This course is about historical and theoretical encounters of otherness in International Relations. It will focus on the representation of identities (including ethnic, nationalist, gendered, social, and cultural identities) rather than the contest of interests, to provide a more comprehensive account of how historic alienations of identity and negotiations of difference have defined International Relations. Offering a historical, philosophical, and legal study of these transnational and cross-cultural encounters, this course will provide a much broader and deeper theoretical framework than the discrete levels of analysis (ëmaní, state, and system) that structure traditional IR theory.
The content and method of the course will draw but go beyond the so-called 'British' or classical approach to International Relations, which emphasizes philosophical, historical and juridical inquiries into the creation and expansion of an international society. It will borrow from it, in the sense that realist ('Machiavellian'), rationalist ('Grotian'), and irenist ('Kantian') traditions will be used to understand historical representations of otherness. It will go beyond it, however, in the sense of offering revolutionist ('Marxist') and revaluationist ('Nietzschean') anti-traditions of thought for late modern forms of alienation that often seem to resist comprehension through the traditional paradigms. The failure to anticipate the end of the cold war, as well as the lack of a vision after it, testifies to this resistance. Contemporary challenges to the traditions, like alternative security regimes, feminism, the accelerated flows of information, capital, and refugees, critical social movements, environmentalism, and media politics - all topics which have been neglected by the traditional classical approaches, will also be explored in the context of other encounters.
We will go beyond the classical concern with interests, and present identities as powerful and constitutive forces in world politics. How national, religious, cultural, social, gendered, political and other identities are formed, accommodated, or alienated will be the underlying theme of the course. In other words, the general orientation of the course will be towards the kind of ethical, critical,and historical reasoning that makes the reader a normative producer rather than a neutral consumer of knowledge.
Each student will be responsible for: one literature review; one essay to be presented in class which will respond to a thematic question (and be from a different section than the literature review); one assignment as discussant for another studentís thematic essay; and a research paper which will be based on one of the section topics (but not the same as the thematic essay). The literature review (3-5 pages) and essay (6-8 pages) will be photocopied and made available to all students prior to the class. The essay will be revised and handed in one week after presentation in the seminar. The latest possible date to hand in the research paper (maximum 20 pages) is May 19.
Required books are available at the Jeffrey Amherst College Bookstore in Amherst. They and suggested readings will also be on reserve at the library. Photocopies of articles will be handed out in the seminar.
1 Introduction
Peter Barry Beginning Theory
2 Classical Approaches to War and Peace
Adam Watson The Evolution of International SocietyHedley Bull ^-Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations^,
Brian Porter (ed), International Theory: The Three Traditions
James Richardson ^-The Academic Study of International Relations^,
J.D.B. Miller , Order and Violence
and R.J.Vincent (ed)
Timothy Dunne ^-The Social Construction of International Society^,
European Journal of International Relations 1(3): 367-89
3 Theories of Representation and Identity
James Der Derian On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western EstrangementFerdinand de Saussure Course in General Linguistics
Roland Barthes ^-The Old Rhetoric: an aide-memoire^,
David Campbell The Political Subject of ViolenceThe Semiotic Challenge, 11-93Michael Dillon (eds)
4 Greeks and Barbarians
Herodotus History of the Persian WarsMartin Wight Systems of States, chapters 1-3
A.J. Toynbee Hellenism, the History of a Civilisation
Neal Ascherson Black Sea
5 Christians and Infidels
William Connolly The Augustinian ImperativeS.F. Belch ^-Paulus Vladimiri and His Doctrine Concerning
Hugo Grotius The Truth of the Christian ReligionInternational Law and PoliticsJean Bethke Elshtain Augustine and the Limits of Politics
6 Europeans and Savages
Tzvetan Todorov The Conquest of AmericaF. de Victoria De Indis (On the Indians)
V.G. Kiernan The Lords of Human Kind
William Connolly ^-Global Political Discourse^,
Identity\Difference ,36-63
7 Free Men and Slaves
C.L.R. James The Black JacobinsDavid Davis The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
Eric Williams Capitalism and Slavery
The Bounds of Race
8 Civilized and Uncivilized
Michael Howard The Laws of WarImmanuel Kant ^-What is Enlightenment?",
and Michel Foucault ^-What is Enlightenment?,Perpetual Peace and Other EssaysNorbert Elias The Civilizing Process, chapter 1 and excerptsFoucault ReaderSamuel Huntington ^-The Clash of Civilizations?^,
Foreign Affairs 72 (3), 22-42
9 Capitalists and Proletariat
Adam Smith The Wealth of NationsKarl Marx The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
Charles Tilly Coercion, Capital, and European States
Justin Rosenberg The Empire of Civil Society
10 Patriots and Enemies
Zygmunt Bauman Modernity and the HolocaustAdorno Dialectics of Enlightenment
and Horkheimer
Vaclav Havel Recent Writings
Martha Nussbaum ^-Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism^
11 Beautiful Souls and Just Warriors
Jean Elshtain Women and WarSimone de Beauvoir The Second Sex
Butler and Scott Feminist Theorize the Political
Zalewski and Enloe ^-Questions about Identity in IR^,
International Relations TheoryToday, 279-305
12 Humans and Cyborgs
Sherry Turkle Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of theWilliam Gibson NeuromancerInternetDonna Haraway ^-A Cyborg Manifesto^, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women
Paul Edwards ^-Minds, Machines, and Subjectivity in the
Closed World^, The Closed World, 303-352
13 Conclusion: Remapping International Relations