1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
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du signifiant). I expla<strong>in</strong> it <strong>in</strong> the follow<strong>in</strong>g section by locat<strong>in</strong>g it with<strong>in</strong> the broader l<strong>in</strong>guistic turn from<br />
which it emerged.<br />
The Primacy of the Signifier<br />
Language then, is foundational to Jacques Lacan’s entire enterprise. He was largely <strong>in</strong>fluenced,<br />
first, by developments contemporary philosophy of language (Heiddegger’s writ<strong>in</strong>gs on speech or<br />
Sprache and Logos <strong>in</strong> particular, see Juignet 2003). These <strong>in</strong> turn need to be understood <strong>in</strong> relation to<br />
the broader shatter<strong>in</strong>g of the correspondence theory of the world that signalled the advent of modern<br />
conceptions of language, which is also at the orig<strong>in</strong>s of constructivism <strong>in</strong> IR. Words were no longer seen<br />
to mirror the th<strong>in</strong>gs they <strong>in</strong>voked; and the (social) world was no longer that fixed referent outside of<br />
language that was ultimately underp<strong>in</strong>ned, <strong>in</strong> a medieval post-Aristotelian ontology, by god itself. The<br />
advent of the l<strong>in</strong>guistic turn was brought on by the realization that words do not merely reveal but<br />
partially constitute the social world. 16 While the term itself tends to be used to characterizes a latemodern<br />
developments <strong>in</strong> the philosophy of languages, it appears, as Terence Ball (1985, 741) has<br />
po<strong>in</strong>ted out ‘almost as a <strong>in</strong>stance of uncoord<strong>in</strong>ated simultaneous discovery’ across the social sciences<br />
and humanities <strong>in</strong> the late 20 th century, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> IR. Or rather, Ball’s argument is that it was <strong>in</strong> fact a<br />
long drawn out discovery that extends back to Hobbes, <strong>in</strong> whom he sees the precursor to this l<strong>in</strong>guistic<br />
turn <strong>in</strong> late modernity.<br />
Developments <strong>in</strong> structuralism, <strong>in</strong> particular Ferd<strong>in</strong>and de Saussure’s (1916) discoveries <strong>in</strong><br />
structural l<strong>in</strong>guistics (and, later, Claude Levi Strauss’s structural anthropology) comprise the second key<br />
<strong>in</strong>fluence on the emergence of Lacanian thought. Saussure took this modern conception of language one<br />
step further. Work<strong>in</strong>g up close with words, or signs, he showed that the relationship between the word<br />
and the world constitutes the wrong start<strong>in</strong>g po<strong>in</strong>t altogether for understand<strong>in</strong>g the mak<strong>in</strong>g of mean<strong>in</strong>g,<br />
16 The term ‘l<strong>in</strong>guistic turn’ is attributed to Richard Rorty’s 1967 anthology The L<strong>in</strong>guistic Turn. Essays <strong>in</strong><br />
Philosophical Method (see Ball 1985), who <strong>in</strong> turn attributes it to Gustave Bergmann.<br />
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