Engaging Foucault: Discourse, Liberal Governance and the Limits of Foucauldian IR

Abstract

This article provides a critical survey of the appropriation of the work of Michel Foucault within poststructuralist IR. Foucault has thus far been employed within poststructuralist IR in three ways: to support deconstructions of realist international theory; to analyse modern discourses and practices of international politics; and to develop novel accounts of the contemporary global liberal order. I argue that the fi rst and the third of these usages are especially problematic. Utilised for the critique of realism, Foucault's main emphases have consistently been overlooked or misrepresented. By contrast, when 'scaled up' to inform analyses of world order, Foucault's work has ended up supporting essentially liberal accounts of international politics. There are, I argue, clear limits to the use of Foucault in theorising international and world politics, and given this I conclude that if Foucault is to be used more effectively within IR, his work needs to be situated within a framework -I suggest a Marxist one -which is cognisant both of the structural dimensions of power, and of the specifi city and irreducibility of the international.

Aiding science : Swedish research aid policy 1973-2008

“…248 The type of critique I deliver in this study could be placed closer to what Koopman describes above as critical problematization, I do not suggest concrete policy changes as part of my conclusions for example. I do not, however, see Fairclough's commitment to 245 Selby, J. (2007 …”

Studies on Governmentality: Six Epistemological Pitfalls

“…For studies in international affairs, such a move might help improve the sensitivity to articulations of imported or externally imposed neoliberal discourses and technologies in nonliberal parts of the globe. Second, there is a need to reground studies on the art of government in an updated version of historical materialism (Joseph, 2010a;Selby, 2007;Thörn et al, 2015), reinterpret (Rehmann, 2013) or substitut by a renewed Marxism (Resch, 1992). Some elements of Marxism are continuously found in Foucault's work (Resch, 1992) and Foucault's ideas are actively employed by Marxists.…”

Governmentality, the global and Russia

“…It has been pointed out that specific problems arise when analytics of governmentality is employed within the discipline. The main strand of this debate revolves around the argument that the concept provides an insufficient basis for analysing the particularities of the international or the global (see, especially , Selby 2007;Joseph 2010a, b).…”