Parameters of a national biography

Abstract

This article is concerned with the ontology of political community, specifically the nation-state, as a bounded entity in time and space. Juxtaposed against the reading of it as an autonomous (realism) or permeated (liberalism) unit, or as constituted through Othering (social constructivism), the article conceptualizes the nation-state as a bounded community constituted by a biographical narrative which gives meaning to its collective spatio-temporal situatedness. Taking a phenomenological approach, the article offers a systematic discussion of the parameters of such a narrative. It highlights the relevance of an experienced space, giving meaning to the past, and an envisioned space, giving meaning to the future, delineated through horizons of experience and of possibility, respectively. In this reading, politics is found in the creative and contested attempts to link these dimensions to a coherent narrative on both the domestic and international level.

Identity and desecuritisation: the pitfalls of conflating ontological and physical security

“…The guiding premise of this post-structuralist literature, which is associated with critical theories of security to varying degrees (Hansen 2011), has been that identity is constituted through difference; state identities lack a stable, pre-given essence, and hence states are in permanent need of reproducing their identities by constructing Other(s) as different, morally inferior, and physically threatening. Recent contributions to the identity literature in IR have challenged the association between the reproduction of identity and the construction of threat in two directions: Some have focused on the endogenous processes of constructing selfnarratives, thereby attempting to delink identity formation from practices of Othering (Berenskoetter 2007(Berenskoetter , 2012Steele 2008;Lebow 2012 Figure 2 Ontological insecurity and (re)securitisation wedded to the role of external Others in identity constitution, but through detailed empirical analyses of representations of Self and Other in different encounters in international relations, stressed the need to recognise different forms and degrees of Otherness (Rumelili 2004(Rumelili , 2007Diez 2005;Hansen 2006;Morozov and Rumelili 2012). As Prozorov (2011) recently underlined, the internal (through narratives, in time) and external (in relation to Others, across space) processes of identity constitution cannot be dissociated from one another (also see Rumelili 2007: 21-28).…”

Narrative practice in international politics and diplomacy: the case of the Crimean crisis

“…IR scholars so far studied the influence or creation of international or states' biographical narratives (e.g., Ringmar 1996;Banerjee 1998;Barnett 1999;Browning 2008;Steele 2008;Berenskoetter 2014). To complement these analyses, we move from narratives as structures to narratives as practices.…”

Militarizing politics, essentializing identities: Interpretivist process tracing and the power of geopolitics

“…The nation is a victim to be defended against all ills, which originate elsewhere (even if that 'elsewhere' ends up being 'here'; see, for instance, Combes, 2017). A prominent role of nationalism does not contradict the book's theoretical setup, since state identity discourses are by definition tied to ideas of the nation (see also Berenskoetter, 2014). The book explicitly dealt with the role of nationalism when it qualified the definition of neoclassical geopolitics for not being necessarily tied to conservative circles and thought -just as Social Darwinism could be found across the political spectrum, including with liberals and socialists (Hawkins, 1997).…”