Representation, recognition and respect in world politics

The case of Iran-US relations

Constance Duncombe

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781526124913
• eBook ISBN: 9781526124937
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

This book addresses a critical issue in global politics: how recognition and misrecognition fuel conflict or initiate reconciliation. The main objective of this book is to demonstrate how representations of one state by another influence foreign policymaking behaviour. Representations are important because they shape both the identity of a state and how it is recognised by others. States respond to representations of themselves that do not fit with how they wish to be recognised. These issues are explored within a detailed empirical investigation of the fraught bilateral relations between the US and Iran, which is perhaps one of the most significant flashpoints in global politics today. With Iran and US relations becoming increasingly fractious under the Trump administration, questions remain about how best to explain the initial success of the deal considering the decades of animosity between Iran and the US.

Part I
Conceptualising the relationship between representation, recognition and identity

1
Representation and foreign policy

Representation is a powerful force in world politics. As the production of meaning developed through language, symbols or signs, it is a significant factor in how we both construct reality and enact our performance of it. Representation conveys a particular understanding of the world around us, which is temporally situated and informed by events over time. Representation exposes power relationships and asymmetries that exist within practices of identity politics, precisely because representation is a form of abstraction and interpretation.¹ Types of engagement with our others are made possible through discourses structured by representation, whereas alternative pathways are precluded. Representation and foreign policy are intimately connected, yet how states respond to representations about themselves requires further consideration.

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate how representation and recognition of one state by another influence foreign policy. This chapter focuses on illustrating the links between representation and foreign policy. I argue that representation and foreign policy are inextricably linked, but that how states respond to these representations is not always fully examined. It is vitally important to analyse the links between representation and foreign policy, because the response and reaction of a state to particular representations of itself are central to shifts in its foreign policy. In order to understand how a state receives different representations of itself to that which it has artfully cultivated, and to what extent these impact on the dynamics of its identity construction, we must examine its ability and strength to project reinterpreted representational schema in response. Knowledge of how a state, represented by others, manoeuvres its foreign policy can offer insight into how policymaking shifts discursively in all polities concerned.

I use films as visual examples to illustrate the pervasiveness of representations emerging from each of these themes as part of a broader discourse that legitimises certain foreign policy actions. Film provides a space within which the motivating factors of particular actions are visualised. In doing so, the representations emerging within the broad categories of Self–Other and historical narrative produce a particular political communication that reinforces the ‘rightness’ of foreign policy decisions.

I have divided the chapter into two main sections. Firstly, I explore the links between representation and foreign policy through the categories of Self–Other,² East and West,³ and postcolonial discourse. Secondly, I examine historical narratives and the use of metaphor and analogy in reinforcing representational schemas.

Self–Other

Representations of Self and Other are central to practices of foreign policy, although considerations of how states respond to representations of themselves is a puzzling absence in approaches to international relations. Here I examine the politics of representation and identity creation within the category of Self–Other. I firstly unpack the dominant perspective on identity at the personal level of interaction before exploring how metanarratives of Self and Other are employed at the macro level of state interaction. Doing so allows me to demonstrate that representations are important because they shape both the identity of a state and how it is recognised by others. Representational schemas are key to producing images of Self and Other that act to reinforce or reimagine frameworks of national identity, which as a meaning-making process enables certain foreign policy decisions while constraining political possibilities for change.

Examinations of how identity is constructed are largely positioned along two great divides. One group champions the importance of primordial evolution in in-group/out-group dynamics, while the other claims identity evolves through conscious political pressures.⁴ Nevertheless, these two positions share the same basic principle – that identity construction is dependent on an Other. Identity manifests through methods of exclusion.⁵ Self and Other are not separate-yet-equal entities – they exist within a hierarchical relationship of dependence.⁶

Henri Tajfel's social identity theory (SIT) is an important intervention into the debate between evolutionary and social construction of identity.⁷ Rejecting the evolutionary theories behind identity and belonging, SIT privileges the factors of perception and interdependence of group members to explain underlying situational divisions within a wider society.⁸ An individual feels part of a group because he or she has a sense of shared similarities with other members. These similarities are not necessarily formed through a genetic relationship with other members, but they are used nonetheless to distinguish the group from other groups in society. The basic concept that an individual derives his or her identity through membership of a group is often used to explain the construction of identity boundaries and shifts in the alterity of the Other.⁹ Group identity is a process whereby members become identical but non-members are always different, which engenders Others as the norm.¹⁰ In doing so, group identity reflects back to its members a positive sense of self that is at the very least equal (or in some cases superior) in comparison to the Other group.¹¹

While understanding identity is useful in examining the surface of individual and group identity construction, I contend that SIT's foundations in psychology and its reliance on experiment replication neglect to document the contextual nature of human development and interaction. In relying on the supposed accuracy of the model, created in the late 1960s, SIT generates a blueprint for understanding the phenomena of Self–Other that does not engage with the social context of the modern world. SIT also overlooks the implications that representation of the Other has for in-group/out-group construction. A series of representations that privilege Self over Other influences the normalisation of a divide between Us and Them. I believe the boundaries of identity as explained through SIT can be understood as shaped at some level by the production of representation, an aspect that the theoretical paradigms of the concept fail either to identify or analyse.

Moving away from the SIT literature, the representative schemas that underlie intersubjective identity production are also part of what can be termed a desire for recognition, where an actor can only be ‘real’ when others recognises its existence. The process of recognising that an individual possesses the validity of existence is subject to continual interpretation, which results in a constant struggle for the positions of master and slave.¹² According to the master–slave model, self-consciousness is not a given, simply supplied absolute, as ‘each person has to fight for who he or she takes him- or herself to be’.¹³ Representations of Self by the Other and vice versa can be an extension of a struggle for recognition. By representing the Other as inferior and unequal, the Self generates a repetition of its own dominant position within the social power structure.¹⁴ Without the Other, the Self would be unrecognised; the Self seeks out the Other ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Representation, recognition and respect in world politics
• Part I: Conceptualising the relationship between representation, recognition and identity
• Part II: State identity and foreign policy in Iran and the US
• Part III: Reciprocal representations of identity in Iran and the US
• Conclusion: Representation, recognition and possibilities for transformative change
• Interviews
• Select bibliography
• Index