addresses there is no sense in which irony 'must' generate straightforward interventions on global ethics. Differences in both intention and reception mean that 'irony' (like many political concepts) does not lead to straightforward lessons or outcomes.
29. Here my understanding of irony differs from Simon Critchley's understanding of humour. There are paralells, when for instance, he argues that 'By producing a consciousness of contingency, humour can change the situation in which we find ourselves, and can even have a critical function with respect to society.' However, he goes on to identify a form of reactionary ethnic humour where 'the British laugh at the Irish, the Canadians laugh at the Newfies, the Americans laugh at the Poles [. . .] Such humour is not laughter at power, but the powerful laughing at the powerless'. S. Critichley, On Humour (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 10-12. My suggestion is that irony is not simply parochial, nor is irony simply a mechanism to make us feel shame (See ibid., p. 74). Rather it suggests a way in which we 'might' individually and collectively become aware of the ethical ambiguities and paradoxes that we live with, and through which global ethics is negotiated.
30. For an extended review of Rorty's thought see J. Brassett, 'Richard Rorty', in J. Edkins and N. Vaughan-Williams (eds), Critical Theorists and International Relations, forthcoming (2008).
31. R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. vii.
32. R, Rorty, 'Justice as a Larger Loyalty', in Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers, Volume 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 110.
33. J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1987).
34. R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. xiv.
35. Ibid., p. xiv.
36. Ibid., p. 73.
37. Ibid., p. xv.
38. Ibid., p. 73.
39. Ibid., p. xvi.
40. Ibid., p. 198.
41. See for instance, B. Jahn, 'Kant, Mill, and Illiberal Legacies in International Affairs', International Organization, 59 (2005), pp. 177-207;
42. Nick Vaughan-Williams, 'Beyond a Cosmopolitan Ideal: The Politics of Singularity', International Politics, 44:1 (2006), pp. 107-124.
43. R. Rorty, 'Justice as a Larger Loyalty', in Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers, Volume 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 55.
44. Equally national or contextual experiences and traditions of irony, but also satire as experienced in say Sweden, or Australia, or Spain, or Mexico may have much to offer the critique of global ethics.
45. Compare for instance, Chris Brown, 'Not My Department? Normative Theory and International Relations', Paradigms, 2 (1987), or indeed, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (Hemel Hempstead, 1992), with the tone of Brown (1999) or 'Narratives of Religion, Civilisation and Modernity', in Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order, eds K. Boothe, T. Dunne and N. Wheeler (Palgrave, 2002a), pp. 293-302.
46. C. Brown, 'What, exactly, is the problem to which the 'five-part test' is the solution?', in International Relations, 19:2 (2005), p. 225.
47. C. Brown, 'Tragedy, "Tragic Choices"and Contemporary International Political Theory', International Relations 21:1 (2007), pp. 5-13.
48. C. Brown, 'Universal Human Rights: A Critique', in T. Dunne and N. Wheeler (eds), Human Rights in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 120).
49. R. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Walker, 'Polis, Cosmopolis, Politics. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 28:2 (2003), pp. 267-87.
50. K. Hutchings, 'Feminist ethics and political violence', International Politics, 44:1 (2007), pp. 90-106.
51. C. Brown, 'The Normative Framework of Post-Cold War International Relations', in Stephanie Lawson (ed.), The New Agenda for International Relations: From Polarisation to Globalisation in World Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 148.
52. Gellner cited C. Brown, 'Universal Human Rights: A Critique', in Human Rights in Global Perspective, ed. T. Dunne and N. Wheeler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 123.
53. C. Brown, 'Universal Human Rights: A Critique', in Human Rights in Global Perspective, ed. T. Dunne and N. Wheeler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 120.
54. International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (Hemel Hempstead, 1992), p. 188, fn 6.
55. C. Brown, 'Tragedy, "Tragic Choices"and Contemporary International Political Theory', in International Relations, 21:1 (2007), pp. 5-6.
56. Ibid., p. 12.
57. Ibid., p. 12.
58. See The New Yorker, Banksy Was Here: The invisible man of graffiti art. Lauren Collins, 14 May 2007: .
59. I am grateful to Chris Holmes for his advice on this point.
60. The Guardian 'The Art of Worship', Esther Addley, 14 June 2007:
61. The New Yorker, Banksy Was Here: The invisible man of graffiti art by Lauren Collins, 14 May 2007: .
62. As Rorty argued 'The Platonist tradition insists that collisions of good with good are always illusory, because there is always one right thing to do. Pieces of the puzzle that obstinately refuse to fit are discarded as mere appearance. But for pragmatists intellectual and moral conflict is typically a matter of beliefs that have been acquired in the attempt to serve one good purpose getting in the way of beliefs that were developed in the course of serving another good purpose. [. . .] Since pragmatists agree with James that the true is the good in the way of belief, and since they take the conflict of good with good as inevitable, they do not think that universalist grandeur and finality will ever be attained. Ingenious compromises between old goods will produce new sets of aspirations and new projects, and new collisions between those aspirations and projects forever. We shall never escape what Hegel called 'the struggle and labor of the negative,' but that is merely to say that we shall remain finite creatures of specific times and places' (2007, pp. 81-2).
63. Banksy, Wall and Piece (London: Century, 2005).
64. See for instance: . Typing Banksy into the BBC website search produces over 13 pages of news items, radio clips and television reports.
65. There is a long debate amongst critics of Rorty over how well this link between 'private irony' and 'public liberal ethics' is made. A number of critiques emphasise the methodological totality of the public-private split to the effect that Rorty effectively cuts off any chance of a thoroughgoing (ironic) critique of public institutions. However, as well as the examples cited above, I find there are numerous instances in Rorty's work where he operationalises the interplay between irony and liberalism. Indeed, on a number of occasions he was quite explicit: In one interview (1995, p. 62) he argued, 'I don't think private beliefs can be fenced off [from the public sphere]; they leak through, so to speak, and influence the way one behaves toward other people.' And in another (2002, pp. 62-3) he categorically retorts, 'I didn't say everybody had a public/private split, but some people do. There is a spectrum here. [. . .] My public/private distinction wasn't an explanation of what every human life is like. I was, instead, urging that there was nothing wrong with letting people divide their lives along the private/public line. We don't have a moral responsibility to bring the two together. It was a negative point, not a positive recommendation about how everybody should behave.'
66. Ibid.
67. Thanks are due to Sian Sullivan for her advice on this point. See also S. Sullivan, 'Viva Nihilism!' On Militancy and Machismo in (Anti-)Globalisation Protest, CSGR Working Paper 158/05, February 2005.
68. Banksy, Wall and Piece (London: Century, 2005), p. 50. British irony, global justice 235
69. Interview for Channel 4 News. News item available at: .
70. Ricky Gervais, Comic Relief 2007 Red Nose Day (BBC Television, 16 March 2007).
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. J. Edkins, Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 159.
74. Even Thomas Pogge's recent and highly sophisticated attempts to construct a theory of global justice around 'individuals' repeatedly falls back of discourses of us and them, moral outrage, and vast statistics that highlight the helpless plight of the 'wretched of the earth'. T. Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights: cosmopolitan responsibilities and reforms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).
75. Debbie Lisle, 'Humanitarian Travels: Ethical Communication in Lonely Planet guidebooks', Review of International Studies, 34:1 (2008), p. 158.
76. J. Brassett, Cosmopolitanism vs Terrorism? Discourses of Ethical Possibility Before and After 7/7', in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, forthcoming (2008).
77. R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 87-8.
78. R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979).
79. For a fuller discussion of the public-private division in Rorty's thought see J. Brassett, 'Richard Rorty', in J. Edkins and N. Vaughan-Williams (eds), Critical Theorists and International Relations, forthcoming (2008).
80. Will Smith, 'Cosmopolitan Citizenship: Virtue, Irony and Worldliness', European Journal of Social Theory, 10:1 (2007), p. 42.
81. F. Robinson, Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory and International Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999). For instance, a point which could be developed is whether irony is an excessively 'masculine' quality? The personal strength required to undermine one's position publicly (Gervais), or to proceed with constant awareness of indeterminacy (Brown, Banksy), seems to fit into some fairly male personality types, 'self-awareness as self-control', of 'swallowing up the pain and toughing it out'.
82. W. Smith and J. Brassett, 'Deliberation and Global Governance: Liberal, Cosmopolitan and Critical Perspectives', Ethics and International Affairs, forthcoming (2007).
83. See for instance J. Bohman, 'International Regimes and Democratic Governance: Political Equality and Influence in Global Institutions', International Affairs, 75:3 (1999), pp. 499-513.
84. 'Selective Humanitarianism: in defense of inconsistency', in D. K. Chatterjee and D. E. Scheid (eds), Ethics and Foreign Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 31-50.
85. K. Hutchings, 'Speaking and Hearing: Habermasian Discourse Ethics, Feminism and IR', Review of International Studies, 31:1 (1999), p. 165.
86. Banksy, Wall and Piece (London: Century, 2005), p. 116.
87. R. Rorty, 'Habermas, Derrida, and the Functions of Philosophy', in Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers Volume 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp.308-26.
88. See also R. Rorty, 'Universality and Truth', in Rorty And His Critics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 1-30.
89. M. Foucault, 'On Method', in Louise Amoore (ed.), The Global Resistance Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 88.
90. See also Louise Amoore that may be relevant: 'There is No Great Refusal': 'The Ambivalent Politics of Resistance', in M. de Goede (ed.), International Political Economy and Poststructural Politics (Palgrave, 2006).
91. D. Bulley, 'The Ethics of Decision: Representations of Britain's War in Iraq'. Paper presented at the 2006 ISA Convention, San Diego.
92. Marieke De Goede, 'Carnival of Money: Politics of dissent in an era of globalising finance', in Louise Amoore (ed.), The Global Resistance Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 379-91.
93. In a masterful analysis of the Lonely Planet guidebook brand, which seeks to provide travellers with a way of breaking down cultural barriers Debbie Lisle argues that while on the one hand Lonely Planet 'travellers do not encourage the global inequalities bolstered by the tourism industry - they help others by breaking down cultural barriers and spending their hard currency where it is most needed . . .' and 'in the process, LP travellers develop important cultural capital: they become well-travelled, culturally aware, cosmopolitan global citizens.' One the other hand 'The problem, of course, is that the benefactor/victim logic of humanitarianism leaves the excommunicated masses of the world - those who are written about in LP guidebooks - in the same position: subordinate and silent.' Debbie Lisle, 'Humanitarian Travels: Ethical Communication in Lonely Planet guidebooks', Review of International Studies, 34:1 (2008), p. 171.