PoMo IR

Prof Amado Mendoza Jr.

IS 290—IR Theories
Postmodernism
 What is Postmodernism?
• Postmodernism
became one of the
most influential and
controversial theories
and trends in the
humanities, the social
sciences, and the
applied science—
including architecture.
 Modern vs. Postmodern
Modern: Postmodern:
Linear progress in history “Historicity”, socio-cultural
Boundaries, social class, locatedness of moments
race and gender in history
Formality, emphasis on Critical study of class, race,
authority and gender
Scientific rationality Intertextuality, self-
Essentialism, seeking “real” reflexivity, montage,
essences pastiche
Grand narrative Signs, image, reproductive
social order
Prescription Local accounts
Normative Description
Geneaological,
Archaeological
 Difficulties of defining postmodernism
“Post-modernism has many interpretations and no
single definition is adequate. Different disciplines
have participated in the postmodernist
movement in varying ways … in architecture,
traditional limits have become indistinguishable,
so that what is commonly on the outside of a
building is placed within, and vice versa. In
literature, writers adopt a self-conscious
intertextuality sometimes verging on pastiche,
which denies the formal propriety of authorship
and genre.”
(The Prentice Hall Guide to English Literature, Marion Wynne-Davies, ed. First Prentice Hall edition,
copyright 1990 by Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd. 812-13)
 Postmodernism & science
Postmodernity (involves) the end of an overarching
belief in scientific rationality and a unitary theory of
progress, the replacement of empiricist theories of
representation and truth, and increased emphasis
on the importance of the unconscious, on free-
floating signs and images, and a plurality of
viewpoints … a shift from a `productive' to a
‘reproductive’ social order, in which simulations and
models -- and more generally, signs -- increasingly
constitute the world, so that any distinction between
the appearance and the ‘real’ is lost.

(David Jary and Julia Jary. eds. The Harper Collins Dictionary of
Sociology. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 375-6)
 No boundaries
“Another feature of postmodernism seen by some
theorists is that the boundaries between `high' and
`low' culture tend to be broken down, for example,
motion pictures, jazz, and rock music According to
many theorists, postmodernist cultural movements,
which often overlap with new political tendencies
and social movements in contemporary society, are
particularly associated with the increasing
importance of new class fractions, for example,
‘expressive professions’ within the service class
(see Lash and Urry, 1987)."

(David Jary and Julia Jary. eds. The Harper Collins Dictionary of
Sociology. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 375-6)
 Rejection of essentialism
Among the characteristic
gestures of
postmodernist thinking is
a refusal of the ‘totalizing’
or ‘essentialist’
tendencies of earlier
theoretical systems,
especially classic
Marxism, with their
claims to referential truth,
scientificity, and belief in
progress.
 The PoMo way
• Postmodernism, on the
contrary, is committed
to modes of thinking
and representation
which emphasize
fragmentations,
discontinuities and
incommensurable
aspects of a given
object, from intellectual
systems to architecture
PoMo writing
Postmodernist analysis is often
marked by forms of writing
that are more literary,
certainly more self-reflexive,
than is common in critical
writing - the critic as self-
conscious creator of new
meanings upon the ground of
the object of study, showing
that object no special respect.
It prefers montage to
perspective, intertextuality to
referentiality. It delights in
excess, play, carnival,
asymmetry…
Postmodern treatments of
medicine & incarceration
Sigurdur Gylfi Magnússon, "The Singularization of History: Social
History and Microhistory within the Postmodern State of
Knowledge”, Journal of Social History, Volume 36, (Spring 2003)
Issue 3

Refutes how microhistorians try to link up small

units of research to a larger macro-context
Wants historians to cut ties with grand
narratives
Proposes a “singularization of history”
Interested in the details, nuances of events, and
broadening objects of research (personal
documents, etc.)
Sumit Sarkar, "Post-modernism and the Writing of History."
Studies in History 15, no. 2 (1999): 293-322.

Interested in life histories; • Concern for movements

people of lower strata between public and
and their convictions, private spheres
ideals
• Lived experience, daily
Radical departure from
conventional focus on routine, social patterns
“leaders” and aesthetic
Individual life histories preferences of different
shed new light on levels of society
political and economic
situations
Samples of postmodern IR
The gulf war did not take place
 Postmodern IR
• Power & knowledge in study of IR

• Postmodern textual approaches/strategies

• Postmodernism & the state

• Rethinking what is political

 Power & knowledge in IR
• Modern
– Knowledge is immune from influence of power

• Postmodern
– Knowledge production is normative and political
– Sovereignty is constitutive of man and state
– Modern statecraft is modern mancraft (ala
Foucault’s Discipline and Punish)
 Genealogy
• Style of historical thought which exposes and
registers significance of power-knowledge
relations
• Concerned with writing counter-histories w/c
expose cases of exclusion w/c make possible
teleological stories
• From a genealogical perspective, there is not one
single grand history but many interwoven
histories varied in power-knowledge effects
• There is no truth, only competing perspectives
and every perspective embodies a set of values
Masters of genealogy
Zehfuss’ genealogical analysis of 9/11
• What is 9/11?
– Attack on West?
– Is Western identity unambiguous?
– Didn’t some Western countries harbor the
‘terrorists’?
– Are all Westerners behind war on terror?
• Cause and effect?
– Is 9/11 an uncaused ‘cause’ of the war on terror?
 Postmodern textual strategies
• James Der Derian
contends that post
modernism is
concerned with
exposing the ‘textual
interplay behind
power politics’.
What is text?
• Jacques Derrida did not
limit text to the realm
of ideas. The world is or
is constituted like a text
and one cannot refer to
it except in an
interpretive experience.
“We need to interpret
interpretations more
than to interpret
things.”
 Deconstruction
• Radical unsettling of supposed stable concepts
and conceptual oppositions
• Conceptual oppositions are always
hierarchical with one privileged (e.g.
sovereignty over anarchy)
• Opposition between two is not clear and
neither is pure and complete in itself
 Double reading
• First reading is commentary or repetition of
dominant interpretation (produces stability
effect). Demonstrates how text appears
coherent
• Second reading unsettles first by applying
pressure on those points of instability within a
text and exposes internal tensions showing
that it is less than stable
 Ashley’s double reading of
anarchy problematique
• Why should power politics follow from lack of
central rule?

• 1st reading: outlines AP in conventional terms

• 2nd reading: questions the self-evidence of IR

as anarchical realm of politics
 Ashley’s double reading
• Deconstruction of sovereignty-anarchy dyad
– Sovereignty is valorized; anarchy takes on
meaning only as opposite
– Both are not mutually exclusive/exhaustive
• Dichotomy is tenable only if states are indeed
sovereign internally; internal dissent
(transversal struggles) undermines the
stability of the dyad
 Problematizing sovereign states
• Genealogical question: how is the state
instituted as the normal mode of international
subjectivity (or loyalty)?

• How is the sovereign state made possible,

how is it naturalized and how is it made to
appear as if it had an essence?
 PM Analysis of the state
• Modern state’s origin’s in violence

• Boundary inscription

• Deconstruction of identity

• Revised interpretation of statecraft

 Violence and the modern state
• Modern political thought see reason rather
than violence as measure of power &
legitimacy
• PoMo analysts see a paradox since violence is
behind state power but citizens must be
protected from the same violence
• Others argue that states used violence to
constitute themselves as states; to impose
differentiations between internal and external
 State boundaries
• How was global political space partitioned?
• Boundary marking is a political act as it
produces and delimits political space;
establishes opposition between sovereignty
and anarchy
• Geography is the product of histories of
struggle between competing authorities over
the power to organize, occupy and administer
space (and people and resources).
 Identity
• How has the territorially-defined self been
constructed (as opposed to a THEATENING
OTHER)?
• Norm of community in times of war:
ONTOPOLOGY—a desire for a coherent,
bounded, monocultural community
• All forms of political community, insofar as
they require boundaries, are prone to some
degree of violence
 Statecraft
• Sovereign state is NOT natural
• Sovereign states became the hegemonic ideal
• Quasi- & failed states reinforce ideal
• Model must be replicable to be hegemonic
• Traditional view: statecraft refers to what fully-
formed states do in world arena
• PoMo view: ongoing practices which keep the
state in perpetual motion; the state is
performatively constituted; always in the process
of being constituted; process never completed
 PRECAUTION!
• PoMo IR does not seek return to realist state-
centrism even if concerned with sovereign
state

• Its concerns:
– Genealogy of state-centric approach
– Costs of such an approach
 Rethinking the political
• Paradigm of sovereignty: impoverished our
political imagination; reduced understanding
of dynamics of world politics
• The PoMo alternative
– Conceptualize world politics in terms of political
prosaics
• Multitude of flows/interactions
• Deterritorialized modern political life
• Activities that stabilize paradigm of sovereignty
 Influence of Deleuze & Guattari
• Reterritorialization: associated with paradigm
of sovereignty; identity, order, & unity
• Deterritorialization: associated with mobile
logic of nomadism and its ability to transgress
boundaries; difference, flows, lines of flight;
can help make sense of the impact of various
non-state actors on state sovereignty
 Rethinking political
community & identity
• Modern political life need not be caught between
the inside (the state) and outside dichotomy
• Identity must not be exclusionary
• Difference not antithetical to identity
• Men-citizen opposition must not privilege
citizens’ claims above claims of humanity
• Need to move beyond paradigm of sovereignty;
incompatible with deterritorialized democracy
 Critique of PoMo
• Trash talk: epistemological hypochondria and
anarchy
• ‘Banging on open door’: orthodox IR had been
criticized for problems of positivism
• Just muddying the waters: pure polemics
• Complete nihilistic relativism
 Nihilistic relativism
• By declaring any theory a fabrication without
legitimate grounding, we are left with no
mechanism to assert one theory over another

• PoMo ultimately negates itself: how can

deconstruction and its other methodologies be
defended as correct?
 PoMo response
• This question only makes sense in a positivist
framework

• PoMo does not seek to prove with absolute

certainty what it proposes but to demonstrate
uncertainty and harm of absolutist claims
 Putting PoMo in its proper place
• Political nihilism or continued commitment to
emancipation?
• No momentous contribution to study of IR
• Insufficient communication between PoMo
accounts in IR
• Not yet a school? Will it be a school? Should it
be a school?