Aesthetics and international relations: Towards a global politics

Global Society

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 299-309

  Moore, Cerwyn ^a   Shepherd, Laura J ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; POLITICAL RELATIONS; REGIONAL POLITICS;

EID: 77954505796     PISSN: 13600826     EISSN: 1469798X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2010.485564     Document Type: Article

References (118)

1. Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights: In Search of Morocco through its Stories and Storytellers (London: Bantam, 2008).
2. The authors are indebted to Gerard Holden, Roland Bleiker, Chris Farrands and Stephen Chan for insightful comments and thoughts on aspects of this introduction. Roland Bleiker, "The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2001), pp. 509-533.
3. Ibid., p. 510.
4. Richard K. Ashley, "The Poverty of Neorealism", in Robert Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 255-300 (pp. 259-260).
5. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952)
6. Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? (London: Oxford University Press, 1930)
7. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings (eds. D. Forgacs and G. Nowell-Smith, trans. W. Boelhower) (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1985)
8. Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics (Cornwall: Continuum, 2009)
9. Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977)
10. Theodor Adorno et al., Aesthetics and Politics (London: Verso, 2007).
11. idem, "Art after 9/11", Alternatives, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2006), pp. 77-98
12. Iver B. Neumann and Steve Smith, "Forum: Are Dialogue and Synthesis Possible in International Relations?", International Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2003), pp. 137-140
13. Michael Shapiro, "Textualizing Global Politics", in Michael Shapiro and James Der Derian (eds.), International/Intertextual Relations (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 11-22
14. Louiza Odysseos, "Laughing Matters: Peace, Democracy and the Challenge of the Comic Narrative", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2001), pp. 709-773
15. Stephen Chan, "A Problem for IR: How Shall we Narrate the Sage of Bestial Man?", Global Society, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2003), pp. 385-413
16. Cerwyn Moore, "Tracing the Russian Hermeneutic: Reflections on Tarkovsky's Cinematic Poetics and Global Politics", Alternatives, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2009), pp. 59-82
17. Maureen Whitebrook, "Taking the Narrative Turn: What the Novel has to Offer Political Theory", in John Horton and Andrea Baumeister (eds.), Literature and the Political Imagination (London: Routledge, 1996) to name but a few examples.
18. Steve Smith, "Singing Our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September the 11th", International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 3 (2004), pp. 499-515
19. Christine Sylvester, "Art, Abstraction and International Relations", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2001), pp. 535-554.
20. Christine Sylvester, "Whither the International at the End of IR", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3 (2007), pp. 551-573.
21. Roland Bleiker, "The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2001), p. 523.
22. Ibid., p. 524.
23. Gerard Holden, "World Literature and World Politics: In Search of a Research Agenda", Global Society, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2003), pp. 229-252.
24. See Roland Bleiker, Aesthetics and World Politics (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2009).
25. Michael Shapiro (ed.), Language and Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1984)
26. Here, however, we would break from both Bleiker and Holden who would include a number of post-structural scholars and those working on art and politics in the second wave of the "aesthetic turn". One reason for this move is because the advocates of post-structuralism, who also make up a considerable portion of those working on art and politics, remain firmly entrenched in debates about either resistance to orthodox theories, or moves which have themselves become part of a critical orthodoxy. There is little debate between these scholars (post-structural writers) and those working in the second wave of the aesthetic turn. In order to move beyond critique, the second wave of the aesthetic turn has the potential to be radical and transformative, as parts of this special issue demonstrate. The second wave of interventions, as Bleiker himself notes, needs "to further refine theoretical positions and to conduct more empirical studies that demonstrate how exactly aesthetic inquiries add to the understanding of international relations"
27. Bleiker, Aesthetics and World Politics, op. cit., p. 187). Furthermore, here we are pointing to debate about aesthetics in art which are ongoing, particularly in the move to "new" aesthetics. The second wave of the "aesthetic turn" therefore seeks to resist the tendency to fall back into what may be called a critical orthodoxy associated with post-structuralism which is most prevalent in British IR, not only offering further critique, nor closing the door on either empiricist or constructivist works.
28. Michael Shapiro, "Literary Production as a Politicizing Practice", Political Theory, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1984), p. 390.
29. Ibid., p. 391.
30. Michael Shapiro, "Textualizing Global Politics", in Der Derian and Shapiro, op. cit., p. 11.
31. Der Derian and Shapiro, op. cit., p. 11.
32. Ibid., p. 21.
33. Although he did not offer a sustained engagement with literary theory, Foucault made some preliminary comments about literature. The two most notable pieces are Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?", in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault's Thought (London: Penguin Books, 1984), pp. 101-120
34. "The Functions of Literature", in Michel Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984 (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 307-313.
35. Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 9.
36. See also Michael Shapiro, "Metaphor in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences", Cultural Critique, No. 2 (1985), pp. 191-214.
37. See Jonathan Arac and Harriet Rivto (eds.), Macropolitics of Nineteenth Century Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 1-11.
38. See, for instance, Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art (Evanston: Northernwestern University Press, 1973)
39. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993)
40. Tony Bennett, Formalism and Marxism (London: Methuen, 1979)
41. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative: Volume III (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); for an application of the social function of literature in IR
42. See Adam David Morton, "The Social Function of Carlos Fuentes: A Critical Intellectual or in the Shadow of the State?", Bulletin of Latin American Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2003), pp. 7-51.
43. Robert Strecker, "Relativism about Interpretation", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 53, No. 1 (1995), pp. 14-18
44. Susan Feagin, "Incompatible Interpretations of Artworks", Philosophy and Literature, Vol. 6 (1982), pp. 133-146.
45. See also David Davies, Aesthetics and Literature (London: Continuum, 2007), p. 95.
46. David Davies, "Works, Texts and Contexts: Goodman on the Literary Artwork", Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 23, No. 3 (1991), p. 343.
47. Ibid., p. 343.
48. Davies, Aesthetics and Literature, op. cit., p. 94.
49. For a recent articulation of the aims of the "art and politics" network, see Alex Danchev and Debbie Lisle, "Introduction: Art, Politics, Purpose", Review of International Studies, Vol. 35, No. 4 (2009), pp. 775-779.
50. We would exempt Debbie Lisle's work on travel writing from this general claim partly because it offers a contribution to discussions about IR by engaging with travelogues, spatiality and imaginary geographies in an interesting and thought-provoking way. A representative sample of work would, of course, include references to Thucydides, Kant and Trotsky. It could also include Kenneth Waltz, Man, State and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959)
51. E.H. Carr, The Twenty Year Crisis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: St. Martin's Press, 1966)
52. Morton Kaplan, "The Great Debate: Traditionalism vs. Science in International Relations", World Politics, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1966), pp. 1-20
53. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995)
54. W.B. Gallie, Philosophers of War and Peace: Kant, Clausewitz, Marx, Engels and Tolstoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)
55. Johan Galtung, "Twenty-five Years of Peace Research: Ten Challenges and Some Responses", Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1985), pp. 141-158
56. Christine Sylvester, Feminist International Relations in a Postmodern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
57. Iver Neumann, Uses of the Other: The "East" in European Identity Formation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999)
58. Stephen Chan, Peter Mandaville and Roland Bleiker (eds.), The Zen of International Relations Theory: IR Theory from East to West (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001)
59. Peter Mandaville and AndrewWilliams (eds.), Meaning and International Relations (London: Routledge, 2003). More recently
60. see Christine Sylvester, Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2009)
61. Cerwyn Moore, Contemporary Violence: Post-modern War in Kosovo and Chechnya (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).
62. See, for example, Malcolm Bradbury's piece in International Affairs which, although little referenced, long pre-dates the recent move to "art and politics". Malcolm Bradbury, "What was Post-modernism? The Arts in and after the ColdWar", International Affairs, Vol. 71, No. 4 (1995), pp. 763-774. The first author is indebted to Gerard Holden for drawing his attention to the piece by Bradbury, amongst others.
63. Gerard Holden, "Cinematic IR, the Sublime, and the Indistinctness of Art", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3 (2006), p. 802.
64. On Danchev and Lisle, "Introduction"
65. see Bleiker, Aesthetics and World Politics, op. cit., p. 4; and Gerard Holden's contribution in this special issue.
66. Alex Danchev, On Art and War and Terror (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).
67. Aside from those special issues see also, among many others, Lene Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (London: Routledge, 2006)
68. in which she explores the representation of conflict in the Balkans through a range of texts including travelogue and fiction; a special issue of Security Dialogue entitled "Securitisation, Militarisation and Visual Culture in the Worlds of Post-9/11", Vol. 38, No. 2 (2007)
69. Laura J. Shepherd, "Visualising Violence: Legitimacy and Authority in the 'War on Terror'", Critical Studies on Terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2008), pp. 213-226.
70. A representative sample could include Marc Doucet, "Child's Play: The Political Imagery of International Relations and Contemporary Popular Children's Films", Global Society, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2005), pp. 289-306
71. Prem Kumar Rajaram, "Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Understanding: An Ethical Method for IR?", Alternatives, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2002), pp. 351-371
72. Graham Galer, "Myths of the Western Front", Global Society, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2004), pp. 175-195
73. Richard Devetak, "The Gothic Scene of International Relations: Ghosts, Monsters, Terror and the Sublime after September 11", Review of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4 (2005), pp. 621-643
74. Cerwyn Moore, "Reading the Hermeneutics of Violence: The Literary Turn and Chechnya", Global Society, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2006), pp. 179-198
75. Anca Pusca, "The Aesthetics of Change: Exploring Post-communist Spaces", Global Society, Vol. 22, No. 3 (2008), pp. 369-386.
76. "Popular Culture and World Politics" homepage (series eds. Simon Philpott, Matt Davies, Kyle Grayson, Christina Rowley and Jutta Weldes), available: . (accessed 27 March 2010).
77. Kyle Grayson, Matt Davies and Simon Philpott, "Pop Goes IR? Researching the Popular Culture-World Politics Continuum", Politics, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2009), pp. 155-163.
78. See, for example, Jim George and David Campbell, "Patterns of Dissent and the Celebration of Difference: Critical Social Theory and International Relations", International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3 (1990), pp. 269-293.
79. An indicative selection includes Jutta Weldes, "Going Cultural: Star Trek, State Action and Popular Culture", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1 (1999), pp. 117-134
80. idem, "Globalisation is Science Fiction", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2001), pp. 647-667
81. idem (ed.), To Seek Out New Worlds: Exploring Links between Science Fiction and World Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
82. James Der Derian, "Imaging Terror: Logos, Pathos and Ethos", Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2005), pp. 23-37
83. idem, Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge). Der Derian has also directed a number of documentaries and coordinated the production of a range of web-based resources that explore the intertextuality of global politics and cultural artefacts. Human Terrain, the most recent film written, produced and directed by James Der Derian
84. Michael Udris and David Udris, "tells the story of the US military's Human Terrain System, a strategy of cultural awareness that embeds academics with combat troops in Afghanistan and Iraq"
85. see the homepage online, available: (accessed 27 March 2010).
86. Stephen Chan has long engaged with cultural and literary sources, as well as sophisticated postcolonial, hermeneutic, aesthetic and poetic approaches to IR.
87. Stephen Chan, "The Performativity of Death: Yukio Mishima and a Fusion for International Relations", Borderlands e-journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2003), available: (accessed 10 January 2010)
88. or his magisterial new work, The End of Certainty: Towards a New Internationalism (London: Zed Books, 2009).
89. Christine Sylvester has written of "Dramaturgies of Violence in International Relations", Borderlands e-journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2003), available: (accessed 10 January 2010). More recently, see Art/Museums: International Relations Where we Least Expect It, op. cit.
90. Including Cynthia Weber, International Relations Theory: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edn (London and New York: Routledge, 2005)
91. idem, "Securitising the Unconscious: The Bush Doctrine of Preemption and Minority Report", Geopolitics, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2005), pp. 482-499
92. idem, Imagining America at War: Morality, Politics and Film (London: Routledge, 2006)
93. idem, "Popular Visual Language as Global Communication", Review of International Studies, Vol. 34 (2008), pp. 137-153.
94. Cynthia Weber has also produced and directed her own set of artefacts that present a critical interrogation of the US media campaign entitled "I am an American". A recent forum in the journal International Political Sociology (Vol. 4, No. 1, 2010) is devoted to the discussion of this project.
95. Including Michael Shapiro, Cinematic Political Thought: Narrating Race, Nation and Gender (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999)
96. idem, Cinematic Geopolitics (London: Routledge, 2008).
97. Holden, "Cinematic IR", op. cit., pp. 808-809.
98. Similar critiques also belie the significance of works by Shapiro, and have been raised elsewhere, see Cerwyn Moore, "Tracing the Russian Hermeneutic", op. cit., pp. 59-82.
99. Holden, "Cinematic IR", op. cit., pp. 805-806.
100. Christine Sylvester, Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 10.
101. Christina Rowley, "Popular Culture and the Politics of the Visual", in Laura J. Shepherd (ed.), Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 309-325 (p. 309).
102. Bleiker, "Aesthetics and World Politics", op. cit. at note 10.
103. Rowley, op. cit., p. 311.
104. see also Grayson, Davies and Philpott, op. cit., pp. 157-158.
105. See, for example, the special issue of Alternatives on "Poetic World Politics", Vol. 25, No. 3 (2003).
106. Roland Bleiker, "Aesthetics and World Politics", op. cit., p. 2.
107. Vivienne Jabri, "Restyling the Subject of Responsibility in International Relations", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1998), p. 610. We are also inspired in part by Holden's vision of an aesthetic IR that would attempt to avoid the "critical/uncritical" dichotomy, and... might seek to establish interdisciplinary connections between IR and the study of films in a way that used the resources of the neighbouring field without presupposing answers to any of that field's specific debates. It might also pay more attention to non-American films.
108. Holden, "Cinematic IR", op. cit., p. 818
109. Jabri, "Restyling the Subject of Responsibility", op. cit., p. 607.
110. Roland Bleiker, "Forget IR Theory", Alternatives, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1997), pp. 57-86.
111. Milan Kundera, The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts (London: Faber & Faber, 2007), pp. 148-152.
112. Examples of the use of global politics include Jim George, Discourses of Global Politics (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1994)
113. James Der Derian, On Diplomacy of Western Engagement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). We also view Agathangelou and Ling's articulations of "worldism" as in keeping with this scholarly move
114. see Anna M. Agathangelou and L.H.M. Ling, "The House of IR: FromFamily Power Politics to the Poisies of Worldism", International Studies Review Vol. 6, No. 4 (2004), pp. 21-49.
115. George, op. cit., p. ix.
116. In recent years contributions have been made about the influence of global politics. See, for example, Cerwyn Moore, "Heretical Conversations with Continental Philosophy: Jan Patoćka, Central Europe and Global Politics", British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2009), pp. 315-331
117. Cerwyn Moore and Chris Farrands (eds.), International Relations Theory and Philosophy: Interpretive Dialogues (London: Routledge, 2010)
118. Laura Shepherd (ed.), Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations (London: Routledge, 2010).