Responsibility at the Limit: The Line Between Ethics and Politics
Madeleine Fagan
A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of International Politics
Aberystwyth University
30th September 2009
i
DECLARATION
This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not
being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree.
Signed………………………………………………………. (candidate)
Date………………………………………………………….
STATEMENT 1
This thesis is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated.
Where *correction services have been used, the extent and nature of the correction is
clearly marked in a footnote(s).
Other sources are acknowledged by footnotes giving explicit references.
A bibliography is appended.
Signed………………………………………………………. (candidate)
Date………………………………………………………….
[*this refers to the extent to which the text has been corrected by others]
STATEMENT 2
I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopyng and
for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside
organisations.
Signed……………………………………………………….. (candidate)
Date………………………………………………………….
i
Acknowledgements
I have been extremely fortunate in having two fantastic supervisors. Professor Jenny
Edkins has provided encouragement, guidance, support and inspiration; I cannot thank
her enough for her patience and belief in both me and the thesis. In his position as
secondary supervisor Professor Hidemi Suganami has gone far beyond the call of
duty, engaging in close and careful reading of my work and providing a constant
stream of challenging questions which have improved the clarity and precision of the
thesis immeasurably.
Most of my friends have had to put up with my absence for far too long—things will
get better, I promise! Thanks to Miruna Canagaratnam, Mary Hayman, Parul
Rabheru, Anna Solarska, Libby Tregillis and Abigail Wells for reminding me of life
outside the thesis and not minding when I go silent for six months at a time.
The International Politics Department in Aberystwyth has been a fantastic
environment in which to study; friendly, stimulating and intellectually challenging.
Thanks in particular to Laura Guillaume, who has kept me sane. I shall be eternally
grateful that I have had her to make my way through the last few years with.
Thanks also to the Politics department at the University of Exeter where I have found
companionship and intellectual stimulation in the latter stages of the thesis.
Most of all, my thanks go to my family. They have provided constant and
unconditional emotional and financial support, encouragement and belief in me. My
thanks for the wake-up calls, the proof-reading, the bibliographic assistance, and for
holidays, fun, refuge, and reminding me that there are other things in life—for this in
particular I thank James.
Finally, without Nick Vaughan-Williams this wouldn’t have happened. He has been
unfailingly inspirational, encouraging, engaged, patient and supportive. I cannot thank
him enough.
I would like to express my gratitude to the ESRC for the research studentship that
funded this thesis.
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Summary
This thesis engages critically with the question of how poststructuralist notions of
ethics and responsibility might inform practical politics. The thesis reviews extant
literature in Politics and International Relations which addresses this question and
identifies a series of problematic assumptions that underlie these approaches. These
tensions are, I argue, a result of a disjuncture between the question asked and the
literature drawn upon to answer it. To explore these issues further the thesis then goes
back to the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy which
underpins much of the secondary literature, to provide alternative readings of these
authors which allow for a different framing of responses to this question. Rather than
approaching ethics and politics as originally separable or derivable from one another
the thesis argues that the focus needs to shift instead to the relationship between these
concepts. The originary ethics drawn from Levinas in order to provide an ethical
politics is, I argue, not straightforward. Instead, as the question is traced through this
literature the notion of a transcendent Other and the corresponding idea of a pure
ethical or responsible relation as a necessary or possible starting point for ethics is
challenged. Nancy’s focus on the line or limit refigures the relationship between
ethics and politics in such a way that they are only on the line which both separates
and joins them. In this alternative reading both immanence and transcendence are
corrupted as grounds, so nothing remains to provide answers on the better way to
proceed. Ultimately, returning to the original question, this means that there are no
grounds—particularly ethical ones—on which to construct a ‘politics of’ anything;
only ethical-political decisions on possible answers can be made.
iii
Contents
Preliminaries
Declarations…………………………………………………………………………....i
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………ii
Summary……………………………………………………………………………...iii
Contents……………………………………………………………………………....iv
Introduction
Ethics in Contemporary Political Life…………………………………………………1
Relativism or Inconsistency: A Double Bind………………………………………….3
Critical Treatments of Ethics and Politics……………………………………………..9
Rethinking Ethics and Politics……………………………………………………….12
Chapter 1
Poststructuralist Approaches to Ethics and Politics
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..22
Poststructuralist Approaches to Ethics and Politics………………………………….24
The Limits of a Poststructuralist Approach?
Disrupting Rationality and Prioritising Alterity: Redressing the Balance?
A Poststructuralist Ethics?
The Move from Ethics to Politics……………………………………………………36
David Campbell: The Politics of Alterity
Simon Critchley: The Politics of Ethical Difference
Alex Thomson: Democratic Politics
iv
Questions Raised……………………………………………………………………..73
What Does Ethics Do?
The Risk of Abstraction?
Favouring Alterity and Multiplicity?
Recognition and Cultivation
Questioning the Questions
Chapter Conclusions………………………………………………………………....89
Chapter 2
Emmanuel Levinas: Responsibility, Politics and the Third
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..92
The Other………………………………………………………………………….…96
The Other as Primary
Subjectivity as Responsibility
Response and Responsibility
The Relation with the Other(s): The Face-to-Face and the Third…………………..117
The Face
The Third
Problematising (Ir)Responsibility
Problematising Ethics and Politics………………………………………………….133
Justice, Charity and the State
Ethics and Politics
Chapter Conclusions………………………………………………………………..144
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Chapter 3
Jacques Derrida: The (Im)possibility of Responsibility
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………148
Decision, Responsibility and Knowledge…………………………………………..150
Subjectivity and the Other
Decision
Knowledge
The Third and the Undecidable……………………………………………………..165
Impossible Responsibility
Undecidability
The Relation Between Ethics and Politics………………………………………….179
Political Interventions
The Conditional and Unconditional: Hospitality and Justice
Deducing Ethics from Politics
Chapter Conclusions………………………………………………………………..201
Chapter 4
Jean-Luc Nancy: Displacing the Other
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………205
Being-With and the Singular Plural………………………………………………...208
Coexistence and the ‘With’
The Singular-Plural
Community……………………………………………………………………….…215
Communal Identity and Individuals
The In-Common, Communication and Exposure
vi
Politics and the Political…………………………………………………………….222
Totalisation and the Retreat of the Political
‘Practical’ Politics
Ethics and Responsibility…………………………………………………………...233
The Ethical and the Political
Relation with no Content
Ethics Without Alterity?
Separation and the Other
Chapter Conclusions………………………………………………………………..248
Chapter 5
Drawing the Line Between Ethics and Politics: Implications for Practical Politics
Introduction………………………………………………………………………....253
Levinas, Derrida, Nancy: From Transcendence to Aporia…………………………256
The Original Questions: Looking for a More Responsible Politics………………...259
The Relation Between Ethics and Politics………………………………………….267
Immanence and Transcendence…………………………………………………….274
Relation and Separation
Practical Politics…………………………………………………………………….289
Chapter Conclusions………………………………………………………………..300
Conclusion
Interrogating the Relationship between Ethics and Politics………………………...304
Limitations and Further Questions………………………………………………….318
Bibliography……….. ……………………………………………………………..323
vii
Introduction
Ethics in Contemporary Political Life
This thesis draws upon a range of critical work in order to investigate and offer
possible new approaches to the broad themes of ethics, responsibility and politics. In
particular, the thesis is interested in so-called ‘poststructuralist’ approaches to ethics,
and how these might inform ‘practical’ politics. The thesis is motivated initially by
very concrete, and very common, concerns. How might we relieve suffering? Should
we intervene in the affairs of other states? How can we prevent genocide, and how
might we best respond to its aftermath? To whom are we responsible? What are our
obligations to those inside and outside our state boundaries? In short, what should we
do?
Answers to these kinds of questions are usually framed in terms of an appeal to ethics,
and this is often backed up by some kind of theory of ethics which informs our
thinking. Within the discipline of International Relations (IR) this appeal to ethics
frames thinking on a whole range of issues, from foreign policy to environmentalism,
as well as more obvious ethical concerns such as human rights and torture. Theories
of ethics then do a great deal of work in contemporary political life in terms of
offering, arguing for and justifying various better ways to proceed.
A range of theoretical approaches in IR are used to address ethical issues, from
cosmopolitanism and communitarianism to pragmatism, Critical Theory and
8
poststructuralism.1 While most of these theories in a sense lead somewhere, to some
vision of a better political organisation, a more ethical way to proceed, a means of
judging between ethical claims and so on, poststructuralism has been accused of
‘leading nowhere’. 2 It is this difference, and this critique of poststructuralism, which
the thesis investigates. Although ‘poststructuralism’ is a problematic term, I use it to
refer to the way that the critics of the approach use the label to group work.3
There is a relative consensus within IR that poststructuralist work does not help with
addressing these ethical concerns.4 If poststructuralism has anything to say about
ethics, this is not, it is claimed, something which could be used in any practical way to
provide answers to pressing ethical questions. In a very broad sense, this thesis
examines whether or not this is the case, whether poststructuralist thought does offer
any practical guidance for answering ethical questions, whether it can lead to any
answers to the question of what we should do.
1
See for example, Daniele Archibugi, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan
Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); David Miller, National Responsibility and
Global Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Molly Cochran, Normative Theory in
International Relations: A Pragmatic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Toni
Erskine, Embedded Cosmopolitanism: Duties to Strangers and Enemies in a World of ‘Dislocated
Communities’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A
Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Andrew Linklater,
Critical Theory and World Politics: Citizenship, Sovereignty and Humanity(London: Routledge, 2007).
2
Chris Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1992), 223.
3
Many authors associated with this term would resist being labelled as such and it encompasses a huge
range of very different approaches.
4
See for example Brown, International Relations Theory; Chris Brown, ‘Review Article: Theories of
International Justice’, British Journal of Political Science 27(2) (1997): 273-297; Chris Brown,
‘“Turtles All the Way Down”: Anti-Foundationalism, Critical Theory and International Relations’,
Millennium 23 (1994): 213-236; Molly Cochran, ‘Postmodernism, Ethics and International Political
Theory’ Review of International Studies 21 (1995): 237-250; Stephen Krasner, ‘The Accomplishments
of International Political Theory’, in Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski (eds),
International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Stephen
K. White, 'Poststructuralism and Political Reflection', Political Theory 6(2) (1988): 186-208.
9
In light of this, the thesis is prompted in the first instance by criticisms put to socalled ‘poststructuralist’ approaches which charge it with relativism, inconsistency, or
blandness in its treatment of ethics and politics; the argument is that work associated
with this approach cannot help us with questions of real-world suffering. In the
second instance, it is driven by an element of frustration with the literature which
prompts these charges and responds to them. Although a range of seemingly divergent
responses are offered, many of these ultimately proceed along a similar path. The
problem is often approached, in very broad terms, as one of identifying an ethical
starting point and then developing a politics from this.5 However, although faithful to
the terms of the question posed by the critics, this seems at odds with the
philosophical literature which these ‘poststructuralist’ approaches draw on. This leads
it seems to an impossible bind, as noted by the critics: either these approaches offer
answers, which seems inconsistent with the philosophical underpinnings of the
approach, or they resist doing so, in which case they are charged with relativism. The
thesis pursues the question of whether there is a way out of this seeming impasse.
Relativism or Inconsistency: A Double Bind
The question of how poststructural approaches might inform political action is
formulated in a number of ways. In the most general sense, poststructuralist
approaches—and deconstructive approaches in particular—are seen as ‘leading
nowhere’. What is missing, authors such as Chris Brown contend, is an ability to
‘create theory’.6 In the same vein Stephen White has argued that deconstruction leads
5
See for example David Campbell, National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998) and Simon Critchley, The Ethics of
Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992).
6
Brown, International Relations Theory, 223.
10
to 'a perpetual withholding operation'.7 In response to the question 'how can
poststructuralism inform political reflection?' he argues that the moves of
deconstruction are
the source of much frustration on the part of someone inquiring about political
implications, for it can be interpreted as a strategy for avoiding certain sorts of
questions that anyone concerned with politics and political reflection must
face. Here is where the suspicion begins to emerge that poststructuralists
cannot give coherent answers to such questions.8
As well as these general criticisms regarding giving any answers at all, the specific
weakness most often highlighted is the lack of criteria provided by these authors to
judge between competing arguments in the fields of normative or ethical claims. For
Stephen Krasner, for example, ‘Post-modernism provides no methodology for
adjudicating among competing claims … If each society has its own truth … what is
the basis for arguing that they are wrong?’9
Although expressions of the general dissatisfaction with approaches labelled as
postmodern for not having a research programme, or testable hypotheses, or being
able to create theory have become less prevalent, they have been superseded by a
more nuanced style of questioning, one which self-consciously claims to have taken
on board the way in which these approaches cannot be judged by the same criteria as
positivist approaches. While not disregarding the insights of poststructuralism
wholesale these sympathetic readings nonetheless find themselves running up against
what they see as the limitations in this otherwise potentially interesting body of
literature when it comes to judging normative claims.
White, 'Poststructuralism’, 191.
White, 'Poststructuralism’, 189.
9
Krasner, ‘The Accomplishments of International Political Theory’, 125.
7
8
11
These are the more interesting critiques for the purposes of my discussion because
they demonstrate precisely the way in which the questioning of poststructuralism
along these lines, however sympathetically approached, cannot produce satisfactory
answers. These critiques are not the product of a careless reading but of a very real
disjuncture between approaches: poststructuralist approaches are indeed lacking if
these are the criteria by which they are judged.
This series of questions generally starts with the assumption, explicit or not, that
justifications and decisions, particularly of an ethical variety, need to be based on
impartial rules. As Brown argues, the problem with poststructuralists is that they are
‘unwilling to think of ethics in terms of the requirements of justice’, where justice is
understood in terms of acting in accordance with impartial rules.10 Similarly, Molly
Cochran, whilst recognising the political import of a condemnation of existing
political orders and practices (as undertaken in this case by Ashley and Walker),
makes the argument that ‘clearly, a criterion of judgement, however understated, must
be the base of such condemnation.’11
Cochran’s argument however is twofold, firstly a restatement of the assumption that
criteria are required for judgement and secondly an argument that Ashley and Walker
are in fact sharing this assumption (though they may be unaware of doing so, or
attempting to disguise the fact). That is, that their judgements are based on grounds
Brown, ‘Theories of International Justice’, 294. See also Brown, ‘“Turtles All the Way Down”’, 225,
for a discussion of the need for foundations/justifications.
11
Cochran, ‘Postmodernism’, 246. Ashley and Walker themselves discuss these types of claims in
some depth in Richard K. Ashley and R. B. J. Walker, ‘Reading Dissidence/Writing the Discipline:
Crisis and the Question of Sovereignty in International Studies’, Special Issue: Speaking the Language
of Exile: Dissidence in International Studies, International Studies Quarterly 34(3) (1990), 367-416,
368. See also Marysia Zalewski, ‘All These Theories yet the Bodies Keep Piling up’ in Steve Smith,
Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996) for a discussion of the problems with this type of questioning and
requirements for criteria.
10
12
and criteria and hence their approach is inconsistent.12 Starting from the assumption
that criteria are required, it is impossible to conceive of a political or ethical
intervention which does not make reference to these criteria in some way. This, the
logic runs, where there are political judgements, there must, somewhere in the
shadows, be grounds and criteria. Approaches informed by poststructuralism then
cannot, if they are to be internally consistent, engage in ethical or political judgement.
This is one arm of the pincer movement in which critics would place poststructuralist
approaches. The second is the insistence that when these approaches do offer
guidance on how to go about making judgements, they do not go far enough. There is
ultimately a ‘lack of content’ in any poststructuralist ethics; insufficient guidance on
how we might go about ensuring a ‘better global politics’.13 In response to work in
this area by Maja Zehfuss, Hannes Stephan makes a similar point in asking how this
might help us to answer the question of ‘how to recognise and combat “evil”, as
opposed to mere “difference”.’ 14 Similarly, Brown thinks that Campbell’s ethical
prescriptions are ‘a little bland’.15
The difficulty in judging competing claims is also addressed by authors who identify
themselves as working within a broadly poststructuralist approach. In this case the
questioning is of a slightly different form but ultimately points to a similar
dissatisfaction. This work engages with this difficulty in order to produce a discussion
of the possible ways in which we might be able to differentiate between others and
resist violences based on this approach. The desire to be able to differentiate between
12
Cochran, Normative Theory.
Cochran, ‘Postmodernism’, 250. See also Cochran, Normative Theory, chapter 4.
14
Hannes R. Stephan, ‘Book Review: Constructivism in International Relations: The Politics of Reality
by Maja Zehfuss’, IN-SPIRE (July 2004): 251.
15
Chris Brown, ‘Theories of International Justice’, 295.
13
13
‘good’ and ‘bad’ others is evident for example in Richard Kearney’s work,16 whilst
David Hoy asks how poststructuralism might assist with normative justifications of
resistance to domination. He addresses head-on the problem of relativism, as he sees
it, through the question ‘why resist?’, that is, why resist this particular form of
violence?17 Poststructuralism, he argues, may need ‘supplementing’ if it is to be
ethically and politically relevant.18 The interesting thing here is that whilst Hoy
acknowledges that the questions he asks are not the poststructuralist questions, he
attempts to answer them anyway. Jim George also explicitly poses this question in
relation to Levinas, asking ‘how do we choose between competing
responsibilities?’.19
It is from this literature that the terms of the question addressed in the thesis are
drawn. It is this literature which positions the work of authors such as Ashley, Walker
and Campbell as ‘poststructuralist’ and which situates its questioning in the
disciplinary context of Politics and IR. The thesis is a response to the research
question ‘what are the implications of poststructuralist conceptions of ethico-political
responsibility for thinking about practical politics?’
Many of the authors considered in the thesis would hesitate to subscribe to the
‘poststructuralist’ label, and the diversity of the work collected under this banner is
huge. One question which I examine in the thesis is whether a ‘poststructuralist’
answer in general can be given or makes sense. Only particular authors and texts can
16
See for example Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness (London:
Routledge, 2003).
17
David Couzens Hoy, Critical Resistance: From Poststructuralism to Post-Critique (Cambridge MA:
MIT press, 2004).
18
Hoy, Critical Resistance.
19
Jim George, ‘Realist “Ethics”, International Relations, and Post-modernism: Thinking Beyond the
Egoism-Anarchy Thematic’, Millennium 24(2) (1995): 195-223, 211.
14
be considered and those in the selection addressed here have in common a motivation
to explicitly answer the questions of applications and practical ethics and politics.
This means that the thesis seeks to investigate sources which may not usually be
considered ‘poststructuralist’—for example the work of Emmanuel Levinas—as well
as work which falls outside the disciplines of Politics and IR. The framing of the
thesis in terms of ‘poststructuralist’ approaches is a reference only to the terms of the
question posed to authors seen to be working in this tradition. Similarly, the use of
‘practical’ politics is a reference to the particular kinds of answers that this
questioning seems to demand. That is, the criticism usually levelled, as discussed
above, is that poststructuralist approaches do not tell us what we should do in the
practical realm; they may produce theory about politics but this is of little use in
answering real world ethical and political questions.
This question of ‘practical’ politics is an enduring and seductive one. Particularly with
regard to so-called ‘poststructuralist’ accounts, authors are charged by their critics
with a demand to make clear what their approach can tell us about this ‘practical’
realm, in terms of both politics and ethics. In trying to demonstrate the substantial
‘practical’ ethical and political significance of a ‘poststructuralist’ argument, I analyse
whether the temptation is to provide answers which satisfy these critics, in terms of
political or ethical guidance, however minimal. This is, after all, the only way in
which a question posed in this way can be addressed on its own terms. The possibility
of this tendency in the ‘poststructuralist’ literature provides the second observation
which drives the thesis.
15
Critical Treatments of Ethics and Politics
What is interesting about approaches such as Cochran’s is that they do flag up an
important issue. The problems with inconsistency may be real ones, that is, showing
how offering criteria and guidelines is inconsistent with a poststructuralist approach is
not an unimportant gesture. But it is not as if Ashley and Walker are unaware of this
difficulty. It is here that a key issue emerges: whether we need to go about making
judgements, interventions and arguments without recourse to foundational claims or
clear criteria (and if so, how), or whether some minimal guidelines might be found to
assist in this. The thesis investigates whether, in the literature on which I focus, these
minimal grounds can be found. Is Cochran is correct in arguing that an ‘affirmative’
ethics does not fit with ‘postmodern method’, at least as far as the authors I
consider?20 Is thinking of ethics in terms of whether it is ‘affirmative’ the only option?
The thesis asks whether an ethics of this ‘affirmative’ type can be constructed and
what the impact of attempting to do this is. Does a construction of this type limit the
scope of an interrogation of the particular construction in political and ethical terms?
The issue at stake then may not be that poststructuralist approaches do not go far
enough—do not have enough content, are not affirmative enough—but that there may
be in some work a tendency to go too far, to try to appease those asking for ‘an ethics’
and to provide it in the terms imposed by the questioners. It is this attempt at
answering which then means that the parallel lines of critique, of inconsistency or
emptiness outlined above can be introduced. One overall aim of the thesis is to
systematically examine the terms of the questions put to poststructuralist approaches,
as one possible way out of this impasse.
20
Cochran, ‘Postmodernism’, 250.
16
However, the construction of or perceived need for ethical codes is not only
performed by critics of poststructuralism. The reason that this type of questioning
needs to be examined in detail is precisely because it also informs poststructuralist
contributions. Whilst approaching issues in a very different way from their critics,
there is nonetheless enough of a similarity here, at least on some readings, for charges
of inconsistency or relativism to gain a foothold.
Rather than dismissing these critiques out of hand, it is instructive to examine the
conditions for their possibility in more detail. That is, it is useful to address whether,
and to what extent, poststructuralist authors do engage with the questions as posed to
them in the terms of those questions. In the terms of Cochran’s critique of Ashley,
Walker, and Connolly for example the question then becomes whether Cochran
misreads what are particular political choices as prescriptions, or whether her
highlighting of these prescriptions does demonstrate a tendency by these authors to
determine a political programme.
The work which opens itself to these charges falls into (at least) two groups. On the
one hand, authors such as Jim George offer more specific suggestions; a commitment
to a democratic and emancipatory political agenda, an opposition to fascism, a stance
of permanent critique. 21 George argues for
an ethics, simply put, which insists that there are no ‘good’ reasons why
Others in the world should not have the opportunities that I have had for a
healthy environment, education, a secure food supply, and the chance for
participation in political decision-making. In general, therefore, it is an ethic
21
George, ‘Realist “Ethics”’, 219, 222.
17
which supports political strategies which seek to provide this opportunity and,
in general, opposes political strategies which seek to deny it.22
On the other hand, work such as Michael Dillon’s is less straightforward in its
suggestions. Underlying these other approaches is a shared assumption that whilst we
may not be able to make general prescriptions about the best way to proceed or which
political institutions to support and so on, there is nonetheless a need to recognise our
way of being as disrupted, shared, and other to itself, and to find ways of welcoming
this otherness or alterity. Dillon argues for ‘cultivating an ethos that welcomes rather
than denies the human plurality that is integral to its being.’23 It is in this vein that
Ashley and Walker also contribute, in calling for an ‘ethics of marginal conduct’;
constantly critically working on limits, 24 or an ‘ethics of freedom’. 25 Outside of the
disciplines of Politics and IR, Jeffrey Nealon calls for an ethics which affirms alterity,
leading to an ‘alterity politics of response’ and Richard Kearney seeks a strategy for
distinguishing ‘good’ from ‘bad’ others. 26
Of course, this tendency is not evident across all the work of the various authors
mentioned—these are very selective examples intended only to illustrate the difficulty
in moving outside the terms of the question. Nor is it evident in all the authors
addressing these themes. Jenny Edkins, Véronique Pin-Fat, Nick Vaughan-Williams,
and Maja Zehfuss for example offer approaches which steer away from this
Jim George, ‘Realist “Ethics”, International Relations, and Post-modernism: Thinking Beyond the
Egoism-Anarchy Thematic’, Millennium 24(2) (1995): 195-223, 219.
23
Michael Dillon, ‘Another Justice’, Political Theory 27(2) (1999): 155-175, 162.
24
Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading Dissidence’, 392.
25
Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading Dissidence’, 395.
26
Jeffrey T. Nealon, Alterity Politics: Ethics and Normative Subjectivity (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1998), 14. See also David Couzens Hoy, Critical Resistance: From Poststructuralism to PostCritique (London: The MIT Press, 2005).
22
18
inclination and in doing so move outside of the bounds of the question.27 However,
these are more oblique treatments of the issues which I pursue in the thesis.
It is at this point that my analysis starts because, whilst the debates between various
approaches on the issue of ethical guidance are of key importance, this is not the
primary positioning of the thesis. Rather, the thesis starts at the point of examining the
responses given by poststructuralist authors to the questions outlined above, the way
in which they have approached the difficulties in negotiating this type of questioning
and the insights and limits of their approaches.
Rethinking Ethics and Politics
I will ask in the thesis whether the temptation to offer answers in the terms of the
original question should be resisted. The thesis considers whether the philosophical
work which many of these ‘poststructuralist’ arguments draw on provides resources
for such an answer and whether, if not, this is a failing or limitation. I explore whether
the work of the philosophical authors I consider is lacking in such as way as to require
a supplement—that Derrida needs supplementing with Levinas, or Levinas with
Derrida,28 for example—or whether the ‘lack’ is where ethical and political
possibilities are brought to the forefront.
27
See for example Jenny Edkins, Whose Hunger: Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000; Véronique Pin-Fat, Universality, Ethics and International
Relations: A Grammatical Reading (London: Routledge, forthcoming); Michael J. Shapiro, Cinematic
Geopolitics (London: Routledge, 2008); Nick Vaughan-Williams, Border Politics: The Limits of
Sovereign Power (Edinburgh; Edinburgh University Press, 2009) and Maja Zehfuss, Wounds of
Memory: The Politics of War in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
28
As Critchley and Campbell respectively, argue in Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction and
Campbell, National Deconstruction.
19
Through exploring this question the thesis aims to offer one possible way out of the
debate about ethics thought of in terms of what we should do. It focuses on whether
this approach must always ultimately rely on grounds or foundations which may be
problematic. The thesis aims to contribute to the undoing of the terms of this type of
question and answer, which are, I will argue, what underlie any approach thought of
in terms of what ‘ethics’ might offer by way of guidance for ‘practical politics’.
What this undoing, through foregrounding the ‘limitations’ of so-called
poststructuralist thought introduces is a possibility for making ethical and political
claims without generalising, abstracting or needing to rely fully on grounds or
foundations. That is, the opening of the possibility for making and convincingly
arguing ethical claims outside of the terms of the dominant way of thinking. But the
authors I draw on, I will argue, do not provide means to adjudicate between claims, do
not, in and of themselves, lead to any particular ethical or political commitments. Nor
do they lead to a position which ‘prefers’ the opening, destabilising and welcoming
which is often seen to characterise their thought. Rather, they demonstrate that we are
always placed (whether this is acknowledged or not) in an unstable position between
competing imperatives and that there is no secure way of choosing between these
claims. In fact, they demonstrate that insecurity is the very condition of possibility for
ethics and politics. Further, these authors do not lead to the position that
acknowledging or recognising this positioning is any ‘better’ than not.
However, the thesis asks whether it is precisely these ‘limitations’, these refusals to
claim that one way is better than another, which allows for this work to be properly
ethical and political. If these approaches do not give any answers, does an
20
appreciation of this mean that claims can and must be interrogated as properly
political, or ethical, in each instance? Are these modes of interrogation themselves the
end or ground—is the question of whether a recognition of our political and ethical
situation is the better outcome also a political one?—or are they rather all we are left
with? A key concern of the thesis is the exploration of whether stopping at this point
is a satisfactory answer or approach, and whether it is possible to go any further.
The central question, of the implications of poststructuralist conceptions of ethicopolitical responsibility for thinking about practical politics, relies on a number of
presuppositions which I go on to interrogate: the separation between ethics and
politics, and a particular understanding of what these realms might comprise, and the
separation of theoretical and practical realms. These separations are enabled by
particular readings of the philosophical literature whereby the terms on which these
separations rely are similarly seen to be in an oppositional and separable relationship,
terms such as singular/plural, conditional/unconditional, other/third,
immanent/transcendent. Rethinking these relationships through a re-examination of
the philosophical literature allows then for a rethinking of the nature of the
relationship between ethics and politics. This in turn allows for a different route into
thinking about responsibility and ‘practical’ politics.
If the philosophical literature on which ‘poststructural’ positions draw has merit then
our usual ways of developing answers to pressing ethical and political issues are
thrown into question. Thinking in terms of adding poststructural insights to alreadyexisting modes of enquiry does not work, as demonstrated by the charges of
relativism and inconsistency. However, these remain important questions that we need
21
to offer answers to and, importantly, that we do offer answers to. As such, new ways
of thinking about how to do this and about how we do do this are urgently necessary,
and these, it seems, may need to start with an analysis of the terms and mode of
enquiry.
Whilst some ‘poststructuralist’ work does address this question of what
poststructuralist notions of ethics might have to say about practical politics, one
hypothesis is that the terms in which it is posed mean that no answer which draws on
poststructuralist approaches will ever be satisfactory, either in the terms in which the
question is posed, or in terms of fidelity to the philosophical literature which is drawn
on. In the face of questioning of this type, so-called poststructuralist approaches are
placed in an impossible bind: either the answers given are seen as weak and relativist,
or they are seen as internally contradictory. There is a sense in which I am
sympathetic to these criticisms. Answers of the type desired by the critics necessarily
fall, I will argue, into one of these camps. However, the question remains whether this
is a failing of the question itself, and the temptation to answer it, rather than of the
poststructuralist approach.
In order to investigate more fully what existing literature offers in response to the
question of poststructuralism, ethics and politics, I draw initially on the work of David
Campbell, Simon Critchley and William Connolly. These authors all attempt to set
out, from a ‘poststructuralist’ perspective, an answer to what an ethical politics might
look like. Although a great deal of other work touches on these issues, these are
particularly detailed and systematic approaches. They also all draw on the work of
Jacques Derrida, whose deconstructive approach is frequently cited, as above, when
22
arguing that ‘poststructuralist’ approaches do not help us with ethical and political
questions. The thesis then actually addresses a rather more limited question than that
posed by the critics of ‘poststructuralism’, but this in itself is part of the answer. This
also means that there are many other possible answers, drawing on other collections
of literature which might be, and have been, formulated.
The literature I focus on in Chapter 1 then is work which attempts to answer the
question of the application of poststructuralist ethics to politics, and which deals
explicitly with this theme. Although the field here is relatively broad, as suggested
above, much of the work draws on the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques
Derrida and so it is the authors who develop this thought that I focus on, in particular
Campbell, Critchley and Connolly. In engaging with the work of these authors I
investigate whether there is a tendency towards providing grounds or prescriptions,
albeit very minimal and of a rather different kind from those usually posited. I ask
whether in this literature there is a desire to provide an account of a ‘poststructuralist’
ethics, which can be used to inform politics and a corresponding political goal.
This analysis raises the question of whether the positions articulated are necessary
outcomes of the philosophical literature that is drawn on, whether they are supported
by this literature, and whether they represent the only possible reading of it. Do
Levinas and Derrida provide resources for answering the question that the authors in
Chapter 1 draw on them to do? If the charges of inconsistency, relativism or
blandness can be made, is this a valid critique of either authors such as Campbell,
Critchley and Connolly, or of the positions they draw on? To what extent does the
question which Levinas and Derrida are drawn upon to answer determine the reading
23
of their work which is adopted? In order to investigate this I turn back to the
philosophical literature.
Chapter 2 focuses on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, who often provides the ethical
starting point for the approaches discussed in Chapter 1. I ask whether this starting
point is as clear-cut as it initially seems, whether Levinas does provide resources from
which either ethical or political positions can be developed. The chapter presents a
reading of his work where the figure of the Third is foregrounded. The chapter asks
whether a reliance on a particular reading of Levinas in which the Third is not taken
seriously enough leads to the attempt to provide an ethics which can then be used to
inform politics. Does Levinas provide an unproblematic ethical starting point, as he is
often taken as doing? Are ethics and politics separable in Levinas’s work in such a
way that one can inform the other?
The adoption of Levinas as a resource for the thinkers discussed in Chapter 1 is in
many ways due to the use of his thought by Jacques Derrida. This chapter investigates
whether Levinas can provide the ethical backbone of a deconstructive approach as he
is often taken to do (for example by the authors considered in Chapter 1). Chapter 3
then moves on to consider Derrida’s work and investigate whether Derrida provides
resources lacking in Levinas for formulating an ethical politics.
With a more explicit focus on the difficulties internal to concepts such as ethics and
responsibility, Derrida’s work highlights more clearly the problems in constructing an
ethics. Overall, these chapters ask whether it is possible to read the work of Levinas
and Derrida as rather more complementary than is often the case. Is the approach
24
whereby one provides resources to ‘fill in the gaps’ in the other’s work supported, and
are there alternative ways of looking at their relationship?
Derrida’s work focuses in more detail on the nature of the relation between ethics and
politics and raises the question of the relation between them and of the possibility of
ethics and responsibility. This chapter analyses Derrida’s use of ethics and politics
and their relationship to the realms of the conditional and unconditional, right and law
and so on. I ask whether these realms are separable and whether the concepts of ethics
and politics are aligned with one or the other. Derrida’s work also introduces the
themes of aporia and hiatus which raises the question of how we might be able to
think about the concepts of ethics and politics with this in mind. How are ethics and
politics connected or separated? How might they be separated or contain a gap within
themselves? Is this gap or limit a problem to be overcome?
In order to examine the notion of this gap, line or limit further, Chapter 4 turns to the
work of Jean-Luc Nancy. Nancy provides a resource rarely used in the literature on
ethics and politics in IR and Politics which I focus on here, but one which is useful in
thinking about how the concepts of ethics and politics are related. Both Levinas and
Derrida retain a commitment, even if only as a starting point for demonstrating their
interpenetration, to thinking ethics and politics in opposition. Nancy, on the other
hand, shifts the terms of the debate somewhat, in focusing instead on the line or limit
as such as the starting point. Nancy’s ontology of being-with thus provides one
alternative way of approaching questions of ethics and politics which allows for a
move outside the framing of the debate in terms of how ethics might inform politics.
25
Whilst Levinas and Derrida both bring into question whether we need something from
‘outside’ to provide ethical impetus, to interrupt the ‘totalising’ realm of politics, and
whether there is any place from which to derive original principles, Nancy gives this
questioning a place at the centre of his project. The chapter explores his concept of
transimmanence as a potential way of reconceptualising the nature of and relation
between ethics and politics which means that we do not need to look to an outside for
ethics, or rather which disrupts the terms of the question that places immanence and
transcendence in opposition in this way. Nancy provides a possible way out of
oppositional thinking with implications for how we think about ethics and politics,
responsibility and the importance of the line or limit not as limitation but as site of
possibility.
Having brought into focus the questioning of the line between ethics and politics,
Chapter 5 then investigates the implications of this for the original research question.
The chapter asks whether we need to appeal to an ‘outside’ to provide ethics or an
ethical disruption, and whether there are grounds on which we can know if this
disruption is the better way to proceed. Can ethics solve the questions of politics? Can
a ‘politics of’ anything be derived from it?
Whilst the authors considered for example in Chapter 1 attempt to get away from the
problem of providing programmes for politics by recourse to politics in terms of
practices I ask whether this attempt is successful. Can or must we consider ethics and
politics as the same types of things? What are the implications of doing this? Is it
possible to move away from the notion of ethics as answerable and decidable and if so
what does this mean for politics?
26
This final chapter investigates what the implications are of an approach which refuses
an answer to the problem of ethics. It asks whether ultimately this leads back to
relativism and a disengagement from political decisions. The chapter also looks into
the question of whether a recognition of the difficulties inherent in ethical and
political decisions should be promoted; whether it is better to acknowledge or uncover
the unstable grounds on which we operate.
It seems very difficult to break away from a notion of ethics as decidable, and so a
corresponding notion of politics as answerable is always present. In this instance,
politics slips back into being answerable rather than a question of practices.
Reemphasising ‘practical’ politics goes some way towards resisting the temptation to
theorise political answers but this move can only be made once the relationship
between ethics and politics and the nature of these concepts in the first place has been
re-examined. However, and perhaps more importantly, what emerges is that the
decision to recognise or cover over the difficulties in providing programmes or
theories are ultimately ethical and political ones. The thesis does not provide grounds
for arguing that this uncovering, or politicisation, is the better way to proceed. The
philosophical literature drawn on, it will be argued, provides no guidance. This leads
to neither relativism nor inconsistency but to unlimited ethical and political decisions
and interventions, whether recognised as such or not, for which, in the absence of
grounds we, as singular-plural, are always responsible. Of course, this lack of ground
casts the analysis offered in the thesis too in terms of an ethical and political
intervention. This too undertakes the task of theorising and making general claims
27
about the nature of politics, but one key point is that we cannot get away from this; it
is all we can, and do, do.
28
The student has requested
that this electronic version
of the thesis does not
include the main body of
the work - i.e. the chapters
and conclusion. The other
sections of the thesis are
available as a research
resource.
29
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