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

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imagination of the discipline’s founding fathers is a desire to secure the means of one’s agency. 26 It is a desire for potency rather than for (material) power as conceptualised in IR. The splitting, that is dramatized in Hobbes by leaving the state of nature and contracting with the Leviathan, is constitutive of the individual’s desire and of her ability to act in the world Second, however, finding a different foundation for theorising agency in IR also means coming to terms with this foundational dependence of the self upon the Other; rather than reverting to an individualist ontology that posits an autonomous, soveregn ‘Self’ interacting with a discrete ‘Other’. The self-other relations that underpin constructivism’s social theory feature an alreadyconstituted ‘Self’ encountering an already constituted ‘Other’ and interacting more or less friendlily with it, according to their respective background histories, cultures etc. (Wendt 1999, 246-312). What is being confused here in Lacanian terms is the small ‘other’ (other social actors) with ‘the Other’ underpinning the social order itself, impersonated in Hobbes’ drama by the Leviathan. Yet this Lacanian reading of Hobbes speaks to constructivism’s central concern with constitution. It lays the foundation for a type of social theorising that centrally foregrounds the mutual constitution of the units and the system, but not merely at the point of origin, soon to be forgotten as the units are then considered as discrete interacting entities. It draws the dependence of the self upon the Other as an ongoing feature of political order itself. More than a social, in the sense entrenched by constructivism, his is a deeply relational ontology. With Hobbes and Lacan the social construction of the units and the systems finally runs all the way down. 26 The realist legacy confuses the means of the desire for power with its ends. The key chapter here is chapter 11, and the key sentence (Hobbes p.70?): And the cause of this , is not alwayes that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, than he has already attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without acquisition of more. The quest for more (goods or power) is not about the acquisition of more goods or power per se but rather about keeping desire itself, the engine of human agency, in motion. 38
Ultimately, what this reading of Hobbes drew out is that the speaking subject, theorised by Jacques Lacan and operationalised in discursive approaches, provides a theoretically coherent and methodologically parsimonious basis for conceptualising agency in international politics. On the one hand it harbours a specific conception of the individual as a divided, speaking subject, as we have seen. On other, however, as I have shown extensively elsewhere (Epstein 2010) the purchase of this concept empirically is that it actually suspends all these ontological considerations, and provides a parsimonious way of continuing to explore identity concerns. The parsimony stems from the absence of having to hold any presumptions regarding the actor’s selves. Discursive approaches consider simply what the actors say, in order to know, not just who they are, but what they achieve. This, moreover, is what enables the analysis to move beyond IR’s characteristic state-centrism: the actors coming into focus are simply those that have made a difference in a specific area of international politics – whether these be states or Non-Governmental Organizations (see also Epstein 2008). Lastly, to apprehend the actors of international politics as speaking subjects opens up the question of the nature of the structures in interesting ways. First, no more than constructivism does it preclude considerations of the material structures that preoccupied the rationalists. Discursive approaches are not a totalizing enterprise that seeks to reduce everything to words or to crowd out the central role of material interests in shaping international politics. Rather, they simply casts the focus upon an additional type of social structures to those already in sight, namely the structures of language themselves. What a careful reading of Hobbes shows is that they grow their roots within IR’s own foundations. 39
Page 2 and 3: 2001). As the seat of human agency,
Page 4 and 5: foundation for elaborating a type o
Page 6 and 7: ones; to the extent that it is dire
Page 8 and 9: away from the ‘Hobbesian traditio
Page 10 and 11: Classical realism thus cast its len
Page 12 and 13: Gauthier is right to find in Hobbes
Page 14 and 15: he mobilises Searle’s distinction
Page 16 and 17: What did carry over from Hobbes , m
Page 18 and 19: within and beyond the text, it is i
Page 20 and 21: This explains, second, the diachron
Page 22 and 23: The imaginary is also the site wher
Page 24 and 25: or signification. 17 The word does
Page 26 and 27: Part III: The Leviathan as the sign
Page 28 and 29: subject that function as anchoring
Page 30 and 31: in terms of what the Leviathan achi
Page 32 and 33: The symbolic, as we have seen, is t
Page 34 and 35: experience and unimpeded desires. H
Page 36 and 37: Reading Hobbes through Lacan shines
Page 40 and 41: Citations Aron, Raymond (1966 [1962
Page 42 and 43: Hansen, L.(2006), Security As Pract
Page 44 and 45: Morgenthau, Hans J. (1960), Politic
Page 46: Wolfers, Arnold (1962), Discord and

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