Postmodernism (DEVETAK 2005)

Richard Devetak, Postmodernism,

in

Scott Burchill, Andrew Linklater, Richard Devetak, Jack Donnelly, Matthew Paterson, Christian Reus-Smit and Jacqui True, Theories of International Relations, third edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005

 

 

Power and knowledge in International Relations

Genealogy

163-164 (...) The subject of knowledge is situated in, and conditioned by, a political and historical context, and constrained to function with particular concepts and categories of knowledge. Knowledge is never unconditioned. As a consequence of the heterogeneity of possible contexts and positions, there can be no single, Archimedean perspective which trumps all others. There is no ‘truth’, only competing perspectives. David Campbell’s analysis of the Bosnian War in National Deconstruction (1998a) affirms this perspectivism. As he rightl reminds us, ‘the same events can be represented in markedly different ways with significantly different effects’ (1998a: 33). Indeed, the upshot of his analysis is that the Bosnian War can be known only through perspective.

 

 

Problematizing sovereign states

 

Violence

174 (...) Indeed, as Agamben (1998: 74, 80) points out, the Roman concept of homo sacer precedes the distinction between sacred and profane, which is why, paradoxically, a so-called ‘sacred man’ can be killed. The clearest expression of this was the system of camps established under the Nazis before and during the Second World War. But similar systems were established during the Bosnian War. As David Campbell (2002b: 157) spells out, the Bosnian Serb camps at Omarska and Trnopolje were ‘extra-legal spaces’ integrated into an ‘ethnic-cleansing strategy based on an exclusive and homogeneous’ political community.

 

Identity

177 A detailed account of the relationship between the state, violence and identity is to be found in David Campbell’s post-structuralist account of the Bosnian war, in National Deconstruction (1998a). His central argument there is that a particular norm of community has governed the intense violence of the war. This norm, which he calls ‘ontopology’, borrowing from Derrida, refers to the assumption that political community requires the perfect alignment of territory and identity, state and nation (Derrida 1994a: 82; Campbell 1998a: 80). It functions to disseminate and reinforce the supposition that political community must be understood and organized as a single identity perfectly aligned with and possessing its allocated territory. The logic of this norm, suggests Campbell (1998a: 168–9), leads to a desire for a coherent, bounded, monocultural community. These ‘ontopological’ assumptions form ‘the governing codes of subjectivity in international relations’ (1998a: 170). What is interesting about Campbell’s (1999a: 23) argument is the implication that the outpouring of violence in Bosnia was not simply an aberration or racist distortion of the ontopological norm, but was in fact an exacerbation of this same norm. The violence of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in pursuit of a pure, homogeneous political identity is simply a continuation, albeit extreme, of the same political project inherent in any modern nation-state. The upshot is that all forms of political community, insofar as they require boundaries, will be given to some degree of violence (Campbell 1998a: 13).

180 (...) It is in this sense that David Campbell (1998a: ix–x), in his account of the war in Bosnia, focuses on what he calls ‘metaBosnia’, by which he means ‘the array of practices through which Bosnia … comes to be’. To help come to terms with the ceaseless production of Bosnia as a state or subject Campbell recommends that we recognize that we are never dealing with a given, a priori state of Bosnia, but with metaBosnia–that is, the performative constitution of ‘Bosnia’ through a range of enframing and differentiating practices. ‘Bosnia’, like any other state, is always under a process of construction.

 

 

Beyond the paradigm of sovereignty: rethinking the political

 

Postmodern ethics

186 (...) The key thinker in this ethical approach is Emmanuel Levinas who has been more influenced by Jewish theology than Greek philosophy. Indeed, the differences between these two styles of thought are constantly worked through in Levinas’ thought as a difference

between a philosophy of alterity and a philosophy of identity or totality.