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From The Twenty Years’ Crisis to Theory of International Politics: a rhizomatic reading of realism

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Abstract

The idea behind this article is to employ a series of Deleuzo-Guattarian principles, primarily the concept of the rhizome, to the articulation and development of Realism as a theory of IR. The article makes the claim that using rhizomatics allows those interested in Realism to reconceptualise the relationship between Realism and Neorealism. The article argues that the publication of The Twenty Years’ Crisis by E.H. Carr and Theory of International Politics by Ken Waltz represent two ‘intense’ moments in the descent of Realism. The article argues that despite the attempted ‘territorialisation’ of Realism into the static, paradigmatic Neorealism, Realism remains a heterogeneous set of concepts. The territorialisation process has met with some resistance; for example, just as Waltz was trying to territorialise Realism, his theory was being deterritorialised by Richard Ashley. The article also examines James Der Derian's attempt to save realism by deconstructing it, advocating an ‘affirmative leap into the imaginary’. The article concludes that despite the Neorealist moment, attempts to splice together constructivism and realism provide evidence that Realism remains mutative, heterogeneous, open and vital.

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Notes

  1. Deleuze makes the extent to which language is political clear in his discussion of Godard's Six Times Two: ‘We should take him quite literally when Godard says children are political prisoners. Language is a system of instructions rather than a means of conveying information’ (Deleuze 1995b: 41).

  2. See the interesting discussion of nomadology, nomad and state science in Muecke (2001: 1164–81).

  3. This expression is taken from the title of an interesting collection of essays A Shock to Thought: Expression after Deleuze and Guattari (Massumi 2002).

  4. A good treatment of the Body without Organs and the role it plays in Deleuze and Guattari's work is Paton (2001: 1092ff). Another useful, brief explanation can be found in Parr (2005: 32–4).

  5. Joyce's experimental texts, for example, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, are typified by the use of strange compound words often derived from a number of different languages or dialects. Although the words make no sense in themselves, in the context of both the reader's exposure to languages, geographies, mythologies and history, in addition to the wider unity inherent in the use of language itself, the words make sense in their immediate context, for example, a word such as ‘Dyoublong’ in Finnegans Wake is intelligible as the geographical ‘Dublin’, the question ‘Do you belong?’ and also, perhaps in the West of Ireland dialect, ‘Do you be long?’ for example, ‘do you be long waiting for the bus?’

  6. Paton claims that the aim is that the book is no longer an image of the world, but rather that the rhizome-book is an ‘assemblage connected to parts of it’ (Paton 2001: 1096). I think that it is both image of a fragmenting world and an assemblage connected to parts of it.

  7. The eternal, but mutable, nature of concepts is attested as follows: ‘concepts … have their own way of not dying while remaining subject to constraints of renewal, replacement, and mutation’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 8). For the novelty of Deleuze's interpretation of the concept, see André Pierre Colombat (2001: 213ff).

  8. Paton puts this relationship in the context of the Body without Organs: ‘We must assume that we are always and invariably caught up on both planes at once; caught up in the perpetual and violent combat between the plane of consistence which liberates and intensifies the body without organs, and those surfaces of stratification which block or reduce it’ (Paton 2001: 1093).

  9. In Dialogues II, Deleuze (2006: 99) argues that the two planes associated with the emergence of arborescent and rhizomatic forms, the plane of organization and the plane of consistence, are mutually dependent, ‘there is no dualism between the two planes of transcendent organization and immanent consistence: indeed it is from the forms and subjects of the first plane that the second constantly tears the particles between which there are no longer relationships of speed and slowness, and it is also on the plane of immanence that the other arises, working in it to block movements, fix affects, organize forms and subjects’.

  10. Deleuze develops this theme elsewhere: ‘Whether they’re real or imagined, animate or inanimate, you have to form your mediators. It's a series. If you’re not in some series, even a completely imaginary one, you’re lost. I need my mediators to express myself, and they’d never express themselves without me: you’re always working in a group, even when you seem to be on your own. And still more when it's apparent: Felix Guattari and I are one another's mediators’ (Deleuze 1995e: 125).

  11. ‘Concepts are not waiting for us ready-made, like heavenly bodies. There is no heaven for concepts. They must be invented, fabricated, or rather created and would be nothing without their creator's signature’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 5).

  12. Compare with Deleuze's contrast of Archimedean and Euclidean geometry (Deleuze 2006: 106).

  13. Among other examples, Carr observes, ‘A bare catalogue, culled from the speeches of British statesmen, of the services which British belligerency was rendering to humanity would fill many pages’ (Carr 2001: 72).

  14. André Pierre Colombat identifies as one of the features of the Body without Organs that it ‘is in constant metamorphosis, occupying the in between space’ (Colombat 1991: 14).

  15. ‘… Philosophy as a whole is like a tree whose roots are metaphysics whose trunk is physics, and whose branches, which issue from this trunk, are all the other sciences’ (René Descartes, cited in Paton 2001: 1094).

  16. Waltz expresses his method as one of ‘isolating’ realms of inquiry (Waltz 1990: 26).

  17. Post-1989 writings of Waltz in which he defends his position include Waltz (1993a, 1993b, 1997, 2000).

  18. See Ashley's extended quote from Morgenthau about the ‘totalitarian state of mind’ and its similarity to the Neorealist project (Ashley 1986: 289). For a parallel argument about the impoverishment of the discipline of architecture by modernist totalitarian thought and its mantras, see Kisho Kurokawa (2001: 1029).

  19. ‘AND doesn’t just upset all relations, it upsets being, the verb … a creative stammering, a foreign use of language, as opposed to a conformist and dominant use based on the verb to be’ (Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 25). See also Deleuze (1995b: 45).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following: The British Academy for providing financial support to enable me to attend the 2007 International Studies Association conference in Chicago; Deborah Snow for reading and commenting on the text of the article; Earl Gammon and Julian Reid for initiating and organising this project.

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Molloy, S. From The Twenty Years’ Crisis to Theory of International Politics: a rhizomatic reading of realism. J Int Relat Dev 13, 378–404 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2010.15

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