Genealogy as critique in International Relations: Beyond the hermeneutics of baseless suspicion
| Author | Stefan Borg |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
| Published date | 01 February 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088217707225 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088217707225
Journal of International Political Theory
2018, Vol. 14(1) 41 –59
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088217707225
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Genealogy as critique in
International Relations:
Beyond the hermeneutics
of baseless suspicion
Stefan Borg
Stockholm University, Sweden
Abstract
This article engages genealogy as a form of critique in International Relations. It demonstrates
that Foucault’s genealogy has had an important, albeit hitherto unexamined, impact on
how critique is understood in post-structuralist International Relations. Specifically, the
article argues that a genealogical disposition tends to inscribe violence as foundational to
the human condition, and genealogically informed empirical applications in International
Relations risk reproducing this gesture. In the first part, the article returns to the first
generation of post-structuralist International Relations and also examines examples of
contemporary scholarship using frameworks of governmentality and biopolitics. The
second part of the article traces the problem of ontologically inscribing violence back
to Foucault’s genealogical phase. Drawing on the work of John Milbank, the article then
contrasts a genealogical ontology of violence with one that refuses violence as foundational.
The article ends by arguing that empirical scholarship drawing on governmentality and
biopolitics should be careful not to read the genealogical ontology of violence into their
analyses of global political life.
Keywords
Foucault, genealogy, Milbank, ontology, post-structuralism, violence
Introduction
The work of Michel Foucault has had an enormous impact on the emergence and devel-
opment of critical work in International Relations (IR). There is now a considerable
amount of studies that employs a number of Foucauldian inspired concepts and methods,
Corresponding author:
Stefan Borg, Department of Economic History, Stockholm University, 104 05 Stockholm, Sweden.
Email: stefan.borg@ekohist.su.se
707225IPT0010.1177/1755088217707225Journal of International Political TheoryBorg
research-article2017
Article
42 Journal of International Political Theory 14(1)
including governmentality, biopolitics, and discourse analysis, to examine various
aspects of global political life (Fournier, 2012). To be sure, Foucault’s legacy in IR has
been hotly disputed (e.g. Shani and Chandler, 2010) and Foucauldian IR critically
engaged from a number of directions. For instance, Jan Selby (2007) and Jonathan
Joseph (2010) have emphasized the difficulties involved in “scaling up” Foucault’s work
without considering the ontological specificities of the international domain, which they
argue that scholarship seeking to apply governmentality onto the international often fails
to do. Both Selby and Joseph have argued for complementing governmentality-inspired
power analysis by turning to the Marxist tradition for an account of the specific dynamics
of the international largely missing in, but not incompatible with, Foucault’s work. Yet,
there is an important question that has not yet received the critical scrutiny it arguably
deserves: What constitutes a genuinely critical Foucauldian disposition toward the study
of global politics? Due to Foucault’s vast influence, this question goes to the very heart
of what it entails to do critical work in IR.
This article examines the critical kernel in Foucault’s writings as it pertains to a
substantial share of Foucauldian IR, a kernel to which I refer as the genealogical dis-
position. I demonstrate that Foucault’s genealogy has had an important, albeit hitherto
unexamined, impact on how critique is understood in post-structuralist IR. In other
words, genealogy has not only been understood as a method for conducting histori-
cally oriented investigations of central concepts in IR but also as a generalized critical
disposition to global politics. As a generalized critical disposition, however, geneal-
ogy does not come without its problems. Genealogically informed IR, I demonstrate,
has a peculiar tendency to inscribe violence as foundational to the realm of interna-
tional politics. It should from the outset be emphasized that my critique is in no way
intended as a critique of Foucauldian IR tout court. Contemporary Foucauldian IR is
far too multifaceted and nuanced to allow for such a critique—in many ways reflect-
ing the complexity of Foucault’s work itself. Instead, this article explores what is at
stake in this distinctive and hitherto unexamined tendency in certain Foucauldian-
informed IR.
To do so, I return to Foucault’s writings and interrogate the genealogical disposition,
which may be understood as the critical kernel in his writings, notwithstanding, as we
shall see, of the extent to which he ever fully embraced this disposition himself. As
Martin Saar (2002) has argued, Foucault’s genealogy has three major aspects to it: a
mode of writing history, a form of critique, and a certain style of writing. I will focus on
the second aspect, namely genealogy understood as a certain form of critique. Here, I
demonstrate that the genealogical disposition tends to inscribe violence as foundational
to social relations. In laying bare the assumptions of genealogy, I point to a radical alter-
native to the ontological inscription of violence. Drawing upon the work of John Milbank
(2006), I contrast Foucault’s genealogical commitment to a differential ontology and an
absolute historicism of irreducible, agonistic, and conflictual differences-as-violence,
with an ontology which posits an underlying harmonic peace that does not “depend upon
the reduction to the self-identical, but is the sociality of harmonious difference” (2006:
5). The purpose of doing so is not to offer a full-scale counter alternative for IR scholar-
ship, which goes far beyond the scope of this article. Nor is my intention that the reader
should necessarily embrace Milbank’s alternative. Instead, my purpose is to situate
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