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Introduction
Interpretation and the Politics of Meaning
Sean Noah Walsh and Clement Fatovic
I On the Interpretation of Politics
This volume provides an introductory guide to interpretive approaches in political theory. There is a wide, and perhaps bewildering, assortment of interpretive approaches available to students of political theory today. The aim of this volume is to help readers navigate their way through this dense and diverse field by providing an overview of the backgrounds and practices that inform these approaches to interpretation. Mastering any of the approaches surveyed in this volume can be a daunting task. So much has already been written on Straussianism, the Cambridge School, and feminism that the novice may have no idea where to begin. Moreover, the texts detailing approaches like deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and genealogy are often so prohibitively dense as to discourage new readers from making the attempt at all. The aim of this volume is thus to provide an introduction that renders these approaches more accessible. Although the book is intended primarily for graduate students and advanced undergraduates who want to know about the backgrounds, methods, and objectives associated with different interpretive approaches, seasoned practitioners of particular approaches will also find the discussions of other, perhaps less familiar, approaches useful as a foundation for further inquiry.
Interpretation is an essential activity of political theory. Political theory is a rich, complex, and contested interdisciplinary field of study that takes diverse forms and pursues a variety of interrelated activities including historical narrative, textual exegesis, normative theorizing, applied ethics, empirical analysis, and political commentary.1 For all the differences in form, style, and objective among these and other endeavors, however, the interpretation of texts is an indispensable activity in political theory. Although interpretation is arguably an unavoidable (if sometimes unacknowledged) aspect of all scholarshipâif not of any and every engagement with the world2âpolitical theorists face the special challenge of interpreting texts that come as close as anything to defining the core of this increasingly pluralistic and unabashedly undisciplined field of study. Even if the analysis of written texts is not their primary concern, the requirements of professional training, teaching, and scholarship make it necessary for political theorists to interpret written texts. But what distinguishesâand sometimes dividesâdifferent political theorists are the different methods, techniques, and procedures they use to render texts intelligible and to explain their meaning.
The interpretive approaches explored in this volume exemplify this diversity. Some of these schools of thought, such as Straussianism, the Cambridge School, Marxism, feminism, genealogy, and deconstruction, have attracted sizeable followings. Others, such as Lacanian psychoanalysis, negative dialectics, and Greimassian semiotics, are perhaps lesser-known approaches that have (so far) worked largely around the margins of political theory. Others may be familiar (by name and reputation if nothing else) to most political theorists as distinct modes of analyzing norms, practices, and institutions, but not exclusively as ways of reading texts. Some of these approaches were specifically designed for the reading of canonical texts in the history of political thought, while others are adapted from approaches first developed or used primarily for the analysis of discourses, institutions, social systems, and other phenomena in more empirical forms of scholarship. Some were developed by self-identified political theorists working within the larger field of political science, while others were formulated by scholars and thinkers in psychiatry, philosophy, linguistics, and other disciplines. Regardless of its provenance, though, each offers a distinct perspective on the meaning and significance of texts that makes it worthy of study.
The diversity of approaches used in political theory today stands in marked contrast to the situation that existed when political theory first emerged as a distinct sub-field of political science. The approaches that dominated political theory until the 1960s generally treated it as a single continuous tradition centered on a fairly limited set of fundamental questions and topics. During the latter part of the nineteenth century and throughout the first half of the twentieth century, political theory was chiefly conceived as the history of political thought in the âWest.â With the emergence of political theory as a distinct sub-field within political scienceâwhich had itself become established at the start of the twentieth century as a distinct discipline with its own professional associations, journals, subject-matter, and standards of scholarshipâthe study of political thought was often defined in terms of the evolutionary development of a continuous tradition that stretched from the ancient Greeks into the present. Scholarship focused on those thinkers who were either deemed to be 1) âgreatâ according to some timeless standard, 2) representative of political thought in their own eras, or 3) influential in the subsequent development of political thought or practice. Studies often took the form of narrative and critical commentary on the so-called Great Books of Western political thought composed by a select group of luminaries, including Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Other thinkers also made notable appearances in studies during this period, but a canon centered around the aforementioned thinkers had taken shape.
Although there were always exceptions, the field was dominated by studies which assumed that works by thinkers from very different time periods and social and cultural contexts were preoccupied with many of the same basic political concerns. There were always studies on individual thinkers and surveys of the political thought of particular periods (e.g., the Middle Ages),3 but the works that probably did the most to define the field of political theory at this time were much broader in scope. Some of the most influential studies in the last century took the form of sweeping surveys of the history of political thought presented in chronological order.4
The study of the history of political theory in this period often served two main purposes: one was to trace the development of key concepts such as justice, freedom, or authority throughout the ages; the other was to glean lessons from this tradition with an eye toward addressing contemporary social and political concerns. As Sheldon Wolin stated in the opening pages of Politics and Vision, âeven the most cursory examination of the masterpieces of political literature discloses the continual reappearance of certain problem-topics.â5 In Wolinâs view, competing conceptions of âorderâ have structured political theory throughout the ages and made it âa continuing form of discourse.â6 Perhaps most influential of all was George Sabineâs claim that the history of political thought could be understood in evolutionary terms as a progression toward evermore democratic and pluralist forms.7 Sabineâs teleological view of political thought leading ineluctably toward liberal democracy was combined with an interest in exploring the âsocial milieuâ in which individual works were produced. Although political theorists were interested in exploring the historical context of canonical works or explicating their essential meaning, many examined texts with the avowed purpose of extracting enduring political lessons or normative criteria that could be applied in the present.8 Some political theorists also argued that careful study of the great texts could enrich the development of political science by contributing a deeper or more refined understanding of key concepts, categories, and criteria.
Despite the attempts of some theorists to make the history of political thought relevant to political science and to contemporary debates over important public issues, political scientists in other sub-fields began to criticize political theory as a form of âhistoricismâ and âantiquarianismâ unsuited to the advancement of a discipline whose practitioners aspired to make it more âscientific.â Behaviorists and others determined to make the study of politics more empirical and predictive began questioning whether the normative and historical preoccupations of political theory belonged within political science at all. Foremost among these critics was the University of Chicago political scientist (and later president of the American Political Science Association) David Easton, who argued that the reading of long-dead thinkers did little if anything to train political scientists to explain the way that âinputsâ and âoutputsâ operated in the various subsystems that comprised The Political System (the title of his influential book from 1953). Easton led the way in calling for new kinds of theories actually capable of guiding empirical research in the modern era.9
By the early 1960s other developments in the social sciences also called into question the relevance of political theory. Popular books announcing the âend of ideologyâ contributed to the sense that political theory had little to offer non-communist Western societies no longer in need of transformative philosophies now that they had supposedly arrived at a ârough consensusâ on major political, constitutional, and economic questions.10 The growing chorus of criticism even led many political theorists themselves to wonder whether their sub-field would survive at all. The dire situation facing political theory was expressed in the provocative title of an essay by the liberal English political theorist Isaiah Berlin, which posed a question on many minds: âDoes Political Theory Still Exist?â11 For Peter Laslett, an English historian at Cambridge University, the answer to this question had already become clear by 1956: âfor the time being anyway political philosophy is dead.â12
Other developments inside and outside the professional boundaries of political theory posed more specific challenges to the assumptions underlying prevailing approaches in political theory, especially to the notion that works of political thought in the West formed a continuous tradition trending towards liberal democracy. But rather than extinguishing political theory, many new developments actually contributed to its revitalization. One major effect of these developments was to transform and rejuvenate political theory by spurring the formation of new schools of thought that produced or encouraged innovations in interpretive methodologies. Although some of the approaches examined in this volume can trace their roots to intellectual developments and theories dating back to the nineteenth century (e.g., Marxian approaches), most began to take shape amidst the tumultuous events transpiring inside and outside academia during the 1960s.
External events posed fundamental challenges to the ways that political science and political theory were practiced, especially in the United States. The social upheaval of the Sixties, including the rise of new social movements seeking womenâs liberation and the extension of civil rights and civil liberties to racial minorities, protests against the war in Vietnam, various student demonstrations, the rise of a counter-cultural movement critical of the social, psychological, and environmental effects of consumption practices in advanced industrialized societies, and other challenges to the status quo, exposed the limitations and biases of behaviorism and other mainstream work in political science, which generally focused on a rather narrow range of political activity occurring in and through the formal channels of government and found it difficult to address, let alone predict, actions that took place in other arenas and that challenged the legitimacy of those formal channels. Indeed, new (or newly salient) forms of political activity and expressions of identity undermined understandings of politics and power that were often conceptualized in terms of or oriented around the state and its sub-systems.13 In response to these social and political changes, there were calls to expand the range of issues, methods, and theories taught in political science and other established disciplines. This period also witnessed the emergence of new fields of inquiry that often had an overtly critical edge and focused on topics that had been largely ignored or marginalized in academia. By the end of the decade, new departments of womenâs studies, cultural studies, and Africana studies had begun sprouting across college campuses. And within political theory itself, the events of the Sixties induced scholars to examine old texts in a new light and to take up issues that had not received as much attention in more traditional studies, including representations of women, civil disobedience, and participatory forms of democracy, among many others.
Larger trends in academia also had profound implications for political theory. Critiques of conventional understandings of science helped to slow the spread of behaviorism and create new openings for students of politics. Philosophers, historians, and scholars working in the natural sciences disputed many of the core assumptions about science underlying empirical scholarship across various disciplines. Chief among these were positivistic understandings of science as the pursuit of objective knowledge about the external world based on accurate descriptions and causal explanations of observables and notions of science as an enterprise that progresses through the incremental but continuous accumulation of facts.14 In addition, the idea that scholarship must be conducted in a neutral or value-free mannerâone of the guiding principles of research in the social sciences at least since the time the German sociologist Max Weber argued that such a stance was essential to science15âwas questioned on both moral and ontological grounds. Pretensions to neutrality and objectivity in the social sciences, it was said, obscured the constellations of interests and relations of power that infiltrate the study of politics no less than politics itself.16 The political philosopher Leo Strauss leveled an even more fundamental charge against the supposed ontological divide between âfactsâ and âvaluesâ that Weber had promulgated by arguing that certain facts and concepts central to the human sciences are essentially value-laden and inseparable from normative assumptions and commitments.17 In fact, Strauss and his students were at the forefront of this assault on the feasibility and desirability of value-free scholarship in political science. In a controversial collection of essays edited by Straussâs former student Herbert Storing, Straussians argued that the ânew political scienceâ represented by behaviorism was not only a trivial pursuit focused on small-bore issues but was also incapable of addressing fundamental problems about the right way to order the political system as a whole.18 Although political theorists in other camps did not necessarily agree with all aspects of Straussâs critique or share his particular views on the moral foundations of politics,19 many of them agreed that the study of politics is an inherently value-laden enterprise. It should thus come as no surprise that some of the interpretive approaches that emerged in the wake of these debates adopted a critical posture incorporating highly specified normative positions.20
Other intellectual developments in academia contributed to the formation of alternatives to those interpretive approaches that presupposed the existence of a continuous tradition oriented around a handful of core concepts or problems. Influenced by the groundbreaking work of scholars such as R. G. Collingwood in history, Thomas Kuhn in science, and Michel Foucault across a number of fields, political theorists became increasingly attentive to the discontinuities and ruptures in the history of ideas, the contingencies that condition the emergence of different theories, the roles of convention and context in the formation and expression of concepts, the incommensurability of different discourses, the epistemic foundations of different claims to truth and knowledge, and a host of other notions that problematized the meanings of texts in new ways. The so-called linguistic turn in twentieth-century continental philosophy, which in some ways overlapped with and contributed to the preceding developments, also exerted a powerful influence on the way that political theorists would approach texts. The linguistic turn, which originated in problems of meaning that vexed analytical philosophers early in the first half of the century, would refer to what the political theorist Fred Dallmayr has described as the âenhanced stature of language in twentieth-century philosophyâ more broadly conceived.21 Although they came out of different traditions and were motivated by very different concerns, the works of Ferdinand de Saussure, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, and others helped transform language into a philosophical problem concerned with questions about how (and if) it is possible to make ourselves understood to others, what it is we âdoâ with language (or what lang...
