Usually power is taken to be one of the key concepts in the subject that is commonly known as ‘power politics’. It has shared centre-stage with the concept of ‘state’ since the discipline’s inception, and is viewed as the basic currency of international relations. Also within classical social accounts, knowledge should be immune from the influence of power.
However when we look at the Power-Knowledge relationship, Foucault is the one mainly contributes to the work. He argues that power produces knowledge. All power requires knowledge and all knowledge relies on and reinforces existing power relations. Post-modernists would like to focus on what power relations are supposed by truth and knowledge practices. Post-modern international theorists have used this insight to examine the truths of international relations theory to see how the concepts and knowledge claims that dominate the discipline in fact are highly contingent on specific power relations. (240, Smith: 2001) Knowledge is thought to depend on the sovereignty of ‘the heroic figure of reasoning man who knows that the order of the world is not God-given, that man is the origin of all knowledge, that responsibility for supplying meaning to history resides with man himself’; and that through reason, man may achieve total knowledge, total autonomy, and total power. On the other hand, modern political life finds in sovereignty its constitutive principles. (183; Devetak)
Now I am going to look at the social construction of state sovereignty to make the idea of power-knowledge clear and distinguish postmodernism from other theories.
“Traditionally, sovereignty has been characterised as a basic rule of coexistence within the states system, a concept that transcends both ideological differences and the rise of major powers, and it is frequently invoked as an institution that must be both protected and defended sovereignty provides the basis in international law for claims for state actions, and its violation is routinely invoked as a justification for the use of force in international relations. Sovereignty therefore, is an inherently social concept.” (1, Biersteker and Weber: 1996)
While other theorists show interests in sovereignty, that territory, population, and authority and recognition are important aspects of state sovereignty, Biersteker and Weber are contending that “ the modern state system is not based on some timeless principle of sovereignty, but on the production of normative conception that links authority, territory, population (society, nation) and recognition in a unique way and in a particular place (the state). “ (3:1996) Also they are talking about state from interdependence and dependence assessments and these critiques suggested that the state was not the only significant actor in the international arena (or the most appropriate level for analysis of important issues); that states coexisted with transnational actors in situations of complex interdependence; and that state sovereignty was eroded by transnational phenomena. (6:1996) To summarise their idea that state is not a main actor of international relations, it is one of the concepts. And the concept of state sovereignty cannot be separated from the ways in which has been studied and analysed in the past time, in history. Knowledge is inextricably tied up with power to extent that it produces the discourse of sovereignty as the primary means of arranging political relations in modernity. So what history is doing in the relationship between power and knowledge? Foucault’s idea of genealogy would be the answer.
Genealogy is a style of historical thought, which exposes and registers the significance of power-knowledge relations. History proceeds as a series of dominations and impositions in knowledge and power. From a genealogical perspective there is not one single, grand history. “A genealogical approach is anti-essentialist in orientation, affirming the idea that all knowledge is situated in a particular time and place and issues from a particular perspective. The subjective of knowledge is situated in and constituted by, a political and historical context, and constrained to function with particular concepts and categories of knowledge. Knowledge is never unconditioned.” (186, Devetak) There are not such things like truth, only ‘regime of truth’. The point of Devetak as postmodernist is “not to provide the ‘true’ representation of international relations, but to provide a critical account of how particular representations circulate and take hold to produce practical political effects.” (186, Devetak)
The third argument of postmodernism is textual strategies. Derian is concerned with exposing ‘textual interplay behind power politics.’ Textuality is a common postmodern theme. It is important to clarify what Derida means by text. Derrida is not stricting its meaning to literature and the realm of ideas, as some have mistakenly thought. He is implying that the world is also a text, or the ‘real’ world is constituted like a text, and ‘one cannot refer to this ‘real’ except in an interpretive experience.’ (148, Derrida: 1988) Postmodernism firmly regard interpretation as necessary and fundamental to the constitution of the social world. To expose his idea, I am going to show two main ways of textual interplays. Deconstruction and double reading.
The main point of deconstruction is to demonstrate the effects and costs produced by the settled oppositions, to disclose the parasitical relationship between opposed terms, and to attempt a displacement of them. Deconstruction is based on the idea that seemingly stable and natural concepts and relations within language are in fact artificial constructs, arranged hierarchically in that in the case of opposites in language one term is always privileged over the other. Additionally it is a way of showing how all theories and discourse rely on artificial stabilities produced by the use of seemingly objective and natural opposition in language. Deconstruction is concerned with both the constitution and deconstitution of any totality, whether a text, theory, discourse, structure, edifice, assemblage or institution.
On the other hand, double reading is Derrida’s way of showing how these stabilisations operate by subjecting the text to two readings. One is a reading, which demonstrates how a text, discourse or institution achieves the stability effect. The second is counter-memorising reading unsettles it by applying pressure to those points of instability within a text, discourse or institution. The point of the first reading is to demonstrate how the text, discourse or institution appears coherent and consistent with itself. The second point is to demonstrate how the dominant reading always risks being undone. The whole point is not to demonstrate the truthfulness or otherwise of a story, but to expose how any story depends on the repression of internal tensions in order to produce a stable effect of homogeneity and continuity. (190, Devetak)
What is different from others? Comparison to realism
To find the distinctive point of postmodernism of international relations, I am going to look at the ideas of realists’ scholars. It is mainly concerned the concept of sovereignty.
Hans Morgenthau did not assume the existence of sovereignty. He denied sovereignty in legal terms as “ the appearance of centralised power that exercised its lawmaking and law-enforcing authority within a certain territory.” (299, Morgenthau: 1967) Also he suggested that the idea of sovereignty legitimised the contemporary national democratic states. He emphasised the continuity of state and sovereignty.
On the other hand, E.H. Carr insisted, “ Few things are permanent in history; and it would be rash to assume that the territorial unit of power is one of them.” (229, Carr: 1964) Interestingly Carr predicted that the concept of sovereignty “is likely to become in the future even more blurred and indistinct than it is at present.” (Ibid. 230) For Carr, sovereignty was never anything more than a convenient label for the independent authority.
Kenneth Waltz essentially defined sovereignty in terms of the conception of anarchy. “To say that a state is sovereign means that it decides for itself how it will cope with its internal and external problems.” (5,Waltz: 1996) it means that states are sovereign because there is no competing governmental authority in the international relations. From these ideas of realists and to contrast to postmodernism, postmodernists believe that “ a change of focus toward the social construction of sovereignty would allow a richer analysis of the changing nature of sovereignty over time” (6, Biersteker and Weber)
Conclusion
To sum up postmodernsim has showed very different approaches to the world for about these twenty years. It is a difficult and abstruct theory but it takes apart the concepts and methods of our thinking. In the way of thinking the concept of sovereignty, idea of deconstruction and theorising history, all of them are very distinguish from other classical theory. Taking off the orthodox idea of states allow us to think the world globally. It can explain the phenomenon of globalisation and it is a distinctive and strong point of postmodernism. Since 1980s system of the world and within the world have changed dramatically. We cannot explain the situation of the world with simple or classical way of thinking. Postmodernism would allow us to think different opinion towards contemporary issues from orthodox ideas, such as internationalisation and globalistion of the world politics and economics, the role of the United Nations, the United Sates’ foreign policy and action against international terrorism. . To look at the news of the modern days, many of significant world issues are not only for a single state and also solution cannot be brought by single state. Postmodernism helps us to think about the conditions under which we are able to theorise about world politics: and to many, postmodernism is the most appropriate theory for a globalised world.
Bibliography
Baudrillard,J. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, Sydney: Power Publications, 1995
Carr, E.H. The Twenty Years’ Crisis, London: Macmillan, 1981
Campell, D. Writing Security: US Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992
Devetak, Richard. Postmodernism, in: Burchill/ Linklater (eds), Theories of International Relations, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996
Morgenthau, H.J. Politics Among Nations, New York: Knopf, 1978
