Open Horizons: The Temporal Visions of Reflexive Realism

Abstract

This paper excavates another conceptual thread running through much of what has been termed “reflexive realism”—the importance of open temporality. We argue that the ethical and political cores of reflexive realism owe much to a theoretical confrontation with the ultimate reality of open‐ended, indeterminate time. Where the legacy of classical realism embedded significant ambiguities in these tensions, reflexive realism can provide a more developed ethical framework for political action through an engagement, via open time, with research often viewed as outside the purview of political realism. We then uncover an aesthetic understanding of action and theory to show how classical realism’s indeterminate view of time, instead of limiting and even debasing any and all human efforts, can be mobilized as a resource for ethical evaluation and action. The paper’s concluding discussion demonstrates this by examining the contributions that open time can make to the perennial dilemma of humanitarian intervention.

Micro-moves in International Relations theory

“…Although attention to time in IR has recently grown (Hom and Steele, 2010;Hutchings, 2008, Solomon, 2014, little of this work focuses on the micro--oriented, everyday aspects of lived time and how they are enveloped in (re)producing or contesting structures of power in the international. However, we suggest time is a key aspect of micropolitics, and that it 'can be a useful tool with which to explore the everyday temporal structures and processes that (re)produce connections between individuals and the social' (Edensor, 2010: 2) Although Hom is concerned with a macropolitical fissure (a transformation of religious to secular authority over centuries), the mechanics and processes that helped bring this about are also micropolitical.…”

Beyond (Post)Positivism: The Missed Promises of Systemic Pragmatism1

“…This has important bearing on the conceptualization and production of international law, since it situates the normative within the historical and the cultural of the now and here and forces us to interrogate more deeply the differentiated meanings and objective embeddedness of rules, as well as the closure that they may operate on the differentiated developmental paths of different peoples and cultures, and humanity as a whole. Such a perspective offers us a more complex matrix from which to rethink and assess economic, political, and environmental policies, practices, and norms, and therefore provides ''problem-solving'' theorists with guidelines that are more sensitive to context, dispositions, and the openness of political temporality (Hom and Steele 2010) than Rational-Choice-inspired approaches can ever be.…”

Studying Emotions in Security and Diplomacy: Where We Are Now and Challenges Ahead

“…The concept of trauma has been very important in discussions about emotions and time. Edkins (), for instance (but see also Hom & Steele, ; Hutchings, ), argues that trauma challenges the modernist conception of linear time because traumatized individuals experience and live in “trauma time.” Thus, their present is interrupted by the trauma time of the past in ways in which they cannot experience a linear flow (of so‐called modernist time). In other words, traumatized individuals go back and forth in time.…”