The Rhetoric of Inquiry in International Relations: A Hermeneutic Investigation Into the Forms of Argumentation in International Relations Meta-Theory by Torsten Michel

Author:Torsten Michel [Michel, Torsten]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000469004
Google: 21dBEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 58081209
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-04T13:29:43+00:00

Concluding remarks

As a first step in our attempt to establish competing forms of meta-theorising we have now reached a four-fold classification. By investigating the logics of argumentation currently operative in IR meta-theory this section identified four different logics: monism, pluralism, displacement and diversity. Each of these is organised either around a logic of subsumption or around a logic of reconstruction and is further distinguishable by the ways in which they relate form to content. Both monism and pluralism rely upon external principles that demarcate and ‘secure’ their respective realms of meta-theory. Based on these principles (in the examples used above a notion of ‘science’), they seek to identify ‘proper’ meta-theoretical approaches and subsume them under the given external principle. In case of monism, and in reference to an aspired to unity of science, only one meta-theoretical position is presented as compatible with this external principle. In terms of the link between form and content in meta-theorising, this logic of argumentation is reductive in that the form of meta-theorising is coextensive with the substantive content of a single meta-theoretical system. Pluralism, however, uses a deductive link between external principle and substantive content in that it allows multiple meta-theoretical systems to be subsumable under its principle. In either manifestation of the logic of subsumption, the external principle is itself not part of the practice of IR meta-theorising but serves as the independently posited standard of demarcation for the realm of meta-theory.

In contrast to these manifestations of subsumptive logic, displacement and diversity represent expressions of the logic or reconstruction. A logic or reconstruction dispenses with an external organising principle and recognises much more explicitly and substantively the social and contingent emergence of meta-theoretical systems. Its focus lies more on the relations between the internal dynamics of developing substantive content and their reflection in forms of presentation to an outward audience. In the case of displacement, this focus specifically aims at ablating the reified and naturalised cornerstones in existing ways of theorising. Its aim is to demonstrate the often hidden and concealed contingencies and contradictions inherent in any attempt to secure any (meta-)theoretical ground. Meta-theorising within a logic of displacement shifts the angle towards an ablation of linguistic structures that constitute the seemingly stable and coherent theoretical toolsets with which particular problem fields are identified and addressed. Consequently, a logic of displacement is not concerned with developing its own substantive meta-theoretical position but rather to demonstrate the precariousness of ‘meta-theory’ as such. Its chief concern lies with de-naturalising the ways in which meta-theorising and its substantive claims are being secured; in other words, the relation it posits between form and content is one in which sedimented layers of textual symbolism and linguistic assertion are eroded in order to de-conceal the contingent and unstable meanings with which substantive claims are being secured.

Finally, we have identified diversity as a fourth logic operative in meta-theorising. Still falling within the remit of the logic of reconstruction, diversity nevertheless differs from displacement in that it seeks a more balanced

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