Hobbesian Theory

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess
Wake: The Rational Actor, the Self,

or the Speaking Subject?
Charlotte Epstein
Abstract
The rationalist-constructivist divide that runs through the discipline
of International Relations ~IR! revolves around two figures of agency, the rational
actor and the constructivist self+ In this article I examine the models of agency
that implicitly or explicitly underpin the study of international politics+ I show how
both notions of the rational actor and the constructivist self have remained wedded
to individualist understandings of agency that were first incarnated in the disciplines
self-understandings by Hobbess natural individual+ Despite its turn to social theory,
this persistent individualism has hampered constructivisms ability to appraise the
ways in which the actors and structures of international politics mutually constitute
one another all the way down+ My purpose is to lay the foundations for a nonindividualist, adequately relational, social theory of international politics+ To this end
I propose a third model of agency, Lacans split speaking subject+ Through a Lacanian reading of the Leviathan, I show how the speaking subject has in fact laid
buried away in the disciplines Hobbesian legacy all along+
The most notable inventions of all was that of speech + + + without which, there had
been amongst men @sic# neither common wealth, no society, nor contract, nor peace,
no more than amongst lions, bears or wolves+
Thomas Hobbes 1
Like the words uttered by God in Genesis, speech is a symbolic invocation which
creates, ex nihilo, a new order of being in the relations between men @sic#+
Jacques Lacan 2
For helpful and encouraging comments on earlier versions of this article, I am grateful to Badredine
Arfi, Rebecca Adler-Nissen, John D+ Cash, Ariel Colonomos, Toni Erskine, Julia Gallagher, Russell
Grigg, Colin Hay, Naeem Inayatullah, Vivienne Jabri, Mark Kelly, Saul Newman, Ben OLoughlin,
David Smith, Sharon Stanley, Simon Tormey, R+B+J+ Walker, Colin Wight, as well as three anonymous
reviewers for the journal
1+ Hobbes 1946, 18+
2+ Lacan 1988, 239+
International Organization 67, Spring 2013, pp+ 287316
2013 by The IO Foundation+
doi:10+10170S0020818313000039
288
International Organization
The rational actor stands at the heart of rationalist accounts of international politics+ By contrast, constructivists suggest that actors agency is shaped as much by
an actors context as by intrinsic interests+ At its core, the rationalist-constructivist
divide that organizes much of contemporary International Relations ~IR! scholarship revolves around divergent models of agency+ The starting point for constructivist theorizing was the realization of the need to unpack the rationalist assumption
that actors are self-interested, in order to examine who that self might be, as
Wendt put it+3 This ushered in identity as the defining consideration for that scholarship+ One of its central legacies was to have tabled a different figure of actorhood, a self enmeshed in its interactions with others within broader social
structures+ The constructivist challenge, however, also opened up the fundamental
question with which this article engages: What conception of the individual provides the adequate foundations for theorizing agency in international politics?
The rational actor and the constructivist self constitute the disciplines two archetypal individuals that have implicitly or explicitly informed most accounts of international politics+ They provide the starting points for my inquiry+ My purpose,
however, is to find a model of the actor that can provide a nonindividualist basis
for apprehending agency in IR, one that is rid of what Wendt himself called a
rump individualism that continues to cut across both the rational actor and the
constructivist self+4 A third model is afforded, I suggest, by the concept of the
speaking subject socially embedded in language that lies at the core of discourse
theory+5 Vis--vis constructivism, the issue is one of ontological consistency with
regards to its own founding project to open up the inquiry into the mutual constitution of the actors and the structures of international politics+ My concern, then,
is to find a different basis for a social theory of the international that fully unravels
the central constructivist insight that the distinctness of the social world, as opposed
to the natural world, lies in the fact that processes of social construction do run, to
paraphrase Wendt but where he would not venture, all the way down; that is, right
down through the self as well+6 While critics of Wendt have extensively exposed
the limits of his treatment of identity, what is still lacking, I contend, is an alternative conceptualization of the self that can sustain a genuinely relational social
theory of international politics+ It is provided by Lacans speaking subject+ What
is more, its seeds are already sown in the disciplines starting place, as Vincent
called it, Hobbess Leviathan+7
3+ Wendt 1999, 215+

4+ Ibid+, 178+
5+ Discourse theory is made up of three key components+ First, it foregrounds language as the elementary social bond and consequently, second, a key site of political analysis+ It thus covers a wide
range of methods regrouped under the heading of discourse analyses that focus on the role of language in international politics ~see notably Milliken 1999; Bially Mattern 2005; Hansen 2006; and
Epstein 2008!+ What is still lacking in IR, however, is a theoretical demonstration of not just how but
why language centrally matters to the understanding of agency in international politics+ Third, the
model of the individual it harbors is the speaking subject ~Howarth 2000!+
6+ Wendt 1999, 92+
7+ Vincent 1981, 93+
Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake
289
Engaging with the Hobbesian legacy is important for two reasons+ Hobbess
state of nature is traditionally considered the founding myth for the rational actor+
It thus provides the starting point for examining IRs historically prior and explicitly individualist model of agency+ Yet the critique of these realist and rationalist
appropriations of Hobbes, while important, is not new+ Hobbess political myth is
important because of what it actually tells us about the individuals makeup+ Myths
have played a central role in revealing collective unconscious structures and in
psychoanalysiss constitution as a body of scientific knowledge+ Centering my reading on the Hobbesian state of nature, I show how Hobbes and Lacan proceed down
surprisingly similar paths+ Strange bedfellows though they may seem at first sight,
their theories illuminate one other, the former providing a narrative illustrating the
relevance of Lacans understanding of the structure of the human psyche for political analysis at large; the latter drawing out how Hobbess formulation of the problem of political order reaches deep into the workings of the individual psyche+
Hence in engaging with the Hobbesian legacy in IR my aim is to reveal the speaking subject that lies buried away in IRs founding myth, and to show how it can
help to understand agency in international politics+
I introduce the speaking subject as a nonindividualist basis for theorizing international relations by way of a Lacanian reading of Hobbess Leviathan+ The speaking subject provides an alternative to both the rational actor and the constructivist
self for laying the foundations of a properly relational social theory of international politicswhere the interactions between the social actors and the polity
are mutually constitutive all the way through, right down to the actors core selves+
In such a theory, the relationship between the actors is not just a sufficient condition of sociality ~something that they might opt in and out of !+ It is a necessary
one because it is founded in a constitutive dependence of the self upon the Other+
The article proceeds in four parts+ In the first part I map the history of IRs
relationship to Hobbes and trace the emergence of its two archetypal actors,
the rational actor and the constructivist self+8 I track, first, the appropriation of
Hobbess natural man by rationalist scholarship that founded the rational actor,
together with efforts by early constructivists and poststructuralists to reclaim IRs
founding author away from that school+ I also track the decisive move away from
Hobbes that yielded the constructivist self as an alternative model of agency to
found a social theory of international politics+ Shining the recent relationalist scholarship on agency upon this first cut into the disciplines intellectual history then
serves to draw out the degrees of individualism that inhere in these two figures of
actorhood+ These relationist lenses reveal how, despite efforts to elaborate it in
8+ One serious objection to my enterprise would be Skinners ~1996, 15! injunction to read Hobbes
against his own historical context, which is a far cry from enterprises that attempt to use his texts as
a mirror to reflect back at ourselves our current assumptions and prejudices+ This, however, is a critique that would validly be addressed to the discipline as a whole, which has constantly sought to
reposition itself in relation to Hobbes+ The uses and abuses of Hobbes in IR to paraphrase Heller
1980 ~see also Jahn 2000!, and the ways in which they have shaped the disciplines thinking about
agency, are explicitly my object here+
290
social theoretical terms, the constructivist self edges toward the rational actor, and
falls short of providing an adequate ontological foundation for a properly social,
relational theory of the international+
The Lacanian reading of Hobbes is then deployed in the second and third parts+
I show that Hobbess Leviathan symbolizes what Lacan calls the Symbolic+ This
category comprises a collective and an individual dimension that mark the two
levels upon which my reading turns+ At the collective level, the Symbolic is the
condition of possibility of political order itself+ In this reading, then, the Leviathan designates not a particular type of political order, conditioned upon sovereignty, but what makes possible ordered interactions in the first place, whether at
the national or international level+ For Hobbes that sine qua non, without which
there is nothing but chaos, is language+ Hence the Hobbesian formulation of the
problem of political order that is relevant for theorizing international anarchy is to
be found not in the state of nature but toward the other pole of Hobbesian narrative, the symbol of the Leviathan+
At the individual level, the Symbolic is the Other without which the self cannot
become a self in the first placean autonomous, functional member of the polity+
It is the psychic instance that hooks the individual to the collective+ It regulates
the individuals relationship to language and the polity+ The function that the Leviathan performs at the individual level is akin to that of Lacans Other+ What Hobbes
captures in dramatizing natural mans contracting with the Leviathan is the
moment where the individual enters into the symbolic order, or, to put it differently, where the child learns to speak+ This entry, Lacan shows, is marked by
a constitutive splitting, by the fundamental loss of a primeval, natural ~in
Hobbess term! state+ Hobbess political subject, then, prefigures Lacans split speaking subject+ The latter in turn provides the basis for a relational social theory of
international politics because it is founded in a constitutive dependence of the self
upon the Other+
IRs Prevailing Models of Agency: The Rational Actor

and the Constructivist Self
The Leviathan posits the site of the original division of labor between political
theory and international relations, which revolves around two related yet distinct
clusters of meanings+ IR, the discipline that carved out its remit as the relations
between states, considers the Leviathan as the state, envisaged from without;
whereas political theory appraises the sovereign, envisaged from within+9 From
there, in IR, questions pertaining to the relationship between the Leviathan and
the subject have been largely black-boxed and attention has shifted to the other
9+ The symbol of the Leviathan has attracted considerable attention in political theory ~see Brown
1980; Stillman 1995; and Springborg 1995!+
291
pole of the narrative; so that the Hobbesian legacy has mostly revolved around the
state of nature rather than the figure of the Leviathan+ The Leviathan is, via realist
readings, both taken for granted as the disciplines founding currency yet largely
lost from sight+ My contention is that returning to appraise the symbol of the Leviathan will draw out yet another level of meaning, beneath the state or the sovereign, that has to do with the very conditions of possibility of political agency itself+10
Before turning to that symbol, I etch out here a schematic history of the discipline
under the prism of its relationship to Hobbes in order to trace the ways in which
the Hobbesian state of nature has explicitly or implicitly informed theorizations of
agency in IR, and specifically its two archetypal agents, the rational actor and the
constructivist self+ To further expose the theoretical foundations upon which these
two figures rest, I draw on the recent theories of agency in the relationism literature, and particularly Emirbayers typology of paradigms of agency+11 This mapping reveals the persistent individualism that, despite their differences, underwrites
the rational actor and the constructivist self+ Overcoming it will require a third
model altogether, the speaking subject+
Hobbes the Realist

Ever since realism first laid claim to Hobbess state of nature as its founding myth,
the history of IR theory has been punctuated by a succession of efforts to recover
Hobbes away from the Hobbesian tradition, as it has come to be known+12 The
linchpin to the realist claim is the original analogy drawn in Leviathan between
individuals in the state of nature and sovereigns who are seen to stand similarly
facing one another in the posture of gladiators + + + their weapons pointing, and
their eyes fixed on one another+ 13 Upon it hinges the formulation of two founding realist concerns, what drives states to behave as they do, and the problem of
international order+ Both centrally invoke Hobbess natural individual+ I consider
each in turn+
First, Hobbess natural man @sic# lies at the core of the classical realists quests
to find the prime mover of states, namely the desire for power, the sole moving
force driving the world+14 In these realist accounts the wolfish tendencies of Hob-
10+ A note here to clarify my terminology+ A symbol is a rhetorical trope, used notably in religion
or art, in which representations of concrete objects serve to invoke abstract, nonfigurable qualities
~associated with the divine for example!+ The prefix sym ~with! signifies this joining together+ A
myth is a literary trope that comprises a narrative, dynamic component and some form of resolution
~Souriau 1990!+ I thus use the term myth to refer to Hobbess state of nature; when referring to the
Leviathan I alternate between symbol and the more neutral figure+
11+ See Emirbayer 1997; and Emirbayer and Mische 1998+
12+ As is the case with most labels in IR, Hobbesian has tended to be attributed mostly by other
schools, first by the English school ~see notably Bull 1981; and Vincent 1981! and then constructivists
~see Kratochwil 1989; Wendt 1999; and Walker 1993!+
13+ Hobbes 1946, chap+ 13, 83+
14+ See Morgenthau 1960, 23, especially 561; and Carr 1946, 112+
292
bess natural individual explain the permanent struggle for survival and expansion
that characterizes interstate relations+ According to Aron, in the state of nature
every entity, whether individual or political unit, makes security a primary objective+ 15 Yet Aron is not invoking Hobbess individual per se but rather only half of
it, as it werethat belonging to the state of nature+ The other half, Hobbess account
of the making of the political subject, is explicitly cast off limits as it is seen as
pertaining to the internal workings of the state+
Taking their cue from Hobbes, classical realists thus turned to the individual to
explain state behavior+ Yet given the multiple accounts of human nature that have
succeeded one another in the long history of political thought and their corresponding states of nature ~Rousseaus and Lockes notably!, why was Hobbess the one
that stuck, for classical realists? The resonance of Hobbess natural individual owes
not ~merely! to its somber nature that somehow fits easily with realisms inherent
pessimism but to the location of this human-state analogy in the history of political thought+ The Hobbesian analogy was seen as the earliest metaphorization of
the international as a distinct sphere of political interactions+ Hobbess account of
state action by way of individuals played a key role in founding IR as an academic discipline+ It carved out not just a distinct object of inquiry ~the international!, but a style of reasoning+ An enduring effect of the Hobbesian legacy,
beyond the so-called Hobbesian tradition, was thus to entrench this analogous juxtaposition of the individual and the state as a lasting trope of IR theorizing+16
These interacting natural individuals provided the original exemplar for conceptualizing the problem of political order in the absence of centralized authority+ As
Williams remarks, the concept of anarchy and the name of Hobbes often seem
virtuously synonymous; and the state of nature was where the synonymy was
sealed+17 For realists writing against the backdrop of a developing nuclear arms
race ~to draw here on an array of classical formulations of the problem!, managing peace in such conditions of anarchy had acquired an urgency it never had
before; it was thought to be the problem of the twentieth century+ 18 Moreover
the Cold War, a phrase that was seen to express the quintessence of what @Hobbes#
took to be the permanent relationship of nations, acutely brought home the relevance of his state of nature to contemporary international politics since, as Gauthier further puts it, the major nuclear powers share the equality of Hobbesian men
@sic#they can utterly destroy one another+ 19
Classical realism thus cast its eye upon Hobbess natural individual and revealed
a highly atomized international system of ever-potentially colliding units like billiard balls, to use Wolferss classical metaphor+20
15+ Aron 1966, 72 ~emphasis in original!+

16+ This is notably the basis for Bulls ~1995! domestic analogy ~see also Suganami 1989!+
17+ Williams 1996, 213+ For a good illustration, see Smith 1986+
18+ These formulations are drawn from Claude 1962, 310; Morgenthau 1960, 23; and Waltz 1959,
11, respectively+
19+ Gauthier 1969, 207+
20+ Wolfers 1962, 19+
293
The State of Nature and the E-Rational Individual

The state of nature was a key site for the convergence of realism in IR and rational choice theory in political science+ This convergence yielded the strong individualism that characterizes current rationalist traditions, and locked in the utilitymaximizing state as IRs unit of analysis+21 Insofar as these rationalist readings
have played an important part in moving attention away from the role of language
and sociality in Hobbess individual, it is worth considering them at some length+22
The Hobbesian state of nature has provided the foundations for theorizing the
rational self-interested individual+23 Specifically, it is considered the traditional
exemplar of the prisoners dilemma situation+24 Extensive work has thus been undertaken to model the behavior of Hobbess natural man @sic# as the archetypal
e-rational ~economically rational! agent, to borrow Neals expression+25 The state
of nature, rather than the Leviathan, lies once again in focus, since it showcases
the natural individual in a raw, self-interested, utility-maximizing form+26
Neal identifies individualism and instrumentalism as two of the theorys core
tenets, which he traces directly to Hobbes+27 By individualism Neal means that
antecedently defined selves stand prior to all sociopolitical relations and institutions+ 28 The individual is therefore the foundation or independent variable of
rationalist analyses+ These individuals or separate selves, moreover, are understood to be rationally self-interested maximizers of utility+ 29
Instrumentalism, then, Neal continues, must deny that human beings are in
any inherent or intrinsic sense social beings+ 30 Further, instrumentalism seeks to
understand relations in terms of selves, not selves in terms of relations+ 31 Through
these rationalist lenses, set upon the state of nature, Hobbes becomes, by way of
his natural man, the founder of a radical individualism, to use Hamptons
21+ I thus use the term rationalist to refer to theories that foreground a utility-maximizing rational
actor, as in Keohanes ~1988! usage, encompassing both neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism+
This is quite distinct from the English Schools understanding as entrenched by Wights ~1992! three
traditions, where rationalism ~the Grotian tradition! is opposed to realism ~the Machiavelli or Hobbesian tradition! and to revolutionism ~the Kantian tradition!; see also Vincent 1981; Buzan 2004+ Rationalism is thus, in the context of my argument, synonymous with realist thought, writ wide+
22+ These close links are recognized from the other end by rational choice theorists who readily
cross over onto IRs terrain; one recalls here the appendix Gauthier ~1969, 20712! devotes to Hobbes
on International Relations ~for a critique from within political theory, see Malcolm 2002!+
23+ See, for example, Neal 1988; Hampton 1986; Brams 1985, 139 46; Kavka 1983, 1718; McLean
1981, 33951; and Gauthier 1969 and 1977+
24+ See Hampton 1986; and McLean 1981+
25+ Neal 1988+
26+ To the extent that the Leviathan does enter into the analysis, for example in Kaplan ~1956, 405!,
it is to limit any hold it might have on the individual by concluding the absence of any extraindividual source of obligation in Hobbess political treaty+ Such a conclusion however is premised
on Hobbess political subject and his natural man being two different persons, rather than two facets
of the same individual+
27+ Neal 1988+
28+ Ibid+, 63738+
29+ Ibid+
30+ Ibid+
31+ Ibid+
294
expression, that entrenches the individual and the wide gamut of its behavior as
the legitimate object of political analysis+32
Implications for Agency: The Speechless Self-Action Model

This conception of the individual exemplifies Emirbayers self-action model of
agency+33 Emirbayers typology builds on Dewey and Bentleys analysis of the
successive epistemological schemes through which agency has been apprehended
throughout the history of scientific inquiry+ The first such model, self-action, features preconstituted entities or things + + + acting under their own powers+ 34 In
this vein, a strong case for self-action is made, for example, by Gauthier who,
taking the route of contractual theory, shows how the social contract necessarily
presupposes self-action+35 Indeed, how could the social contract hold any worth,
if the contracting units do not come together of their own volition or power? In
this individualist ontology, self-action is consequently the necessary basis of social
agency, hence also the foundation of society+ In this individualist ontology:
Individual human beings not only can, but must, be understood apart from
society+ The fundamental characteristics of men are not products of their social
existence + + + man @sic# is social because he is human, not human because he
is social+ In particular, self-consciousness and language must be taken as conditions, not products, of society+36
It is noteworthy that Hobbes remains once again the key reference point+ Building
on Gauthiers work, Hampton further elaborates the rationalist self-action model:
Gauthier is right to find in Hobbess theory a strong brand of individualism, one
that regards individual human beings as conceptually prior not only to political
society but also to all social interactions+ 37 An important implication of the
rationalist-individualist ontology is the minimal role afforded language+ As Gauthier illustrates, language holds no privileged position+ It stands on par with all other
institutions as one more instrument put to maximizing the interests of an e-rational,
quintessentially a-social actor+ Here, what the actor says does not matter; or it
matters no more than all the other forms of behavior by which the actor furthers
its interests+ In this sense the actor is speechless+ This is the point at which language is evacuated from the rationalist theorization of agency in the rationalist
tradition and elided in Hobbes+
32+
33+
34+
35+
36+
37+
Hampton 1986+
Emirbayer 1997+
Dewey and Bentley 1949, 108+
Gauthier 1977+
Ibid+, 139+
Hampton 1986, 6+
295
Unearthing the Seeds of Sociality and Signification in the State

of Nature: Cooperative Talking Gladiators
The state of nature provided the battleground for the initial attempts to recover
Hobbes from this individualist ontology and the billiard board model of anarchy
it had yielded+ The critiques of its uses and abuses in IR, as Heller put it,
occurred on two successive frontsthe themes of sociality and the role of language+38 First, scholars from both IR and political theory extensively underlined the limits Hobbes is careful to set upon his analogy immediately after
establishing it+39 That Hobbes himself fell short of extending the logic of his
solution to the international level was not an oversight but rather indicates his
awareness of the differences between that sphere and the state of nature, which
has been largely brushed aside as the analogy became increasingly entrenched in
realist thought+
Second, with regard to sociality, scholars from the English School tradition sought
to reclaim Hobbes as a founder of international society by unearthing the seeds of
cooperation within Hobbess own state of nature+40 The point to the other dimensions of Hobbess natural man, beyond human wolfish tendencies, that also govern interactions between Leviathans, emphasizing the articles of peace that
Hobbes explores in his subsequent chapter, and notably the propensity toward cooperation that emerges from the correct use of reason+41 Grounding the prospects for
international cooperation within Hobbess conception of natural law ~itself a product of well-wielded reason! thus enables them to reclaim this author for the canon
of international law+42
The question of language opens up broader epistemological storms around
Hobbes that continue to rage in and beyond IR+ Against early appropriations of
Hobbes as the protopositivist by rational choice theorists, to borrow Balls expression, scholars in the interpretative tradition have emphasized the nominalism in
Hobbes that positions him instead as a thinker acutely aware that social and
political reality is linguistically made+ 43 In IR, this new interest in a protoconstructivist Hobbes in the wake of the reflectivist turn has prompted constructivist and poststructuralist efforts to tease out some linguistic elements in the
disciplines founding myth+ Kratochwil anchors his inquiry into the normative
structures of international politics by way of reference to the norms and rules
that inhere in Hobbess natural state, while Williams considers the epistemic
agreement that necessarily underpins even the Leviathans declaring war upon
38+ Heller 1980+

39+ The key sentence foregrounded by critics is it does not follow from it that misery which accompanies the liberty of particular men ~Hobbes 1946, 83!+ See Malcolm 2002; Williams 1996; Kratochwil 1989; Vincent 1981; Heller 1980; and Bull 1981+
40+ See Bull 1981; Vincent 1981; Boucher 1990; Wight 1992; and Williams 1996+
41+ Hobbes 1946, chap+ 14, 84105+ I am grateful to one reviewer for drawing out this point+
42+ See Bull 1981; Vincent 1981; and Kratochwil 1989, 3 4+
43+ See Ball 1985, 740; Watkins 1989; Tuck 1989; Skinner 1996; and Williams 2005+
296
one another, let alone their cooperating+44 Both factors center upon language as
their primary medium+ Among poststructuralists, Hobbess discourse of danger
provides the starting point for Campbells theorizing of identity, albeit to radically depart from it+45 To the extent that these more recent reengagements with
Hobbes in IR draw out, not merely cooperation and sociality, but the linguistic
phenomena at work in the Hobbesian account, my reading is inscribed in their
wake+ Beyond drawing out disparate linguistic components, however, mine foregrounds the role of language per se as a center point of his theory+
Moving Out of Hobbess Shadow to Find

the States Self
Notwithstanding these efforts to reclaim Hobbes, the most significant challenge
to the rational actor was tabled by the constructivist model of the self+ Significantly for the purposes of this article, agency constituted the terrain where the
challenge was mounted+ Constructivism successfully demonstrated that what
remained wanting in the rational actor was an understanding of the very basis
of its self-interested actions, namely identity+46 Because identity was key to throwing the gauntlet at the rationalists, a strong theory of that concept was needed to
sustain the challenge+ It was provided by Wendts theory of the self+ 47 Insofar
as it remains the most complete and authoritative articulation of agency and identity in that scholarship, and given its impact on the discipline, it is my main
focus here for revealing the constructivist self, or Ego in the Wendtian terminology+ My starting point is Wights engagement with Wendt on the question of
agency+
Agency, for Wendt, is a function of certain inherent, given, properties of the
agent, namely, intentionality and cognition+ The actor, for Wendt, is quintessentially a human actoran actor endowed with the ability to reflect and make
decisionsto the degree that actor and agent become equivalent terms for
Wendt+48 Wendts understanding of agency is thus rooted in human consciousness+
As Wight demonstrates, this narrowing of agency to its reflexive dimensions ultimately restricts its ability to capture nonhuman agency+ Yet doing so is necessary
to properly appraise the agency of structures per se, apart from the individuals
comprising it; that is, to appraise an agent beyond the individual actor+ What Wights
argumentation draws out for our purposes is that it is Wendts narrow understanding of agency, founded in individual consciousness, that leads him to need a self
to theorize state agency+ This then yields the states as people thesis for which,
with the individual laid down as the foundation of agency, states can henceforth
44+
45+
46+
47+
48+
See Kratochwil 1989, 3 6; and Williams 1996+

Campbell 1998, 53 60+
Wendt 1992, 398+
Wendt 1999+
Wight 2006, 19091+
297
be appraised just like people+ As Wight also shows, Wendt falls short of unpacking his notion of personhood within properly corporate terms; that is, in such
a way that corporate agency can be apprehended as something more than a collection or sum of individuals+49 In other words, for Wendt, corporate and collective
agency are equivalent; whereas for Wight working through their differences ~in
order to better hone in on corporate agency! is central to deploying a conception
of agency suitable for the state+50 Taking a step further than Wight, my argument
is that doing so is also key to steering clear of the ontological individualism that
Wendt ultimately falls back on, because of the particular conception of the self he
harbors+ I now turn to consider that self by way of a close examination of its
derivative, the essential state, and the function it performs in laying the foundations for a constructivist model of agency+
Wendts essential state is the linchpin of his efforts to deploy onto the international theories originally developed to appraise individuals+ It is constructed by
way of reference to a human essence+ This essential self is taken to be the seat of
a presocial, unconstructed identity, for the individual and the state alike+51 Wendt
has been extensively taken to task for an essentialist understanding of identity,
which ignores alternative conceptualizations+52 My aim in this article is to emphasize how this rump essentialism impairs the possibility of developing a constructivist model of agency that provides a genuinely nonindividualist and properly
relational alternative to the rational actor+ I show that the essential state leads Wendt
instead to fall back onto what I would call an inadvertent individualism, by which
I mean an atomized ontology for which self-other relations remain secondary rather
than constitutive of the self+
Implications for Agency: Unchanging Speechless Inter-Action

In the Wendtian project the essential state sets up a bulwark against the theorizing
that Wendts efforts serve to perfect+ Wendt is explicit about not wanting to unravel
the constructivist logic all the way down and about the importance of holding
on to a middle-ground rump materialism+ 53 To this end, toward the beginning of
the second part of his opus, he engages in a series of line-drawing moves to contain the very constructivist logic that he successfully deployed throughout the first
part+ The essential state, buttressed by way of reference to the physical body, constitutes the site where such line-drawing occurs+54
49+ Ibid+, 18386+

50+ Ibid+, 18599+
51+ It is worth noting that Hobbess shadow here still looms large, insofar as, in disciplinary historical terms, anthropomorphizing the state by way of analogy with the individual is founded in and still
derives its legitimacy from the Hobbesian trope+ Wendts essential state could appear in this light as
yet another one of its avatars+
52+ See notably Doty 2000; Zehfuss 2001; Guillaume 2009; and Epstein 2011+
53+ Wendt 1999, especially 92138+
54+ See ibid+, 22425; and Epstein 2011 for a critique+
298
With identity thus firmly grounded in a core self, the Wendtian state, or Ego,
enters fully formed into interactions with an Alter+ The constructivist self corresponds to Emirbayers second model of agency, inter-action+ Here entities no
longer generate their own action, but rather the relevant action takes place among
the entities themselves+ 55 In Dewey and Bentleys original chronology, the first
model of agency ~self-action! took shape in the context of appraising natural phenomena ~such as gravity!, while the second one emerged to be able to appraise the
specificities of the social world+56 This mirrors the evolution from rationalist to
reflectivist epistemologies in IR+ For the theories of agency explicitly centered on
the social rather than the natural world, such as constructivism, the central question becomes what part do the interactions between the units play in constituting
the units themselves; or to what extent should these interactions be foregrounded
in theorizing the units and their agency? Rephrased again differently, the key question becomes whether these interactions are essential or merely secondary to the
making of social actors+
With his essential state, Wendt settles the question in a direction quite different
from that upon which he had initially set out+ The essential state serves to cordon
off a primary self from constructivist dynamics+ By the same token it also establishes self-other interactions as secondary and thus, ultimately, as exogenous to
the formation of the selfat least at its core+ This ultimately defeats Wendts original intention to show that the identities and interests of purposive actors are constructed since their core remains given, just as in the rationalist model+57
Doing so requires a third model of agency that does not shy away from appraising the ways in which the interactions between the actors not only affect but actually constitute them all the way down, which Emirbayer terms trans-action+ Having
developed his typology, Emirbayer shows that the substantive line of divide between
the different paradigms of agency runs in fact between essentialist ~or substantialist in his term! ones, which include both the self-action and inter-action models, and relational ones, such as the trans-action model, tabled, but not quite fleshed
out, by his Manifesto+ Importantly, Emirbayer emphasizes that the inter-action
model is only apparently the chief rival to rational choice models because entities remain fixed and unchanging throughout such interaction, each independent
of the existence of the other, much like billiard balls or the particles in Newtown-
55+ Emirbayer 1997, 285 ~emphasis in original!+

56+ Dewey and Bentley 1949+
57+ Wendt 1999, 1+ Given that his Social Theory holds four types of identity ~type, role, collective, and personal or corporate!, the reader may wonder why the onus here is placed on the
last one alone ~the personal or corporate!+ First, because it is posited as the core of identity within
Wendts typology+ Second, because the middle ground that Wendt thus seeks to carve out remains
ridden with an irreconcilable tension between a set of ontological commitments ~to constructivist dynamics! on the one hand, and a set of epistemological ones ~to certain rationalist premises, such as a particular understanding of causality!+ Dividing up the category is a way of managing rather than resolving
that tension+ This initial splicing is then overlayered with the constructed ~the first three! versus unconstructed ~the last! binary+
299
ian mechanics+ 58 Jackson and Nexon further underscore the illusion of agency
perpetuated by constructivism in IR+59 In their analysis:
While it might seem credible that inter-action has agentsafter all, it posits
concrete, self-organizing entities that inter-act to produce outcomesso called
agents at the heart of inter-actionism do not act at all+ It is variables
attributes of entitiesthat do that acting+60
In the Wendtian framework, for example, such variables would comprise the roles
of enemy, rival, or friend that a preconstituted Ego would take up upon entering
into interactions with an Alter, according to the broader cultures of anarchy in
which the two states are embedded ~Hobbesian, Lockean, or Kantian respectively!+
Two important implications stem from here regarding the question of change
and the role of language+ First, this unchanging core self sits uneasily with
constructivisms founding promise to better explain change than rationalism can,
which in turn hinged on its ability to appraise the constitution of the actors identities and interests+ The social theorist Abbot captures the challenge in these terms:
Social theories that presume fixed, given entitiesrational choice being the
obvious examplealways fall apart over the problem of explaining change
in those entities, a problem rational choice handles by ultimately falling back
on biological individuals, whom it presumes to have a static, given character+61
Wendts reverting to the biological body to ground the states self is significant in
this regard+62 Abbot further unpacks the problem by positing that @in order to
explain change#, we must begin with it and hope to explain stasiseven the stable entity that is human personalityas a byproduct+ 63 Short of being able to do
so, one is left with social ontology that by making stasis primary loses its ability
to explain change+ 64 The essential state locates Wendts social theory in this type
of ontology+
Second, language, the primary medium of social construction, is also removed
from the realm of the core self+ This marks the point in the elaboration of the
constructivist self where language and signification are cleft from considerations
about identity formationthe point where, as Drulak puts it, Wendt forgets about
the contribution of language 65 and breaks with the linguistic sensibilities that had
marked early constructivist IR theory+66 If language is a social construct, whereas
58+
59+
60+
61+
62+
63+
64+
65+
66+
Emirbayer 1997, 284 ~emphasis in original!+

Jackson and Nexon 1999, 294 ~emphasis in original!+
Ibid+
Abbot 1995, 859+
See Wendt 1999, 22425; and Epstein 2011, for an extensive critique+
Abbot 1995, 863+
Ibid+
Drulk 2010, 77+
See, for example, Kratochwil 1989; and Onuf 1989+
300
the core self is given, then, at its core, language is nonessential to the formation of
identity+
This middle-ground constructivist self, grounded in an essential core, ultimately
takes the bite out of the founding constructivist insight into the co-constitution of
the actors and the structures+ It ultimately short-circuits the possibility of founding
a relational social theory of international politics+ While Wendt does not explicitly
set out to find a relational ontology and thus, on some level, cannot be taken to
task on this score, the structurationist theorizing under whose aegis Wendt places
his efforts is fundamentally relational, in that it emphasizes the complex interactions and the feedback loops circuiting between the social actors and the structures+67 Yet by excising an essential self from these structurationist dynamics, Wendt
elides a key dimension of this relationality+ Developing a social theory that fully
draws out the ways in which the actors selves and the structures mutually constitute one another requires eschewing this individualistic starting point altogether+ It
requires enquiring into dynamics of social construction that do run all the way down,
and reintegrating the role of language in the making of the self+ It is in search of
such a possibility that we now turn to Lacan and return to Hobbes+
The Symbol-Leviathan as Signifier of the Symbolic:

The Collective Level
In coining the Leviathan, what Hobbes conjures is none other than the Lacanian
Symbolicthe symbol symbolizes the Symbolic+ Although a complete exposition
of Lacans complex thought is beyond the scope of this article,68 a few remarks
are useful to contextualize the concept+ As a practicing clinician, Lacan had his
sights set upon the individual or rather the subject+ The two key features of the
Lacanian subject are first, that it is a subject of languagea speaking subject
and second, that it is inherently divideda split subjectbetween conscious
and unconscious cognitive processes+ In the wake of Freuds discovery, the central task of psychoanalytic theorizing has been to unearth the deep structures
of the unconscious+ The unconscious significantly expands, or rather profoundly
shakes up, our understanding of the sources of human agency+ It ushers in the
realization that an entire dimension of motivations and interests remain constitutively inaccessible to the actors consciousness; that actors are also acted upon
67+ See, notably, Giddens 1984; and Bhaskar 1998+ This is not to say that all structurationist theorizing qualifies as relational in Emirbayers ~1997! term, but only that this pitfall is avoided by identity not being the central concern ~notably in Giddens 1984!, whereas it is for Wendt ~1992, 1999,
2004!+
68+ Fink 1995+ For a clear exposition of the Lacanian Symbolic, see Juranville 1984; and Juignet
2003+ For the symbolic at work in Lacans thought, see Lacan 1975, 1981, and 1994+ The original
transcripts of Lacans seminars are available at ^http:00www+ecole-lacanienne+net 0bibliotheque+
php?id13&+ Accessed 29 October 2012+
301
by motives that are theirs yet elude themthat, to paraphrase Freud, we are not
masters in our own dwelling places+
Lacans key contribution to the psychoanalytic enterprise was to draw out the
efficacies of language+ For Lacan, as for Hobbes, speechour ability to signify,
to make meaningis what constitutes us as political animals, and thus the primary social bond+ In Hobbess words: the most notable inventions of all was that
of speech + + + without which, there had been amongst men neither common wealth,
no society, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongst lions, bears or wolves+ 69
That human beings are first and foremost creatures of language entails that they
are structured by language+ That is, language provides the basic organizing principle of collective life, but also, and this is Lacans key finding, of the unconscious as well+
The Symbolic is this realm of language, of the collective, with which the
subject is constantly contending+ The concepts purchase for political analysis is
twofold+ The first is its location at the nexus of the individual and the collective+
At the individual level, the Symbolic is a clinical term designating one of three
categories of the subjects experience ~of the subjects reality!; alongside the
Imaginary ~schematically, the realm of preverbal identifications! and the Real ~that
which cannot be put into words!+70 Grossly simplified, the Symbolic is the place
within the subject where the subject connects ~or fails to connect! to the collective+ At the collective level, the symbolic order is not simply the political order; it
designates something more foundational, namely the conditions of possibility of
organized life+ The concepts second key advantage over other forms of theorization of the political is the depth and breadth of its writ+71 The conceptual space in
which we are operating here is the deepest stratum of political ontology, to borrow the expression that Blits uses to point to the level where fear is at work in the
Hobbesian ontology ~as opposed to the political level to which it tends to be
reduced in the wake of Rousseaus critique of Hobbes!+72 Thus, to string out the
spatialization, the Symbolic designates a liminal space below or beneath the polity+ It evokes a manner of underlying matrix that underpins the possibility of collective life in the first place+
I develop my Lacanian reading of Hobbes in two movements that reflect these
two aspects of the Symbolic+ I analyze the function performed by the Leviathan at
the collective level first before considering it at the individual level in the next
69+ Hobbes 1946, 18+

70+ Crucially, the Real ~that which ultimately resists symbolization!, which is considered Lacans
most important contribution to philosophy ~Juranville 1984!, is not to be confused with reality: the
Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic are all dimensions of an individuals reality+
71+ Compared notably with that of Schmitts ~2007!+ In carving out his political ontology, Schmitt
sets out to separate the political from other realms of organized life, notably religion and the economy+ Although he gives precedence to religion, he ultimately holds them discrete+ Schmitts theorization thus falls short of reaching this foundational level, that of the conditions of possibility that make
all social institutions possible in the first placeincluding religion and the economy+
72+ Blits 1989, 417+
302
section+ First I show how, in Hobbess political treatise the Leviathan operates as
the signifier of the Symbolic, by way of two different theories of language, that of
Lacan and speech act theory+ Starting in the state of nature, my argument follows
the movement of the Hobbesian narrative, which is one of entry into socialization+
The State of Nature, Where the Sound and Fury Signify
Nothing: Hobbess Empty Signifiers
Hobbess theory of signification, nicely dubbed by Watkins his humpty dumpty
theory of meaning, is key to appraising his moral philosophy+73 At its core lies an
inherent disconnect between the signifier and signified, or words and their meaning+ In the state of nature, which consists in a multitude of humpty dumpties,
words mean only what the utterer intends them to+74 Consider the following wellknown evocation of the natural state from Leviathan:
But whatsoever is the object of any mans appetite or desire, that is it which
he for his part calleth good: and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and
of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable+ For these words of good, evil, and
contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there
being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and
evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the person of man, where there is not commonwealth; or, in a commonwealth, from
the person that representeth it+75
Considering the state of nature here, with Williams, not @as# an actual condition
but rather as an intellectual construct @that seeks# to explicate the basic elements
of human action, this passage reveals the centrality of language to Hobbess ontology+76 What it starkly illuminates is that signifiers, for Hobbes, are naturally
empty+ They do not hold any inherent meaning+ In the state of nature words are
appropriated by individuals for whatever suits their purpose+ Nothing fixes moral
predicates, such as good, to a set of commonly accepted meanings of what constitutes the good+ That is precisely the role of the Leviathan+
In the Hobbesian thought experiment the state of nature is the liminal place that
precedes social construction+ In this, it is of key interest to constructivist theorizing+ In this passage the state of nature is revealed, in the strongest possible sense,
as a space of meaninglessness+ Humans cannot understand each other since the
same words hold different meanings for every person+ While there are utterances
~indeed Hobbess natural man speaks!, there is no language, in the sense of a
collective, transmittable sets of meaning that can provide the basis of a common
understanding+ Consequently no collective action is possible+ In the state of nature
there is only sound and fury, signifying nothing+
73+
74+
75+
76+
Watkins 1989, 104+

Ibid+
Hobbes 1946, chap+ 6, 32+
Williams 2005, 28+
303
This meaningless or topsy-turvyism is also what constitutes the most robust objection to taking the state of nature at face value as the founding paradigm for appraising the space of interstate relations+ Tempting though the image may be, that space
is not quite populated by a multitude of humpty dumpties; and history has provided sufficient evidence of successful collective action between states, as amply
emphasized by the English School+ In international anarchy, then, language and
meaning still obtain+ That is, despite the multiplicity of languages, the possibility,
if not always the actuality, of a common understanding still remains+
What the state of nature represents, then, is the solipsistic world of the infant
etymologically the prespeaking being ~in-fans!+77 The condition that Hobbes evokes,
I suggest, is that of the infant+ I will show that the Hobbesian individual is much
closer to the speechless and utterly vulnerable infant than to the aggressive gladiator fully in possession of his weapons that IR chose to focus on+
The Leviathan as the Quilting Point Fastening
the Social Order
This inherently loose relation between the signifier and signified dramatized in
Hobbesian myth is the hallmark of the floating signifier, a defining concept of
the linguistic turn in contemporary political thought+ It is also what marks Hobbes
as the precursor to a turn that occurred, in Balls words, almost as an instance
of uncoordinated simultaneous discovery in the social science and humanities at
large, constructivism being its offshoot in IR+78 The floating signifier captured the
shattering of the correspondence theory of truth, whereby words were seen to no
longer simply mirror the world, but indeed to partially constitute it+ That the signifier floats expresses simply that meaning does not inhere in it, since meaning
is a matter of social convention, and different languages feature different signifiers for the same signified+ The signifier, per se, is empty+ Signification, then, or the
making of meaning, is the tying together of a signifier and a signifier within a
broader signifying system, or language+79
The fixing of meaning or the filling of an inherently empty signifier is the
primary process of social construction+ Understanding the workings of language,
then, is crucially relevant to constructivist theorizing because it illuminates the
how of social construction+80 This is the main motivation for finding ways to bring
the centrality of language to bear on political analysis+81 What the linguistic tradi-
77+ In as in prior to; fans as the present participle of fari, to speak+

78+ Ball 1985, 741+
79+ A signifying system is a language in structural linguistics+ Importantly, what structural linguistics underlines is that meaning emerges from the play of difference between the signifiers within
this system+ The meaning of hot is giving by its contrast with cold and neither term would mean
anything to anyone who does not speak English+
80+ This is not to deny the other facets of social construction, such as the role of practice+ However,
the prior fixing of common meanings is a necessary condition for practices to emerge+
81+ For examples of linguistic political thought, see Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Howarth 2000; Laclau
1996; Edkins 1999; Stavrakakis 1999; Zizek 2003; and Glynos and Stavrakakis 2008+
304
tion has underscored more starkly than other forms of constructivist theorizing is
not merely the contingency ~or historicity! of social constructs, but that this contingency itself owes to the unfixity of meaning as the base condition underlying
processes of social construction+
The floating signifier is also the center point of Lacans conception of language+82 With unfixity as his starting point, a key concern was to capture how
the signifier is fastened together with a signified in speech+ For Lacan, this floating or constant slippage between the level of the signifier and that of the signified is temporarily arrested by what he calls quilting points ~ points de capiton!,
or ~literally! upholstery buttons+83 While Lacan coined the concept to analyze the
individuals discourse, the concept was developed in his wake to analyze political discourses at large+84 Quilting points are key signifiers in the discourse of the
normal ~nonpsychotic! subject that function as anchoring points where signifiers and signifieds are knotted together+ The analogy here is that the upholstery
button is a place where the mattress-makers needle has worked to prevent a shapeless mass of stuffing from shifting about+ The button links the two outer edges of
the mattress, which evoke these two levels involved in signification+ Stringing
out the analogy, just like the lines radiating from the upholstery button on the
mattresss surface, the quilting point captures the idea of an organizing point running through broader discourses, a form of overarching referent for multiple individual utterances, which Lacan then proceeds to flesh out with his concept of the
master signifier+ 85 The master signifier is thus a key signifier that unifies a discursive field, fixing the meaning of often open-ended or contested concepts+ For
example Zizek shows how, under communism, certain signifiers, such as democracy, freedom, and the state, acquired a particular meaning when quilted
by the master signifier or point de capiton communism+ 86 The same words rang
quite differently in the West where they were quilted otherwise+
These signifiers, however, designate a political order, not the order underlying
the possibility of politics itself+ This is precisely what Hobbes nailed with the
symbol-Leviathan+ What the signifier-Leviathan conjures, then, is the Symbolic
per se+ It is an open-ended signifier that necessarily eludes all attempts to pin it
down to a set of signifieds, because it operates as the master signifier that designates the Symbolic at large+87 Just as the quilting point is the point at which a
82+ With his thesis of the primacy of the signifier ~ primaut du significant!, Lacan goes perhaps
furthest in foregrounding the floating signifier+ This unfixity is what enables the signifier to capture the
unconscious productions that constitute the material of psychoanalytic practice+
83+ Lacan 1981+
84+ See Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Edkins 1999; Stavrakakis 1999; and Zizek 2003+
85+ Lacan 1981+
86+ Zizek 2003, 282+
87+ Pinning down the meanings of the symbol is what Schmitt ~2008! sets out to do+ After mining
the text for the terms occurrences, Schmitt, frustrated by its slipperiness, concludes to its failure, an
astounding conclusion given its traction in the history of political thought+ Schmitts frustration, I suggest, offers a starting point for the way of appraising the symbol that I propose here+ My contention is
that the symbol-Leviathan is necessarily open-ended and polysemic precisely because what it symbolizes is nothing short of the instance that makes symbolizing possible in the first place+
305
signifier is knotted to the otherwise indeterminate and floating signifieds, the Leviathan is the instance that fastens the otherwise ever-shifting and always relative
meaning of good to a fixed, objective, and commonly agreed-upon set of understandings about what constitutes the good+
Centrally, Hobbess theory of signification developed two chapters earlier carries this dimension beyond moral predicates alone+ His description of the natural
state thus needs to be read against his insistence on the necessity of definitions+ 88 This fastening together of signifiers and signifieds is a precondition for
language to be able to function as the effective social bond that can contain the
threat of disorder suffusing the natural state+ The Leviathan is this fastening instance+
This enables us to revisit in a new light the notorious description of the state of
nature in Leviathan:
In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is
uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use
of the commodities that may be imported by the sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much
force; no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time; no arts; no
letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of
violent death; and the life of man @sic#, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and
short+89
The grammatical negative functions here, to draw on a metaphor from analogue
photography, as the negative vis--vis the silver print+ The final picture of the state
of nature captures, exactly inverted, the key components of the symbolic order+
Hobbes is careful to include here the major cardinal points undergirding social
life: markers of time and space; the possibility of cultivating the earth ~and indeed
all cultural productions!; the possibility of knowledge, and in fact, all peaceful
interactions ~including at the international level!+ The Leviathan, in turn, is the
center point of that symbolic order+ It both refers to ~signifies! and makes possible
the Symbolic order itself+ It is the master signifier that guarantees the possibility
of all signification+
The Leviathans Performativity
The performativity of the symbol-Leviathan can also be illuminated from within
speech act theory+ It operates on two different levels: first, on the level of what
Hobbes achieved, and second, in terms of what the symbol achieves+ The first
pertains to Hobbess historical location at a juncture where theorizing was directly
efficacious as in few areas of contemporary public life+ Standing on the verge of a
civil order that was coming undone, Hobbess poietic act consisted in creating a
symbol that could conjure up a unified polity as the horizon for political action+
88+ Hobbes 1946, chap+ 4 ~Of Speech!+

89+ Ibid+, chap+ 13, 82+
306
That the symbol still remains common currency for evoking the British Commonwealth is a testimony to the success of Hobbess foundational act+90
As for the second, Watkins has underlined the ways in which speech and action
are co-extensive in the figure of the Leviathan+ In declaring something to be right
or wrong, a sovereign is not describing it or making a statement about it+ His
declaration is, to use Austins term, a performative+ 91 The function of the Leviathan, in other words, is not merely one of revealing a preexisting natural or divine
order ~as in correspondence theory of the world!, but of actual constitution+ There
are thus two parallel levels of constitution at play+ Hobbess sovereigns actually
make the things they command @sic#+ 92 The Leviathan makes the social order
itself: that which makes possible language and all ulterior conventions+
Taking this line of argument beyond Watkins and indeed Austin himself, the
type of performative power implied in the sovereign speech act could be said to
be pre-locutionary+ It is not simply an act supported by social conventions, as
in illocutionary acts ~such as the judge who pronounces a sentence!+ Rather, it
makes all social conventions possible in the first place+ It is also therefore what
enables perlocutionary acts to take effect, to name the other main speech act under
examination in speech act theory ~acts that operate by way of consequence rather
than conventions per se, such as offending someone by insulting them!+ Watkins,
whose argument centers on the act of naming, compares the Leviathans speech
act to that of the clergyman who christens a child+ Remarkably, in a Lacanian
perspective, the act of naming is precisely what inscribes the child into the symbolic order+ This initial inscription ~performed by a clergyman or not! is what
makes social existence possible for the individual, as we will see+ However Watkins clergyman operates on the conventions of an already existing symbolic order+
What the Leviathan does is name the symbolic order into existence+ Thus, far
ahead of Lacan, in coining the symbol Hobbes names the instance that makes all
naming possible+ In sum, the Leviathan is the signifier that makes all signification possible+
The Leviathan as the Master Signifier That Enables

Signification: The Individual Level
At the collective level, the Leviathan functions as the master signifier that designates the symbolic order, hence the very possibility of human collectives existing
in the first place+ The second movement of my argument hinges on the Leviathans
function at the individual level+ A key problem for Hobbes was to ground the relationship between the individual and the sovereign within the subject, in order to
90+ Springborg 1995+

91+ See Watkins 1989, 111; and Austin 1962+
92+ Watkins 1989, 111 ~emphasis in original!+
307
explain the subjects entry into the social contract as an internal necessity, as Gauthier had correctly sensed+ As Foucault underscores:
What, indeed, was the sovereign + + + for Hobbes? + + + @It was# the instance
capable of saying no to the individuals desiderata; the problem then being
how this no + + + could be legitimate and founded in this individuals very
own will+93
The Lacanian framework reveals the extent to which Hobbes achieves exactly that,
in ways that reach far beyond what Foucault himself gauged+ Doing so rests on
the second dimension of the Lacanian Symbolic, which designates, for the individual, the order of the Other+ The term Lacan coins to circumscribe this function
of the Other at the individual level is the Name of the Father+ Here I show that
the Leviathan corresponds to the Lacanian Name of the Father, that is, the instance
that connects the individual to the collective+ The individuals perspective ~the perspective of natural man! thus reveals how the Leviathan operates as that which
fastens together the individual and collective levels+
The Leviathan as the Other
The Symbolic, for the individual, is the order of the Other+ The moment when the
individual acquires a name marks its birth as a social, symbolic being+ The order
into which the individual is thus hailed by being named into it, is initially fundamentally alien to the speechless infant+ The words that the infant learns belong,
quite literally, to a foreign worldan order that preexists it and where these words
already hold given meanings+ To learn to speak is to step into this alien order+ The
Symbolic is that world+ It designates the place of the Other, constituting both the
reservoir of preexisting signifiers ~its treasure chest! 94 and the original addressee,
the person with whom the infant first interacts, and with whom it learns eventually how to speak ~the figure of the ~m!other!+ This foundational exchange determines the basic structure of signification+ Subsequently, to speak is only ever to
draw upon preexisting signifiers ~first aspect of the Other! to convey meaning to
an addressee ~second aspect of the Other!+ To draw upon, or better said in a Lacanian sense to borrow: becoming a social animal rests on a Great Debt+ 95 This is
the symbolic debt that one incurs in borrowing signifiers from the Other in order
to be understood, and therefore to be acknowledged as belonging to that order+
Lacan emphasizes the mythical origin of the symbol as both a gift and a pact
that all at once indebts and binds together those who receive it ~the Argonauts in
his example!, creating the basic social bond+96
93+ Foucault 2004, 75 ~my translation!+

94+ Lacan 2006, 336+
95+ Ibid+, 74+
96+ Ibid+, 66 67+ Rites and celebrations, such as Christmas celebrations, offer a good place to observe
the Symbolic reproducing itself+ Giving gifts to children can be read as instantiating, with a happy
308
What, then, underwrites this debt, and whence does it draw its power? This
stepping into the Symbolic is not merely the acquisition of a positive, distinctly
human, neurological capacity of speech+97 To the contrary, what Lacan draws out
is that the entry into the Symbolic is premised on a constitutive loss+ Alienation
within the symbolic order is a basic condition of ones becoming a social speaking
being+ Lacan captures this foundational loss, or lack, with the concept of castration+ To be clear, it has nothing to do with the physical act of mutilation; we are
here squarely within the realm of the Symbolic rather than the Real+ In fact, castration is the concept that centrally underpins that realm+ It captures the original
forsaking that each of us undergoes in order to accede to language+98
Subsequently, however, we forever uncomfortably straddle these two realms, the
realm of immediate, preverbal experience ~the world of raw needs, impulses, frustrations, anger, and joy, of the Imaginary and the Real!; and the mediated realm of
the Symbolic, into which we must first be integrated in order to express that experience+ But to be able to express it is also to lose it in its raw, immediate form+ Herein
lies the constitutive split that marks the tragedy of the human condition+ Words can
never completely convey exactly what the speaker wants to say+ For anything to
be said requires that it be mediated by words that belong to everyone, words that
hold generic meanings and are thus fundamentally ill-fitted for that unique and
immediate impulse that led the subject to want to speak in the first place+ As Lacan
put it in his famous quips, the thing must be lost in order to be expressed, or again
speech is the murder of the thing+ 99 The thing in its original, raw individualized form must be relinquished so as to be fitted into existing signifiers and thereby
communicated+ This forsaking is a condition of entry into the Symbolic+ It is what
one gives up in order to be able to become a social, speaking being+ Man @sic#
speaks, then, but it is because the symbol has made him man+ 100
The Social Contract as Castration and the Leviathan as the
Name of the Father
This symbolic debt casts a new light on the depths that Hobbes plumbs with his
understanding of the psychic mechanisms underpinning the social contract+ First,
in contracting with the Leviathan, the individual forsakes liberty in exchange for
securing life and, centrally, being rid of the fear of death+ That fundamental freedom, I argue, pertains to the realm of immediate experience and unimpeded desires+
Hobbess natural man is the being that does exactly as it pleases, takes exactly
face, the debt that is being incurred by the childrens insertion into the symbolic order, by their becoming adults ~which will then lead them to give back to other children in order to observe the rite, and
thereby in turn partake in the further perpetuation of the Symbolic!+
97+ As in, for example, Chomsky 1993+
98+ This centrality of loss as foregrounded by castration is what places Lacans perspective fundamentally at odds with analyses of socialization, which remain oblivious to this dimension+ For an
engagement in IR, see Epstein 2012+
99+ Lacan 2006, 77+
100+ Ibid+, 72+
309
what it wants, calling whatever suits its momentary appetite good and whatever
displeases it, evil+ It wanders without any moral compass, its wants unhindered+
What Hobbes offers, I suggest, is in fact a fantasmatic representation of the preverbal individual prior to its encounter with the Symbolic and to castration taking
hold+ Hobbess state of nature is an apt rendition of the world of Lacans infant
who, unaware of its limit, experiences itself as all-powerful+ Its primordial liberty
is what is lost in order to enter the social order+ Centrally, however, it is also a
fantasmatic liberty, an expression of this illusion of omnipotence+ Seen in this light,
what Hobbes draws out perhaps more than any other social contract theorist is the
extreme vulnerability that natural man finds itself in, which drives it to entering
the contract with the Leviathan+ That fear of death is a foundational fear+ Its constitutive role is akin to that of the slave in Hegels master-slave relationship+101 It
is not just the fear of dying after having lived a free life+ It is the fear of not being
able to live in the first place, to establish oneself as an autonomous self+
In this light, then, in the contract passed between the individual and the Leviathan, the Leviathan is, much more fundamentally than has been recognized, the
Other upon whom the self constitutively depends to acquire the means to become
itself+ That contract institutes not merely the monarchs subject, not merely the
political subject ~or the subject of a certain kind of political order!+ Rather, it founds
the speaking subject itself, which is also always split+ It constitutes the individual
qua political animal+ This is the true meaning of that symbolic pact: it is an
exchange of the freedom to do however one pleases against language and the ability to act politically+ It is underwritten, and herein lies Hobbess Lacanian insight,
by a symbol, the Leviathan+
In Lacanian thought, one signifier in particular performs a similar function, the
Name of the Father+ 102 Lacan elaborates the concept in the same seminar where
he coins the notion of quilting point+ 103 He realizes that there is a signifier more
fundamental still, one that holds no signifier+ 104 This is properly the master signifier, or pure signifier as Juranville captures it, in that it attaches to no particular signified, and instead encompasses them all+ It is the instance that underwrites
all other signifiers, all chains of signification+105 It is what makes meaning possible in the first place+
The father is the instance that triangulates the mother-child relationship and
opens it up to the Symbolic+106 The father ruptures the original mother-child symbiosis+ This constitutes an essential loss; but it is also what ushers the child into
101+ See also Blits 1989+

102+ To be specific, Lacan calls it at different stages of theoretical development, The Name-of-theFather, master signifier, or S1+ These terms are thus interchangeable at this final stage of my
argument+
103+ Lacan 1981+
104+ Lacan 1975, 74 ~my translation!+
105+ Juranville 1984+
106+ To clarify, the mother is the imaginary, primeval, Other located in the realm of identification
and imaginary capture; which Lacanians denote as the m~Other!+ The father, as the instance that
opens up the mother-child binary, is the place where the Other becomes the Symbolic+ Importantly,
310
the symbolic order and thereby institutes the possibility of symbolizing, of speaking+ Subsequently, this instance detaches from the actual father in this primordial
configuration, and becomes the Other that supports all social relationships, all
possibility of interaction between a self and an otherhence why it is a signifier, the Name of the Father+ It is the signifier that designates the order of
Other and, in doing so, underwrites the possibility of signification itself+ In Hobbess world that signifier is none other than the Leviathan, the instance that makes
possible interactions and common understandings+
The Speaking Subject: Conclusions for IR Theory

Reading Hobbes through Lacan shines a dramatically different light upon the individual that has stood in the disciplines sights ever since it turned to Hobbess
state of nature for its first cues about the structure of the international system ~in
realism!, and that remained in its sights even when it moved away from Hobbes to
further distil the essence of the units selves ~in constructivism!+ It restores the
second half of the Hobbesian individual obscured by IRs gaze having being cast
upon the state of nature alone+ The key realist insight that does carry over into a
Lacanian reading is that the agonistic relations dramatized by Hobbess mythical
nature, that state of permanent and latent warfare between the units, is constitutive and it is structural+ Where the Lacanian reading departs from realism, however, is that, with Hobbess full picture and the Leviathan back in sight, that unit
is not a discrete, self-contained entity or billiard ball; nor does it consequently
yield an atomistic billiard board of utility-maximizing unitswhether colliding or
rolling in the same direction+
This individualist conception of the individual, for which Hobbess natural man
was first marshaled by rationalism, and which has not been entirely shaken off by
constructivisms concept of the self, actually falls short of appreciating just how
far Hobbes reaches in foregrounding the fear of death as prime mover of his natural individuals behavior+107 This fear is indeed what drives the individual, and
subsequently for realism, states, to seek security as their primary objective, to echo
Arons words+108 But, centrally, it is also what drives the individual to not dwell in
the state of nature at all+ Hence freezing the narrative at this point to uphold only
the state of nature in sight makes little sense+ What is to be found there, a Lacanian reading reveals, is a wordless infant, a naked being stripped of the trappings
of agency+ It is a pre-actor, whose life would be very short indeed+ For its part, the
rational actor, an actor presumably equipped with the means to actwho can talk
both terms refer to roles in the structure of the relationship, not to the genders of the real persons who
occupy them+
107+ Interestingly Blits ~1989, 428! foregrounds the centrality of an objectless fear to Hobbesian
agency+ An objectless fear is precisely psychoanalysiss definition of anxiety+
108+ Aron 1966, 72+
311
and walk at the very leastis the one who leaves the state of nature as quickly as
possible and contracts with the Leviathan in order to stay alive+ That is the rational thing to do+ That survival is at stake is true in a fundamental, constitutive
sense+ It is what constitutes the individual per senot a natural man or a powerless wordless infant, but the full-blown individual, complete with the trappings
of agency+ But it also means that the actor is always already a social being who
does not exist outside of its constitutive relation to the Leviathan-Other+ It is, in
Hobbess dramatization, simply crushed by the dangers lurking in the state of nature+
The Split, Desiring, Speaking Subject

Finding a new basis for elaborating human agency first requires restoring these
two halves to Hobbess individual, his natural individual and his political subject+
The picture thus emerging overlies Lacans subject, on three central points+ First,
it reveals an individual constitutively split between these two realms, the realm of
immediate, unimpeded impulses ~here is the state of nature!, and the Symbolic,
the realm of language and the social; but also, importantly, an individual who ~in
normal circumstances! is not so rent between these two as to be reduced to paralysis+ The split speaking subject forever straddles these two realms, one foot in
either+
That tension, second, is the motor of human desire+ Lacans and Hobbess theories of agency both centrally foreground the role of desire as the dynamic component of the human psyche+ Desire, in Lacan as in Hobbes, is the engine, not of the
natural individual ~that was the fear of death in Hobbes! but of human agency
itselfthat is, of the whole of the individual rather than its half+ Hobbess desire
for power that so captured the imagination of the disciplines founding fathers is a
desire to secure the means of ones agency+ It is a desire for potency, rather than
for the material power IR has tended to focus on+109 The splitting, dramatized in
Hobbes by leaving the state of nature and contracting with the Leviathan, constitutes the individuals desire and the individuals ability to act in the social world+
Working with the Hobbesian myth, leaving the state of nature is in fact the very
first expression of that desire+ Desire is what drives the individual to step into
sociality and language for the means to express it, and to obtain what the individual wants+ This desire to want to know how to speak ~and the frustrations of not
quite yet knowing how to! is a tangible feature in a child+
The split desiring subject is therefore also, third, a speaking subject, an actor
who does things with words, to paraphrase Austins seminal work+ What Lacans
theory draws out, however, is the extent to which that actor, acting in words, is
equally embedded in sociolinguistic structures that act upon the actor, in accordance with a structurationist social theory+
109+ See Barnett and Duvall 2005, for a critical overview+
312
Toward a New Social Theory of International Politics

The split speaking subject thus provides the ontological basis for deploying a structurationist and properly transactional social theory of international politics where
the mutual constitution of the actors and the structures runs, this time, all the way
down+ Because deploying such a theory in full is not possible within the space of
one article, my primary concern has been simply to lay a first cornerstone, with a
new model of agency to be found in the Lacanian figure of the split speaking
subject+ With it, however, four features of what such a social theory may look like
begin to take shape+
First, a relational social theory of international politics foregrounds front and
center the foundational dependence of the self upon the Other, instead of reverting to an individualist atomistic ontology that posits an autonomous, sovereign
Ego interacting with a discrete Alter as in the Wendtian social theory+110 What
grounds this relationality, and prevents it from such slippage, is that it is revealed
as an ontological dependency, not merely as a secondary, contingent relation+ It is
the foundational dependence that makes the self in the first place, and subsequently
remains an ongoing feature of political order+ This Lacanian reading of Hobbes
thus drastically revisits constructivisms defining concern with constitution and
with identity+
Second, the speaking subject paves the way for a social theory that shifts the
focus away from interests to desire as the basis for human agency+ The speaking
subject brings new depths to the founding constructivist insight underpinning its
conception of agency, namely, that understanding actors identities is central to
appraising their interests, since the actors understanding of its interests is a function of its self-understanding+ As a key implication of this insight, constructivists
have rightly emphasized the extent to which an actors interests are not selfexplicit or automatically given, insofar as they are read through its identities+ The
speaking subject illuminates the ontological basis for this opacity+ It is not merely
that its interests are not fully transparent to the actor in that they are bound up
with its identity+ It is that identity itself is not fully accessible to the actor, since
the self is constitutively split between conscious and unconscious dimensions+ The
split subject significantly dents conceptions of the autonomous actor who knows
and does what it wants+ Bearing out this realization draws out the restrictions that
have been placed by conceiving agency within the terms of interests alone+ It paves
the way for the more productive category of desire as the foundation for human
action+
Third, refounding a social theory upon the speaking subject opens up the category of structure itself+ The linguistic Lacanian ontology presents a new type
of structure altogether, alongside the objective social structures shaped by actors
110+ In Lacanian terms, what is being confused in the Wendtian scenario is the small other ~other
social actors! with the Other underpinning the social order itself, impersonated in Hobbess dramatization by the Leviathan+
313
interactions that are habitually considered by social theoretical IR+ Lacan tables a
deeply intersubjective structure that is also a key driver of action, the unconscious+ As that side of the subject that has been constitutively split off from the
actors consciousness, this is what eludes at first-hand the actors knowledge of
the actors intentions and motivations+ Lacans central theoretical contribution was
to uncover the parallel functioning of the unconscious and of language, the primary medium of social construction+ In this it is centrally relevant to the constructivist concern with the social construction of institutions and identities+ Language
provides a way of accessing this whole other source of human agency, alongside
conscious, intentional action+ Language and the unconscious would thus constitute two additional structural foci for a Lacanian relational social theory+
The fourth implication is methodological+ The speaking subject shores up the
theoretical foundations for the discursive study of international politics+ Elsewhere
I have shown that the methodological added-value of the concept of speaking subject for empirical scholarship is that it allows the analysis to travel the levels of
analyses implicated in IR, from the state to the individual+ Apprehending the actor
as a speaking subject suspends the ontological a priori as to who constitutes the
actors of international politics, thereby moving the analysis beyond IRs characteristic state centrism+111 The speaking subject is the actor located at the place of I0We
in a discourse+ That talking actor may be an individual, a state, or indeed a nongovernmental organization, according to the case at hand+112 Discourse thus provides a more theoretically parsimonious way of studying identity than the
constructivist self, because it holds no presumptions about the actors selves+ What
I hope to have added in this article to this theoretical edifice is to illuminate who
that self might actually beand to show that it was always there, buried away in
our Hobbesian legacy+ It is a split, desiring, speaking, political subject+
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Theorizing Agency in Hobbess

Wake: The Rational Actor, the Self,

3+ Wendt 1999, 215+

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

IRs Prevailing Models of Agency: The Rational Actor

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

Hobbes the Realist

15+ Aron 1966, 72 ~emphasis in original!+

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

The State of Nature and the E-Rational Individual

Implications for Agency: The Speechless Self-Action Model

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

Unearthing the Seeds of Sociality and Signification in the State

38+ Heller 1980+

Moving Out of Hobbess Shadow to Find

See Kratochwil 1989, 3 6; and Williams 1996+

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

Implications for Agency: Unchanging Speechless Inter-Action

49+ Ibid+, 18386+

55+ Emirbayer 1997, 285 ~emphasis in original!+

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

Emirbayer 1997, 284 ~emphasis in original!+

The Symbol-Leviathan as Signifier of the Symbolic:

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

69+ Hobbes 1946, 18+

Watkins 1989, 104+

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

77+ In as in prior to; fans as the present participle of fari, to speak+

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

88+ Hobbes 1946, chap+ 4 ~Of Speech!+

The Leviathan as the Master Signifier That Enables

90+ Springborg 1995+

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

93+ Foucault 2004, 75 ~my translation!+

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

101+ See also Blits 1989+

The Speaking Subject: Conclusions for IR Theory

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

The Split, Desiring, Speaking Subject

109+ See Barnett and Duvall 2005, for a critical overview+

Toward a New Social Theory of International Politics

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

111+ Epstein 2011+

Blits, Jahn H+ 1989+ Hobbesian Fear+ Political Theory 17 ~3!:41731+

Theorizing Agency in Hobbess Wake

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