Rethinking Roles: Reflexive Role Ascription and Performativity in International Relations

Abstract

This article argues for a practice of reflexive role ascription in International Relations (IR) to prevent actor normalization. Roles are useful and often applied in narratives to facilitate our understanding of particular actors or subject positions. Yet, recurrent and non-reflexive ascriptions give rise to normalization, shaping how actors become understood. Awareness of performativity, over-generalization, and over-determining roles would thus contribute to more nuanced understandings of actors and prevent limited yet insightful role ascriptions from becoming the norm. The article builds on two largely compatible turns in IR—the reflexive and narrative turns—with a view to enlarging the concept of role beyond the domain of interaction and drama. It thus reviews the manner in which roles have been conceptualized in IR and extends their definition. Then, by focusing on the notions of attribution, predication, and Judith Butler's performativity, the article propounds a two-level approach to reflexive role ascription–derived from Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics—that deters narratives and their roles from normalizing subject positions in IR.