The Discursive Turn Arrives in Turtle Bay: The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons’ Operationalization of Critical IR Theories
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12343 |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | Matthew Bolton,Elizabeth Minor |
The Discursive Turn Arrives in Turtle Bay: The
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear
Weapons’Operationalization of Critical IR
Theories
Matthew Bolton
Pace University, New York, USA
Elizabeth Minor
Article 36, London, UK
Abstract
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has aimed to reenergize global civil society activism on
nuclear weapons through a discursive strategy, borrowing self-consciously from critical and post-positivist international rela-
tions (IR) theories. ICAN aims to generate a new disarmament discourse that establishes nuclear weapons as inherently inhu-
mane. Alongside the state-led Humanitarian Initiative, ICAN campaigners are helping to reshape the conversation at certain
international meetings on nuclear weapons. They have helped to contest the dominance of national security narratives and
force even the nuclear-armed states to address the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. In supporting a reframing
of the conversation, they have opened nuclear disarmament policy making to new voices. However, as with the transmission
of many ideas from one arena to another –in this case from academia to global policy making forums –there is a translation
process as ICAN campaigners selectively adopt from post-positivist IR to meet their political goals. It is possible that this trans-
lation of critical theorizing into the setting of multilateral forums has necessitated reducing the potency of the disruptive
critique of the original ideas.
Seated at the head of a long table in a non-descript room,
Ray Acheson elaborated a critical analysis of diplomatic dis-
course on nuclear weapons. The preceding presenter, Pro-
fessor Nobou Hayashi, had provided a deontological critique
of the consequentialist justifications of nuclear deterrence.
Making disarmament a possibility, said Acheson, requires
‘problematizing’deterrence discourse and getting ‘out of
the security framework which ensures that policy decisions
are based on threat and fear and violence.’Policy makers
should adopt an emerging ‘humanitarian discourse’, using
‘human-centered rather than a state-centered’language to
challenge unexamined ‘assumptions’and talk explicitly
about what nuclear weapons ‘do to human bodies.’This dis-
cursive shift would ‘empower other states’marginalized by
traditional nuclear weapons diplomacy and enable new
kinds of action. Acheson observed that already ‘resistance to
this new discourse is fierce’from nuclear-armed and depen-
dent states, playing out ‘in a gendered discourse of rational-
ity and emotion’, in which the ‘reasonable, realistic,
pragmatic’status quo is contrasted with ‘weak’,‘irrational
and irresponsible’disarmament. Acheson called on her audi-
ence to challenge ‘the discursive equation of nuclear weap-
ons with masculine strength’by framing disarmament as
‘rational, just and moral.’
To the academic audience of this journal, the preceding
scene probably sounds familiar, like a doctoral seminar or a
faculty research talk. However, this presentation on the gen-
dered discourse of nuclear weapons states was held at a
side event on nuclear ethics at the United Nations head-
quarters in Turtle Bay, New York City, during the 2015
Review Conference (RevCon) of the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT). While there were a few academics in the
packed room, most attendees were diplomats and NGO
advocates. The ‘discursive turn’or ‘cultural turn’in the
humanities and social sciences (Jameson, 1998; Davies and
Davies, 2007) was shaped by academics considered outcasts
and dissidents. Within international relations (IR), discursive
and critical theories are beginning to have an impact on the
scholarly conversation (e.g. Edkins, 1999; Milliken, 1999; Lin-
klater, 2007; Der Derian, 2008), though are often marginal-
ized in undergraduate introductory courses. In Acheson’s
presentation, however, we were hearing the language of
discourse analysis at the very ‘center’of power politics on a
topic that has long been seen as the totem of dominant,
‘realist’discourse: nuclear weapons.
Acheson’s line of argumentation represents the emer-
gence of an explicitly and self-consciously discursive strat-
egy to change the way nuclear weapons are discussed in
Global Policy (2016) 7:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12343 ©2016 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 7 . Issue 3 . September 2016 385
Special Section Article
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