The reflexive potential of silence: Emotions, the ‘everyday’ and ethical international relations
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088219830119 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Author | Amanda Russell Beattie |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088219830119
Journal of International Political Theory
2019, Vol. 15(2) 229 –245
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1755088219830119
journals.sagepub.com/home/ipt
The reflexive potential
of silence: Emotions, the
‘everyday’ and ethical
international relations
Amanda Russell Beattie
Aston University, UK
Abstract
This article argues on behalf of an autoethnographic methodology as one, but not the only,
method suited to the excavation of the emotions of everyday international relations. I
suggest, drawing on my own lived experiences of writing the Life in the United Kingdom
Test specifically, and being ordered deported from the United Kingdom more broadly,
that a reflexive practice informed by silence allows scholars to attend to the otherwise
discounted and excluded forms of emotional knowledge. As my story unfolds, and the
transformative potential of trauma is rehearsed, the possibility of excavating otherwise
silenced emotions, guided by an affective empathy, comes to the fore. I suggest, building
on my own lived experience, that as the researcher cum agent embraces this position,
discounted and discarded stories are revisited. In so doing I present a piece of evocative
autoethnography in and of itself while demonstrating the role that emotions can play in
the construction of everyday practices of International Relations.
Keywords
Autoethnography, emotions, international relations, reflexivity, the everyday
Introduction
I begin this article with a confession. (Not a confession as interrogated by Foucault
(1998), but a personal avowal of a goal I seek to achieve.) Simply put, I no longer want
to do damage to others. I am not a physically violent person. Violence, however, is not
always physical. It can be internal, to one’s self, and it can be structural as well. There
are wide-ranging interpretations of what constitutes a violent act. I focus on the internal
personal experience, always mindful of an institutional influence, because I believe this
Corresponding author:
Amanda Russell Beattie, Department of Politics and International Relations, School of Languages & Social
Sciences, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK.
Email: a.r.beattie@aston.ac.uk
830119IPT0010.1177/1755088219830119Journal of International Political TheoryBeattie
research-article2019
Article
230 Journal of International Political Theory 15(2)
is the form of violence that I am guilty of. Perhaps I am no longer party to this experi-
ence, I do not know for sure. It is this uncertainty, in my own beliefs, and my own
agency, that has led me to work on the ensuing ideas of silence that shape this article. I
suggest, aware of my confessional act, that silence as an eloquent rendering of ethical
reflexivity and moral agency might be a place to continue my ongoing negotiation of
being an academic seeking accountability in the research that I perform while generat-
ing a space for surrender and vulnerability to the relationships that emerge within the
research journey. More broadly, I suggest that my autoethnographic reflections provide
a particular approach to the theorisation of the politics of everyday emotions in
International Relations (IR). As my story unfolds, and the transformative potential of
trauma is rehearsed, the possibility of excavating otherwise silenced emotions, guided
by an affective empathy, comes to the fore. I suggest, building on my own lived experi-
ence, that as the researcher cum agent embraces this position, discounted and discarded
stories are revisited. This process, I contend, excavates emotional qualities that may
hitherto remain unacknowledged.
I experienced what Ellis (2004) calls ‘a knock’. At that moment in time, I didn’t rec-
ognise it for what it was – a shattering of my world, a loss of faith; what I now label
trauma. In 2004 I found myself off balance, reeling from a letter from the U.K. govern-
ment stating, in no uncertain terms, yet in decidedly legal jargon, that I was being
deported from the United Kingdom. It is a well-rehearsed story (see Beattie 2014a,
2014b, 2014c, 2015) in which, among other things, I embraced a form of personal self-
reflexivity and professional autoethnography to negotiate what had happened to me. The
emotional turmoil surrounding this lived experience was more than I could negotiate on
my own, and I have turned to professionals to help me re-story my own identity and my
position in the world. This personal venture now informs my professional activities
which I rehearse herein to wonder what intermingling role silence and reflexivity might
offer those engaged in the task of knowledge creation. I offer a subjective, personal,
mode of being and knowing, at odds with universal, top-down prescriptions, and reflec-
tive of the ideas and arguments put forward by Naumes (2015).
Naumes (2015) poignantly writes of the violence of the research process. She sug-
gests that authors vigorously deny their personal affiliation to the ideas they are working
on in an elusive quest for objectivity. Drawing on Doty (2004) she suggests that authors
silence themselves in the production of knowledge adopting a sterile voice and thereby
denying the role of embodiment and positionality in the construction of knowledge. She
writes,
When IR scholars write from a place that buries the author, we commit violence not only
against ourselves as murdered authors, but also because of the silence we institute around
explaining our situatedness. Although I contest the notion of objectivity outright, we certainly
are not and cannot be objective analysts of the situations on which we research and write. Most
of us have chosen our niche topics of study for personal reasons, which begs the question: how
do our lived experiences change what and the way in which we research? (Naumes, 2015: 827)
As I queried my ‘knock’ I discovered I was not alone. A growing number of scholars
attuned to the methods of critical reflexivity suggest they too have negotiated similar
crises (see Dauphinee, 2015; Steele, 2015). Yet, I was also learning, to speak of this
To continue reading
Request your trial