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The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory
Abstract
This essay explores the nature and significance of aesthetic approaches to international political theory. More specifically, it contrasts aesthetic with mimetic forms of representation. The latter, which have dominated the study of international relations, seek to represent politics as realistically and authentically as possible, aiming at capturing world politics as it really is. An aesthetic approach, by contrast, assumes that there is always a gap between a form of representation and what is represented therewith. Rather than ignoring or seeking to narrow this gap, as mimetic approaches do, aesthetic insight recognises that the inevitable difference between the represented and its representation is the very location of politics. The essay, thus, argues for the need to reclaim the political value of the aesthetic; not to replace social science or technological reason, but to broaden our abilities to comprehend and deal with the key dilemmas of world politics. The ensuing model of thought facilitates productive interactions across different faculties, including sensibility, imagination and reason, without any of them annihilating the unique position and insight of the other.
Eleştirel güvenlik çalışmaları yazını özellikle son 10 yılda pek çok teorik tartışmaya sahne olmuştur. Bu tartışmalar, yazındaki iki temel eksen olan derinleşme ve genişlemenin ötesine geçme ihtiyacından kaynaklanmıştır. Ancak yazında gelişmeye başlayan alternatif teoriler ve iki ekseni aşmaya yönelik tartışmalar yeni bir eksene olan gereksinimi beraberinde getirmiştir. Bu yeni eksen disiplinin açılımı (opening) ile ifade edilmiştir. Bu argüman, güvenlik çalışmalarındaki vernaküler ve görsel dönüşler ile daha da kuvvetlenmiştir. Bu tanımlayıcı çalışmanın temel amacı da, söz konusu dönüşlerin vaatlerini ve eleştirel güvenlik çalışmalarına katkılarını incelemek ve bu yaklaşımları Türkçe yazına kazandırmaktır. Çalışma, “Vernaküler ve Görsel güvenlik dönüşleri güvenliğin çalışılmasını nasıl dönüştürebilir?” sorusundan hareket etmektedir. Bu amaçla çalışma, bütünleyici yazın taramasına dayanmaktadır. Çalışmada, söz konusu iki yeni dönüşün hem dominant ekollerin bazı dezavantajlarını aşma hem de disiplinin ihtiyaç duyduğu açılıma cevap verme noktasında umut vaadedici olduğu vurgulanmaktadır.
This special issue explores how popular culture shapes local, regional, national, and global perceptions of Ukraine amid the ongoing war with Russia. Integrating literatures on popular geopolitics, vernacular and aesthetic IR, and Ukraine studies, we delve into the complexities of the knowledge-making about Ukraine that takes place at the interstices of the everyday, the aesthetic, and the international. Given the mutually implicated relationship between popular culture and world politics, the popular representations of the Ukrainian subject both mirror and shape prevailing narratives, practices, identities, and power relations. But we also inquire into how popular culture serves as a space for political resistance and activism by those existing at the margins of world politics. By centering the Ukrainian perspective in all its multiplicity, the special issue helps to challenge the Western- and Russian-centric prism through which Ukraine has been approached in IR and related disciplines.
The gap between Russia’s aspirations to become a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to do so has become increasingly more visible, especially following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. I examine the mismatch between the Russian leadership’s AI narrative and the country’s technological capabilities via the lens of Russia’s quest for great power status and ontological security. Connecting literatures on status-seeking, ontological security, and narratives in International Relations, I show the need to scrutinise narratives surrounding technology, especially AI technologies and their associated ambiguities, as part of how states deal with the constant uncertainty about recognition of their self-perceived identity. Based on an analysis of textual and visual documents collected via open-access sources, I find that the Russian official AI narrative embeds three of the elements forming Russia’s conception of a great power, namely the ability to compete, modernise, and attain technological sovereignty. It features a plot where the state is the main protagonist leading Russia towards AI leadership despite the obstacles it is facing. Although the official rhetoric does not match the reality of Russian capabilities, the narrative is used as a cognitive tool in the quest for identity during times of uncertainty.
