The problematization of the subject in International Relations. A re-reading through its analytical and political effects
Keywords:
Modern subject, International Relations, sovereignty, Power, postestructuralismCopyright (c) 2024 Mariela Cuadro
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This article seeks to revisit what has already been written, trusting that re-readings are not reiterations, but rewritings. It seeks to shake the dust off texts that shook the discipline by rocking its foundations and allowing for new topics, new dimensions, and new voices to emerge in the study of the international. In these ways the margins of the political imagination are expanded.
Two reasons lead to this review. The first concern is political and is linked to what is perceived as the overwhelming force of an authoritarian individualism which, in different parts of the world, breaks ties while conceiving the other as an obstacle that can and should be dispensed with. Despite some warnings that the individual should not be confused with the modern subject, the separation of human beings brought to paroxysm by this mode of subjectivity finds its condition of possibility in the epistemo-ontological separation brought about by modernity and instantiated in the subject-object separation that allows the emergence of the former. So, which subject is this subject? What unites it and distinguishes it from the subject of modernity? What does it tell us about the relations of power-knowledge? To answer these questions, it is necessary to return to the modern subject and its problematisation.
The second reason is disciplinary. It is linked to the emergence and consolidation of so-called Global International Relations as a critical path. Partly indebted to postcolonial thought, this project has brought back into the disciplinary discussion the notion of agency and, with it, that of the subject-agent in order to include the voices of the regions of the Global South in the constitution of the discipline. And it has done so by expanding the hegemonic conception of agency to reach those of us who inhabit the geographical and political South. In doing so, it has left the discipline's dominant idea of the subject unchanged. Hence the need to critically reflect on the foundations of this burgeoning academic project in order to identify its potential scope and also its limitations.
Besides making an analytical review of how the modern subject emerged as a problem in the disciplinary field, the paper takes as a second objective the analysis of the effects of the predominance of this epistemo-ontological conception on the ways of conceiving the political in IR. It is argued that the idea of the modern subject appears intimately linked to that of sovereignty, giving shape to the sovereign conception of power; that is, to the substantialist, centered and repressive form of power that prevails in our figurations of the international.
In order to do so, the text is organized in five sections and a conclusion.
The first section establishes the coordinates that have historically defined the modern subject as the constituent center of social life. Thus, it is argued that the emergence of the subject in modernity implied the establishment of a point of inflection which imposed a hierarchy between the human being, the others and the world. The importance of knowledge in its constitution leads to the identification of two milestones in its making: the Cartesian ego cogito and Immanuel Kant's agential idea. Both are symptoms of the establishment of the subject first as certainty and then as a principle of agency.
The second section addresses the criticisms that have been made of this account first focusing on the critique made by Michel Foucault. The French philosopher pointed out the historical character of the subject thus constituted, described not as a substance, but as "a form that is not always identical to itself" (Foucault, 2017b, p. 1537). This way, he did away with the sovereign condition of the subject: the subject is no longer assumed as a free decision-maker, but his decision presupposes a conditioned, regulated, and administered freedom. However, Foucault argued that the subject also objectifies himself through the power he exercises over himself. Thus, he linked the processes of subjectivation to freedom. The power of this critique lies in its analytical and political effects: if the subject is not a source, is neither an origin nor a constituent force, it is necessary to pay attention to the mechanisms through which it is tied to that which oppresses it.
In the third section, the text contextualizes the emergence of the subject question in IR in the epistemic-ontological debate that took place in the discipline in the 80s of the last century. The main epistemological paradigms involved are established under the names of positivism and post-positivism, and the main ontological conceptions under the labels of substantialist and relational ontology. The section traces the relationships between these epistemological and ontological assumptions and the different conceptions of the subject they imply.
The fourth section goes into the form taken by the critique of the modern subject in IR. Starting with the identification of the existing relations between the modern subject and sovereignty, it affirms that the questioning of the modern subject allows, in the field of IR, to do the same with the notion of sovereignty that functions as "an unquestioned and unquestionable foundation of critical interrogation" (Ashley, 2009, p. 79), the foundation of the theoretical edifice of IR. In this way, it is stated that this problematisation undermines one of the "ontological premises" of the discipline (Odysseos, 2007, p. xii): its "enlightenment foundations" (Gregory, 1989, p. ix).
The fifth section focuses on specifying the effects of power implied by the articulated critique. It begins by pointing out the relations between the notions tackled in the preceding sections -subject and power, sovereignty and power, and agency and power- in order to point out that they all share a conception of power that is characterized by its objectualization (power is considered a thing) at the service of a subject considered pre-existent and able to instrumentalize it. Based on Barry Hindess’ Discourses of Power, the power thus conceived is named as sovereign power. The problematisation of the subject changes this conception of power since it disrupts the relation of externality between the subject and power. Moreover, it states that as a form which is constituted through a multiplicity of practices, the subject is the product of power relations in which it is immersed. This way of conceiving of power, which, following Foucault, is articulated under the name of governmental power, is relational. Hence the question is not about the interests of a given rational agent, but about how the subject's intimate desires are shaped by technologies of government, not restricted to the state.
The conclusion insists that the relevance of focusing on the conception of the subject lies in that it constitutes the ways in which we think about the world and act in it. That is to say, in this sense, it has analytical and political effects. This way, the article seeks to highlight how different conceptions of the subject, linked to different epistemo-ontological apparatuses, have effects not only on notions of sovereignty and agency, but also (and through them) on how power is conceived and acted upon.
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