From Policy Relevance to Present Relevance: Entanglement, Scholarly Responsibility, and the Ethics of Quantum Social Theory

Abstract

Abstract Debates about the role of international relations (IR) scholarship in contemporary politics historically privilege “policy relevance” as both a goal and site of debate. The role of scholarship, scholars, and scholarly collectives has become increasingly resonant given the overlapping crises of white supremacy, police violence, and state repression in the United States, the worldwide pandemic, and the antidemocratic nationalist politics throughout Europe and the United States. Critical IR and critical security studies typically resist policy engagement entirely, positioning critical thought and inquiry as political intervention in and of itself. Here, I explore that claim using quantum concepts that foreground the inextricability of entanglement in thinking politics, ethics, and action. Ultimately, I argue that IR should move toward engaging and being responsible to the/a political present. Drawing on the temporality in IR literature, I argue that we are always already entangled with a heterotemporal present. Framing the question of political relevance as a binary of for/against precludes an effective assessment of the politics and normative meaning of scholarly interventions into contemporary politics. By reformulating our understanding of scholarship as produced by and reproducing a political present, something with which we are inevitably entangled whether we choose to be or not, the question of relevance becomes reoriented toward scholarly relationships with a/many presents, and consequently, a/many pasts and futures. Negotiating this dynamic is a more complex question than the narrow formulation of policy and/or political recommendations, and requires a fundamental rethinking of the presumption that scholarship in and of itself is sufficient.