Conclusion: A Counter-Memory of Realism

Abstract

Throughout this book two concurrent processes have been at work. The first of these processes was to challenge, problematize, and undermine the orthodox representation of Realism. The second process was, through detailed interpretation and historical recovery, to present another, alternative perspective on the emergence of Realist concepts in the works of Carr, Morgenthau, Wight, and Waltz. The first process concerns the question of the “name” of Realism, and the meanings inherent in names. The genealogy of Realism presented here has demonstrated that our present meaning of Realism is different, perhaps, even an inversion of Realism as it was proposed by Carr and Morgenthau. There may have emerged a difference between “offensive” and “defensive” Realism, but this difference is strictly contained within a paradigmatic framework1 The vice-like grip of pseudo-structuralism—a theoretical approach that employs the language of structuralism without applying its concepts thoroughly, but rather according to expediency—has had the effect of squeezing Realist discourse into suspended animation. This conceptual squeeze has resulted in Realists such as Mearsheimer putting forward a redefinition of the Realist tradition that possesses the language of classical Realism but is still dependent upon Neorealist categories for “theoretical” validation, thus rendering blunt the cutting edge of Realism.

Only as creators!—This has caused me the greatest trouble and still does always cause me the greatest trouble: to realize that what things are called is unspeakably more important than what they are. The reputation, name, and appearance, the worth, the usual measure and weight of a thing—originally almost always something mistaken and arbitrary, thrown over things like a dress and quite foreign to their nature and even their skin—has, through the belief in it and its growth from generation to generation, slowly grown onto and into the thing and has become its very body: what started as appearance nearly always becomes essence and effectively acts as its essence! What kind of a fool would believe that it is enough to point to this origin and this misty shroud of delusion in order to destroy the world that counts as “real,” so called “reality”! Only as creators can we destroy!—But let us also not forget that in the long run it is enough to create new names and valuations and appearances of truth in order to create new “things.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book II, No. 58.

The question or questions that have to be asked are: “what types of knowledge are you trying to disqualify when you say you are a science? What speaking subject, what discursive subject, what subject of experience and knowledge are you trying to minorize when you begin to say: “I speak this discourse, I am speaking a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist.” What theoretical-political vanguard are you trying to put on the throne in order to detach it from all the massive, circulating, and discontinuous forms that knowledge can take?”

Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, p. 25.