1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...

for every person. While there are utterances (since Hobbes’ natural man seems speak) there is in fact no
language, in the sense of a collective, transmittable sets of meaning that can provide the basis of a
common understanding and thus for collective action. In the state of nature there is only sound and
fury, signifying nothing.
This meaningless or topsy-turvism also constitutes the most robust objection to taking the state
of nature at face value as the founding paradigm for appraising the space of inter-state relations.
Tempting though the image may be that space is not quite populated by ‘a multitude of humpty
dumpties’, and history, as amply emphasized by in English School readings of Hobbes, has provided
sufficient evidence of successful collective action between states. In that space language and meaning
still obtain; that is, despite the multiplicity of languages, the possibility, if not always the actuality, of a
common understanding remains.
In this reading, what the state of nature represents is the solipsistic world of the infant,
etymologically the pre-speaking being (in-fans). 20
The individual that Hobbes’ natural individual
captures, then, is not even the child, but the infant, a point to which I return below. An implication of
that argument here is that apprehending the state (in realism) or the individual (in rational choice
theory) on the model of Hobbes’s ‘natural man’ [sic] is tantamount to infantilizing them, in the sense of
negating the constitutive and central role of language in their ability to act politically.
The Leviathan as The ‘Quilting Point’ Fastening the Social Order
Hobbes’s state of nature thus features the same inherently loose relation between the signifier
and signified that characterizes a Lacanian conception of language. In Lacan (1956), this constant
slippage is temporarily arrested by what he terms ‘quilting points’ (points de capiton), or (literally)
upholstery buttons. These constitute key signifiers in the discourse of the ‘normal’ (non-psychotic)
20 in as in prior to; fans as the present participle of fari, to speak.
27