The politics of ‘reality’: Derrida's subversions, constructivism and German military involvement abroad

Abstract

So far this book has highlighted tensions within each of the different constructivisms under consideration. Each chapter focused on a problematic key move: Alexander Wendt's approach is based on a conception of identity which is contradictory, Friedrich Kratochwil's on a notion of norms which does precisely what he wants to avoid and Nicholas Onuf's on a conceptualisation of the relationship between words and world which unravels in relation to his other claims. In the preceding chapters, these shortcomings were illustrated chiefly in relation to the FRG's shift towards participating in international military operations. My analysis was informed by Jacques Derrida's thought without, however, explicitly detailing how the specific claims used relate to his fundamental challenge to Western thought. Here I want to provide a brief introduction to my reading of Derrida's work, focusing specifically on what I call the ‘politics of reality’. Derrida's plot is as simple as it is subversive: he sets out to demonstrate that our thought, which he terms ‘logocentric’, cannot function on the basis of its presuppositions. The result of this subversion is a fundamentally different conception of the ‘real’ which undermines the value-laden hierarchy reality/representation. Following Derrida, even if there were a real, we could never have access to it other than through our representations. As a consequence, what we conceptualise as real is itself an effect of representations. This means that appeals to reality, which were frequent in relation to German military involvement abroad, are not neutral factual statements.