Who speaks? Discourse, the subject and the study of identity in international politics

• Published in: European journal of international relations Vol. 17; no. 2; pp. 327 - 350
• Main Author: Epstein, Charlotte
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.06.2011; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Constructivism; Criticism; Discourse; Discourse Analysis; Epistemological doctrines; Fallacies; Geopolitics; Hunting; Identity; Identity Politics; International politics; International Relations; Lacan, Jacques; Political Discourse; Post-structuralism; Psychology; Self Concept; Social Constructionism; Social theories; Social theory; State; Subjectivity; Travel; Whales & whaling; Whaling; whaling; Jacques Lacan; psychology; subject-position; constructivism; psychoanalytic theory; social theory; levels of analysis; post-structuralism; discourse
• ISSN: 1354-0661; 1460-3713
• DOI: 10.1177/1354066109350055

This article aims to show the theoretical added value of focussing on discourse to study identity in international relations (IR). I argue that the discourse approach offers a more theoretically parsimonious and empirically grounded way of studying identity than approaches developed in the wake of both constructivism and the broader ‘psychological turn’. My starting point is a critique of the discipline’s understanding of the ‘self’ uncritically borrowed from psychology. Jacques Lacan’s ‘speaking subject’ offers instead a non-essentialist basis for theorizing about identity that has been largely overlooked. To tailor these insights to concerns specific to the discipline I then flesh out the distinction between subject-positions and subjectivities. This crucial distinction is what enables the discourse approach to travel the different levels of analyses, from the individual to the state, in a way that steers clear of the field’s fallacy of composition, which has been perpetuated by the assumption that what applies to individuals applies to states as well. Discourse thus offers a way of studying state identities without presuming that the state has a self. I illustrate this empirically with regards to the international politics of whaling.