TY - JOUR
AU - Laura, Zanotti
AB - Isn’t the most general of political problems the problem of truth? (Foucault 1991, 82) Perhaps, the reason why my work irritates people is precisely the fact that I’m not interested in constructing a new schema, or in validating one that already exists. Perhaps it’s because my objective isn’t to propose a global principle for analyzing society. (Foucault 1991, 85) To us nature is more diverse and interesting than any god, and the body is more layered, rich, and creative than the soul. Most immanent naturalists support an ethic in which visceral attachment to life and the world provides the preliminary soil from which commitment to more generous identifications, responsibilities, and connections might be cultivated. (Connolly 2002, 85) Politics is the terrain of competing ontologies. Politics is about competing visions of how the world is and how it should be. Every ontology is political. If there were no ontological differences there would be no politics. (Wight 2006, 2) Introduction The status of International Relations (IR) theory and its relevance for politics and ethics is the topic of an ongoing debate in the discipline.1 I argue that a reflection on IR ontologies and epistemologies is central in this regard. Epistemological positions have a claim on the way we believe we can achieve knowledge, and ontological commitments have a claim on the nature of “what is out there.” They shape how we imagine the world is and the way we fit in it. As Foucault (1991) has argued, the problem of truth is deeply political. The notion of “truth” encompasses both ontological and epistemological trajectories. The way we think about these two trajectories is central to devising possibilities for political agency and the way we justify our actions. The relevance of ontological commitments for epistemology and methodology in IR has been the subject of a growing debate since the publication of Jackson’s (2011) book. In the meantime, IR scholars (Amoureux 2016; Connolly 2013; Bleiker 2003; Steele 2010) as well as feminist theorists (Tanesini 2004; O’Connor 2008; Robinson 2011) have advocated for practically rooted justifications of political actions and ethical choices. However, the implications of ontological starting points for ethics and political agency have yet remained underexplored. In this article, I inquire how ontological and epistemological positions have a bearing upon the way we understand agency and validate ethical and political decisions. More specifically, I take up Wendt’s (2015) and Kurki’s (2008) exhortation to undertake a reflection on the possible political and ethical implications of embracing an ontology and epistemology of entanglement and nonlinear conceptualizations of causality. I argue that positions which focus on the making of things, differently from those that focus on discovering the properties of entities (what I call atomistic) or the organizing principles of the whole (what I call structuralist-substantialist), pave the way for a reconfiguration of ethics as a method or an attitude that embraces uncertainty. I question the soundness of deontological theories that, following Kant, adopt a view of ethics as grounded upon universalizable laws, on which any and all reasonable beings could act at the same time, regardless of circumstances. Instead, I embrace a conceptualization of political agency as a practical engagement, and (following Derrida 1992) of ethics as a decision that exceeds the “law.” Feminist realist philosopher of science Karen Barad argued that in a universe of entanglements and emergences, “what is” comes to being through processes of intra-action (Barad 2007).2 Given this ontological horizon, I argue that it may be possible to rethink agency in a way that does not conceptualize it as “power” or as an “all or nothing” endeavor that (short of falling into irrelevance) must lead to changing whatever is thought to be the organizing principle of “the structure.” As entangled subjects, we may be able to induce change while not being able to over-determine it. In building my argument, I rely upon my previous critique of structuralist-substantialism (Zanotti 2013, 2015) and upon a growing body of scholarship (in IR and beyond) on ontology, causality, and politics. Wight (2006) and Joseph (Wight and Joseph, 2010) underscored the deeply political nature of ontological claims and the inseparability of ontological and epistemological assumptions. Patomäki (2002) specifically explored the relevance of such reflections for questioning universal normativity as the main ground for the justification of international politics. Wendt’s (2015) recently published book on quantum brain and Kurki’s (2008) work on causation in IR challenged the constraints imposed by prevalent conceptualizations of causality for research programs in social sciences. Sociologists such as Archer (1995, 2000) and Donati (2011) studied the emergent and morphogenetic properties of the social; Coole and Frost (2010) explored the implications of new materialism for agency and politics; Kratochwil (2008) advocated thinking of causality in social sciences as a cluster of conditions coming together under specific circumstances rather than linear cause-effect relations. In the meantime, Der Derian (2000) supported embracing quantum conceptualizations of reality as well as adopting a theoretical framework (which he calls virtual theory) that “seeks to understand how new technologies create the effects of reality, but it also begins with the premise…that reality has always been inflected by the virtual” (Der Derian 2000, 786–87). I start my reflection by critically addressing structural-substantialist positions in IR and by exploring some of the conservative political effects they entail. Next, I engage with critical realism to assess the bearing of ontological and epistemological positions on the agent-structure debate. Subsequently, I address the ontology of entanglement proposed by Wendt (2015) and Barad (2007), highlighting its relevance for rethinking ethics. I develop my argument by putting in conversation Connolly (2002, 2013) and Foucault (1991). I conclude that taken together, and notwithstanding the remarkable differences, these scholars started from the assumption of connectedness and put practices at the center of their reflection on political agency. In this framework, abstract principles may not offer the best guidelines for justifying ethical decisions. Furthermore, political agency is not stifled by assumptions about the stabilizing power of structures or validated only if aimed at establishing a totalizing alternative order.3 Experimentation, creativity, and thoughtful micropolitical interventions, while not necessarily bringing about structural reversals and totalizing alternative social orders, may contribute to important political transformations. Finally, ethical and political decisions must include competent assessments of the means for action and of what is possible under specific circumstances, as well as gauge the political consequences and distributional effects of such decisions. Doing Social Sciences as if Universals Did Not Exist: Questioning Substantialist-Structuralism The long-standing debate in IR regarding the connection between critical theory, ontologies, and epistemologies testifies to the imbrication of onto-epistemological assumptions and possibilities of devising political agency. In the 1980s, Cox (1986) and Ashley (1986) critiqued Waltz’s neorealist theory, exposing the limitations of social sciences mimicking the positivist method. Cox and Ashley criticized positions that contain the following characteristics: consider parsimony the best indicator of theoretical validity; start from assumptions regarding entities and their qualities; aspire to find stable principles for devising interactions among entities; aim at explaining recurrent patterns more than change; embrace, at least at the aspirational level, the idea of unity of knowledge and methods across disciplinary lines; and rely upon representationalist conceptualizations of knowledge that consider truth as a progressively accurate reflection of what is out there. This way of theorizing in social sciences—and in IR especially—is conducive, for Ashley (1986) and Cox (1986), to gross oversimplifications of complex phenomena. The likely political consequence is the ideological reinforcement of contingent social and political configurations that are represented as natural. The central provocations of the Cox, Ashley, and Waltz debate are still relevant today. In embracing Cox’s holistic approach, Kurki (2008) questioned the validity of Waltz’s two central ontological assumptions, that is, “the notion of international system and state” (Kurki 2008, 247, emphasis in original), and instead advocated for exploring “the complex ways in which the social relations of the interstate system are embedded in wider global social relations” (Kurki 2008, 258). More broadly, Kurki follows Cox and Ashley in criticizing analytical approaches that reduce complex social phenomena to “regularity analysis.” In fact, for Kurki, by focusing on “variables and their relations these approaches reproduce an atomistic ontology that represent social phenomena as quantifiable and predictable” (Kurki 2008).4Kurki (2008) argued that Humean conceptions of causation entail that “casual relations are tied to regular patterns of occurrences,” and that science is about studying such regularities; that such regularities are observable and (at least in probabilistic terms) deterministic; and that causes are “efficient causes that push and pull” (Kurki 2008, 6). She advocated challenging these conceptualizations in two respects; first, by “opening up the ontological aspect of the problem of causation” and, second, by disentangling the “notion of cause from the notion of efficient cause” (Kurki 2008, 10). The problem of causation, as Kurki made evident, is deeply embedded with ontological assumptions and has important implications for how we see the world. Elsewhere I have explored the conservative political effects of explaining the world in terms of overarching organizing principles and oversimplified abstractions. I have argued that ontological substantialism straddles IR schools of thought, including neorealism, neoliberalism, post-Marxisms, and even versions of postmodernism (Zanotti 2013). Ontological substantialism has “atomistic” and “structural” versions. Atomistic versions of ontological substantialism explain what happens based upon entities’ attributes, while structural versions do so based upon postulated organizing principles of the whole. My critical argument here focuses on structural-substantialism. While favoring divergent political aspirations and agendas, structural-substantialist positions share an ontology that, similarly to atomistic versions, posits agents as monads endowed with substantial characteristics and qualities. However, unlike atomistic positions, which rely on monads’ attributes, structural substantialism explains the behavior of entities through a few overarching principles that regulate the “system.” The organizing principle of choice may vary; that is, Anarchy for Waltz (1979), Empire for Hardt and Negri (2000), or the Liberal Biopolitical order for Agamben (1998). However, regardless of political affiliation or school of thought, that principle is reified as an inescapable deterministic factor that defines the behavior of actors and shapes the outcomes of their deeds. In fact, Kurki (2008) noted, even Wallerstein’s version of Marxism “has a a-historicist and mono causal connotations, and because of his concentration on the ‘abstract structure of capitalism, does not necessarily provide nuanced explanation of specific contexts” (Kurki 2008, 258). In a similar vein, Joseph (2010) is critical in his discussion of oversimplified versions of Marxism that offer explanations of all that happens in society along the lines of a single logic deriving from the capitalist mode of production. While Marxism for Joseph still provides a valid framework for understanding social relations, it needs to develop a “sufficiently complex, differentiated, stratified and emergent conception of the international” (Joseph 2010, 67). To summarize, in mono-causal, structural-substantialist frameworks, the structure tends to reproduce its stability, thus reorienting actors’ political engagements toward preserving the status quo. The ways out of the determinism of this script are few. Short of changing the organizing principle of the system, as a conservative structural-substantialist like Waltz would have it; totally withdrawing from the “script” of power, as Prozorov (2007), who embraces Agamben, suggested; or constituting the “multitude as one” to fight the mighty “Empire,” as Hardt and Negri (2000) would put it, agents can do very little to change “what is” (Zanotti 2013). In fact, regardless of their stated political preferences, these positions are methodologically conservative. By emphasizing the stabilizing effects of the structure, they stifle political imagination and limit options for action. In structuralist frameworks, only changes in the organizing principle of the structure (be it anarchy or capitalism) may achieve social change. Other forms of agency by and large end up reinforcing what the organizing principle of the extant order is. Politically, this brand of structuralism may nurture either a resignation to the status quo or, alternatively, “all or nothing” totalizing and violent forms of political action that are imagined as steering history toward a given teleology and an immanent alternative social order. The debate outlined above centers around a difference in ontological and epistemological orientation between methods of inquiry that embrace substantialism and those that do not. Substantialist approaches search for regularities and explain social dynamics through overarching principles that govern relations of “things.” Non-substantialist approaches focus on unsettling taken-for-granted conceptualizations of “reality,” diagnosing how “what is” comes into being, and discovering differences instead of “sameness.” The latter kind of scholarship is methodologically attuned with Foucault’s preference for ways of doing social sciences “starting from the decision that universals do not exist” (Foucault 2008a, 3). It aims at understanding how “what is” is formed and shaped through partially open processes, instead of ascertaining the “true nature” of “what is” or the overarching laws of the whole. Foucault actually describes his scholarly project as a quest for how social entities are formed in practices. The quotation that follows explains this position: For my part, I would like to…show how certain things—state and society, sovereign and subjects, etcetera, were actually able to be formed, and the status of which should obviously be questioned. In other words, instead of deducing concrete phenomena from universals, or instead of starting with universals as an obligatory grid of intelligibility for certain concrete practices, I would like to start with these concrete practices and, as it were,pass these universals through the grids of these practices. (Foucault 2008a, 3) This focus on practices is essential to understanding Foucault’s position on structuralism.5 In Foucault’s words, “as soon as one leaves human practices aside, considering only structures and rules of constraint, it is obvious that one is again missing history” (Foucault 1998, 422). In taking Dumezil’s work as an example, Foucault argues that rather than proceeding from categorization and entities (such as, say, the history of Spain and America), the historian should start from exploring documents. “The object of historical research is to establish, on the basis of these documents, a certain number of relations” (Foucault 1998, 427). Historical inquiries should not focus on “time” and “past” but on “change” and “event” (Foucault 1998, 423, emphasis in original). The point of such inquiries is in fact to explore “the document with a view to the system of its internal and external relations” (Foucault 1998, 430), so as to “grasp both the discontinuities of events and the transformation of societies” (Foucault 1998, 431). Foucault’s brand of structuralism does not assume entities endowed with immutable qualities, or organizing principles that inevitably shape historical trends. It is instead a method of inquiry aimed at understanding how historically social objects are formed. In fact, Foucault argues, “an analysis is structural when it studies a transformable system and the conditions under which its transformations are carried out” (Foucault 1998, 426). Foucault calls this way of inquiry “eventalization.” Eventalization aims at uncovering, diagnostically, not predictively, the “hidden layer of diffuse ‘atmospheric,’ polycephalic events that determine, finally and profoundly, the history of the world” (Foucault 1998, 428). The focus here is about discontinuities and change and on the analysis of contingent convergence of a multiplicity of forces. In this perspective, “History appears then not as great continuity underneath an apparent discontinuity, but as a tangle of superimposed discontinuities” (Foucault 1998, 429). Foucault’s ethico-political position is grounded upon a deeply non-substantialist approach to social inquiry focusing on the diagnostics of what exists. Situated in the condition of uncertainty of results, it is driven by a commitment to displace assumptions about the natural character of what is taken for granted. The excerpt that follows is central in this regard: It’s quite true that I don’t feel myself capable of effecting “the subversion of all codes,” “dislocation of all orders of knowledge”, “revolutionary affirmation of violence”, “overturning of the contemporary culture”, these hopes and prospectuses that currently underpin all those brilliant intellectual ventures which I admire all the more because the worth of those who undertake them guarantees an appropriate outcome. My project is far from being of comparable scope. To give some assistance in wearing away certain self-evidences and commonplaces about madness, normality, illness, crime and punishment; … to contribute to changing certain things in people’s ways of perceiving and doing things; to participate in this difficult displacement of forms of sensibility and thresholds of tolerance—I hardly feel capable of attempting much more than that. (Foucault 1991, 83) Foucault’s commitment to reflexivity challenges positions that aspire at bringing about a totalizing alternative social order, the features of which may be planned in advance, or, alternatively, that embrace the resignation to accept the status quo as the only possible and plausible arrangement of social relations. Foucault does not concern himself with ontological questions. However, methodologically, his position is attuned to epistemological approaches that embrace a radical relationality instead of starting from assumptions about entities or overarching laws that regulate “the system” (however it may be defined). Next, I will engage with critical realism to explore further the implications for political agency of embracing a non-substantialist ontological starting point. Reframing Agents and Structures: Questioning Universalism in a Critical Realist Perspective For critical realists, structures resemble Foucault’s “events.” Structures are historical formations that result from the contingent convergence of distinct trajectories, not stable arrangements governed by general laws that determine how societies function, evolve, and change. Archer (1995) used the notion of morphogenesis to question both structuralism and individualism. For Archer, The “morpho” element is an acknowledgement that society has no pre-set form or preferred state: the “genetic” part is a recognition that it takes its shape from, and is formed by, agents, originating from the intended and unintended consequences of their activities. (Archer 1995, 5) In line with critical realists’ positions, Patomäki’s brand of structuralism calls for a definition of how structure affects particular phenomena instead of reifying universal organizing principles or laws of history.6 In Patomäki’s words, “any explanatory iconic model of concrete outcomes has to articulate a unified account of the complex of relevant and efficient causes at work in a well specified area of time” (Patomäki 2002, 106, emphasis in text). The notion of emergence is central to critical realism’s attempt to find a middle ground between realist determinism and the possibility of explaining change.7 As Patomäki states, the “emergent powers and properties of systems cannot be reduced to actual activities and interactions” (Patomäki 2002, 118). In this view, interactive processes produce transformations and generate possibilities that exceed the status quo and may have bearings that exceed localized manifestations. However, in an emergent world, the direction and outcomes of such changes cannot be planned or predicted in advance. The notion of emergence entails a reconsideration of traditional conceptualizations of causality. In this regard, Patomäki embraces Mackie’s (1976) position, focusing on contingent and case-specific clusters of conditions rather than on linear, reproducible relations among entities.8 Similarly, Wight (2006) observes “empirical invariance” and reproducibility function well when ceteris paribus conditions exist, such as in experimental situations set in laboratories. Here, the system under scrutiny can be “closed” and the variables that may intervene to determine a given result controlled. However, the social is not a closed system, and rarely do the same conditions manifest across time, place, and space. In the light of these considerations, Wight repositions the agent-structure debate from the theoretical to the empirical sphere. For Wight, whether agents or structures determine a particular outcome is an empirical question. Accordingly, attempts to resolve it in the abstract inevitably lead to solutions that are all agential or all structural (Wight 2006, 101). For Wight, “no general transhistorical or purely philosophical resolution of these problems is possible” (Wight 2006, 102). In this framework, the solution to questions about agency can only be adjudicated after careful consideration of specific context and circumstances. This statement is crucial for the way we adjudicate the validity of actions as well as for how we regard the relations between theory and praxis. Patomäki’s conceptualization of ethics is also driven by a radical commitment to situational evaluations, and is firmly rooted in critical realism’s acceptance of ontological realism and epistemological pluralism. For Patomäki, reality exists independently from its descriptions and can be plausibly portrayed by multiple systems of statements. Therefore, openness to challenge is not simply a scholarly virtue but also an ethical one (Patomäki 2002, 149).9 Thus, detaching “normative discourse from concrete realities” may end up “making normative discourse monological and potentially violent by ignoring or excluding the ethico-political concerns of different others” (Patomäki 2002, 158). In summary, instead of constituting the ground for justifying ethical behavior, as in Kantian positions, normative universalism for Patomäki harbors the risk of totalitarianism. Patomäki also recognizes the imbrication of theorizing, ethics, and politics. Indeed, for Patomäki, as well as for Foucault, the production of truth is performative, not reflective.10 The choice between different theories and explanatory models is “a matter of the ethical responsibility of the actors involved,” instead of the result of cognitive processes. Social sciences may contribute to “re-signify practices in their temporal dimension” (Patomäki 2002, 160), and “to ascertaining what is ethico-politically good and how to reach that good—if it is achievable at all” (Patomäki 2002, 160). In this regard, scientific inquiry and political engagements are closely related enterprises. Because the production of truth and the political are interconnected, social sciences have a special role to play in establishing the meaning of political actions and ethical choices.11 While Patomäki does not specifically take his reflection this far, I suggest that in this framework social sciences can potentially produce morphogenetic effects, that is, change the ontological properties of “what is.” Patomäki, Wight, and Joseph’s conceptualizations of structure, causality, and knowledge are central to the point I want to make here. In a world of emergences, political action always takes place in conditions of uncertainty regarding the effects it triggers. The possibility that universal norms, principles, or totalizing planning rationalities may offer a valid ground for making sound decisions is slim. This situation was acknowledged in 2001 by former Under Secretary General for United Nations Peacekeeping Operations Jean Marie Guehénno, who identified the need to revise the conceptualizations of causality upon which decisions regarding peacebuilding are taken. In Guehénno’s words, The interdependent world looks more and more like the weather system described by chaos theory; influenced by millions of variables, its causality does not follow a linear model, and consequences are not proportionate to causes. … The idea that an individual or a human community could determine long-term goals and develop a strategy to attain them may become increasingly unrealistic. (Guehénno 2001, 91) As Guehénno suggested, in a world of emergences, we must let go of the hubris underlying the persuasion that we can control outcomes and steer history. This does not mean, however, that political action is futile. On the contrary, it may be transformative, but it must be carried out as a responsible and practical endeavor driven by attitudes of modesty and prudence. Quantum Entanglements, Modest Ethics, and Responsible Political Agency As I have argued above, Patomäki’s position with regard to ethics and political agency is firmly rooted upon his commitment to a realist ontology and a pluralist epistemology. Furthermore, by rethinking causality in terms of “clusters” instead of invariant relations among entities, and by reframing the agent-structure question into an empirical one, critical realists make a vital contribution to rethinking agency. They open ways for seeing agency in a way that is not bound by the stifling assumptions of substantialist-structuralism or validated mainly through the a priori recognition of universal norms of behavior dictated by reason itself. For critical realists, structures look more like “contexts” than systems strictly regulated by overarching principles and laws of history. Such contexts possess causal power, but do not necessarily wield all that happens toward the conservation of the status quo or a given teleology of history. In fact, for critical realists, any causal story is holistic. Only complex clusters of causation produce outcomes. Furthermore, if a particular causal power does not manifest in a specific situation, this does not rule out its existence. As Jackson would have it, critical realists hold that “no general law governs a causal power’s manifestation, and no systematic relationship limits a causal power complicity in the production of an outcome” (Jackson 2011, 110). I argue that Wendt and Barad’s quantum onto-epistemology pushed critical realism’s holism a step forward. They trailblazed a new pathway for conceiving our position in the world as agents starting from the assumption of connectedness instead of atomistic separation. By relying on quantum physics, Barad (2007) and Wendt (2015) delineate an onto-epistemological horizon that opens possibilities for reconceptualizing the way we can engage with the interdependent world of which we are a part. For Barad, reality is not an externality, endowed with properties we may discover, but an “externality within.” Matter is not inert, but something within which we are entangled by the way of intra-agential activities. In other words, the world is made by phenomena that cannot be controlled by agents. Instead, agents are a part of phenomena within which they operate ontological cuts that “close” a range of possibilities. What “is” comes into existence as an effect of these ontological cuts. Wendt (2015) specifically mobilizes quantum ontology to address the agent-structure debate. For Wendt, unlike in theories of “structuration” or “mutual constitutions,” as a quantum entanglement the agent-structure relation is not “a process of causal interaction over time, but a non-local, synchronic state from which both are emergent” (Wendt 2015, 260). In this way, Wendt simultaneously redefines both the notion of structure and the notion of agent. For Wendt, “as superpositions social structures are only potentialities rather than actualities, but this is equally the case for agents. Their superposed states are co-emergent, and if they become real realities they do so together in localized practices” (Wendt 2015, 265). In Wendt’s words, “what is going on is that agents are themselves emergent from interaction, and that the causal power of the structures in which they are embedded is not that of efficient causation” (Wendt 2015, 266). Importantly, for Wendt, practices are the place where ontological cuts happen, with regard to both agency and structure. In this way, Wendt offers an ontological background to Wight’s empirical repositioning of the agent-structure problem. Not only does quantum ontology offer alternatives to ontological individualism, it also questions classical demarcations between the “material” and the “non-material.” Wendt argues, for example, that in a quantum universe “physical” does not mean “material.”12 For Wendt, the growing evidence offered by quantum psychology that as humans we are quantum mechanical phenomena “would constitute a basis for solving the mind-body problem, and in so doing unify physical and social ontology within a naturalistic, though no longer materialist, worldview” (Wendt 2015, 283). Mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they constitute a duality that “emerges from an underlying reality that is neither mental nor material” (Wendt 2015, 31). Instead of conceiving agents as isolated individuals endowed with the power to trigger linear processes in reality, quantum ontology “sees the material world described by classical physics and the material world of consciousness as joint effects of an underlying reality that is neither” (Wendt 2015, 283). This does not mean that possibilities are always open or that causal relations and ontological properties are never stabilized. On the contrary, as agents we may produce ontological cuts that contribute to further stabilizing or destabilizing what is as we know it. In this framework, any adjudication of the ethical qualities of a given action calls for a deep assumption of responsibility. In contrast to Wendt, who bases his argument on the findings of quantum psychology, Barad focuses her onto-epistemological argument on the non-human. Her position on ethics is based upon her commitment to a radical imbrication of ontology and epistemology. In this framework, the fundamental commitments of both Newtonian physics and Cartesian epistemology to a “representationalist triadic structure of words, knowers, and things” come under question (Barad 2007, 138). Unlike Patomäki, who assumes a reality out there and bases ethics upon epistemological pluralism, Barad sees the world as characterized by ontological indeterminacy. Ontological indeterminacy pertains both to the “material” and to “the social.” In relying upon Bohr’s physics, Barad argues that such indeterminacy can only be contingently resolved in the intra-action between the observer and the observed. Phenomena, Barad argues, “are ontologically pre-existing relations—relations without pre-existing relata” (Barad 2007, 139). In this framework, “phenomena do not only mark the epistemological inseparability of observer and observed, or results of measurements; rather, phenomena are the ontological inseparability entanglement of intra acting agencies” (Barad 2007, 139, emphasis in text). Barad points at the difference between intra-action and inter-action. While the notion of inter-action presupposes the prior existence of independent entities (i.e., an atomistic ontology), intra-action maintains that “the boundaries and properties of the components of phenomena become determinate” only in the context of intra-actions (Barad 2007, 139). In following Bohr’s quantum physics, Barad argues that the property of the components of phenomena emerge differently in various experimental situations. In fact, matter is not passive, but it reveals itself to us in these continuously unfolding intra-active processes. Because we are of the world, not above the world, and our acting contributes to defining ontology, while the world out there defines our being, epistemology and ontology are deeply entangled and cannot be separated. Barad criticizes positions that (like Patomäki’s) rely upon ontological realism and epistemological relativism as untenable because they reproduce a substantialist conceptualization of reality. She also rejects assumptions that portray matter as “passive, immutable and mute,” as well as the “representationalist belief in the power of words to mirror pre-existing phenomena” (Barad 2007, 133). In this way, Barad advances the notion of performativity of knowledge a step forward from Patomäki’s. Political and theoretical claims are not distinct practices. Instead, theorizing is a practice of engagement with the world within which we “have our being” (Barad 2007, 133). A post-humanist position shifts the attention from representation to “mattering practices,” thus bringing to the forefront questions about “ontology, materiality and agency” (Barad 2007, 135). Because for Barad, “things do not have inherently determinate boundaries or properties and words do not have inherently determinate meanings” (Barad 2007, 138), objectivity is not predicated upon “distance” from reality, but upon engaging it with experimental apparatuses that produce intra-agential ontological cuts in what exists. Far from falling into relativism, this position offers a way to “hold on to the possibility of objective knowledge” (Barad 2007, 138). Barad’s position on objectivity and political agency is grounded upon this radical, non-substantialist understanding of both the human and the non-human, where the two spheres take part in “mattering practices.” Based upon the notion of intra-agential agency, Barad questions views that maintain the centrality of language and culture as well as views that reiterate the determinism of matter. The relation between the cultural and the natural (or in other words, the way we are of the world) is an “exteriority” within, not a “static relationality” that leaves the properties of the terms of the relation unchallenged. The cultural is an “enactment of boundaries” (Barad 2007, 135), a practice of operating ontological cuts that entails “constitutive exclusions.” It therefore requisites questions of accountability. In summary, this kind of onto-epistemology challenges human exceptionalism, a view that denies nature “any sense of agency and historicity” (Barad 2007, 136). It also offers interesting avenues for reframing both ethics and human agency beyond structuralism and atomism. In Barad’s words, “post-humanism eschews both humanist and structuralist accounts of the subject that position the human as either a pure cause or pure effect…posthumanism doesn’t presume the separateness of any ‘thing,’ let alone the alleged spatial, ontological, and epistemological distinction that sets humans apart” (Barad 2007, 136). In this framework, relata are not prior to relations: “Matter is produced and productive, generated and generative” (Barad 2007, 136). Difference has generative effects in the production of other differences, and causality is not rooted upon ontologically stable properties of entities. In fact, “causal structures” are generated by different patterns of differentiation and processes of materialization enacted through practices of knowing and doing. While Barad acknowledges the role of Foucault in challenging some of the tenets of humanism, she argues that he did not go far enough in including the non-human in the notion of performativity.13 However, I contend that Barad’s focus on processes of materialization is methodologically akin to Foucault’s focus on the formation of social phenomena. Where Barad is interested in processes of materialization of matter, Foucault is interested in processes of materialization of social phenomena. They both share the conviction that nothing worthwhile discussing exists with definite qualities before these processes. As an example, in defining experimental apparatuses, Barad does embrace Foucault’s notion of dispositif, and emphasizes that apparatuses are not only observation instruments, but they are “productive (and part of) phenomena” (Barad 2007, 142). For Barad, apparatuses are what make possible the determination of boundaries and properties of objects (the intra-agential cuts), as well as the embodiment of concepts in the apparatus. “Apparatuses enact agential cuts that produce determinate boundaries and properties of ‘entities’ within phenomena, where ‘phenomena’ are the ontological inseparability of agential intra acting components” (Barad 2007, 148). Discursive practices and material phenomena are ontologically imbricated. Experimental dispositifs are not only heuristic but also performative instruments and have a bearing upon resolving ontological indeterminacy. Knowledge is performative, not reflective; and matter is not inert. “What is” and the way we know it cannot be conceptualized separately. Nevertheless, phenomena are not the result of human agency. Instead, “the world is a dynamic process of intra-activity and materialization in the enactment of determinate causal structures which determine boundaries, properties, meaning, and patterns of marks on bodies” (Barad 2007, 140). Barad’s position suggests a radical reconceptualization of our being in the world. In engaging the world as agents, we do not act as monads endowed with potentia, but as entangled phenomena that are part of what exists. We do not preordain material dynamics as a result of aspirations dictated by reason. Instead, we participate in processes of materialization of which we are a part but do not control. “All or nothing” political engagements that aim at bringing about an immanent alternative social order or at realizing abstract idealistic aspirations are entangled in complex clusters of causation and processes of materialization that we as humans may contribute to but do not determine. In this framework, modest and accurate considerations of what is at stake (or, as Barad would put it, of the exclusions and inclusions that the ontological cuts we operate in specific practices produce) become central steps for validating ethical and political action. Practical processes, rather than abstract principles of reasoning, constitute the basis for ethical decisions. In summary, while Foucault focused on the social and Barad extended her considerations to the non-human, they both embraced a non-substantialist onto-epistemology. They explored processes of formation of what is instead of the nature of things or of the organizing principles of systems. In extending Foucault’s radical non-substantialist position to the non-human through Bohr’s quantum physics, Barad linked a reflection on our being in the world to a reflection on the way we know what we know, and the way we act upon it. Barad sees us enmeshed in a world of ontological indeterminacy. Such indeterminacy can only be resolved intra-agentially. Humans cannot over-determine outcomes, but can take part in processes of mattering by navigating intra-agential cuts differently. By radically questioning the very notion of separability that underlines notions of individuality, rationality, and universal normativity, Barad traces the ontological and methodological horizon for devising an ethics that embraces uncertainty and complexity. In a similar vein, Wendt suggested that while atomism tends to promote individualism and competition, an ontology of entanglement may nurture cooperation and open avenues for agency. In fact, as Wendt put it, while there is no guarantee that “individuals will put their agency to progressive causes, at least [in a quantum ontology] … they have the option” (Wendt 2015, 282). I will now turn to further analyzing the political and ethical implications of embracing a quantum ontology. How Does This All Matter for Reconceptualizing Political Agency and Ethics? Connolly’s (2013) reflection on political agency is firmly rooted upon an ontology of entanglements. In Connolly’s words, a Newtonian universe must appear to us to be governed by mechanical laws while we must also postulate a human power of freedom that escapes those determinations as it also possesses almost magical power to act back upon bodily processes to guide behavior. (Connolly 2013, 159) Instead, in an entangled universe, humans do not determine outcomes. For Connolly, as well as for Wendt, ontology is flat, and the possibilities for change triggered by political agency may not be confined to “levels” within which such changes are contained.14 Interconnections straddle “levels,” systems are not organized by stable laws or by one mighty principle, and microscopic phenomena may have relevant (and unforeseen) effects on macroscopic processes (Connolly 2013, 153). As a result, the point today is not to wait for a revolution that overthrows the whole system. The “system”…is replete with too many loose ends, uneven hedges, dicey intersection with nonhuman forces and uncertain trajectories to make such a wholesale project plausible. Besides, things are too urgent and toomany people on the ground are suffering too much now. (Connolly 2013, 42) In a universe of complex interconnections where matter matters, assumptions regarding the human capacity of controlling and planning full chains of events come under question. In this onto-epistemological horizon, both universal normativity and the aspiration to bring about an immanent totalizing alternative social order seem to be increasingly inadequate guidelines for shaping political agency. Unlike Newtonian physics, Connolly starts from the position that natural laws are not impositional but immanent. By this he means they allow for degrees of liberty and variance. For Connolly, “the universe consists of entangled active elements rather than discrete particles” (Connolly 2013, 153). By accepting the notion of quantum entanglement, that is, by assuming radical relational ontology, Connolly moves toward a fresh notion of what “is out there” and our “place in it” that strongly differs from atomistic substantialism or structuralism. My central point here is that ontologies of entanglement embrace uncertainty not as the limit, but as the very condition of possibility of ethical action. They pave the way for a reconceptualization of political agency that is not rooted upon universal principles or totalizing aspirations, but upon responsible consideration of the outcomes possibly deriving from our engagement with what exists. Quantum ontologies conceptualize our being in the world in a way that supports Derrida’s vision of ethics as a decision that exceeds rules and is rooted upon radical assumptions of responsibility. In this framework, ethics is a virtue to be exercised more than a behavior warranted by the abstract recognition of universal truths. For Connolly, the key political virtues are reflexivity and creativity. As Barad also argued, in a post-humanist perspective, creativity is not exclusively a human quality, or “the simple product of an agent or subject” (Connolly 2013, 156). Creativity concerns “nature” and involves “a process of self organization that brings something new into being” (Connolly 2013, 157). It is “always a conditioned creativity in which that which is created involves enabling and constraining relations of ingression and concrescence between actual entities” (Connolly 2013, 158). In Neuropolitics, Connolly (2002) embraces a flat ontology that translates the transcendental into the immanent and blurs the distinction between what is material and what is not, which he calls “immanent naturalism.” While Kant’s regulative reason presupposes a two world metaphysics (the super sensible and the sensible), immanent naturalism challenges “Kantian, reductionist, and teleological models of human embodiment” (Connolly 2002, 60) and rejects “both a command model of morality set in a juridical rendering of the transcendental field and a teleological image of ethics set in a divine order of things” (Connolly 2002, 86). Ethics is not validated by “a transcendental command or an intrinsic juridical source” (Connolly 2002, 104). In echoing Derrida, Connolly maintains that ethics exceeds codes. This makes it an experimental endeavor, one that relies on processes of cultivation of the self as an ethical subject. Codes of law, Connolly argues, may very well lead to ethically undesirable behaviors such as “simplification, cruelty and violence” (Connolly 2002, 106). As I have argued elsewhere (following Arendt), an extreme example of the inadequacy of codes of law as a valid foundation for ethics is Eichmann’s justification of his role as the logistician of the Holocaust as an act of “following the rules” (Arendt 1964; Zanotti 2014). Connolly conceptualizes ethics as a method and an attitude. Similarly to Patomäki, for Connolly the justification of ethico-political endeavors is based upon “legitimate contestability of presumptions” (Connolly 2002, 112). On this ground, Connolly suggests that it is possible to imagine a brand of cosmopolitanism based on the recognition of plurality and contestability of Kant’s regulative ideas, instead of upon an “innate duty” or apodictic15 recognition of universals that are already there. Like Patomäki, Connolly’s embrace of contestability may shelter against the hubris of universalism. This attitude is especially important in an interconnected world that operates at an increasing speed. For Connolly, if we embrace it, acceleration “sets a condition of possibility for achievements that democrat pluralists prize” (Connolly 2002,143). By exposing all of us to differences and making distances smaller, acceleration demands modesty and openness. In fact, unless we embrace the challenges that acceleration and interconnections pose with such attitude, acceleration may also entice the opposite of democracy and pluralism. Fundamentalism, Connolly argues, is the nostalgia toward certitude and foundations, and it finds its roots in the refusal to embrace or accept the pluralism fostered within and by a fast-moving world. In Connolly’s words, fundamentalism is “the shape the desire for a slow, centered world takes when its temporal conditions of possibility are absent “(Connolly 2002, 180). In a time of increasing tendency toward political radicalization, this position is central for outlining a politics of prudence, care, and careful consideration of what is at stake in the specifics of situations. Embracing our being entangled with the world, valuing uncertainty as the horizon for ethical choices, and conceptualizing political engagements as performative but not omnipotent all pave the way for the affirmation of ethics in methodological terms. Micropolitical engagements and practices of cultivation of the self take the place of abstract normativity as the pivotal criteria for ethico-political decisions. Indeed, for Connolly, micropolitics is a “cultural collectivization and politicization of arts of the self” (Connolly 2002, 108). In this regard, Connolly states, Cultivation of the right kind of character also becomes a matter of prime importance, partly because there is no characterless moral subject available in this world that issues universal moral laws and partly because, on such a cosmological account, the larger world is not postulated to be highly predisposed to humanity in the last instance. (Connolly 2013, 103, emphasis in text) Importantly, if we accept a relational ontology, externalities are not “external” but are ontologically rooted in the world’s multiple entanglements (Connolly 2013, 260). Therefore, instead of being the inevitable residual of ethically valid prescriptions, (unintended) consequences should be rethought of as central for the validation of ethical and political choices. Taken together, these reflections reveal that in an entangled and relational universe, where the subject is no longer thinkable as a separate rational powerful entity, where causality is not linear, and where our status in the world in one of feltedness16 (O’Connor 2008), we must rethink the way we validate our ethico-political actions. Cultivation and creativity offer a possible ground for rethinking political agency. Methodologies through which we interrogate the world play an important role in this process. All in all, ways of inquiry are deeply imbricated with political agency. This connection is key in Foucault’s work. In The Government of Self and Others, Foucault reflected on the role of philosophy as both a “practice of the self” and a political endeavor. In commenting on ancient Greek philosophy, Foucault argued that “the reality of philosophy is its practice” (Foucault 2008b, 242). Such practice, however, is not to be understood as aimed at abstract theorizing. Instead, it is a mode of activity of the self on the self. What is at stake here is not “logos,” that is, the quest for an abstract and universal truth, but the subject, that is, the cultivation of a particular kind of character. In Foucault’s words, Philosophy finds its reality in the practice of philosophy understood as a set of practices through which the subject has a relationship to itself, and works on itself. The reality of philosophy is this work of self on self. (Foucault 2008a, 242) Philosophical life is a testimony of the truth—in fact a performance of it. As Foucault describes: Through the type of life one leads, the set of choices one makes, the things one renounces and those one accepts, how one dresses, how one speaks etcetera, the philosophical life should be from start to finish the manifestation of this truth. (Foucault 2008b, 333–34) This reflection shifts the understanding of truth and of the goals of philosophical activity from abstract reasoning to performativity. In exploring the role of philosophy in ancient Greece, Foucault argues that “philosophy is a form of life, and is also a sort of both private and public office of critical advice” (Foucault 2008b, 345). Parrēsia, or the constant calling to task those who have social power, is an integral part of philosophical life. Foucault argues that throughout antiquity philosophy was lived as the “free questioning of men’s conduct by a truth-telling which accepts the risk of danger to itself” (Foucault 2008b, 346). Philosophy emerges here as a social practice, a cultivation of the self, and a critical political activity, the relevance of which is rooted in its performance and in the process of free questioning. Foucault draws on his reflection of the ancient Greeks to devise the role of modern philosophy, which also functions as a work of self on the self as well as an interrogation of “deception, trickery and illusion” (Foucault 2008b, 354). Thus, the veridiction function of philosophy (ancient and modern) has to be found in its performance as a way of life as well as in the unsettling of what is taken for granted. However, as a political activity, philosophy does not necessarily need to be prescriptive. In Foucault’s words, philosophy should not want to say what must be done in the realm of politics and how one should govern… It would be wrong to say what is true or false in the realm of science. And it would equally be wrong to want to give itself the mission of liberation or disalienation of the subject itself. It is not for philosophy to say what should be done in politics. It has to exist in a permanent and restive exteriority with regard to politics, and it is in this that it is real… It has to constantly practice its criticism with regard to deception, trickery, and illusion, and it is in this that it plays the dialectical game of its own truth. (Foucault 2008b, 354) Foucault’s philosopher exercises political agency by rendering testimony of a way of life and by interrogating what is taken for granted, rather than by finding overarching truths or prescribing universal laws of behavior, or by contributing to realize totalizing alternative social orders. In different ways, the scholarly work addressed above offers tools for reconceptualizing political agency based upon contextual engagements with the world rather than upon the assumption of separateness and abstract normativity. Foucault did not concern himself with ontological questions. However, he defended an intellectual and political project focused on deconstructing what is taken for granted instead of attempting to identify an overarching principle for explaining all that happens in society. Foucault considered processes of knowledge, arts of cultivation of the self, and political critique as strictly interconnected projects aimed at questioning accepted truths and social arrangements. Foucault did not aspire to guaranteeing an “appropriate” outcome of political engagements. Instead, his political and research project sought to unsettle certainties, participate in the “difficult displacement of forms of sensibility,” and unveil the trickeries of those who have power (Foucault 1991, 83). Connolly relied upon an ontology of entanglement for grounding his understanding of reflexivity and creativity as political virtues as well as his position on the potential transformative effects of micropolitics. In this framework, options for changing what is are found in the multifarious and contingent struggles that come as part of our being felted in the world (O’Connor 2008; Connolly 2013). These engagements exceed and transform what is out there as well as our being. Both Foucault’s and Connolly’s conceptualizations of the connection between knowledge and political agency support prudent engagements and relentless interrogation of the extant orders, without imposing the stifling effects of a unifying logos to the diversity of human practices or reductionist interpretation of all that happens in society in the light of a few organizing principles. Conclusion In this article, I have argued that in order for IR to remain politically relevant and critical, we must rethink and reflect on the ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions of the discipline. I then explored how onto-epistemologies, ethics, and political agency are interlinked. Ontologies of entanglement tend to embrace complex conceptualizations of causality and the morphogenetic properties of what exist. In a quantum world, ontological cuts happen in practices. This worldview invites a reconsideration of the way we justify and address political decisions and ethical action beyond the universalism supported by atomistic ontologies and the stifling limits imposed by substantialist-structuralism. As Nick Onuf has argued, “In a straightened world, as in a world in turmoil, talk of universal principles rings hollow… In such a world, positional ethics is the best we can hope for” (Onuf forthcoming, quoted with permission). A quantum reconceptualization of our being in the world and our relation to matter calls for a profound sense of modesty, as well as for the central role of responsibility for taking political decisions. In an entangled world that is not governed by theoretically detectable, linear, and immutable laws of history, but instead by intra-agential processes, the conditions of possibility for political agency are rooted in the morphogenetic properties of practices. Taking responsibility for critically questioning what exists without the hubris of assuming our ability to ordain outcomes displays an affinity with Foucault’s methodological and political project. In this vein, ethical guidelines may not be grounded on abstractions stemming from the solitary ruminations of an individual’s mind. Prudence, responsibility, and practices of cultivation of the self offer pathways to overcome the limitations of the Kantian categorical imperative by which universal prescriptions are the main way of validating ethical choices. As Patomäki has shown, universalism may elicit exclusionary and violent practices. Moreover, as Connolly has argued, the nostalgia for a slowly moving world regulated by linear relations of causality and characterized by certainty and stability may be the root of fundamentalism. Furthermore, if we accept Barad’s position that we are “of the world” and not above the world, theorizing looks more like a practice endowed with performative political effects than a quest for the discovery of the “true nature” of what exists. Therefore, intellectual undertakings are a form of political agency and come with great responsibility. Such responsibility requires the need for exercising prudence in making truth statements about what is universally good or naturally inevitable. Assumptions about linearity of causal relations, universal laws of history, or ontological properties of entities yield two problematic effects. On the one hand, they may stifle political imagination; on the other hand, they could encourage actions based upon abstract prescriptions rather than upon careful diagnosis of the forces that obtain in the situation at hand. In an entangled world, there are no externalities. Arguments that divert responsibility by basing political choices upon abstract principles or aspirations and, as a result, that treat what happens on the ground as “unintended consequences” or “collateral damage,” are ethically thin and politically dangerous. In fact, unintended consequences may well be the result of irresponsible political decision-making that does not include a competent assessment of the practical configurations that constitute the context of action and the means necessary to achieve stated goals. Such attitudes, Amoureux and Steele (2014) have suggested, have led to disastrous initiatives, such as the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. Likewise, Kennedy (2006) has shown that the bland rhetoric of jus in bello that provides standardized criteria regarding the number of acceptable civilian casualties (conveniently called collateral damage) produces the effect of diverting responsibility from those who conduct war while assuaging their consciences concerning the injuries and deaths their choices are inflicting. Kennedy (2004) has also shown that as a result of the preference for universal normativity, the human rights profession (which he calls “the invisible college”) is more concerned with protecting abstract norms than with acting politically so as to devise viable solutions to specific problems. Universal norms and bureaucratic routines play a major role in prescribing and justifying UN peacekeeping interventions. As Jean Marie Guehénno argued more than a decade ago, strategies of international intervention based upon assumptions of causal linearity and invariance may amount to hubris. Norms and rules can also offer grounds for appeasement. The massacres that occurred in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the 1990s provide examples of how, by uncritically following institutionalized rules, United Nations peacekeepers permitted atrocities. UN employees are not cold-blooded monsters or extremely callous individuals. They follow norms and rules, key examples of which include the principle of “impartiality,” Security Council mandates, and “rules of engagement.” By doing so, however, they have often fallen short of considering the possible consequences of decisions in specific situations. The United Nations’ failure to take action to prevent the Rwanda and Srebrenica genocide testifies to the fact that following universal norms (i.e., the imperative to preserve impartiality) and bureaucratic reasoning (i.e., the rules of engagement prescribing not to intervene to disarm any party of the conflict) set the stage for avoiding a careful assessment of what was at stake on the eve of the massacres. These ways of reasoning also appeased consciences for not making decisions accountable to the people in danger (Zanotti 2014). Significantly, the lack of prudence that derives from broad overgeneralizations and reliance on abstractions, rather than careful consideration of what the case demands, threatens more self-defeating outcomes in peacekeeping and international politics. This is why a careful reflection of the ways our political choices are validated ontologically and epistemologically is of paramount practical importance. Seven decades ago, Carr (1946) advocated the need for conceptualizing political agency and ethics in a way that addresses both the limits of the idealist illusion regarding the possibility to transform reality through acts of will as well as the realist persuasion about the inescapable subordination of actors to external conditions. Both of these positions, Carr pointed out, lead to self-defeating outcomes and stifle political imagination because they focus on general abstractions, failing to take into consideration what conditions and political opportunity actually obtain in specific historical configurations. Here I have proposed that an ontology of entanglement fosters an ethic of engagement and activism along the lines suggested by Foucault and opens up possibilities for political action. In this ontological horizon, what qualifies as meaningful agency is not stifled by the structuralist commitment to the stabilizing effects of structures (like in Waltz’s) or by the inescapable features of an oppressive and alienating social order that dispossess subjects of their humanity and reduces them to “bare life” (as in Agamben). Instead, micropolitical interventions, parrēsia, and the cultivation of a particular kind of character, while not revolutionizing the status quo, may be relevant to triggering social change. Importantly, ontologies of entanglement also raise the bar for adjudicating the ethical validity of political choices. Radical assumption of responsibility drastically limits what is acceptable as “unintended consequences.” This is important for the way international organizations make decisions regarding international peacekeeping interventions and for the way politicians decide to wage war. Ethically and politically sound decision-making cannot be based mainly upon the apodictic recognition of universal rules of behavior, abstract aspirations, or overarching theories of the functioning of society. They must also include careful analysis of how clusters of causes may generate effects in the specific contexts at hand and take responsibility for the ontological cuts our initiatives operate and for the morphogenetic processes they may set off. Footnotes 1 See for instance the following two special issues: (1) Wight, Colin, Hansen, and Tim Dunne, eds. 2013. The End of International Relations Theory? Special issue, European Journal of International Relations 19 (3); and (2) Special conference issue for the 2014 Millennium Conference on Method, Methodology, and Innovation, 2015. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43 (3). 2 For Barad, ontological properties are not a “given” but are acquired in relational processes through which possibilities are opened or foreclosed. “What is” acquires the shape it has through ontological cuts. I will return on this notion in the pages that follow. 3 Koddenbrok argued that “both Foucauldian and Latourian critique prevent a totalizing perspective is one of the reasons for the paralysis of large parts of “radical” IR in the face of contemporary capitalism” (Koddenbrok, 2015, 257). Here, I argue that totalizing perspectives are indeed part of the problem, rather than the solution. Actually, Koddenbrok’s endorsement of an idea of totality as a dynamic whole, which he traces in Marx, is akin to the brand of structuralism embraced by Foucault. However, while Foucault and Marx share an interest in how “what is” is formed, for Foucault the laws of articulation of the whole are not limited to the capitalist economy. The understanding of those specific articulations is central for social change. Far from stifling political critique, the focus on contingent practices enriches instead possibilities for creative political action. 4 My point here is not to discard quantitative methods as inevitably socially conservative. On the contrary, I tend to agree with Barkin and Sjoberg (2015), who argued that quantitative methods may offer useful tools to answer questions with origins in socially critical positions. My critique is directed at ways of theorizing that do not question how social objects and conceptualizations are formed and take for granted reified conceptualizations of “what is.” 5 Foucault’s work on governmentality has constituted the background for the elaboration of a stream of theoretical work in IR. However, as I have argued elsewhere (Zanotti 2013), governmentality has often been translated in substantialist terms. 6 Patomäki engages both Bhaskar and Giddens, but he distances himself both from “Bhaskar naturalist metaphors” and from Giddens’s focus on “rules and resources” (Patomäki 2002, 99). In defining critical realism’s social ontology, Patomäki acknowledges a debt to hermeneutics (and more specifically of Peter Winch and Hang-Georg Gadamer), the Frankfurt School, Michel Foucault, and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late work (Patomäki 2002, 99–100). 7 The notion of emergence has been adopted as part of a reflection on agency by sociologist Archer (1995 and 2000) and more recently by Donati (2011). Patomäki more specifically incorporated this concept within a reflection on IR. 8 On conceptualizations of causality inspired by Mackie in IR and its relevance for decision-making processes, see Kratochwil (2008). 9 For Patomäki, we know through “iconic models,” that is, interpretations of reality based on metaphors, idealizations, and abstractions mediated by culture. Iconic models are at the same time heuristic and explanatory tools, and they necessarily include a theory of causality. However, while epistemological relativism recognizes that all beliefs are socially produced, not all beliefs are equally plausible. As an example, if one believed s/he could fly and jumped out a window, s/he would find that belief to be utterly wrong. Similarly, social phenomena produce practical consequences that cannot be manipulated at will. 10 Speaking from a constructivist standpoint, Onuf (2009) argued that model making (or theorizing) is a way of exchanging views about the world intersubjectively and to institutionalize these views. This may contribute to social change by promoting alternative forms of institutionalization. In fact, for Onuf, the real source of trouble about Waltz’s structuralism is not the model itself but the notion of correspondence of such a model to the world. Onuf’s position is in my view, attuned to Barad’s notion of intra-agential agency. 11 This conceptualization of the relations between truth and purposive political action shows family resemblances with feminist Wittgensteinian philosopher Alessandra Tanesini (2004) as well as with Fiona Robinson’s (2011) “ethics of care.” For Tanesini, “truth statements” are not the only way we connect to other human beings. Indeed, in acting and living we make many claims whose content is not cognition (i.e., “truth”) but demands for or expression of recognition. 12 I understand Wendt’s use of “material” to mean a reality governed by Newtonian physics and made of atoms, or distinct entities. 13 Lemke (2014), in engaging with Barad, argued that Foucault’s lectures on governmentality implicitly embrace the entanglement of the natural and the human. I agree with Lemke on this. 14 A full discussion of the relation between quantum ontology and levels of analysis is fascinating, but beyond the scope of this article. 15 Nicola Abbagnano (1971), Dizionario di Filosofia, defines “apodictic” as “necessary.” Kant called “apodictic” the judgments that are determined “a priori” through the laws of reason and are logically necessary. 16 Felting, O’Connor argues, is the process by which wool fibers are transformed into a “dense tangled mat, in which the individual fibers can no longer be distinguished” (O’Connor 2008, 61). The felt, in O’Connor’s view, describes our relation to the world of which we are a part. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This article has been shaped by many conversations. I am especially indebted to Edward Weisband, Lydia Patton, Mario Khreiche, and Francois Debrix, as well as to other members of the ASPECT working group, for their comments on a previous version of this work. I am grateful to Nick Onuf for suggesting the title of this piece and for his (as always) challenging remarks. Conversations with Fritz Kratochwil over lunch and coffee at several ISAs helped me gain confidence that this was an inquiry worthwhile pursuing. I am also indebted to Max Stephenson for having shared important aspects of the intellectual journey that brought me to this point. The anonymous reviewers and the Editors’ insightful remarks have been central for sharpening my argument, for which I am grateful. I am also thankful to Mary Ryan for her editorial revisions. Of course the limitations and shortcomings of what is written here remain my sole responsibility. References Abbagnano Nicola. 1971 . Dizionario di Filosofia . Torino : UTET . Agamben Giorgio. 1998 . Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life . Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press . Amoureux Jack L. 2016 . A Practice of Ethics for Global Politics: Ethical Reflexivity (A New International Relations) . 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TI - Reorienting IR: Ontological Entanglement, Agency, and Ethics
JF - International Studies Review
DO - 10.1093/isr/viw044
DA - 2017-01-13
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/reorienting-ir-ontological-entanglement-agency-and-ethics-uNDaYcrlgB
SP - 1
EP - 380
VL - Advance Article
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -