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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The Leviathan posits the site of the orig<strong>in</strong>al division of labour between political theory and <strong>in</strong>ternational<br />
relations, which revolves around two related yet dist<strong>in</strong>ct clusters of mean<strong>in</strong>gs. IR, the discipl<strong>in</strong>e that<br />
carved its remit out as the relations between states, considers the Leviathan as the state, envisaged<br />
from without; whereas Political Theory appraises the sovereign, envisaged from with<strong>in</strong>. From there, <strong>in</strong><br />
IR, questions perta<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g to the relationship between the Leviathan and the subject have been largely<br />
black-boxed and attention largely shifted to the other pole of the narrative; such that the Hobbesian<br />
legacy <strong>in</strong> IR has largely revolved around the state of nature rather than the figure of the Leviathan. As<br />
such the Leviathan is, via realist read<strong>in</strong>gs, both taken for granted as the discipl<strong>in</strong>e’s found<strong>in</strong>g currency<br />
yet largely lost from sight. My contention is that return<strong>in</strong>g to appraise it fully as a symbol draws out yet<br />
another level of mean<strong>in</strong>g, beyond the state or the sovereign, that reveals someth<strong>in</strong>g fundamental about<br />
the possibility of <strong>in</strong>teract<strong>in</strong>g politically that is pert<strong>in</strong>ent for understand<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>ternational order. 7 Before<br />
turn<strong>in</strong>g to that symbol I etch out a very brief history of the discipl<strong>in</strong>e under the prism of the relationship<br />
to Hobbes <strong>in</strong> order to show the ways <strong>in</strong> which the Hobbesian state of nature has explicitly or implicitly<br />
<strong>in</strong>formed conceptions of agency <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>ternational politics.<br />
Hobbes the Realist<br />
Ever s<strong>in</strong>ce realism first laid claim to Hobbes’s state of nature as its found<strong>in</strong>g myth, the history of<br />
<strong><strong>In</strong>ternational</strong> <strong>Relations</strong> Theory (IRT) has been punctuated by a succession of efforts to recover Hobbes<br />
7 A note here to clarify my term<strong>in</strong>ology. A symbol is rhetorical trope, used especially <strong>in</strong> religion or art for<br />
example, <strong>in</strong> which representations of concrete objects serve to <strong>in</strong>voke abstract, non-figurable qualities<br />
(associated with the div<strong>in</strong>e, for example). The prefix sym (‘with’) signifies this jo<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g together. The core<br />
question explored as part of the argument itself is, once we suspend these two mean<strong>in</strong>gs conventionally<br />
attributed to it (the state and the sovereign), what else has the Leviathan been jo<strong>in</strong>ed to?<br />
A myth for its part is a literary trope that comprises a narrative, dynamic component and some form of<br />
resolution or denouement (Souriau 1990). I thus use the term ‘myth’ to refer to Hobbes’s ‘state of<br />
nature’, that place that humans leave to form a polity. When referr<strong>in</strong>g to the Leviathan I alternate<br />
between the neutral term ‘figure’ and ‘symbol’, which is thematised as part of the argument itself.<br />
7