The Politics of Subjectivity in American Foreign Policy Discourses

The Politics of Subjectivity in American Foreign Policy Discourses PDF

Author: Ty Solomon

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2015-01-05

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0472120662

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Why are some discourses more politically efficacious than others? Seeking answers to this question, Ty Solomon develops a new theoretical approach to the study of affect, identity, and discourse—core phenomena whose mutual interweaving have yet to be fully analyzed in International Relations. Drawing upon Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory and Ernesto Laclau’s approach to hegemonic politics, Solomon argues that prevailing discourses offer subtle but powerfully appealing opportunities for affective investment on the part of audiences. Through empirical case studies of the affective resonances of the war on terror and the rise and fall of neoconservative influence in American foreign policy, Solomon offers a unique way to think about the politics of identity as the construction of “common sense” powerfully underpinned by affective investments. He provides both a fuller understanding of the emotional appeal of political rhetoric in general and, specifically, a provocative explanation of the reasons for the reception of particular U.S. foreign policy rhetoric that shifted Americans’ attitudes toward neoconservative foreign policy in the 1990s and shaped the post-9/11 “war on terror.”

Discourse on Policy-making

Discourse on Policy-making PDF

Author: Kenneth W. Thompson

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 9780819163387

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This volume considers the role of rhetoric and discourse in policy through the eyes of foreign policymakers. Its contributors include Louis J. Halle, I. M. Destler, Philip Odeen, James R. Schlesinger, and Dean Rusk. It illuminates the role and the limits of political rhetoric in foreign policy.

Always at War

Always at War PDF

Author: Thomas Colley

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2019-08-01

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0472131443

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Compelling narratives are integral to successful foreign policy, military strategy, and international relations. Yet often narrative is conceived so broadly it can be hard to identify. The formation of strategic narratives is informed by the stories governments think their people tell, rather than those they actually tell. This book examines the stories told by a broad cross-section of British society about their country’s past, present, and future role in war, using in-depth interviews with 67 diverse citizens. It brings to the fore the voices of ordinary people in ways typically absent in public opinion research. Always at War complements a significant body of quantitative research into British attitudes to war, and presents an alternative case in a field dominated by US public opinion research. Rather than perceiving distinct periods between war and peace, British citizens see their nation as so frequently involved in conflict that they consider the country to be continuously at war. At present, public opinion appears to be a stronger constraint on Western defense policy than ever.

Critical Approaches to International Relations

Critical Approaches to International Relations PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9004470506

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Critical Approaches to International Relations: Philosophical Foundations and Current Debates covers the most influential approaches within critical IR scholarship with a particular focus on historical heritage and philosophical roots they built upon and current directions of research they propose.

Russia and the Idea of Europe

Russia and the Idea of Europe PDF

Author: Iver B. Neumann

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-02-01

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1134824076

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The end of the Soviet system and the transition to the market in Russia, coupled with the inexorable rise of nationalism, has brought to the fore the centuries-old debate about Russia's relationship with Europe. In Russia and the Idea of Europe Iver Neumann discusses whether the tensions between self-referencing romantic nationalist views and Europe-orientated liberal views can ever be resolved. Drawing on a wide range of Russian sources, Neumann outlines the argument as it has unfolded over the last two hundred years, showing how Russia is caught between the attraction of an economically, politically and socially more developed Europe, and the attraction of being able to play a European -style inperial role in less-developed Asia. Neumann argues that the process of delineating a European "other" from the Russian self is an active form of Russian identity formation. The Russian debate about Europe is also a debate about what Rusia is and should be.

The Politics of Secularism in International Relations

The Politics of Secularism in International Relations PDF

Author: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-01-10

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1400828015

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Conflicts involving religion have returned to the forefront of international relations. And yet political scientists and policymakers have continued to assume that religion has long been privatized in the West. This secularist assumption ignores the contestation surrounding the category of the "secular" in international politics. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations shows why this thinking is flawed, and provides a powerful alternative. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd argues that secularist divisions between religion and politics are not fixed, as commonly assumed, but socially and historically constructed. Examining the philosophical and historical legacy of the secularist traditions that shape European and American approaches to global politics, she shows why this matters for contemporary international relations, and in particular for two critical relationships: the United States and Iran, and the European Union and Turkey. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations develops a new approach to religion and international relations that challenges realist, liberal, and constructivist assumptions that religion has been excluded from politics in the West. The first book to consider secularism as a form of political authority in its own right, it describes two forms of secularism and their far-reaching global consequences.

The Politics of Intimacy

The Politics of Intimacy PDF

Author: Anna Durnova

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2018-07-23

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780472130894

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Debates on the end-of-life controversy are complex because they seem to highjack national and cultural traditions. Where previous books have focused on ideological grounds, The Politics of Intimacy explores dying as the site where policies are negotiated and implemented. Intimacy comprises the emotional experience of the end of life and how we acknowledge it—or not—through institutions. This process shows that end-of-life controversy relies on the conflict between the individual and these institutions, a relationship that is the cornerstone of Western liberal democracies. Through interviews with mourners, stakeholders, and medical professionals, examination of media debates in France and the Czech Republic, Durnová shows that liberal institutions, in their attempts to accommodate the emotional experience at the end of life, ultimately fail. She describes this deadlock as the “politics of intimacy,” revealing that political institutions deploy power through collective acknowledgment of individual emotions but fail to maintain this recognition because of this same experience.

Poststructuralism & International Relations

Poststructuralism & International Relations PDF

Author: Jenny Edkins

Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9781555878450

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Offering an introduction to the major poststructuralist thinkers, this text shows how Foucault, Derrida, Lacan and Zizek expose the depoliticization found in conventional international relations theory. poststructuralists are concerned with the big questions of international politics: it is precisely their work that analyzes the political and explains the processes of depoliticization and technologization.

The Politics of Identity

The Politics of Identity PDF

Author: Christine Agius

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9781526110244

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This book explores identity as contingent, fragmented and dynamic across a range of global sites and approaches that deal with citizenship, security, migration, subjectivity, memory, exclusion and belonging, and space and place. It explores the political and social effects and possibilities of identity practices, discourses and policies.