Rethinking Roles: Reflexive Role Ascription and Performativity in International Relations

The question of truth: how facts, space and time shape conversations in IR

“…Behind the attempt to refute potentially incompatible claims between liberals and realists was also a concern with one approach becoming dominant. The problem of theoretical constructs coming to be reified, that is shaping the way we act towards others beyond academia, is an issue with which both critical and hermeneutical or interpretivist approaches have often grappled in IR (Amoureux and Steele, 2015; Guzzini, 2000, 2013; Ish-Shalom, 2009, 2011; Levine, 2012; Levine and Barder, 2014; Teles Fazendeiro, 2016, 2019). Inspired by Heidegger, Taylor and other contributions to philosophical hermeneutics, Jason Blakeley (2013) refers to this sort of conversation as being less about discussing facts than pondering what reality would become were it reduced to a theoretical construct: ‘theories of social science can be assessed not only in terms of how true they are but also of how true they can become’ (p. 405).…”

“…Likewise, recent arguments in favour of pluralism acknowledge how this mitigates the reduction 'reality' to a single spatial-temporal world (Levine and Mccourt, 2018). Of course, to account for reification -or event to contain it -requires a willingness to engage with other theoretical approaches, if only to highlight the limits of a theory, particularly the spatialities and temporalities that it otherwise conceals (Teles Fazendeiro, 2016). Wight (2019) thus raised an important point, as aforementioned, when he referred to integrative pluralism as necessary to IR.…”

The Screen and the Street: Two Face(t)s of Ukrainian Popular Biopolitics

“…This blurs the distinction between representations of the first (political speeches) and the second (cultural imageries) order by demonstrating the deeply performative actorship of the "real" political leaders who play roles as a matter of everyday political routine. In this vein, performative role ascription (Fazendeir, 2016) is an inherent part of both "real" political life and its representations in popular culture. Yet the line between "facts" and "fictions" (Daniel & Musgrave, 2017, p. 509) or reality and appearance (Zizek, 2013, p. 47) in the specific case of Ukraine is blurred by the nature of Servant of the People's portrayal of politicians as puppets manipulated by the oligarchs, which makes Holoborod'ko the only 'true' representative of the people as opposed to the bulk of the political elite who are ready to change masks upon the demands of their financial sponsors.…”

From the Bronze Soldier to the “Bloody Marshal”: Monument Wars and Russia’s Aesthetic Vulnerability in Estonia and the Czech Republic

“…10 In the meantime, "any refusal to repeat an act that confirms a subordinate identity, necessarily has a political effect" as well. 11 Consequently, "alternative ascriptions can also disrupt repetition and help question normalization, including the practices they are meant to signify, 12 and this is exactly how the pro-removal discourses and actions can be interpreted in the language we have chosen for this study.…”