This chapter offers an account of postmodernism. It begins by drawing a distinction between two broad approaches to the postmodern: one that outlines the contours of a new historical period (postmodernity), and another that places emphasis on finding new ways of understanding modern practices of knowledge and politics (postmodernism). The second part of the chapter examines how postmodern ideas entered international relations scholarship, and how ensuing contributions continue to reveal important insights up to the present day. Defining postmodernism is no easy task. Postmodern scholarship is characterised more by diversity than by a common set of beliefs. Add to this that the postmodern has become a very contentious label, which is used less by its advocates and more by polemical critics who fear that embracing postmodern values would throw us into a dangerous nihilist void. But while the contours of the postmodern will always remain elusive and contested, the substantial issues that the respective debates have brought to the fore are important enough to warrant attention.

Introduction

This chapter offers an account of postmodernism. It begins by drawing a distinction between two broad approaches to the postmodern: one that outlines the contours of a new historical period (postmodernity) and another that places emphasis on finding new ways of understanding modern practices of knowledge and politics (postmodernism). The second part of the chapter examines how postmodern ideas entered IR scholarship, and how ensuing contributions continue to reveal important insights up to today.

Defining postmodernism is no easy task. Postmodern scholarship is characterised more by diversity than by a common set of beliefs. Add to this the fact that ‘postmodern’ has become a very contentious label, which is used less by its advocates and more by polemical critics who fear that embracing postmodern values would throw us into a dangerous nihilist void. But while the contours of the postmodern will always remain elusive and contested, the substantial issues that the respective debates have brought to the fore are important enough to warrant attention.

Postmodernity as a new historical period

The postmodern has become a stretched, widely used and highly controversial term. It first achieved prominence in literary criticism and architecture, but eventually spread into virtually all realms, including international relations. What the postmodern actually means is highly disputed. The increasing sense of confusion in the proliferation of the postmodern led Gianni Vattimo (1992: 1) to note that this term is so omnipresent and faddish that it has become almost obligatory to distance oneself from it. But Vattimo, and many others, nevertheless held on. He, alongside such diverse authors as Jean-François Lyotard (1979), Jean Baudrillard (1983), David Harvey (1989) and Fredric Jameson (1984), viewed the postmodern as both a changing attitude and a fundamentally novel historical condition. They focused on the cultural transformations that have taken place in the Western world and assumed, as Andreas Huyssen (1984: 8) summarises, that we are witnessing ‘a noticeable shift in sensibility, practices and discourse formations which distinguishes a postmodern set of assumptions, experiences and propositions from that of a preceding period’. Such shifts are recognised in various globalising tendencies, such as the rapid evolution and global reach of mass media and other information and communication tools.

Dialogue has become one of the most central and intensely debated issues in political and moral philosophy. The implications that these debates have for our understanding of gender and identity are particularly important, though they are neither clear nor uncontested. Feminist scholars have, indeed, been rather ambivalent about the role and nature of dialogue. Dialogue is generally seen as a crucial element of an emancipatory approach, for it can provide women with a voice and thus create the preconditions for engendering a more just social and political order. But many feminist scholars are, at the same time, sceptical about how prevailing approaches to dialogue are conceptualised. They are particularly worried about framing dialogue as an effort to reach a global consensus, for many previous modern attempts to establish universal norms have been based on explicit but linguistically masked value systems that define the male as norm and the female as deviant.

To understand the importance of these linkages between dialogue, identity and gender it is necessary to take a step back and consider how dialogue became such a central philosophical issue in the first place. The history of philosophy is sometimes divided into three general periods: the ontological, the subjectivist, and the linguistic. The ancient philosophies and world religions provided comprehensive accounts of the cosmos in which humans were situated; modern philosophy was born with the ‘discovery’ of subjectivity by thinkers such as Descartes and Kant; while present-day philosophy is defined by ‘the linguistic turn’, a recognition that language practices set out what we can know about ourselves and the world. As with all such categorisations, this one is contentious, and closer examination of individual theorists and traditions reveals a complexity that confounds the threefold division. It does, however, help us understand why dialogue has become such a dominant concept in contemporary political theory.

Introduction

This chapter offers an account of postmodernism. It begins by drawing a distinction between two broad approaches to the postmodern: one that outlines the contours of a new historical period (postmodernity), and another that places emphasis on finding new ways of understanding modern practices of knowledge and politics (postmodernism). The second part of the chapter examines how postmodern ideas entered international relations scholarship, and how the ensuing debates often had a strong polemical tone. Given the complexity of these debates and the limited space available here, my engagement in no way claims to be comprehensive. My objective is limited to identifying some of the key themes in postmodern thought so that interested readers can then explore the issues at stake if they wish to do so.

Before starting off it is useful to acknowledge that defining postmodernism is no easy task. Postmodern scholarship is characterised more by diversity than by a common set of beliefs. Add to this that the postmodern has become a very contentious label which is used less by its advocates and more by polemical critics who fear that embracing postmodern values would throw us into a dangerous nihilist void. But while the contours of the postmodern will always remain elusive and contested, the substantial issues that the respective debates have brought to the fore are important enough to warrant attention.

Introduction

Defining postmodernism is no easy task, for postmodern scholarship is characterised more by diversity than by a common set of beliefs. Add to this that the postmodern has become a very contentious label which is used less by its advocates and more by polemical critics who fear that embracing postmodern values would throw us into a dangerous nihilist void. But while the contours of the postmodern will always remain elusive and contested, the substantial issues that the respective debates have brought to the fore are important enough to warrant attention.

To understand the significance of these debates I begin this chapter by drawing a distinction between two broad approaches to the postmodern: one that outlines the contours of a new historical period (postmodernity) and another that places emphasis on finding new ways of understanding modern practices of knowledge and politics (postmodernism). The second part of the chapter examines how postmodern ideas entered international relations scholarship, focusing in particular on the contribution made by Australian scholars. I highlight both the key features of these contributions and the often polemical nature of the ensuing debates. Given the complexity of these debates and the limited space available here, my engagement in no way claims to be comprehensive. My objective is limited to identifying some of the key authors and issues, so that interested readers can then explore the issues at stake if they wish to do so.

The first part of this book examines the historically constituted dimensions of transversal dissent. The focus rests, in particular, with theories and practices of popular dissent. More specifically, the inquiry investigates how ideas about popular dissent have emerged and evolved during the modern period, and how the political practices that issued from them have come to transgress boundaries of national sovereignty. The main objective of this endeavour is to understand how centuries of practising and thinking about resistance have shaped the nature of dissent and its role in contemporary global politics.

This history of the present, to use Foucault's well-known terminology, takes the form of a genealogy. Its purpose is to illuminate relatively unknown aspects of our past to then illustrate how they have gradually grown into ideas and practices that are more familiar to us. The inquiry begins with a sixteenth-century French text, Étienne de la Boétie's Contr'un, or Anti-One. Despite its relative obscurity today, this text played a significant role in shaping practices of dissent in the early and middle stages of the modern period.

Changes in political dynamics, particularly the advent of globalisation, have transformed the manner in which dissent operates today. Practices of resistance have taken on increasingly transversal dimensions. They ooze into often unrecognized, but nevertheless significant grey zones between domestic and international spheres. They fuse the local and the global.

The first two parts of this book have scrutinised these transformations from a variety of perspectives. The inquiry has focused, in particular, on whether or not a long modern tradition of theorising dissent remains adequate to understand the transversal context within which political dynamics are unfolding today. A reading of the events that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall has demonstrated how instances of popular dissent, such as street demonstrations and protest migration, transgressed the spatial givenness of East German and international politics. While challenging the authoritarian regime and, ultimately, contributing to the dissolution of the Cold War order, these dissident practices were bound by limits too. A comparative analysis of gender relations before and after German unification served to illustrate this point. Despite active participation in the protest movement of 1989, women as a social group were in some ways worse off after unification. The institutionally and discursively entrenched patriarchal system of exclusion remained unaffected by practices of popular dissent.

Manifestations of popular dissent, such as street demonstrations, social movements and civil disobedience, have for long occupied central positions in most political landscapes. The processes through which they exert human agency, however, have recently undergone important transformations. In previous epochs, popular protests had a mostly local nature, that is, their dynamic was one that directly opposed ruler and ruled. By the late twentieth century the nature of dissent has changed fundamentally. The presence of mass media can transform a local act of resistance almost immediately into an event of global significance. Images of a protest march may flicker over television screens worldwide only hours after people have taken to the street. As a result, the protest soon takes on a much larger, transterritorial dimension.

This book theorises the changing nature of dissent in the context of several historical and contemporary case studies. Among them is a detailed scrutiny of the protest forms that contributed to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and, ultimately, to a series of substantial transformations in global politics.