Book Review: Jenny Edkins, Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political Back In (London: Lynne Rienner, 1999, 170 pp., £39.95 hbk.)
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290030915 |
| Author | Hakan Seckinelgin |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Millennium
952
too much and need a new policy now. Accordingly, what policies should they
choose? Containme nt or engagement ? If the aut hor suggests the necessit y of
shifting from the current policy to one of containment, he should explain the
reasons why and how suc h a p olicy is needed. Nevertheless, Eberstadt’s work
proves useful for anyo ne interested in the North Ko rean issue and provide s a timely
important discussion of the subject.
JAEHO HWANG
Jaeho Hwang is a Research Student in the Department of International Relations
at the London School of Economics and Political Science
Jenny Edkins, Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the
Political Back In (London: Lynne Rienner, 1999, 170 pp., £39.95 hbk.).
Poststructuralism and International Relations aims at bring ing discussion s of the
concept o f ‘the politica l’ into t he theoretical deba te within Internati onal Relations.
It suggests th at ‘realignme nt and re-exa mination of t he subjec tivity’ would
challenge Inte rnational Relations as it rea ssesses ‘“the politic al” itself’ (p. xi). This
aim is approached by looking at mainly three important philosophical traditions:
poststructu ralist, dec onstructivist, and p sychoanalytical, focusing particularl y on
the writings of M ichel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, J acques Lacan, and Slavoj i ek.
Thus, follows a d iscussion of the possibility of a rticulating a perspec tive which
thinks about the question of the political.
In t he first chapter, Edkin s focuses o n the d ifferentiation bet ween ‘politics and
the po litical’. The former refers to ‘depoliticised’ and normalised acti vities within
given social structures, while ‘th e political’ refers to the overarchin g social
framework in which politics takes place and in which other social spheres are
delineated . The central issues of the book—depolit icisation, sovereignty, a nd
subjectivi ty—are used to b ring about the questio n of the poli tical in terms of ‘time,
essence, and lan guage’.
In chapter two, the reader is introduced to four decentrings of the Enlightenment
subject, which Edkins locates in the Cartesian subjectivity. She analyses differe nt
challenge s from a variety of positi ons: linguistic (Saussu re), Unconscio us
(Sigmund Freud), Feminist (Luce Irigiray), and soc ial (Karl Marx). These positio ns
are then develo ped from the perspectives of Foucault , Derrida, Lacan, and ie k.
Chapter t hree dea ls with Foucaul t’s writing s and the way in which he
problematise s the Enlightenme nt subject. Edkins demonstrates the possibility of
questioning, and thus denaturalising, the relationship between an assigned subject
position and po litics, whereby the subject is repoliti cised along with the knowledge
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