We Other IR Foucaultians

Abstract

When an interrogation whose purpose seems to be to assess the utility of Foucault's work and Foucault-inspired ideas in a particular domain of political analysis (IR) is initiated, one cannot help but wonder whether a logic of confession or justification is being mobilized. Such a confessional logic seems to interpellate “we other/us all” ( nous autres ) IR Foucaultians1 and demands to be addressed as a precondition for any discussion about what it might mean to deploy Foucaultian analytics in IR. Thus, I find myself incapable of answering the questions I have been asked to reflect on without addressing these interrogations first. “What has Foucault done for International Relations?” and “What is Foucault's impact on International Relations?” are injunctions that call Foucault-influenced scholars ( nous autres Foucaultians, whoever “we” may be2) to demonstrate, preferably through a series of irrefutable proofs, what they have contributed to a domain of disciplinary activity (IR) whose very definitions and demarcations seem to require no further explanation. The questions that frame this forum may well be in need of what one can consider to be a “Foucaultian” treatment. That is to say, the opening (and delimiting) interrogations as injunctions can be subjected to a prior mode of questioning (about what authorizes their discursive possibility) so that the sense of closure, decisiveness, and finality they seem to call for (and that calls “us” in) may be rendered less normal, commonplace, or acceptable. Among the elements of closure we find in this forum's framing interrogations is a request made to the so-called IR Foucaultians to abide by rules of disciplinary utility (what do you do for IR?) and knowledge accumulation (how does your brand of analysis build upon or “impact” what “non-Foucaultian IR scholars” have …