Towards International Relations beyond the mind
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| Author | Dirk Nabers |
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088218812910 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088218812910
Journal of International Political Theory
2020, Vol. 16(1) 89 –105
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088218812910
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Towards International
Relations beyond the mind
Dirk Nabers
Christian-Albrechts-Universitat zu Kiel, Germany
Abstract
The analysis focuses on the centrality of the mind and the mental, and their relationship
with the notion of discourse in International Relations theorizing. While many forms
of discourse theory are linked with anti-materialist idealism, the article develops an
alternative argument, that is, that discourse theory should primarily be situated ‘beyond
the mind’. The analysis starts with a discussion of prominent International Relations
work on ideas and discourse and argues that that a large segment of International
Relations work is insufficiently clear on these crucial notions. I therefore contend
subsequently that this state of the art is reflected in how the philosophy of science
and the philosophy of the mind have been treated in prominent International Relations
work by following a particular version of Cartesian rationalism. It is on this basis that
the article proposes to transcend the antinomies between mind and world as well as
ideas and materiality by advancing a political ontology that stresses a particular concept
of discourse in the final section. On that basis, it will become possible in the conclusion
to summarize a path towards International Relations beyond the mind that engages in
the study of the political more seriously.
Keywords
Discourse, ideas, mind, world
Introduction
The article takes issue with the centrality of the mind in International Relations (IR) theo-
rizing. It queries both the dualism between a knowing subject and an external object, and
the monism of reducing the real to thought. While dualist positions are often questioned by
pointing to the transitive quality of allegedly intransitive natural objects, monist positions
Corresponding author:
Dirk Nabers, Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, Christian-Albrechts-Universitat zu Kiel, Wilhelm-Seelig-Platz
2, 24118 Kiel, Germany.
Email: nabers@ips.uni-kiel.de
812910IPT0010.1177/1755088218812910Journal of International Political TheoryNabers
research-article2018
Article
90 Journal of International Political Theory 16(1)
seem harder to grapple with at least at first sight, for IR specialists as well as ordinary peo-
ple talk about human minds as containing ideas, beliefs, apprehensions, desires, ideas and
knowledge, all of them capable of inducing some kind of social behaviour. However, a
direct causality between the ‘world’ and the mental states that represent this world has been
discounted by numerous philosophers of mind after German idealism, for it implies two
serious problems: the risk of error and the possibility of non-existence. Mental capacities,
given that they are autonomously functioning, might simply be wrong in their representa-
tion of the world, and they might also be about things which do not exist. More crucially,
however, a metaphysical humanism relying on a hierarchically reductionist depiction of
mental explanations that start with human beings, focus on their minds, which are com-
posed of neurons, and which can then be explained by physics, is nowadays often replaced
in the philosophy of mind by a focus on the social as a starting point. The sequence must
then be ‘social-mental-biological-physical’ (Brassier, 2017; Clapin, 2002: 18; Morton,
1997: 117–133) instead of ‘physical-biological-mental-social’. In this case, the question
remains why one should not start with the functioning of the social from the outset if one
wants to understand global politics as a social process.
In this article, I will employ the notion of discourse to develop this argument. While
many forms of discourse theory are linked with anti-materialist idealism, the analysis
puts forward exactly the opposite argument, that is, that discourse theory should primar-
ily be situated beyond the mind. To develop more thoroughly the argument that ideas,
fears or desires – as mental products – do not independently constitute the experienced
(whether observable or not), but are themselves an upshot of discursive variation, the
analysis starts with a discussion of prominent IR work on ideas and discourse in the next
section. While not calling into question that minds exist, the crucial question that sur-
faces is what makes them work (Clapin, 2002: 2; Dupuy, 2009; Fodor, 1989). A hint may
be found in the claim that ‘[t]hought is nothing without something that forces and does
violence to it. More important than thought, there is “what leads to thought”’ (Deleuze,
2000: 61). This abstract thing that leads to thought, is precisely what I call discourse. I
will show that a large segment of IR work is insufficiently clear on this crucial notion.
Ideas and discourse are all too often employed coterminously, which makes the use of
discourse redundant and superfluous. I therefore contend subsequently that this strange
state of the art is reflected in how the philosophy of science and the philosophy of the
mind have been treated in prominent IR work, epitomized in the work of Patrick Thaddeus
Jackson and Alexander Wendt, by following a particular version of Cartesian rational-
ism. Unsurprisingly, the focus on the mind and on ideas as products of the mental fore-
closes an engagement with discourse as an ontological level beyond the mind. It is on
this basis that the article proposes to transcend the dichotomies between mind and world
as well as ideas and materiality by advancing a political ontology that stresses a post-
structuralist concept of discourse in the final section. Although the disjointedness of the
various theoretical strands dubbed ‘poststructuralist’ leads many of its alleged advocates
to reject the label, the following analysis will develop a definition that works neither at
the level of the ‘real’, nor at the level of the ‘imaginary’, but requires a third order that
produces the unity of a theoretical object. This part of the argument is greatly indebted to
the work of the late political theorist Ernesto Laclau and his co-authored work with
Chantal Mouffe. In thoroughly engaging their argument, it will become possible in the
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