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Postmodernism, ethics and international political theory

Molly Cochran

Review of International Studies / Volume 21 / Issue 03 / July 1995, pp 237 ­ 250DOI: 10.1017/S026021050011767X, Published online: 26 October 2009

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How to cite this article:Molly Cochran (1995). Postmodernism, ethics and international political theory. Review of International Studies, 21, pp 237­250 doi:10.1017/S026021050011767X

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Review of International Studies (1995), 21, 237-250 Printed in Great Britain

Postmodernism, ethics and internationalpolitical theory*MOLLY COCHRAN

There are more idols in the world than there are realities . . . For once to posequestions here with a hammer . . .

Nietzsche1

Introduction

A group of writers have taken up Nietzsche's hammer against the constructionsof contemporary international theory. Postmodern approaches problematize thedominant understanding of international relations as a world of sovereign stateswhich demarcate inside from outside, order from anarchy, identity from difference.More generally, they challenge the notion of sovereignty as an ahistorical, universal,transcendent concept, be it applied to the sovereign state, the sovereign individual ora sovereign truth. Sovereignty and the dichotomies regulated by its power aremechanisms of domination and closure which limit the play of political practice. Itis the aim of these writers to hammer away at these limitations, opening space forplural and diverse practices in world politics.2

This article outlines shared themes in the work of Richard Ashley, R. B. J. Walker

This article was originally presented as a paper for the British International Studies AssociationConference, Warwick, December 1993. I would like to thank Richard Little for suggesting that Isubmit the paper to the Review and for his comments as well as those of the anonymous referees. Ialso wish to extend a special thanks to Chris Brown, Mervyn Frost and Mark Hoffman not only fortheir suggestions regarding the paper, but for their advice, encouragement and inspiration.

1 F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (New York, 1968), p. 21.2 This is but a short list of a growing body of postmodern IR literature: R. Ashley, 'The Geopolitics

of Geopolitical Space: Toward a Critical Social Theory of International Polities', Alternatives, vol.12 (1987), and 'Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique',Millennium, vol. 17, 2 (1988); R. Ashley and R. B. J. Walker (eds.), Special Issue—'Speaking theLanguage of Exile: Dissidence in International Studies', International Studies Quarterly, vol. 34, 3(1990); D. Campbell, Writing Security (Manchester, 1992); W. Connolly, IdentitylDifference:Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca, 1991); J. Der Derian, On Diplomacy: AGenealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford, 1987) and Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed and War(Oxford, 1992); J. Der Derian and M. Shapiro (eds.), Internationalllntertextual Relations: PostmodernReadings of World Politics (Lexington, 1989); J. George, Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical(Re)Introduction to International Relations (Boulder, CO, 1994); M. Shapiro, Reading thePost-Modern Polity (Minneapolis, 1992); C. Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations ina Postmodern Era (Cambridge, 1994); R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations asPolitical Theory (Cambridge, 1993); C. Weber, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State andSymbolic Exchange (Cambridge, 1995).

237

238 Molly Cochran

and William Connolly regarding their analysis of world politics and its theoriz-ation.3 The inquiry is guided by two concerns, first, to examine the implications ofthe postmodern critique for an ongoing debate within international political theory,the cosmopolitan/communitarian debate, and secondly, to ask whether the positionpresented by these writers results in any kind of ethics as such.

Cutting the moorings of international relations (IR) theory/practice

Practices such as genealogy, deconstruction, reading the world textually are strangeto mainsteam IR theory, yet such practice is the (anti)method which informspostmodern critique of traditional thought in IR.4 Variations upon these practiceslead to their diverse use among a number of writers. Of the three writers discussedhere, Connolly is the most selective, taking issue with deconstruction and its'theoretical postponism'.5 Yet despite differences regarding how such practices maybe used, common themes between these writers can be discerned. These sharedthemes include the closed nature of world political imagination, the crisis of modernsovereignties, and a 'politics of resistance'.

Closure in world politics

The writings of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillardand Jacques Lacan have found new life in IR. A discipline previously far removedfrom French poststructuralism, IR is now having its cage rattled through theextension of poststructuralism by Ashley, Walker and Connolly to challenge regu-lative functions of contemporary IR discourse by focusing on the contingency ofworld politics. Following the poststructuralists, they critique the foundations ofEnlightenment thought, progress, modern notions of rational humankind, meaningconstructed in dichotomous relationships and universalist assumptions in theoryand method. Modernity is knowledge seeking and its practices of knowledgeproduction shape social and political reality. For these writers, theory is understoodas practice. As Ashley writes, theory 'does not stand outside of modern global life,

3 I have limited the scope of this paper to the work of three writers in order to explore thecontributions of postmodern theory to ethics and IR in more depth than would be possibleconsulting the large body of work by those writing in this area. I have selected these three writers inparticular, one IR critic of neo-realism—Ashley, one associate of WOMP—Walker, and oneFoucauldian political theorist—Connolly, because their views do vary and they represent areasonable sample of the postmodern literature. Although none of these writers labels their work as'postmodern', it remains an easy term of reference which is commonly used with the qualifier thatpostmodernism and poststructuralism are not synonymous. Also, I take the positions of Campbell,Der Derian, George and others listed above as not necessarily outside of the argument to bepresented here.

4 For an introduction to these practices see the Foreword and Prologue to Der Derian and Shapiro(eds.), Intemationalllntertextual, pp. xiii-22.

5 Connolly, IdentitylDifference, pp. 13-14, 56.

Postmodernism 239

as if at some Archimedean point'; rather, it is linked to working knowledgeablepractices.6

While rejecting its 'doctrinal elements', Foucault writes that the modern attitudeor philosophical ethos of Enlightenment thought may still inform a critique of ourepoch:

The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine,nor even a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as anattitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and thesame time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experimentwith the possibility of going beyond them.7

Like Foucault, Walker admits 'a certain continuity' between forms of moderncritique and postmodern perspectives, yet he wants to 'challenge those affirmationsof modernity that have degenerated into dogmatisms'.8 Thus, we are presented witha critique performed not from outside modernity, but at its margins.

From the 'margins' or 'borderlines' it is the aim of the writers discussed here tounderwrite the dogmatism central to IR theory/practice, that is, the assumption ofthe sovereign state as given. Ashley writes that a position at the margins is'unsettling' as it is 'never precisely drawn', but unceasingly redrawn or rewritten,thus providing a 'nonplace' to critique the modern search for permanent ground.9

Connolly too, is concerned with 'multiplying sites' of global politics to counter theever present longing for a 'politics of place'.10 To eschew the modern emphasis onterritoriality grants entry to the gamut of political and social practice closed off bythe contemporary need to fix identity and history in sovereign spaces.

Thus, the task of these writers is set in the asking of 'how' questions over the'what' of fact and evidence seeking, explanatory IR theory. Ashley asks, 'how, byway of what practices, are structures of history produced, differentiated, reified andtransformed?'" Walker writes that the postmodern turn involves 'trying to under-stand how theories of international relations . . . have been constituted on the basisof historically specific and increasingly contentious claims'.12 Connolly is alsoconcerned to demonstrate how international relations theory is produced, con-tending that the intertext between old world and new is a 'better "model" ' than any'relation between "theory and evidence" '. 13

Uncertainty is the undercurrent beneath the 'how'. The fear of contingency, aworld without meaning, no criteria of truth, sustain the sovereign constructions ofmodernity. The collapse of the church and dynastic empire in early modern Europe

6 Ashley, 'Untying', p. 228. There is a significant difference between the position represented here andthe way in which Ashley writes as if he were speaking outside of modernist confines in 'Living onBorderlines: Man, Poststructuralism and War' in Der Derian and Shapiro (eds.),International!Intertextual, pp. 259-321.

7 M. Foucault, 'What is Enlightenment?', in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (New York, 1984),p. 50. It is worthy of mention that Foucault offers a more antagonistic representation of the attitudeof modernity in his earlier work, see The Order of Things (New York, 1973).

8 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 18.9 Ashley, 'Living', p. 272.

10 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 34." Ashley, 'Geopolitics', p. 409.12 Walker, InsidelOutside, p. 18 (emphasis added).13 Connolly, Identity!Difference, p. 38.

240 Molly Cochran

unleashed a crisis of identity and representation. Connolly recognizes in those lostafter the death of God the need for 'secular reassurances', the assumptions of whichare based in 'the unconscious phenomenology of life and death in late modernity'.14

These compensations, which organize, domesticate and tame contingency act as a'filter to theorization'.15 Ashley and Walker label this attitude of despair 'religious',and like Connolly, agree that it fashions theory by turning 'this fear into a desire, adesire to fill the void, to compensate for the lack, to impose a centre of universaljudgement capable of effecting limitations and fixing a space, a time, an identitybeyond question'.16

In IR, the centre capable of all those things and more is the sovereign state. Thenarrative of how this centre is constructed begins with the global condition of anarchyas a foundational truth. The anarchy problematique sets up the sovereign state as anauthoritative solution to the problem of order and contingency in world politics.17 Thatsolution is represented in the sovereign state as a site where humankind's struggle withthe universal and the particular is resolved.18 Walker writes that territorial sovereigntyacquires relevance in demarcating space where universal principles such as justice andright are possible versus a realm outside of mere relations, not genuine politics.Secondly, the sovereign state is significant in its affirmation of temporal boundaries,making progress towards universal claims possible, separated from the contingency ofthe outside.19 The fixity of these boundaries and the sovereign entities outlined ismaintained through what Ashley terms 'heroic practice'. Heroic practice replicatesunderstanding of the state as 'an unproblematic rational presence . . . the self-sufficientforce of international history's meaning'.20

The idea that the sovereign state is here to stay, a permanent feature of inter-national relations, is regarded as unproblematic, worthy of little thought. Yet thesewriters regard the silence surrounding this constitutive feature of world politics asactually having much to say. As Walker writes, where there is silence in receivedwisdom 'power is often most persuasive'.21 The sovereign state represents an arbi-trary political relation imposing order upon that which cannot be ordered. Throughintense organization, discipline is imposed. As Connolly writes, 'one must nowprogram one's life meticulously to meet a more detailed array of institutionalstandards of normality and entitlement'.22 Thus, identity is constructed throughmodes of domination which instruct thought and conduct. For these writers, thesovereign solution is no solution at all.

The crisis of modern sovereignties

State sovereignty is weakening. It cannot maintain its ordering of social life across14 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 16.15 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 20.16 Ashley and Walker, 'Reading Dissidence/Writing the Discipline: Crisis and the Question of

Sovereignty in International Studies', International Studies Quarterly, vol. 34, 3 (1990), p. 381.17 Ashley, 'Untying', p. 229.18 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 78.19 Walker, Inside/Outside, pp. 62-3.20 Ashley, 'Untying', p. 231.21 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 13.22 Connolly Identity/Difference, p. 21.

Postmodernism 241

the endless play of multiple forces of fragmentation and integration at work in theworld today. Nor can it maintain its hold upon history of universal truth as theacceleration of time erases notions of lasting structures, fixed criteria or assuredmeanings. These writers are concerned to identify pressures destabilizing thesovereign notions fastened to historical, political representations called states.

Walker writes that evidence of change is all around us, yet there is no clearunderstanding of its effects. If we pursue the implications of the pace of recentchange, that is, inquire into the ways 'temporal acceleration' increasingly charac-terizes political life, this early modern resolution of space/time constructs in thesovereign state can no longer be taken for granted.23

Ashley speaks of a 'global crisis of representation—a crisis in the enframing andfixing of the sovereign grounds of domestic society that the modern state, as a focusof legitimate violence, may be claimed to represent'.24 In acknowledging the role ofnon-state actors in international relations, the discipline loosens its hold upon claimsfor the sovereign state. This space for universal assertions is comprised by theinability to express with certainty what is to be included or excluded; boundariescannot be steadfastly maintained. Thus, claims to power and authority by the statebecome ambiguous.

Connolly locates the crisis of sovereign states in what he identifies as the'globalization of contingency'.25 This condition of late modernity, engendered byglobal insecurities over the environment, nuclear holocaust, terrorism, etc., resistsmastery no matter how state-centred discourse may try. But the irony for Connollyis that the more late modernity seeks mastery the more 'it creates global con-tingencies that haunt it with a new fatefulness'.26

A qualification is necessary here. Despite the temper of the arguments above,these writers are not challenging the significance of states in international relationstoday. Otherwise, what impetus would there be behind a critique of sovereignstatehood in IR? As Walker writers, what is at issue in examining change in worldpolitics 'is not the eternal presence or immanent absence of states', but instead,whether 'the principle of state sovereignty offers a plausible account of con-temporary political practices'.27 The point is, there are multiple infringementsupon states today, transnational processes of all kinds which undermine claims tosovereignty. Thus, the task of these writers is not one of denying the existence ofstates, but one of drawing out the implications of a global politics without recourseto sovereign impositions of identity, unity and permanence. At stake, are thefoundations (or non-foundations) upon which states gain significance.

A 'postmodernist politics of resistance'

One may respond that such a challenge against sovereignty is a fundamentaldestabilization of statehood as well as the international system, premised upon

23 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 14.24 Ashley, 'Untying', p. 255.25 Connolly, Identity I Difference, p. 24.26 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 27.27 Walker , Inside!Outside, p . 14.

242 Molly Cochran

interaction between sovereign entities. Such a challenge is profoundly disturbing. AsAshley writes, now the anarchy problematic 'really is an anarchy problematic'.28

These writers recognize the fear this elicits, facing a world fragmented, withoutfoundations. Walker writes, 'it remains exceptionally difficult to renounce thesecurity of Cartesian coordinates, not least of all because they still provide our mostpowerful sense of what it means to look over the horizon'.29 The attempt at closure,the imposition of these historical constructs called sovereign states, is assumed lessdangerous than 'the hell of infinite openness', writes Connolly.30 None the less,resignation over what would be left without these coordinates is not licence fortheoretical concealment. In the opinion of these writers, such imposition actuallyincreases violence.

Connolly explains this increase in violence as a response to the gap between theglobalization of contingency and the state's self-sufficiency.31 As the notion ofsovereignty attached to states grows 'increasingly anachronistic', the state respondsby extending discipline wherever it can, sustaining 'collective identity throughtheatrical displays of punishment and revenge against those elements that threatento signify its inefficacy'.32 According to these writers, the violence of suppressingdifference, anarchy, and contingency results in more grievous consequences than thatof exposing our vulnerabilities. Thus, the politics of Ashley, Walker and Connollyset out to open what is closed.

As Jim George writes, theirs is a 'postmodern politics of resistance, be itarticulated at the dissenting margins of academic life, or as part of a more directsocial movement of change'.33 There are two aspects to this politics. The firstincludes opposing those practices which claim authority over subjectivity, objecti-vity, space, time, inclusion, exclusion, truth and falsehood, etc. This task places alarge burden upon postmodern method, that is, the efficacy of deconstruction orgenealogy in breaking sovereign notions. The second aspect promotes democraticpluralism, encouraging the growth of new political practices in the space cleared bypostmodern method. Later in the paper, this postmodern politics will be furtherelaborated.

Similar closure? The cosmopolitan/communitarian debate

Introduction to the debate

Normative international political theory asks of world politics a question politicaltheory has asked of politics in domestic societies for centuries: 'what is the good

28 Ashley, 'Untying', p. 253.29 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 162.30 Connolly, Identity!Difference, p. 59.31 Connolly, Identity!Difference, p. 24.32 Connolly, Identity!Difference, p. 206.33 J. George, 'Of Incarnation and Closure: Neo-Realism and the New/Old World Orders', Millennium,

vol. 22, 2 (1993), p. 233.

Postmodernism 243

life?' How do you determine what that might be? Do present structures of theinternational system promote or detract from the living of a good life? Two ethicaltheories offer dissenting views.34 The issues between cosmopolitanism and communi-tarianism centre upon three points: a concept of the person, the morality of statesand universalism versus particularism.

Regarding a concept of the person, the debate centres upon the individual's rightto choose one's life in virtue of that capacity qua humankind, versus the commit-ments and obligations of community membership which give life meaning and thepossibility of expression. For cosmopolitans, the person is a pre-social individualborn with the capacity to form a conception of the good and free to choose thatconception, unencumbered by social attachments. Communitarians see the indivi-dual as constituted by the social matrix of which one is a member. Thus, for thecommunitarian, the moral ends of individuals by a cosmopolitan understanding areempty, not grounded in shared meanings. The expression and pursuit of any goodhinge upon community.

The issue of state morality asks whether the centrality of states in internationalrelations promotes or impedes the living of a good life. This question follows closelyfrom a conception of the person. To the cosmopolitan, who regards the person asunencumbered by social attachments, the autonomy of states has no normativerelevance. Complex interdependence and the transnational linkages of non-stateactors make the state empirically and morally insignificant. For the communitarian,the sovereign state is the forum in which ethical duties are made possible, where theindividual may achieve freedom and self realization in his/her identification with asocial totality. The sovereign state represents the community necessary to thedevelopment of the individual as a free person.

The universalism versus particularism question asks whether there is a standardby which ethical judgements can be made across communities. Here the problem ofrelativism rears its head. As the cosmopolitan sees each individual capable offorming a conception of the good, relativism is an obstacle within and betweencommunities as there is no rational means of choosing among moral ends when theycome into public, political conflict. The cosmopolitan attempts a solution throughthe construction of an external standpoint from which we can transcend theparticularism of plural goods.35 This method clears the way for universal claims tothe entitlements of humankind which cosmopolitism is wont to make. For thecommunitarian, values, ends, and goods fostered in the state constitute tradition.Social tradition within the state is the framework which founds and enables ethicaldiscourse. Thus relativism is not an issue within communities, but it is a problembetween states as the world cannot be conceived as a single community whosetradition shapes or constitutes the individual.

34 These two ethical theories are elaborated in C. Brown, International Relations Theory: NewNormative Approaches (New York, 1992) and J. Thompson, Justice and World Order: A PhilosophicalInquiry (New York, 1992).

35 See Charles Beitz's use of Rawls' veil of ignorance to build a global theory of justice in part three ofPolitical Theory and International Relations (Princeton, 1979), pp. 125-83.

244 Molly Cochran

A postmodern account: cosmopolitanismlcommunitarianism as a modern construction

By a postmodern account, this debate is a legacy of the modern era. Modernity,marked by the rise of the abstracted individual as subject and the conviction that weas individuals must each establish our own foundations for the practice of our lives,generates a number of dichotomies which the cosmopolitan/communitarian debateperpetuates. Where I can only draw inference from the work of Ashley concerningthis debate, Walker and Connolly speak directly to the limitations of this con-versation and its counterpart in political theory, liberalism and communitarianism. Iwill address the three issues of the debate outlined above and related concernsexpressed by these writers.

Regarding a conception of the person, a postmodern perspective takes issue withthe modern understanding of the individual as subject. The dualism in the liberal-cosmopolitan account of the autonomous subject separated from the objectiveworld, unencumbered, rings for Walker with 'the same modernist dichotomies thathave been reified so smoothly within claims about state sovereignty and politicalrealism'.36 As Ashley writes, 'from a genealogical standpoint, there are no subjects,no fully formed identical egos, having an existence prior to practice . . . Like fieldsof practice subjects emerge in history'.37 With the communitarians, these writersagree that subjectivity is integrally tied to objectivity, meaning that any under-standing of the individual as subject is linked to the historical practices of thesocial matrix, and similarly, the understanding of those practices is reinforced bysubjective consciousness.

While the communitarian challenges the liberal-cosmopolitan, unencumberedsubject, s/he too has a conception of the individual as subject, having a capacity ofagency, but with a difference. This is a subject who is socially constructed andchooses for his/herself to recognize social practices and institutions in which s/he isparticipant. These postmodern writers are highly sceptical of the notion of agencyattached to modern subjectivity, whether liberal or communitarian. Ashley writes:'the subject is itself a site of power political contest, and ceaselessly so'.38 Againstthe communitarian, these writers argue that identification with social tradition is notfreely chosen by the individual, but instead, is an imposition of authoritativepractices at work within modernity.

This notion of agency, that individuals choose for themselves the grounds bywhich they conduct their lives, is an undercurrent to the issue of state morality. AsConnolly writes, late modernity forces a choice between treating one's life as aproject, being 'indebted to the institutions in which one is enclosed' and conformingto territorial norms, or not treating life as a project, choosing one's own way andincreasing 'one's susceptibility to one of the categorizations that licence institutionaldiscipline from another direction'.39 His tone regarding either choice is caustic atbest as together the liberal and communitarian choices 'licence a lot of discipline'.40

36 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 8.37 Ashley, 'Geopolitics', p. 410.38 Ashley, 'Geopolitics', p. 410.39 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 21.40 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 28.

Postmodernism 245

Both attempt to mitigate the resentment of social membership for the modernsubject either by 'enabling self-reliance' or by elevating 'the experience of connected-ness to a larger community', yet only at the cost of discipline by the hand of themarket economy or the imposition of universal norms within the community.41

According to Connolly, this idea of a choice disregards contingency in the socialworld, working to control it either through asserting sovereign man's ability tomaster nature or through the idea of harmonization or attunement within thesovereign state. Thus, sovereign practices are maintained through this debate.Cosmopolitanism and communitarianism represent two knowledge practices. Suchpractices, as Ashley understands them, contain 'their own exemplary and replicablestrategies and technologies for the disciplining of plural historical practices in theproduction of historical modes of domination'.42 Thus, the idea of a choiceinforming either position's stance regarding the issue of the morality of states is nochoice at all for these writers. Once again, modernity generates one more falsedichotomy, in this case, a dichotomy of two ethical theories which maintainsopposition between cosmopolitan and communitarian standards.

Another modern construct is the dichotomy of universalism and particularism atissue within the cosmopolitan/communitarian debate. The assumption behind thisdichotomy is that ethical principles must have a universal basis of truth. Thepostmodern account denies any grounds or foundations for a universalist ethic be itlocated between or within communities. Thus, the conflict between the two positionsover a criterion of ethical judgement across communities is moot. Neither thecosmopolitan attempt to secure foundations for a universalist ethics, nor thecommunitarian presumption of universalism within the particularity of communitycan establish itself without sovereign assumptions. Thus, as Walker writes, 'univer-salism, to put it bluntly and heretically, can be understood as the problem, not thesolution'.43

Yet does this not sink us in a mire of ethical relativism? These postmodern writerswould again castigate such a concern as typically modern. Relativism misleadinglyassumes an either/or choice between building upon what we have or a nihilism whichdenies any criterion of progressive politics.44 Walker's preference is for postmodern'celebrations of uncertainty' over the dubious claims of human essences which foundmodern universalist ethics. Connolly too, writes that the 'relativist worry is untimely'as the more important concern in this time of 'closure and danger, is to open up whatis enclosed, to try to . . . stretch and extend fixed patterns of insistence'.45

Thus, the postmodern turn consigns the cosmopolitan/communitarian debate intothe junk heap of modernity. Yet while denying the debate's dichotomies, it followslines that run parallel to the oppositions. And while denying a unversalizable ethics,it maintains notions of truth which inform a postmodern 'politics of resentment'.The next section will examine the ethics and consequent politics which results fromthe 'truths', however historically contingent they may be, proffered by these writers.

41 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 28.42 Ashley, 'Geopolitics', p. 409.43 Walker , Inside/Outside, p . 77.44 Walker , Inside/Outside, p . 16.45 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 59.

246 Molly Cochran

A non-universalized postmodern ethics?

Ashley, Walker and Connolly ascribe universal attributes to the closure of worldpolitics, a ubiquitous fear of difference and contingency, and the silent (sometimesnot silent) violence of sovereign notions of statehood. This comprehensive visionfuels an ethical condemnation which calls for new, alternative political practice.Clearly, a criterion of judgement, however, understated, must be at the base of suchcondemnation. Yet, have these writers not disclaimed the possibility of grounds orfoundations for ethical discrimination? The will to a postmodern ethics is in a bindof its own making.

The postmodern turn recognizes that world politics is infused with ethics. Walkerwrites that his chapter 'Ethics, Modernity, Community' is motivated by a sense thatwork concerned with ethics and international relations is important.46 Yet, post-modern interest in ethics and international relations starts in developing a criticalunderstanding of the limitations of ethical theory, that is, its reliance upon modern-ist foundational assumptions. As Ashley and Walker write, traditional ethicalthought relies upon

the imposition and observance of limitations that can themselves be unambiguously definedand justified from the standpoint of a sovereign center of judgement that commands aspace, authenticates what is valuable and good within, defines alien and dangerous modes ofthought and conduct to be excluded, and is itself beyond question.47

Despite their anti-foundationalism, these writers do not deny the possibility ofethics, nor do they want to. What is suggested is a thorough re-examination of whatwe understand by ethics.48 An ethics is possible, but it is not ethics as we tradition-ally conceive of it; a new understanding is required. Alternatively, they invoke aqualified ethics, what Connolly describes as a 'second order ethicality'.49 Such anethics recognizes the frailty of universal claims as historical constructs. Aware ofcontingency and the historicity of value assertions, this qualified ethicality offersno pretence of temporal nor spatial roots. Consequently, ethical considerationschallenge what it means to talk about world politics today, what freedom, demo-cracy, community represent without recourse to a 'sovereign center'.50 Connollyoffers one version of a qualified ethics that he labels as an 'agnostic ethic of care',and Ashley and Walker offer another version, an 'ethics of marginal conduct'.

Connolly looks to Nietzsche and Foucault to articulate a second-order ethicality."The primary quest is not for a command that answers "why" or a ground thatestablishes "what" but for ways to cultivate care for identity and difference in aworld already permeated by ethical proclivities and predispositions to identity'.51

This means exposing the paradox of ethics, that identity is formed through thedesignation of difference, in order to crack the closure of modernist ethicalpronouncements of identity, making room for an 'agnostic ethic of care'. This

46 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 50.47 Ashley and Walker, 'Reading', p. 390.48 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 79.49 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 12.50 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 79.51 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 10.

Postmodernism 247

agnostic respect is nurtured by genealogy and democratic politics as both encouragethe 'experience of contingency in identity' despite its sovereign accounts. Connollyrecognizes that these are dangerous practices, but he writes that it is better to exposethe paradox of ethics than suppress it, as the interplay of these dangerous practicesmay one day reveal a productive counter-ontological possibility.52

In a special issue of International Studies Quarterly, edited by Ashley and Walker,the self-proclaimed dissidents outlined their conception of an 'ethics of marginalconduct'.53 Marginality represents the 'inability to speak and labor in a register ofdesire', desire being the will to fix identity, space and time.54 Celebrated are the spaceof freedom and the possibility of new modes of ethical conduct liberated throughcritique of the paradoxical nature of a universal ethical system which requiresmarginalization and exclusivity to ground judgement. They recognize this 'celebra-tory register of freedom' is purely negative, wrecking the possibility of ethicaldiscrimination, but, as they write, at least those at the margins 'do not sit idlyawaiting answers that can never come'.55 This ethics of marginal conduct can in noway be formalized, delineating the good life, but they argue it does not hinderdiscussion of how we might 'orient' such an ethics. Its orientation, as they discuss it,does not exclude territorialized ethics nor lead to any form of totalitarianism. Itdoes not reject, but it questions territorialized ethics to widen the scope of an ethicsof freedom, and uses democratic practices of listening, questioning and speaking to'traverse the institutional limits' so that 'where this ethic is rigorously practised, nototalitarian order could be'.56

As this outline indicates, theirs is not an ethics in any comprehensive sense, yet itremains questionable whether it represents a non-universalized ethics. Clearly, theyprefer to suggest what this ethics is not, focusing upon critique rather than statingwhat this ethics might affirm. None the less, it does affirm. Connolly writes, 'noaffirmative theory can proceed without invoking ontological presumptions; severalpolitical theories today conceal their own presumptions'.57 Similarly, the ontology atwork in the writings of these postmodernists needs to be brought to the surface fora closer look.

While Connolly's idea of an ethics holds out hope for a counter-ontology tomodernist presumptions, Ashley and Walker refuse to suggest any such hope.58 Yet itis clear that two outcomes are desired by all three writers, freedom and democraticplurality. The will to these effects shapes an ontology that locates freedom in theprivileging of multiple practices. A transcendent condition, something better thanwhat we know, is a product of opening what is closed. Their 'politics of resistance'reflects this ontology. Walker suggests a progressive politics in writing that 'the most

52 Connolly, Identity!'Difference, pp. 11-13.53 Ashley and Walker, 'Reading', pp. 367^16.54 Ashley and Walker, 'Reading', p. 388.55 Ashley and Walker, 'Reading', p. 391.56 Ashley and Walker, 'Reading', p. 395.57 Connolly, Identity I Difference, p. 67.58 Ultimately, it is because of this difference regarding a counter-ontological possibility through

opening multiple practices that I am more sympathetic to Connolly's project. Yet, while Connolly ismore cautious in his claims regarding the violence of societal determinations and remains ademocratic theorist, however radical, I maintain that the tenor of his writings has a Foucauldiansuspicion of social commitments that warrants his inclusion in the following argument regarding thepossibility of a postmodern ethics.

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interesting ways forward will be opened up by those who seek to speak to thepossibility of new forms of political community while resisting the [prior] resolu-tions'.59 By breaking the 'blackmail of heroic practice', Ashley writes, we can free its'victims' and make possible 'new connections among diverse cultural elements . . .and new ways of thinking and doing global politics'.60 Connolly dispenses with thenostalgia for a determinate 'politics of place' and suggests 'multiplying sites at whichthe issues of freedom and unfreedom can be posed in late modern life'.61

The postmodern turn itself could be accused of a silence similar to that whichthese writers charge against the theory/practice of sovereign statehood. In affirmingthat the play of contingency and multiple, conflicting political practices is preferableto our closed world political imagination, these writers are invoking ontologicalpresumptions, which by their nature are universal and no less sovereign in characterthan the ontology behind territorialized ethics. Although they may try, these writersdo not succeed in articulating a new understanding of ethics, independent ofuniversal categorizations.

This is not the first time these writers have been charged with asserting truths orcontradicting themselves. And when so charged, Connolly emphatically responds,'the simple answer is yes on all counts. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes'.62 To suggest their workis contradictory or relativist is to maintain a sovereign centre of judgement overtheir invocation of contingency and paradox.63 In asserting that their account ofethics is self contradictory, I am simply imposing coherence as a typical modernistwould. They insulate themselves from critique by castigating as modernist those whotrespass at the margins questioning their direction. This suggestion of incom-mensurability between demands for coherence and an ethics or politics of themargins is itself a knowledge practice which makes unpenetrable its constructions.

Concluding remarks

This paper is written out of a sense that it is important for normative internationalrelations theory to listen to the voices from the margins. Although there is increasedinterest in ethical theory in IR, it is contained within the gridlock of two theories,cosmopolitanism and communitarianism. Having no rational way to prioritizebetween these theories, the debate leaves ethical theory in a condition of stasis.The writings of Ashley, Walker and Connolly shake this stasis, forcing valuablereconsiderations of the debate as a whole, and upon the two positions as well.

As in normative international relations theory, the postmodern writers bring IRtheory back into the fold of political theory after decades of positivist separation,but they do so with a difference. They problematize modernity, challenging modern-ist notions of rationality, autonomy, and foundational philosophy as historicalconstructions which silently assume sovereign status. Thus, the postmodern turnrequires that we inquire into the ways in which the cosmopolitan/communitarian

59 Walker, InsidelOutside, p. 80.60 Ashley, 'Untying', p. 254.61 Connolly, Identity I Difference, p. 34.62 Connolly, IdentitylDifference, p. 60.63 Ashley and Walker, 'Reading', p. 375.

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debate and our consequent understanding of ethics is framed by modernist assump-tions. These writers suggest that the debate is misconceived as an either/or choicebetween unsustainable modern dichotomies. As Walker writes, his concern is 'todestabilize seemingly opposed categories by showing how they are at once mutuallyconstitutive and yet always in the process of dissolving into one another'.64 I agreewith Walker's task. This debate sets up rigid ethical positions assumed to bemutually exclusive, yet the interplay of their differences does indicate a relationshipthat needs to be explored.

In addition, the debate benefits from an understanding of itself as historicallycontingent. The source of the seemingly either/or choice within the debate stemsfrom the modern era being marked by the rise of the abstracted individual assubject. The rise of subjectivity presents a dilemma for modern political practice,that is, how to reconcile this individual, who looks to herself as her own standard oftruth, with the commitments and obligations of social membership. This is thehistorical condition which frames the debate. While I agree with the postmodernists'assertion that we must acknowledge the debate's modernist framing, I disagree withtheir assumption that they are somehow unfettered by the modernist dilemma. Thispoint can be developed by first looking at the lines favoured by these writers withinthe debate and secondly, at the motivations behind their 'politics of resistance'.

As discussed in part three, these writers do have a conception of the person associally constructed in line with communitarianism. Yet, in most other respects theirpostmodernism resonates with cosmopolitanism. Like the cosmopolitans, they con-test arguments for the morality of states on two counts. To begin, the state's morallegitimacy rests in its claim to be the community in which ethical duty is madepossible, a forum where universal principles can be recognized. Walker argues thisis a dubious claim as the communitarian fails to acknowledge the problematiccharacter of community in international relations, that is, the assumption thatcommunity is contiguous with the sovereign state.65 Secondly, following from that,the state's claim to power and authority is ambiguous, sanctioning a lot of violenceto maintain one community among plural communities.66 From this challenge to theefficacy of sovereign statehood, these writers go on to licence a new, cosmopolitanunderstanding of democracy as non-territorialized, no longer 'locked behind thebars of the state'.67 Regarding the issue of universalism versus particularism, thepostmodern attitude challenges the attempts of universalists to resolve particularityand difference into sameness. For these writers, such universalism errs on the side ofboth cosmopolitanism and communitarianism, but as discussed above, universalsalso 'err' on the side of the postmodernists.

While cosmopolitanism benefits from a postmodern understanding of its social,historical construction, and communitarianism benefits from the suggestion that thestate cannot maintain itself as the only depository of communal identity andmeaning for the individual, these postmodern writers have their own axe to grindregarding the modern dilemma. They reject the Enlightenment project, yet they have64 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 25.65 Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 198, in footnote 2.66 These arguments are similar to the cosmopolitan position of David Luban. See 'Just War and

Human Rights' and 'Romance of the Nation-State', in Beitz, Cohen, Scanlon and Simmons (eds.),International Ethics (Princeton, 1985), pp. 195-217 and 238^7.

67 W Connolly, 'Democracy and Territoriality', Millennium, vol. 20, 3 (1991), p. 479.

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taken one feature of that project, the concept of autonomy, and pushed it to itsfurthest extreme. They instil within the abstracted individual of modernity a radicalautonomy such that social membership is not possible without violent repercussionsfor the individual.

Perhaps this is overstated in order to make a point, but I am not sure that it isunfair. The kind of freedom valued by these writers is represented in the free play ofcontingency, the celebration of difference. Thus, the imposition of sovereign spacesand sovereign identities sustained by harmonized value systems violently impingesupon the individual. This represents a negative freedom very much in contrast witha positive notion which understands the individual's participation in social reality asempowering self-affirmation. Clearly, there is potential for the authority invested insocial institutions and in sovereign ideas to do violence to individuals. But tocharacterize such violence as ubiquitous, as I believe these writers do, is un-reasonable. This results in a negative politics of resistance, a disengagement fromsocietal constraints, which leaves the content of an ethics for a better global politicsempty.

Postmodern international relations theory wants to promote an ethics which can'identify the intolerable', discriminate among identities—not celebrating 'any andevery identity'—and destabilize institutions of violence.68 Thus, it is affirmative. Yetthe possibility of its affirmation is stymied by the negation of postmodern methodwhich refuses secured grounds for ethical judgement, identifying violent powerknowledge practices within foundationalist theory. What the 'postmodern turn'attempts to get past is an ethics which has to be universalizable, instead suggestingan ethics which is loosely fastened to local practices, and understood as historicallycontingent. Such an ethics would represent a valuable contribution to current debatewithin normative international relations theory. But compromised by a methodwhich universalizes power and violence in all attempts to secure grounds, howevertemporary, all these writers can offer are critiques which post warning signs to thoseengaged in the task of finding an ethical theory of international relations withcontent.

For each of these ethical aims, see respectively, Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 52; Connolly,Identity!Difference, p. 14; Ashley and Walker, 'Reading', p. 394.