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Doing IR Theory in the Camera Obscura

Dimitrios E. Akrivoulis, PhD Candidate in IR, Dept of Politics and IR, UKC

Please note: Paper presented at the UKC Friday Seminars. Akrivoulis, D.E. (1999). "Doing

IR Theory in the camera obscura." Lecture (invited) at the Friday Seminars of the Dept of

Politics and IR, University of Kent at Canterbury. Dept of Politics and IR, University of Kent

at Canterbury, Canterbury, UK, May 14, 1999.

What is at stake, first of all, is an adventure of vision.

—J. Derrida1

Knowing is one kind of interaction which goes on

within the world.

—J. Dewey2

The difficulties to which the “awesome science” of

metaphysics has given rise since its inception could

possibly all be summed up in the natural tension

between theoria and logos.

—H. Arendt3

Dialogues, whatever their subject matter, are always

dramas of self-constitution.

— V. Crapanzano4

Ascending the hill towards the historic castle, just a few metres before its gate, the

spectator can find on her right side one of the most provoking sight-seeings of the city

of Edinburgh. The exterior of the building betrays almost nothing about the

experience in store. By-passing the exhibitions hosted on the first two floors the

spectator finds herself on the terrace, right in front of an hermetically closed,

mystifying, metal door separating the interior from the outside world. Waiting for its

opening, the spectator can observe the city from above, feeling for a last moment a

part of the whole. For by entering the dark chamber concealed behind this door,

isolated, distant from the outside world, she will only experience its imagery

reproduction through a prism on a large two-dimensional plate situated in the centre

of the room. For the spectator will have entered the camera obscura.

1 Derrida, J., “Force and Signification”, in Writing and Difference, translated by A. Bass, Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 3. 2 Dewey, J., Reconstruction in Philosophy, New York: Mentor, 1950, p. 106.

3 Arendt, H., Life of the Mind: Thinking, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971, p. 120.

4 Crapanzano, V., “Text, Transference, and Indexicality”, in Hermes’ Dilemma and Hamlet’s Dream:

On the Epistemology of Interpretation, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992, p. 130.

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It is in the metaphorical context of the camera obscura that the present paper

will first discuss the impact of modernist science on the notional metamorphosis of

the camera obscura to a metaphor of individuation and objectivity in scientific

observation. It will further suggest that the camera obscura has been the metaphorical

locus and modus for traditional IR theorizing in its quest for the eternal truths of

international politics. Some insights from quantum theory will be also discussed not

as offering an alternative metanarrative, a coherent all-unifying and all-encompassing

epistemological metadiscourse, a new scientific „orthodoxy‟ for framing the

discipline, but instead as a metaphor that could better elucidate the relation between

theory and practice. Thus, the focus will be less on deciphering or replicating the

philosophical connotations of the quantum physicists‟ views, than on reimagining

how knowledge of the political is possible. After examining the reverberations of the

quantum revolution in the discipline‟s theory/practice problematique, the paper will

also attempt to notionally explore some aspects of the quantum metaphor by drawing

upon the writings of John Dewey and Hannah Arendt. It will further suggest that the

employment of quantum metaphoricity could help us reimagine the relationship

between theory and practice and also between diverse IR theories. In this venture,

vision will be used to undermine vision, or rather to problematize a specific, dominant

mode of vision and challenge its complicity in the disciplinary practices of

International Relations. By „Heraclitizing‟ an epistemological tradition which could

be traced in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientific revolutions, this paper

will finally question its truth claims and exclusionary practices.

IR Theory in the Dark Chamber of the En-lightenment

Although the underlying principles of its function should be traced back to Aristotle,

and despite a westernizing historiographical attempt to „invent‟ a Western inventor,

namely someone called Roger Bacon, it was actually the Arabian scholar Hassan ibn

Hassan (also known as Ibn al Haitam) who first described in the 10th century what

can be called a camera obscura.5 In its early stages traced in the late 1500s the camera

obscura first corresponded to the semantic forms of Renaissance resemblance, and

especially the Foucauldian similitudes of convenientia and aemulatio as evoked in

5 See Lindberg, D.C., The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in

Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 BC to AD 1450, Chicago and London: Chicago

University Press, 1992, p. 313.

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della Porta‟s Magie Naturelle (1558/1589).6 It is in this context that the observer is

seen in quest for the universal symbols and metaphors of nature, the analogies, finally

leading to the apotheosis of sympathies.7

Yet, the turning point for the notional metamorphosis and the metaphorical role

of the camera obscura was marked by the modernist impact of the Cartesian-

Newtonian scientific revolutions. Instead of signifying the unity between the subject

and the object of observation, and the proximity between the knower and the known,

the camera obscura was then seen as delimiting the observer from the now „outside‟

world.8 For Catherine Wilson, such a visual metaphor can be seen in two

complementary ways, that is,

as part of the construction of the new „private‟ or cameral subject, defined

as one possessing moral and epistemological autonomy and deserving of

political self-determination, and as part of the construction of a repressive

absolute state, with its categories and coercions, rising up, as it were, as a

rational creation of this new subject and meeting and enclosing him.9

6 Identified by Lenoble as a “pre-modern” thinker, or situated by Cassirer within the Renaissance

tradition of magic, the Neapolitan della Porta is considered to be one of the inventors of the camera

obscura. See Lenoble, R., Histoire de l’ idËe de nature, Paris: Michel Albin, 1969, p. 27; Cassirer, E.,

The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, translated by M. Domandi, Philadelphia:

University of Philadelphia Press, 1972, p. 148. 7 According to Foucault, the notion of convenientia “denotes the adjacency of places more strongly

than it does similitude”; it is a “resemblance connected with space in the form of a graduated scale of

proximity.” Aemulatio, on the other hand, is a “sort of „convenience‟ that has been freed from the law

of place and is able to function, without motion, from a distance.” Third, it is in the analogy that

“convenientia and aemulatio are superimposed. Like the latter, it makes possible the marvellous

confrontation of resemblances across space; but it also speaks, like the former, of adjacencies, of bonds

and joints.” Finally, sympathy is “an instance of the Same so strong and so insistent that it will not rest

content to be merely one of the forms of likeness; it has the dangerous power of assimilating, of

rendering things identical to one another, of mingling them, of causing their individuality to disappear

— and thus of rendering them foreign to what they were before. Sympathy transforms.” See Foucault,

M., The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences, London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 18, 19,

21, 23-24 (emphases in original). 8 In the nineteenth century, the camera obscura is also seen in the writings of Marx, Bergson and Freud

transformed from the locus to the modus of truth, thus, constituting a “philosophical metaphor, a model

in the science of physical optics ... a model, in both rationalist and empiricist thought, of how

observation leads to truthful inferences about the world.” Crary, J., Techniques of the Observer: On

Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 1990, p. 29. See also

Marx, K., The German Ideology, 2nd edition, edited, translated and with an introduction by C.J.

Arthur, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1974, p. 47; Bergson, H., Matter and Memory, translated by

N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer, New York: Zone, 1988, pp. 37-39; Freud, S., The Interpretation of

Dreams, translated by J. Strachey, New York: Basic, 1955, pp. 574-575. 9 Wilson, C., “Discourses of Vision in Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics”, in Sites of Vision: The

Discursive Constitution of Sight in the History of Philosophy, edited by D.M. Levin, London and

Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999, p. 322.

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The camera obscura was not a mere observational device, neutral from the

cultural practices of the epoch of its use, but rather a Deleuzian assemblage10

embedded in a wider context of organization of knowledge with excessive

connotations on the relation between the perceiver and the „external‟ world, between

the observer and the observed.11 It implied and presupposed “a new model of

subjectivity”, while performing “an operation of individuation”.12 Thus, the observer

was a priori defined as isolated and autonomous,13 his observational experience being

superseded by the relations between the apparatus and a fixed, objective truth.14

According to Crary, the camera obscura became “a metaphor for the most rational

possibilities of a perceiver within the increasingly dynamic disorder of the world.”15

The image of the camera obscura, as the dark chamber of observation through

individuation, the necessary site of the organization of knowledge, is also evident in

Newton‟s Opticks (1704).16 The starting point for Newton‟s approach to vision and

the study of observation could be found in Descartes‟s Dioptrique and MÈtÈores17

who, in turn, had drawn upon Kepler‟s Diotprice and Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena,

where Kepler first developed the concept of the eye as a kind of camera obscura in

which pictures are painted.18 In the very opening lines of his Opticks, Newton states:

In a very dark Chamber, at a round hole, about one third Part of an Inch,

broad, made in the shut of a window, I placed a glass prism, whereby the

Beam of the Sun‟s Light, which came in at that Hole, might be refracted

10

See Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by

B. Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. 11

On the evolution and role of the camera obscura in representation and art, see Danto, A., “The

Representational Character of Ideas and the Problem of the External World”, in Descartes: Critical and

Interpretative Essays, edited by M. Hooker, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978;

Hammond, J.J., The Camera Obscura: A Chronicle, Bristol: Hilger, 1981. 12

Crary, Techniques of the Observer, pp. 38-39. 13

See Luk·cs, G., History and Class Consciousness, translated by R. Livingstone, Cambridge: MIT

Press, 1971, pp. 135-138. 14

See Nietzsche, F., Will to Power, translated by W. Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, edited with

commentary by W. Kaufmann, London: Weinfeld and Nicolson, 1968, p. 137. 15

Crary, Techniques of the Observer, p. 53. 16

On the epistemological impact of Newton‟s Opticks, and especially his sensorium theory, see

Toulmin, S., “The Inwardness of Mental Life”, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 6, 1979, pp. 1-16. 17

For a short discussion on the differences in Newton‟s and Descartes‟s approaches on vision and light,

see Cohen, I.B., The Newtonian Revolution: With Illustrations of the Transformation of Scientific

Ideas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp. 103-104; Dobbs, B.J.T., Newton and the

Culture of Newtonianism, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995, pp. 18-20. 18

Hall, R.E., All Was Light: An Introduction to Newton’s Opticks, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, p.

13.

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upwards toward the opposite wall of the chamber, and there form a

coloured image of the Sun.19

Distinct from the operation of his device, Newton is situated in the dark chamber

witnessing an objective representation of the outside world. Yet, he is incapable of

situating himself in the product of his observation, of becoming a part of the

representation itself; he is incapable of self-representation as both subject and object,

just as in the Foucauldian analysis of Velasquez‟s Las Meninas.20

In his earlier Essay on Human Understanding, Locke metaphorically talks about

a similarly dark room, the observer‟s camera obscura:

That external and internal Sensations are the only passages that I can find

of Knowledge to the Understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover,

are the Windows by which light is let into this dark Room. For, methinks,

the Understanding is not much unlike a Closet wholly shut from light,

with only some little opening left ... to let in external visible

Resemblances, or Ideas of things without; would the pictures coming into

such a dark room but stay there and lie so orderly as to be found upon

occasion it would very much resemble the Understanding of a man.21

In his metaphor, Locke is more explicit on the individuation process of observation.

The human eye is distant from the reproduction of images, from the „resemblances‟

produced that are found only „upon occasion‟. In short, Locke‟s epistemology

depends on the acceptance of two fundamental assumptions of mechanical

philosophy, namely the spatial separation of the human mind from the external world,

and the production of sensations by the motions of external objects.22 His only

differentiation on sensation from the advocates of mechanical philosophy is his denial

that we can know with certainty the mechanism by which motions are transformed

into ideas, offering the basis for all major eighteenth-century psychological theorists.23

What is especially noteworthy in Locke‟s camera obscura and its metaphorical

implications for the understanding of the human mind is its similarities and

19

Newton, I., Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light,

4th edition, New York: Dover, 1952, p. 26. 20

Foucault, The Order of Things, pp. 3-16. 21

Locke, J., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1979, p. 17 (emphases in original). 22

A similar disassociation of the observer is also evident in Hume: “The operations of the mind ... must

be apprehended in an instant by a superior penetration, derived from nature and improved by habit and

reflection.” Hume, D., Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles

of Morals, 3rd edition, edited by L.A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P.N. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1975, p. 16. 23

Olson, R., The Emergence of the Social Sciences, 1642-1792, New York: Twayne, 1993, pp. 86-87.

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intellectual proximity with Descartes‟s approach in his Second Meditation,24 as

identified in the work of Richard Rorty.25 The same process of individuation is also

for Descartes the necessary prerequisite for knowledge of the external world, just as in

Vermeer‟s paintings,26 for the camera obscura becomes the site where Descartes‟s

highly distinct res cogitans and res extensa intertwine. The camera obscura was for

Descartes a necessity for avoiding the confusions of sensual empiricism, the medium

for obtaining an objective scientific knowledge of the external world, thus

analogically corresponding to the eye of God.27

By gazing the „external world‟ in the camera obscura, the spectator is able to

mimetically represent the reality of nature and prefigure its objects as discoverable

and knowable structures. As objects become visible, they disclose themselves in the

sensory experience of the viewing subject. The individuating process of observation

does not only signify the separation of the subject from the object of observation. It

also entails a particular way of how knowledge is possible; knowing proceeds as the

subject mimetically represents the objects‟ truths through her scientific logos. As the

spectator of the camera obscura, the modern man thus becomes the sovereign subject

of representation, that is, the Subject lying before its picture.28 Hence, all „problems of

knowledge‟ become “referential or, in contemporary jargon, realist in epistemology,

objectivist in ontology, existentialist in semantics.”29 In that sense, the camera obscura

seemed to offer the answer to what Husserl identified as the major question of the

seventeenth century: “How a philosophizing which seeks its ultimate founding in the

24

Descartes, R., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff,

and D. Murdoch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, Vol. 2, p. 21. See also ibid., Vol. 1, p.

166. 25

Rorty, R., Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 49-50. An opposite

view is supported in Yolton, J.W., Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid, Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. 222-223. 26

It has been also speculated that Vermeer actually used the camera obscura in the making of his

paintings. The correspondence between Vermeer‟s views and Cartesian thought is interestingly

discussed in Serres, M., La Traduction, Paris: Minuit, 1974, pp. 189-196. 27

See Ricoeur, P. “The Question of the Subject: The Challenge of Semiology”, in The Conflict of

Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, translated by D. Ihde, Evanston: Northwestern University

Press, 1974, pp. 236-266. 28

For Heidegger, “where the world becomes picture, what is, in its entirety, is juxtaposed as that for

which man is prepared and which, correspondingly, he therefore intends to bring before himself and

have before himself, and consequently intends in a decisive sense to set in place before himself.”

Heidegger, M., “The Age of the World Picture”, in the Question Concerning Technology and Other

Essays, New York: Harper and Row, 1977, p. 129. See also Critchley, S., “Post-Deconstructive

Subjectivity?”, in Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity: Essays on Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French

Thought, London and New York: Verso, 1999, pp. 51-83. 29

Sandywell, B., Reflexivity and the Crisis of Western Reason, London and New York: Routledge,

1996, pp. 46-47.

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subjective ... can claim an objectively „true‟ and metaphysically transcendent

validity?”30

It was exactly such epistemological underpinnings that imbued the modernist

pursue of objectivity, truth and knowledge during the Enlightenment. Moreover, it

was the figure of the camera obscura that metaphorically framed our observational

theories and delineated our epistemological borders, both the locus and the modus of

equating, in Burgin‟s terms, “looking with objectification”,31 of obtaining knowledge

about the „external‟ world and representing that knowledge as reality, as in Plato‟s

allegory of the cave.32 In this context, the camera obscura is seen here as the

epistemological metaphor of the glorification of the theory/practice dualism that has

dominated the rational-scientific underpinnings of Western epistemologies.

It has been widely suggested that this insufficient view of the observer and his

place in the world has also permeated traditional IR theory, as any other discipline

influenced by the orthodoxies of the Enlightenment project. Their main targets mostly

being the variants of realism and neorealism, such critiques have attempted to

question the discourses through which we attribute meanings to, and obtain

knowledge about international politics. Their focus is turned on the theories‟

resonance on an ontology copious of modernist dichotomies (theory/practice, or

subject/object) and positivist claims to objectivity and truth, resulting to an all-

inclusive truth claim of universal validity relating to the reality of the world „out

there‟. This external and knowable reality consisting of “tangible, palpable,

perceptible things or objects” becomes “material and concrete”, “the realm of the

unchangeable, inevitable and in the last resort inexorable occurrences, a world of

eternity, objectivity, gravity, substantiality and positive resistance to human

purposes.”33 It seems, then, that the camera obscura could also metaphorically depict

the locus and the modus of traditional IR theorizing; all an IR theorist/spectator has to

30

Husserl, E., The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction

to Phenomenological Philosophy, translated with an introduction by D. Carr, Evanston: Northwestern

University Press, 1970, p. 81. 31

Burgin, V., “Geometry and Abjection”, in Psychoanalysis and Cultural Theory: Thresholds, edited

by J. Donald, New York: St Martin‟s Press, 1991, p. 12. See also Foucault, M., “Of Other Spaces”,

translated by J. Miskowiec, Diacritics, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1986, p. 22. 32

See Clark, S.H., “„The Whole Internal World His Own‟: Locke and Metaphor Reconsidered”,

Journal of History of Ideas, Vol. 59, No. 2, 1998, p. 247. According to Reid, “PLATO‟s subterranean

cave, and Mr LOCKE‟s dark closet, may be applied with ease to all the systems of perception that have

been invented.” Reid, T., Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), New York: Garland, 1971,

Vol. 2, p. 117. For Vogt, though, the analogue is “merely coincidental”. See Vogt, P., “Metaphor in

Locke‟s Essay”, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 54, No. 1, 1993, p. 5. 33

Berki, R.N., On Political Realism, London: J.M. Dent, 1981, pp. 7, 8.

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do is just look at the similitude, the „two-dimensional‟, objective representation of

political reality existing only outside the camera obscura.

Yet, it should be noted that what is actually in question here is not „objectivity‟

in the sense that theorists should avoid any form of prejudice in their theorizing, but

instead „objectivity‟ as an intrinsic element of the Cartesian eye of God. This very

attempt of transcendence, what Rorty calls our “attempt to step outside of our skins”,34

is probably the most fundamental commonality among the various epistemologies of

traditional and often diverse readings of Political Theory and International Relations.

According to Deibert, this is “what unites Plato‟s quest for True Forms with

Descartes‟s inner compulsion and Kant‟s Transcendental Idealism; or — to consider a

somewhat different lineage — Morgenthau‟s Animus Dominandi with Waltz‟s

anarchic structure and Keohane‟s Rational Actor.”35 Thus, by entering the camera

obscura we fail to comprehend change both in practice and in theory for, as Cox

remarks, we rule out reflexivity on the contingency and historicity of theorizing

itself.36

In his Discourses of Global Politics, Jim George has pointed out that positivist

realist epistemology permeated by Popperian falsificationist techniques, Gellner‟s

“empiricist metaphysic” or Hegel‟s non-reflexive “sententious sayings”, and

behaviouralist infiltrations, is based on the very assumption that knowledge is

constructed through the representation, or rather the imposition of external facts upon

the theorist or the statesman. According to George,

[a]t the philosophical core of International Relations is a dichotomized

ontological logic that assumes into reality a distinction between a realm of

empiricist „fact‟ and a realm of „theorized‟ knowledge, derived in one way

or another (i.e. either inductively or deductively) from it. ... [T]his

fact/theory dichotomy has legitimated politico/strategic images of

rationalized interstate hierarchy and violence and theories of order

congruent with them (e.g., deterrence theory).37

34

Rorty, R., Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972-1980, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1982, p. xix. 35

Deibert, R.J., “„Exorcismus Theoriae‟: Pragmatism, Metaphors and the Return of the Medieval in IR

Theory”, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 13, No. 2, 1997, p. 175. 36

Cox, R., “Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory”,

Millennium, Vol. 10, No. 2, 1981, pp. 126-155. 37

George, J., Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations,

Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1994, pp. 18, 19.

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Despite the rather inescapable generalizations of his overall critique, George is

right to point out that the dominance of modernist positivism in IR theory is highly

manifested and firmly associated with the relationship between theory and practice. In

IR theory we are continuously reminded that what we study are actions. Yet, if

knowledge is possible only in a camera obscura, and originates from actions that take

place in the world „out there‟, which we are able to „objectively‟ observe, then little

theoretical space is left for reflecting on the processes that bear such actions. Perhaps,

the core of the problem lies in the very philosophical underpinnings that have

permeated both IR theory and social science in general since their very emergence.

Framed by the Newtonian political imaginary and indoctrinated by Cartesian

dualisms, traditional IR theory is still seeking for certainties, regulating laws and

„real‟ meanings, IR theory‟s Graal.38 If we appreciate IR theory as less a description

or even prescription of reality than an intersubjective meaning constituting and being

constituted by the practice of international politics, it may be not difficult to imagine

that the two-dimensional surface of the imagery reproduction of reality in the camera

obscura becomes our Procrustean bed for doing theory, meaning the production of a

specific kind of subjectivity through silencing particular realities, while making

others discernible and framing the earnestness of statements and their correspondence

to established commonsensical rationalities.39

Yet, the issue does not relate only to the theoretical „disciplining‟ of the

discipline, but also leads to an appreciation of theoretical contestation in terms of

partisanship, closure, incommensurability, and incomparability.40 Certainly, this

might be the case if we adhere to the quest for a certain knowledge about the world,

as if we were the seekers of the Graal, victims of what Bernstein called “the

Cartesian anxiety” and described as the “grand and seductive” either/or dualism of

modern objectivism that has patronized Western social theory and practice since

38

Graal is the medieval term for the Holly Grail, that has been the central object of knight-quest in

medieval literature. According to Matarasso, “[b]y allowing his heroes to retain their traditional roles

and character, the author [of the Queste del Saint Graal] is able to show how their much-valued

attributes lead them to the outcome one would least have looked for.” Anonymous, The Quest of the

Holy Grail, translated with an introduction by P.M. Matarasso, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976, p. 15. 39

See Derrida, J., “Violence and Metaphysics”, in Writing and Difference; Derrida, J., “White

Mythology”, in Margins of Philosophy, translated by F.C.T. Moore, Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1982; Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage, 1979. 40

Neufeld, M., “Reflexivity and International Relations Theory”, in Beyond Positivism: Critical

Reflections on International Relations, edited by C.T. Sjolander and W.S. Cox, Boulder and London:

Lynne Rienner, 1994, pp. 15-16.

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Descartes.41 It is exactly what George and Campbell have called the “modernist

proposition”, that “either we have some sort of ultimate „foundation‟ for our

knowledge or we are plunged into the void of the relative, the irrational, the arbitrary,

the nihilistic.”42 It seems that unless we detach ourselves and our theories from this

quest for episteme and the ontological premises of the Archimedian points of

analytical truth, such problems will remain not only unavoidable but also irresolvable.

It is far beyond the scope of this paper to give a short history of all different

approaches in International Relations concerning the relation between theory and

practice. Yet, some of the most important instances of this long debate will be

brought in question again. What will be suggested here is that, despite their

supposedly critical character, most views that have in times tried to seriously question

the fundamental philosophical premises of modernist positivism and its impact on the

theory/practice problematique, they have failed to do so mostly because of their

embedment in these very modernist premises. In short, they have failed to break up

with their strong epistemological and ontological ties with a long tradition that haunts

social science since time immemorial.43

In his discussion of the problematique and his critique of the dichotomizing

tradition between theory and practice, George points out that quantum physics has

revolutionized this “crude dichotomy” in science. He remarks that quantum physicists

“have effectively undermined the positivist insistence upon an objective factual world

„out there‟ as the foundation of our (theoretical) knowledge and as the basis of the

scientific method.”44 Yet, how exactly could quantum physics help us destabilize this

dichotomy? George does not seem to offer a definite answer. Instead, he prefers to

use quantum physics as an exemplary case of rejecting the respective dualism to

which IR theorists and social science in general have traditionally resided. Although

his point is of importance, I think that quantum physics could be also helpful as a

metaphor for reimagining the meaning of theory itself. Yet, let us first examine what

41

For Bernstein this implies the belief that “either there is some support of our being, a fixed

foundation for our knowledge, or we cannot escape the forces of darkness that envelop us with

madness, with intellectual and moral chaos.” Bernstein, R.J., Beyond Objectivism and Relativism:

Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985, p. 86. 42

George, J., and D. Campbell, “Patterns of Dissent and the Celebration of Difference: Critical Social

Theory and International Relations”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3, 1990, p. 289. 43

For Bhaskar, the reason lies in the two philosophical errors that unite positivism and post-positivism,

namely the “epistemic” and the “ontic fallacy”. See Bhaskar, R., Plato Etc: The Problems of

Philosophy and Their Resolution, London: Verso, 1994, p. 253. 44

George, Discourses of Global Politics, p. 22 (emphasis in original).

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the epistemological contribution of quantum physics was, and how IR theory reacted

to this revolution in science.

Disturbing Reality

According to Prigogine and Stengers, a scientific description is regarded as objective

by classical science:

to the extent that the observer is excluded and the description is made from

a point lying de jure outside the world, that is, from the divine viewpoint

to which the human soul, created as it was in God‟s image, had access at

the beginning. Thus classical science still aims at discovering the unique

truth about the world, the one language that will decipher the whole of

nature.45

Referring especially to the discipline of International Relations, Steve Smith has

claimed that its positivist readings are embedded in exactly such a classical science

methodology as developed until the beginning of the twentieth century, meaning “a

physics before the epistemologically revolutionary development of quantum physics

in the 1920s, which fundamentally altered the prevailing view of physical world as

one which could be accurately observed.”46 Indeed, the quantum uncertainty principle,

the measurement problem, and the complementarity principle47 have challenged the

crude dichotomy between scientific theory and practice, destabilizing the

epistemological premises of science. According to Heisenberg,

[i]n atomic physics observations can no longer be objectified in such a

simple manner; that is, they cannot be referred to something that takes

place objectively or in a describable manner in space and time [thus] the

science of nature does not deal with nature itself but in fact with the

science of nature as man thinks and describes it.48

The observer was not seen any more as separated from the „external‟ world but,

instead and for the first time, understood as bound together with the observed

elements in a strange interaction, described by the notion of disturbance, rendering

observation an act of participation. What the uncertainty principle implied was that

45

Prigogine, I., and I. Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature, London:

Heinemann, 1984, p. 52. 46

Smith, S., “Positivism and Beyond”, in International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, edited by S.

Smith, K. Booth, and M. Zalewski, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 17. 47

Heisenberg preferred instead the terms „indeterminism‟ and „indefiniteness‟. 48

Heisenberg, W., “Planck‟s Discovery and the Philosophical Problems of Atomic Physics”, in

Modern Physics, edited by Heisenberg, W., et. al., New York: Clarkson Potter, 1961, p. 20.

12

scientists could “no longer speak of the behaviour of the particle independently of the

process of observation.”49 The quantum scientists were still seeking for an accurate

representation of nature; they were still trying to depict a complete, detailed picture of

nature. In their experiments, though, they realized that this picture had to include

themselves, as well; it presupposed a reference to themselves. In Heisenberg‟s own

words, this picture could not be “a picture of nature so much as a picture of our

relationships with nature.” Thus, with the observer seen as “an actor in this interplay

between man and nature”, scientific observation intervenes, “alters and refashions the

object of investigation.”50 The quantum physicist faced a representational crisis, as he

could no longer be the sovereign subject of observation standing before his picture of

the world. He became „en-framed‟, a part of his own depiction, both the subject and

the object of his observation.

Moreover, this inability of offering an objective representation of nature also

revealed that representation itself is inherently complex and problematizing.51 As no

picture could be the accurate mimesis of nature, quantum physicists had to use

different pictures to describe atomic systems, which although seemingly exclusive

and contradictory were mutually complementary.52 As Bohr has put it, the inability to

offer a single picture that could not contain all “experimental evidence” necessitated

regarding more different pictures as complementary to each other, “in the sense that

only the totality of the phenomena exhausts the possible information about the

objects”,53 and, hence, “complete elucidation of one and the same object may require

diverse points of view.”54

The first response to this revolution in science was the rather impulsive reaction

of logical positivists who, according to Wight, “hoped to identify the scientific

method, and, in the process, to eliminate what we might retrospectively call a multi-

paradigmatic situation in which there was competition between schools of neo-

Kantian rationalists, Machian phenomenalists, Einsteinian relativists, and Newtonian

49

Heisenberg, W., Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, New York: Harper and

Row, 1958, p. 15. 50

Ibid., pp. 28-29 (emphasis in original) 51

See Ricoeur, P., Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, edited and introduced by G.H. Taylor, New York:

Columbia University Press, 1986. 52

Heisenberg, W., The Physicist’s Conception of Nature, translated by A.J. Pomerans, New York:

Harcourt/Brace, 1958, pp. 40-41. 53

Bohr, N., “Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems of Atomic Physics”, in Albert

Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, edited by P.A. Schilpp, La Salle: Open Court, 1949, Vol. 16, pp. 199-

241. 54

Quoted from Jammer, M., The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics, New York: Wiley, 1974, p. 102.

13

mechanistic materialists.”55 The result was not a radical engagement with the

problematiques of Western philosophy emanating from its modernist naturalism,56 but

instead a mere questioning of the verification techniques at the methodological level,

leading finally to an almost total embracing of empiricist epistemology.57 As Giddens

remarks, logical positivism adhered to and even empowered the rationalist and

scientific premises of philosophy, while dismissing “most of the traditional

ontological and epistemological dilemmas of philosophy as belonging to metaphysics

and hence outside the scope of rational discussion.”58 With the Vienna Circle as its

vanguard, Western philosophy turned once again towards the goal of a scientific

inquiry of human society intellectually flavoured by logical formalism and

verification methodologies. Yet, nothing „really‟ changed, for as George claims,

the foundationalist paradox was never more evident, as logical positivism

celebrated its detachment from the (“metaphysical”) traditions of

Descartes, in exemplary Cartesian terms, and proclaimed its strict

antimetaphysical stance upon the principles of the (positivist) “empiricist

metaphysic”. In this regard logical positivism stands as perhaps the

quintessential modernist perspective.59

Let us now turn to IR theory‟s own reaction to the epistemological problems

raised by quantum physics, and how they were reflected on the discipline‟s

theory/practice problematique. Keohane‟s approach is of interest here since he

explicitly contemplated the quantum revolution in physics. Despite his suggestion

that theory has implications for practice, he stayed attuned to the assumptions of

modernism, by adopting a rather primitive form of positivism. Thus, his discussion of

Newtonian physics and scientific theories was restricted solely to the level of

differentiating between the factual world of science and the value-laden world of

politics.60 As rather dramatically Walker suggests,

understood as part of a broader challenge to Newtonian metaphysics,

contemporary structural analysis conflicts with popular accounts of the

55

Wight, C., “Incommensurability and Cross-Paradigm Communication in International Relations

Theory: „What‟s the Frequency Kenneth?‟”, Millennium, Vol. 25, No. 2, 1996, p. 296. 56

For Wight, „naturalism‟ can be taken to be “the thesis that the social world can be studied in manner

that in general approximates to the methods of the natural world.” Ibid., p. 296, n. 27. 57

See Gunnell, J.G., “Realizing Theory: The Philosophy of Science Revisited”, Journal of Politics,

Vol. 57, No. 4, 1995, pp. 923-940. 58

Giddens, A., Studies in Social and Political Theory, London: Hutchinson, 1977, p. 44. 59

George, Discourses of Global Politics, p. 57. 60

Keohane, R.O., “Realism, Neorealism and the Study of World Politics”, in Neorealism and its

Critics, edited by R.O. Keohane, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, p. 5.

14

world as an accumulation of things. Some people may kick tables to affirm

the material solidity of the „real world‟, but the demonstration is unlikely

to be convincing to anyone familiar with categories of contemporary

physics. With a stress on rationality come questions about how one

understands the distinction between the parts of a structure and the

„emergent properties‟ that arise because the whole is greater than the sum

of its parts.61

Keohane fails to adequately answer these questions, primarily because his

understanding of the role of theory is limited to the ordering of reality into categories,

a mere reactionary role to the „reals‟ and „facts‟ of politics retrospective: theory prior

to practice and certainly not integral to it.62

The major reaction to such readings of International Relations and their

philosophical connotations for the theory/practice problematique came from the area

of critical social theory, with Ashley and Cox‟s cases as probably the most

paradigmatic of all.63 Cox‟s response, in particular, aimed at the positivist assumption

of an external world „out there‟ independent of the way we theorize about it,

observable and measurable by empirical observation. By recognizing a continuous

dialectical interaction between theory and practice, he also identified the inadequacy

of the neorealist reading of International Relations to reflect on the wider processes

upon which this supposed „objectified‟ image of the world is theoretically

constructed.64

Emanating from Kuhn‟s or Feyerabend‟s post-positivist philosophy of science,

the Wittgensteinian linguistic turn, neopragmatist Gadamerian hermeneutics, and

Foucauldian discourses on knowledge and power, a rather reflexive understanding of

61

Walker, R.B.J., “History and Structure in the Theory of International Relations”, Millennium, Vol.

18, No. 2, 1989, p. 175. 62

George, Discourses of Global Politics, p. 132. 63

Ashley, R.K., “The Poverty of Neorealism”, International Organization, Vol. 38, No. 2, 1984, pp.

225-286; Ashley, R.K., “Political Realism and Human Interests”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol.

25, No. 2, 1981, pp. 204-236; Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders”, pp. 126-155; Cox, R.,

Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History, New York: Columbia

University Press, 1987. 64

For Frost, despite the major contribution of Cox‟s views on the wider critique of positivist realism,

his approach as generally most approaches within critical IR theory seem to fail to achieve their goal

for two reasons. The first is the very fact that they are intellectually rooted in and committed to the

modernist discourse itself, the philosophical space where almost all the respective underpinnings of

positivism realism emanate from. The second is their inability to sufficiently engage with the normative

issues raised by the relation between theory and practice, restricting their analysis to the explanation of

the various causes, structures and systems of international politics and the presumed understanding of

the values of the observed agents. Frost, M., Towards a Normative Theory of International Relations,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 23-40.

15

the relation between theory and practice has been evoked recently in many instances

in IR theory.65 Some of the latest contributions of feminist IR scholarship have also

tried to disturb such dualistic epistemologies, by focusing on the silences,

marginalization and omissions of women‟s role in the orthodox readings of IR theory

and practice.66 Many of these theorists, as Zalewski suggests, think of theory more as

a verb than as a noun, for

[t]hinking of theory as a noun, as ... is the case with those who write about

theory as a tool, reinforces the impression that it is a thing which may be

picked up and used and refined if necessary. But thinking of theory as a

verb implies that what one does is „theorize‟ rather than „use theory‟.”67

Thinking of theory as a verb, besides implying a specific view of theory as a way of

life and a radically extended understanding of who the „theorists‟ are, as Zalewski

goes on, has a major ontological implication defining what the important and relevant

issues are for the study of international politics.68

Recent readings of International Relations have further tried to challenge the

discipline‟s modernist-positivist epistemological premises. Besides George and

Campbell,69 Walker also calls for a refutation of our conceptual boundaries, “a

decisive break from the comfortable, deeply ingrained and indeed addictive Western

habit of making a separation between subject and object, between the knower and the

world to be known”,70 and a development of “a clearer sense of the complex

relationships between theory and practice.”71 In his work, Der Derian reviews the third

debate as a part of a wider debate against the orthodoxies and “foundational unities”

65

See the respective discussion in George and Campbell, “Patterns of Dissent and the Celebration of

Difference”, pp. 269-293. 66

See for example Peterson, V.S., “Transgressing Boundaries: Theories of Knowledge, Gender and

International Relations”, Millennium, Vol. 21, No. 2, 1992, pp. 183-206; Ship, S.J., “And What About

Gender? Feminism and International Relations Theory‟s Third Debate”, in Beyond Positivism. 67

Zalewski, M., “„All These Theories Yet the Bodies Keep Piling Up‟: Theory, Theorists, Theorizing”,

in International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, p. 346. 68

See ibid., pp. 346-351. 69

See George, Discourses of Global Politics; George, J., “International Relations and the Search for

Thinking Space: Another View of the Third Debate”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3,

1989, pp. 269-279; George, J., “Of Incarceration and Closure: Neo-Realism and the New/Old World

Order”, Millennium, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1993, pp. 197-234; Campbell, D., “Global Inscription: How

Foreign Policy Constitutes the United States”, Alternatives, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1990, pp. 263-286;

Campbell, D., Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, revised

edition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. 70

Walker, R.B.J., Political Theory and the Transformation of World Politics, World Order Studies

Program, Occasional Paper No. 8, Princeton: Princeton University Centre of International Studies,

1980, p. 4. 71

Walker, R.B.J., One World, Many Worlds: Struggles for a Just World Peace, Boulder: Lynne

Rienner, 1988, p. 7.

16

of modernist thought highly imbued with Cartesian dualities (subject/object,

fact/value, self/other) and an inclination toward “grand theory”.72 Rereading

diplomatic theory as practice, he also offers an alternative diplomatic narrative

extracted primarily from Nietzschean-Foucauldian genealogy, Hegelian alienation,

and discourse analysis.73

In a similar „diplomatic‟ context, but mostly drawing upon Heidegger,

Constantinou uses the Greek word theoria to talk of theory as practice. As he notes,

[t]heoria exposes the originary, etymological, the philosophical

association between theory and diplomacy — in ancient Greece theoria

meant both philosophical thinking and a solemn or sacred embassy sent to

discharge a religious duty and/or to consult the oracle. Theoria is therefore

both metatheory and theory-as-practice.74

What seems not only interesting but, mostly, inviting in Constantinou‟s indirect

account of the problematique, is that instead of discussing what separates or not

theory from practice, he prefers to see them as inherently bound in the term theoria.

Albeit rather differently, theoria will also be the starting point for the employment of

the quantum metaphor in the following section.

Exiting the Camera Obscura

As we have seen above, in quantum physics the observer could not be seen as

separated from the „external‟ world, rendering observation an active participation. As

the ability of scientific vision to offer a mimetic representation of nature was

questioned, the issue also involved the inability to offer a unique, single, and

sovereign picture of the world. Yet, any attempt to directly or literally apply

respective insights from quantum physics in politics would make the problem even

more perplexing or quixotic, to say the least. How, after all, could the disturbance of

particles by the light-waves of measuring instruments correspond to the „disturbance‟

of political reality by theories of international politics? Nevertheless, I think that this

does not necessarily mean that quantum physics could not be treated as a metaphor.

72

Der Derian, J., “Introducing Philosophical Traditions in International Relations”, Millennium, Vol.

17, No. 2, pp. 189-193. 73

Der Derian, J., On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement, Oxford: Basil Blackwell,

1987. 74

Constantinou, C.M., On the Way to Diplomacy, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota

Press, 1996, p. xiv.

17

Metaphorically speaking, if the uncertainty principle pointed towards the

relationship between theory and practice, the complementarity principle indicated the

necessary contestation and dialogue between many diverse accounts of reality, that

although seemingly mutually exclusive are mutually complementary. Yet, is this to

merely imply a theoretical relativism? What could be its implications on the

relationship between theory and practice? What exactly would this metaphorically

mean for politics? These are the questions that I would attempt to explore in the

paragraphs that follow. Rather disappointed by the respective accounts in IR theory, I

decided to find refuge in political philosophy, where the diverse writings of Dewey

and Arendt could prove illuminating.

Despite the undeniably modern roots of both his philosophy and his readings of

technology and progress, Dewey does offer a powerful critique to the epistemological

corollaries of the camera obscura in what he calls the Enlightenment “spectator theory

of knowledge”. Discarding the “scopic paradigm” of democratic politics, he raises the

question of what alternative means of action and control on the exercise of power

could replace earlier Enlightenment notions of „reality‟ as public standards for the

description of the world.75 Considering that the role of ocularcentrism in democratic

political theory and practice was affected by the rationalization of observation in the

experimental epistemology of traditional science, Dewey relates the decline of the

spectator‟s understanding of politics to the questioning of the spectator‟s conception

of scientific knowledge.

Indeed, his revisionist account of democratic politics reflects his appreciation of

current evolutions in the scientific realm. William James, for example, noted that

Dewey‟s views were influenced “by changes in current notions of truth.”76 Describing

the early twentieth-century scientific discourses, he observed that

[t]here are so many geometries, so many logics, so many physical and

chemical hypotheses, so many classifications, each one of them good for

so much and yet not good for everything that the notion that even the

truest formula may be a human device and not a literal manuscript has

dawned upon us — we hear scientific laws now treated as so much

„conceptual shorthand‟, true so far as they are useful but no farther. ...

Truth we conceive to mean everywhere ... not the constructing of inner

75

See Dewey, J., The Public and Its Problems, Chicago: Swallow Press, 1954. 76

James, W., Pragmatism, New York: Dover, 1995, p. 233.

18

copies of already complete realities but rather the collaborating with

realities so as to bring about a clearer result.77

It was in the midst and immediate aftermath of scientific revolutions brought

about by Einstein‟s theories of relativity and quantum physics, that Dewey criticized

in his Quest for Certainty (1929) the “spectator theory of knowledge”, according to

which the knower “must be outside what is known, so as not to interact in any way

with the object to be known”; it is a theory of knowledge “modelled after ... the act of

vision.”78 Although a linkage between the natural and the social sciences is not

explicitly drawn in his work, one could appreciate the similarities between his

arguments on politics and Heisenberg‟s own discussion of quantum phenomena. In a

language that reflects the epistemological arguments of the Copenhagen

Interpretation, Dewey sees knowing as an act more of an inside „participator‟ than of

an „outside observer‟:

If we see that knowing is not the act of [an] outside spectator but of a

participator inside the natural and social scene, then the true object of

knowledge resides in the consequences of directed action.79

Similarly again to the quantum physicists, Dewey calls for a shift of focus from

the properties of political subjects to the relations between political events.80 Despite

his earlier optimism that the fallacies of spectatorial democracy could be corrected, he

finally alludes to a belief in the irreversibility of “the eclipse of the public” as an

observing agency.81 What underlies his scepticism concerning the accountability of

the spectatorial understanding of democratic practice is a radical revisionist

understanding of the productive powers of vision itself, leading him to a

conceptualization of human knowing “as an active participation in the drama of an

on-moving world.”82 Thus, seeing becomes less a contemplation, recording or

mirroring of reality than an aspect of acting and interacting. Correspondingly,

knowing is possible only through “intelligibly conducted doing.”83

By thus discarding the difference between spectators and performers, Dewey

shifts towards what could be called an „actor theory of knowledge‟ as a “process in

77

Ibid., p. 234. 78

Dewey, J., The Quest for Certainty, New York: Capricorn, 1960, p. 23. 79

Ibid., p. 196. 80

Ibid., pp. 144-145. 81

Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, p. 209. 82

Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, p. 291. 83

Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 106.

19

which the human quest for certainty is achieved through intervening, acting, and

changing rather than through the mental possession of a sense of immutable reality.”84

Revealing his quasi-phenomenological influences, he comes to define knowing as

“one kind of interaction which goes on within the world”.85 Questioning the Cartesian

eye of God, he treats the human eye as an aspect of political action and knowledge as

the product of social interaction. Consistent with his epistemological predisposition to

a liberal-democratic individualism, he sees individuals as partial and diverse knowers,

emphasizing that “knowledge does not encompass the world as a whole.”86

Seeing-as-doing is always reflexive for Dewey. Through vision individuals do

not just participate but are also transformed by the experience of seeing. As in the

case of art or science, the political „eye‟ both creates and is re-created in each creative

action,87 as “[p]erception and its object are built up and completed in one and the same

continuing operation.”88 According to Ezrahi, Dewey temporalizes this visual

experience („continuing‟) by injecting “the inherent open-endedness of the flow of

time as a means of discarding the possibility of spatial, visual closure and of seeing as

contacting immutable truths.”89 Thus, the spectator could not be appreciated as the

Olympian Subject, situated in an Archimedian point from where objective truth and

knowledge would be possible. Revealing the empiricist basis of his anti-

foundationalism, Dewey writes in his Art as Experience:

In seeing a picture, it is not true that visual qualities are as such, or

consciously central, and other qualities arranged about them in an

accessory or associated fashion. Nothing could be further from the truth. It

is no more true of seeing a picture than it is of reading a poem or a treatise

on philosophy in which we are not aware in any distinct way of the visual

form of letters and words. These are stimuli to which we respond with

emotional, imaginative, and intellectual values drawn from ourselves. ...

[N]othing is perceived except when different senses work in relation with

one another.90

84

Ezrahi, Y., “Dewey‟s Critique of Democratic Visual Culture and Its Political Implications”, in Sites

of Vision: The Discursive Constitution of Sight in the History of Philosophy, p. 322. 85

Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, pp. 204-205 (emphasis added). 86

Ibid., p. 296. 87

See Dewey, J., Intelligence in the Modern World: John Dewey’s Philosophy, edited by J. Ratner,

New York: Modern Library, 1939, pp. 971-977. 88

Dewey, J., Art as Experience, New York: Capricorn, 1958, p. 177. 89

Ezrahi, “Dewey‟s Critique of Democratic Visual Culture and Its Political Implications”, p. 324. 90

Dewey, Art as Experience, pp. 123, 175.

20

Although Dewey‟s overall aim is related to the possibilities of a more

participatory democracy, I find his views of interest to the present analysis for two

reasons. First, they seem to reflect some epistemological claims of quantum physics,

and similarly criticize the premises of how political knowledge is possible. In that

sense, his understanding of the spectator as an active participator both resembles to

the appreciation of the observer in quantum science, and negates the modernist

assumption of a neutral observer in the camera obscura able to mimetically represent

the real of nature or politics. Second, his views raise crucial questions concerning the

epistemological role of vision, relating especially to the theory/practice

problematique.

Certainly, Dewey‟s „actor theory of knowledge‟ could be a nice starting point

for a consistent employment of the quantum metaphor. Metaphorically speaking, then,

the IR theorist could escape the confines of the camera obscura and participate in the

political reality she seeks to comprehend. Following Dewey, she would become less a

passive spectator than an active participant changing the political reality she observes.

Yet, on what grounds would this change take place? Most importantly, as many

theorists attempt to understand the same reality, and multiple participations and

transformations take place, what implications could this have on both our theories and

political reality itself? Could individual experience, a sense of practicality, or a

liberal-democratic metanarrative of progress offer the standards in the contestation of

the different accounts of political reality? I do not think that this is necessarily so.

Despite the apparent similarities between Dewey‟s philosophy and some

epistemological connotations of quantum physics, it is not my aim to reduce the

quantum metaphor to a more perplexing form of pragmatism. It seems to me, that is,

that the main problem does not lie in Dewey‟s anti-foundationalism, but in his

understanding of the spectator-actor‟s reflexivity as infiltrated by an ahistorical

pragmatism and inividualist epistemology.

In quantum physics, as we have seen, the scientist is disturbing the reality he

tries to observe. Yet, this does not only result in the inability of offering a sovereign,

neutral, and objective representation of nature, but also in the possibility of offering

multiple, diverse pictures of reality that are complementary to each other. It is this

problematic notion of complementarity that I will attempt to notionally explore and

metaphorically employ in the following paragraphs to reimagine the relationship both

between these diverse pictures/theories, and between theory and practice. In other

21

words, the main question that I will attempt to answer is: What does it mean to

metaphorically understand theoretical diversity in terms of complementarity and, at

the same time, appreciate theory as practice? For this purpose, I will now turn to some

aspects of Hannah Arendt‟s work.

While discussing the vita activa in The Human Condition, Arendt refers to

evolution in science as following:

The modern astrophysical world view, which began with Galileo, and its

challenge to the adequacy of the senses to reveal reality, have left us a

universe of whose qualities we know no more than the way they affect our

measuring instruments ... . Instead of objective qualities, in other words,

we find instruments, and instead of nature or the universe — in the words

of Heisenberg — man encounters only himself.91

One may suggest that by quoting Heisenberg, Arendt seems to acknowledge the

impact of the epistemological contribution of quantum physics on man‟s attempt to

understand nature, thus revealing her appreciation of theory as practice. Yet, this

hardly is the point that will be made here. Instead, Arendt‟s own discussion on the

relationship between theory and practice will be used to make more intelligible the

way the quantum metaphor could be employed in International Relations.

Discussing how vision was constructed in the philosophical interpretation of

nous, Arendt begins her exploration by examining the pre-philosophical

underpinnings of this construction, and identifying among them the Greek

preoccupation with immortality.92 For the Greeks, the only way to achieve

immortality, and thus accommodate themselves in the “immortal” cosmos, was

through “their capacity for the immortal deed, by their ability to leave nonperishable

traces behind.”93 Yet, in order to become immortal, the deed had not only to be of a

“divine nature”, but also to be seen and remembered. It presupposed, that is, a

community of spectators who would observe, remember and immortalize it through

91

Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd edition, with an introduction by M. Canovan, Chicago and

London: University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 261. 92

“Imbedded in a cosmos where everything was immortal, mortality becomes the hallmark of human

existence. Men are „the mortals‟, the only mortal things in existence, because unlike animals they do

not exist only as members of a species whose immortal life is guaranteed through procreation. The

mortality of men lies in the fact that individual life, with a recognisable life-story from birth to death,

rises out of biological life. This is mortality: to move along a rectilinear line in a universe where

everything, if it moves at all, moves in a cyclical order.” Ibid., pp. 18-19. 93

Ibid., p. 19.

22

storytelling. Arendt‟s argument in The Human Condition is that nous came to replace

this “immortal deed” in the quest for immortality.

Since nous would be able to contemplate god, the eternal Being, there would be

no need for such a community of spectators for preserving its immortality. Instead,

“the way to the new immortality was to take up one‟s abode with things that are

forever, and the new faculty making this possible was called nous or mind.”94 Yet,

nous needs also a vision, a vision that is speechless, “which to Plato was arrheton

(„unspeakable‟) and Aristotle calls aneu logou („without word‟)”.95 Most importantly,

though, this vision no longer necessitates an actor and an event; instead, it involves

only the contemplation of the eternal Being. Thus, the vision enjoyed by nous

becomes the contemplation of god, that is theoria.96

Nevertheless, in the Life of the Mind, Thinking, Arendt suggests that things are

not that simple, since nous always needs logos; it needs to be translated into words:

“This was called aletheuein by Aristotle and does not just mean to tell things as they

really are without concealing anything, but also applies only to propositions about

things that always and necessarily are and cannot be otherwise.”97 Interestingly

enough she notes:

The difficulties to which the “awesome science” of metaphysics has given

rise since its inception could possibly all be summed up in the natural

tension between theoria and logos, between seeing and reasoning with

words — whether in the form of “dialectics” (dia-legesthai) or, on the

contrary, of the “syllogism” (syl-logizesthai), ie., whether it takes things,

especially opinions, apart by means of words or brings them together in a

discourse depending for its truth content on a primary premise perceived

by intuition, by the nous, which is not subject to error because it is not

meta logou, sequential to words.98

For a moment, this passage might seem a bit ambivalent, concerning her appreciation

of nous. Nevertheless, in my reading at least, her analysis that follows reveals that

Arendt understood nous as never really separated from logos, but instead as inherently

94

Arendt, Life of the Mind, p. 122. 95

Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 20. 96

Etymologically, theoria derives from the Greek words theos (god) and orao (to contemplate). For

Heidegger, “theoria is pure relationship to the outward appearances belonging to whatever presences,

to those appearances that, in their radiance, concern man in that they bring the presence of the gods to

shine forth.” Heidegger, M., “Science and Reflection”, in The Question Concerning Technology and

Other Essays, p. 164. 97

Arendt, Life of the Mind, p. 137. 98

Ibid., p. 120.

23

discursive. Then, this „tension‟ between theoria and logos becomes an affirmation

less of a paradigmatic transition to a new paradigm of knowledge based on logos, than

of the fact that all along the history of philosophy, vision has been discursive, a

theoretical activity (theorein).

Later in her work, Arendt refers to the theoroi, the philosophers who travelled

abroad to study the laws and institutions of other cultures. She mentions especially

Solon‟s ten-year philosophical journey “partly for political reasons, but also for sight-

seeing, theorein.”99 Yet, as she points out, the method of philosophizing did not only

involve contemplation but also dialogue and conversation. It was actually through this

discursive dialogue that philosophizing about the world was possible. Moreover,

when the theoroi returned back home their judgements thus formed were neither

accepted as given truths nor directly incorporated in the Athenian laws and

institutions. Instead, they were once again subject to debate, contestation, and

criticism. Any improvement in the polis presupposed the action of theorein, that is,

less a passive contemplation than a discursive activity.

Another case where Arendt attempts to demonstrate the discursive character of

theoria could be found in her discussion on Thucydides‟ writing of the history of the

Peloponnesian war. In his attempt to offer an objective view of the war and decipher

its truth (theoria), Thucydides suggests that he had to contrast the accounts of several

eyewitnesses:

In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were

delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to

remember the precise words used in their speeches which I listened to

myself ... so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to

the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the

speakers say what, in my opinion was called for by each situation.100

For Thucydides, the writing of history could not be possible by merely watching

the conflict from above, as an external observer, escaping the historical event. Instead,

in his search for the truths (theoria) of the war, he situates several accounts in

dialogue and contestation, implying that he appreciates theoria as lying within the

political, in the discursive exchange of different accounts by a plurality of

99

Ibid., p. 165. 100

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, translated by R. Warner, New York: Penguin, 1954, p. 45.

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spectators/speakers. For Arendt, that is, Thucydides understands theoria as historical

and political.101

Nevertheless, I think that Arendt‟s case on the discursive „tension‟ between

theoria and logos becomes more illuminating in her discussion on the relation she

traces between theoria and the theatai, the Greek word for spectators, referring us to

the very site where theorein as discursive action was possible, that is the theatron

(theatre).102 Arendt starts by quoting Diogenes Laertius: “Life is like a festival; just as

some come to compete, some to ply their trade, but the best people come as spectators

(theatai), so in life the slavish men go hunting for fame (doxa) or gain, the

philosophers for truth.” The spectators are located in the „festival‟, they seem passive

non-participants in the human quest for fame. Yet, the spectators‟ “nonparticipation”

is still “active”, “[f]or it is through the opinion of the audience and the judge that fame

comes about.”103 Thus, theorein becomes, once again, less a passive contemplation

than a discursive action.

What one could extract from Arendt‟s discussion on theoria is then that theory

is not a passive contemplation, but instead an inherently discursive activity. In other

words, Arendt does not just make a travelogue in ancient Greece to investigate the

relationship between theory and practice, but to make a far more powerful claim about

the ab initio discursive character of theory. It is in this sense that we could understand

both how theory and practice are related and also how diverse theories of political

reality communicate and interact. To return to the quantum metaphor, it is in this

notional context of discursivity that both our observation of reality entails

participation and change, and the different „pictures‟ of reality are complementary to

each other, as well.

This might look like using a political metaphor to make quantum interaction

more intelligible. Yet, this hardly is my aim. Instead, I think that if we are to employ

the quantum metaphor in international politics we have to treat it as such, that is, as a

metaphor. As we have seen so far in the analysis on the transformative and self-

101

Here Arendt seems to follow Heidegger‟s understanding of the inseparability between the

theoretical and the political: “The sustaining ground and determining essence of all political Being

consists in nothing less than the „theoretical‟” Heidegger, M., Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art, San

Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991, Vol. 1, p. 165. 102

See Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos, edited with introduction and notes by Sir R. Jebb, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1920, p. 1491. See also Constantinou, On the Way to Diplomacy, pp. 95-

120. 103

Arendt, Life of the Mind, p. 93.

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transformational character of metaphoricity, once a metaphor is employed in diverse

sociopolitical or scientific discourses, it cannot not escape its dialogue with the

questions or the elements of such discourses, thus notionally metamorphosing itself. I

think that the metaphorical employment of quantum insights involves such a notional

metamorphosis, so that the quantum metaphors of disturbance and complementarity

could become meaningful in the context of international politics.

To be more explicit, the way the quantum metaphor is used here to reimagine

the relationship between theory and practice emanates from the epistemological

impact of quantum physics on the disturbing, active and participatory function of

observation/theorizing. Its aim is to problematize the trust in the possibility of a

mimetic, private and detached representation of political reality, and constitute a freer

thinking space where many diverse „pictures‟/theories could coexist as

complementary to each other. Yet, it also understands this complementarity in terms

not of theoretical relativism but of discursive dialogue, thus appreciating IR theory as

theoria. In the imaginary evoked by this quantum metaphor, the IR theorist is then no

longer the neutral, passive observer of an „external‟ political reality, individuated

within the confines of the camera obscura. She becomes a participant in the reality she

theorizes about and seeks to understand. While theorizing, she realizes that the

„picture‟ of political reality she tries to depict inescapably includes herself too. She

becomes both the subject and the object of her theoretical representation. Her

„picture‟/theory is no more a depiction of an estranged reality mimetically represented

through her logos. Instead, it is through logos that she becomes an active participant,

as well. Her „picture‟ then is not merely a passive contemplation of political reality,

but a theoria, a search for truth that is not sovereign but mediated by other „pictures‟

that although seemingly exclusive are complementary to her own. Thus, the IR

theorist exits the arduousness and closure of the camera obscura and enters the

theatron; she is in-the-world.104 And here, as in Shakespeare‟s Hamlet, “the play‟s the

thing”.105

Conclusion: An Epilogue to IR Theory’s Quest for the Graal

104

See Bernstein, R.J., The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of

Modernity/Postmodernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, p. 49. 105

Shakespeare, W., Hamlet, edited by C. Hoy, New York: W.W. Norton, 1996, p. 2.

26

In this paper I have attempted to demonstrate that the discipline of International

Relations has been traditionally locked in the camera obscura, the imagery

observational locus and modus of individuation for obtaining knowledge about an

external world „out there‟. It is in this dark room, the epistemological metaphor of the

glorification of the theory/practice dualism, that we more often than not continue to

form, select or preclude theories, in our long proclaimed quest for the eternal truths of

international politics, IR theory‟s Graal. The claim was made that despite the

discipline‟s engagement with the theory/practice problematique in the so-called third

debate it mostly failed to break with the epistemological premises of modernist

science, which had been already problematized in the realm of science by quantum

physics. Rather disappointingly, the impact of this epistemological break was

reflected in IR theory mostly in the form of logical positivism. Although more recent

attempts have questioned these very modernist-positivist underpinnings of IR

theorizing, and some of them referred to or implied the epistemological implications

of revolution in science, the possibilities of quantum physics to inform or redirect our

epistemologies were not fully explored.

It is in this sense, that this paper attempted to use some epistemological insights

from quantum physics neither literally nor directly, in a „scientific‟ manner, but

instead metaphorically. The meaning of the quantum metaphor was further

investigated through an examination of some aspects of Dewey and Arendt‟s

writings. I suggested that each of these cases is useful in appreciating the notional

context of the quantum metaphor for different reasons. In the context of the present

analysis, Dewey‟s work, on the one hand, is of interest here since many of his claims

reflect some of the epistemological assumptions of quantum physics. Nevertheless,

although his philosophy seems to be an exemplary case at hand of how quantum

physics could be metaphorically employed in politics, I argued that his individualist

epistemology and ahistorical pragmatism would render the metaphor nothing but a

more perplexing form of theoretical relativism.

Some aspects of Arendt‟s work, on the other hand, concerning what she calls

the „natural tension‟ between theoria and logos and the inherent discursivity of

theorein, were further discussed. By resituating theory in discursive practice, Arendt

seems to illuminate better both how theory relates to practice, and how theorizing

does not only involve a passive contemplation of political reality, but also, and

foremost, necessitates a discursive dialogue between diverse but complementary

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accounts of this reality. Employed in this notional context, I think that the quantum

metaphor could better illuminate how the IR theorist is not only a detached observer

of but an active participant in the political reality she seeks to understand. Moreover,

it would connote that it is through the discursive dialogue between theories that both

theory relates to practice and the understanding of political reality is possible. Thus, a

new self-reflexive space of thought and practice could be opened up, that would

encourage dialogue and comparability which are excluded in the metaphysical

concept of the discrete entities of the Newtonian-Cartesian world-view and the

egocentric metaphysics of modern thought that have infiltrated IR theorizing.