What is a minor international theory? On the limits of ‘Critical International Relations’

Michelsen, Nicholas

doi:10.1177/1755088220956680

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 102 publications

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“…First, there is the institutionalisation of post-positivist IR scholarship since the 1980s: whereas the early turners adopted a ‘dissident’ positionality vis-à-vis the positivist mainstream (Ashley and Walker, 1990), the subsequent decades have seen ‘critical IR’ establish itself as a major subfield within the discipline. In many ways, this subfield has begun to function as a ‘mainstream’ in its own right, complete with its own gatekeepers and status hierarchies backed by a self-sustaining ecology of journals and book series welcoming reflexivist scholarship (Michelsen, 2021). The label ‘critical’, as Philip Conway (2021: 341) notes, has become ‘a flexible point of compromise between radicalism and respectability’.…”

Section: Turning Within Reflexivity: the Proliferation Of Turns Since...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflex to turn: the rise of turn-talk in International Relations

Heiskanen,

Beaumont

2023

European Journal of International Relations

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The field of International Relations (IR) is being spun around by a seemingly endless number of ‘turns’. Existing analyses of turning are few in number and predominantly concerned with the most prominent recent turns. By excavating the forgotten history of IR’s earliest turns from the 1980s and tracing the evolution of turn-talk over time, this article reveals a crucial yet overlooked internalist driver behind the phenomenon: the rise of reflexivity. Rather than emerging in the 21st century, turn-talk began at the end of the 1980s as a series of turns away from positivism and towards reflexivity. Cumulatively, this first wave of turns would denaturalise IR’s state-centric ontology while enshrining reflexivity as a canonical good among critical scholars. By the mid-1990s, however, these metatheoretical critiques of positivism had produced a substantial backlash. Charged with fostering an esoteric deconstructivism, a new generation of reflexivists set out to demonstrate the feasibility of post-positivist empirical research. As a result, IR’s turning also took on a different form from the 2000s: whereas the first wave of turns had mounted an epistemological and methodological attack against the positivist mainstream, the second wave set about bringing new ontological objects under the scrutiny of reflexivist scholars. This shift from anti-positivist to mostly intra-reflexivist turning was facilitated by the institutionalisation of critical IR as a major subfield of the discipline. It is the privileged position of reflexivity among critical IR scholars that is the condition of possibility for endless turning, accentuated by mounting pressures to demonstrate novelty in an increasingly competitive environment.

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Section: Turning Within Reflexivity: the Proliferation Of Turns Since...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflex to turn: the rise of turn-talk in International Relations

Heiskanen,

Beaumont

2023

European Journal of International Relations

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“…In the eyes of the New Right, the dissipation of critical energies has been accompanied by the co-optation of critical theorists, who have gained a small degree of power and a high degree of comfort (both psychological and material) in the process. As ideal theorists, supposedly adversarial artists, or irrelevant “radical” academic philosophers espousing the merits of pure negativity or the virtues of “failure” (Michelsen, 2020: 14), these self-proclaimed “critics” have in fact become integral parts of New Class hegemony increasingly distant from actual political power and (despite their declarations) estranged from large parts of the non-elite population. 20 As Faye (1998/2010: 144) declares: “The critical Left is neither reformist, nor revolutionary or conservative: it is a means to reinforcing the system.…”

Section: Conservatism and The New Class: A Critique Of Neoliberalism—with A Twistmentioning

confidence: 99%

From critique to reaction: The new right, critical theory and international relations

Drolet

Williams

2021

Journal of International Political Theory

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Across the globe, radical conservative political forces and ideas are influencing and even transforming the landscape of international politics. Yet IR is remarkably ill-equipped to understand and engage these new challenges. Unlike political theory or domestic political analyses, conservatism has no distinctive place in the fields’ defining alternatives of realism, liberalism, Marxism, and constructivism. This paper seeks to provide a point of entry for such engagement by bringing together what may seem the most unlikely of partners: critical theory and the New Right. Important parts of today’s New Right represent self-conscious appropriations of Critical themes and thinkers—turning them to self-declared “reactionary” ends. Developing outside the confines of the academy, these forms of thought have woven insights from across Critical theory into new and mobilizing forms of conservative ideology, seeking to link that ideology to social forces that play increasingly active roles in global politics. Our intention here is not to somehow blame Critical perspectives for the ideas of the New Right, either directly or by association. Rather, we seek to show how an engagement with Critical theory helps us understand the New Right, while also demonstrating some of the direct challenges the New Right poses for critical perspectives.

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“…All critique is a function with its historical context. In critiquing a world, we shape the world to come, just not necessarily as we, the critics, expect (Michelsen, 2021). What is clear is that a new world order is being born around usand the claim to a failure in Liberalism is its defining characteristic.…”

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confidence: 99%