ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER TEORİLERİ II

The answer is A.

The answer is A.

The answer is A.

The answer is A.

The answer is A.

The answer is D

The answer is A.

The answer is A.

The answer is D.

The answer is A.

In this context, poststructuralism can be defined as a worldview or even an antiworldview suspicious about the fact that events in the world can not be explained without grand theories. They chose not to use grand theories’ methods but rather to analyze in detail how people were influenced in specific historical periods with a specific way of thinking, which was shaped with the relations of knowledge and power in any given time. Put another way, rather than being a theory, poststructuralism is regarded as a critical attitude or approach that emphasizes the importance of representation, the role of discoure in the meaning of international relations and the relationship between knowledge and power. So, poststructuralism is not a new school with its own actors, subject and members, but an approach that tries to explain its concerns with some questions. It is an attitude or mentality that tries to make alternative policies possible with its critiques. 

Poststructuralism can be defined as a worldview or even an antiworldview suspicious about the fact that events in the world can not be explained without grand theories. They chose not to use grand theories’ methods but rather to analyze in detail how people were influenced in specific historical periods with a specific way of thinking, which was shaped with the relations of knowledge and power in any given time (p. 3). Moreover, language, culture, identity and historicity take an important place in poststructuralist analysis (p.4). 

In the traditional approach, state is considered as natural and necessary. Though poststructuralists oppose to this idea strictly and focus on the creation of state. For it does not exist a priori, according to poststructuralist thinking. As expressed by Cynthia Weber, the sovereign state shouldnot be understood as it was a priori presence; as opposed to traditional belief, the state is an ‘ontological effect of practices which are performatively enacted’. In other words, ‘sovereign nation-states are not pre-given subjects but subjects in process”. There is no existence of subject/state prior to the political practice. Sovereign states are continuously rebuilt through historical and political practices. It acquires an identity hereby with these actions. More clearly the state’s existence/identity is an effect of performativity that is constructed with discursive practise about foreign and domestic policies, security and defence strategies, or being a member of any international organization. 

Poststructuralist thought begins its assumption by questioning the traditional assertions that there is an outer place from which the world can be observed objectively and theories can be neutral. But this is not possible according to the poststructural approach. As Edkins says, scholar must be a God-like detachment or have otherworldliness for this assumption to be possible. Because, scholars of IR are necessarily participants in the world politics, not independent observers. So neither theorists nor theories which consist of ideas can not be politically neutral contrarily they do have a political and social impact. 

Derrida transformed philosophical school’s understanding of speech and writing, reading, texts and publications, such as Speech and Phenomena, (trans. 1973), Of Grammatology, (trans. 1976), Writing and Difference, (trans. 1978), Dissemination, (trans. 1981), Margins of Philosophy, (trans. 1982), and Positions, (trans. 1981) 

Deconstruction tries to find blind spots in Western history. In other words, deconstruction as re-reading and counter-reading strategy, attempts to expose anomalies or inconsistencies in a given text. In this context, Derrida aspired to reread Western thought to give voice to which has been systematically excluded and silenced.

The double reading method was included to literature as a deconstruction style by Derrida. The aim here is to understand the story of the construction of the identity of a discourse, a text or any other social institution. 

The first reading tells in accordance with original by using its own assumptions of the dominant discourse. In other words, it tries to show how dominated reinterpretation provides self-integrity or continuity of the discourse or institution. The main point here is the second reading. It tries to expose the inner contradictions and how they are unsuccessfully closed and displaced by exerting pressure on the discourse or weaknesses of the institution. 

Michel Foucault approached the issue of power with different perspective from the traditional theories. In traditional approaches, power is considered to be something that can be possessed: individuals or states have power but some have more than others. For example liberal theory sees power as something that is established by a social contract. According to Marxism, power is a function of class domination that rests on the control of economic factors. Foucault conceptualized the traditional power as ‘juridico-discursive” where power comes from above, from a sovereign. He suggests a new way of thinking about power. According to Foucault, “power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.” What is alluded to here is that power should not be seen as something that preexisting entities possess but as something generated in relationships. Therefore, according to Foucault, there is no power, but there are power relations.

Foucault was also interested in the analysis of discourse that relied on power and knowledge relations throughout his career. For Foucault, discourse cannot be inconceivable separated from the epistemes of the historical period in which it arises. Discourse, is an instrument of constituting knowledge, together with the social practice and power relations. On the one hand, discourse is created and perpetuated by the power; on the other hand, power is produced and transmitted by discourse. As expressed by Foucault, discourses constitute the reality, what can be thought and said about the world. Discourse as defined by Foucault, is the whole of the practices that construct the objects it speaks on or creates its own truth. So, according to Foucault there is no universal reality or truth as in poststructuralist thought. He asserts that meaning, truth and morality are created through discourse. 

Foucault in his work called “The Order of Things” said that to understand the social structures and the individuals acting according to the social parameters formed within this structure; the researchers should focus on changing historical conditions, not on time-independent and unchanging a priori ideas. In simple terms, he said that they should evaluate each event/case according to its context and the conditions of its time. As a reason, he put forward the claim that science is dominated by discontinuity and epistemological breaks, rather than universality or continuity.