Bridging divides
I am just back from the International Studies Association annual convention in San Francisco. The theme of the conference was ‘Bridging Multiple Divides’ – divides between academics, policymakers and activists, and divides within academia between different theoretical and methodological approaches to studying international politics. Of the 4,000+ presentations on offer, for me one of the more entertaining panels challenged the idea that bridging divides is necessarily a good thing. This struck a chord: at a convention a few years back I recall an ISA president calling for academics to speak with ‘one voice’ to policymakers, since that would make things easier for government.
The ‘Why Bridge It?’ panel, organised by the LSE’s Millennium: Journal of International Studies, challenged ISA’s notion that divides should or could be reconciled. They did so simply by examining what bridges are. This might seem incredibly flippant. Building bridges signals humankind’s mastery of nature, argued Douglas Bulloch, and in films like A Bridge Too Far or Bridge Over the River Kwai, our hubris. Bridges signal conflict too: to destroy a bridge appears hugely symbolic in the case of Mostar during the 1990s Balkans conflicts or the al-Sarafiya Bridge in Baghdad more recently. Bridges are a site of battle, noted Henry Radice, where the loser is thrown off the side, or a point of restricted passage if a bridge is gated or guarded. To those deliberately on marginal islands, bridge-building connects them to the mainstream or mainland, perhaps against their wish to be undisturbed. A bridged divide is no longer a divide. Bridges may have utility, but they do violence! Does ISA’s inclusiveness signal violence?
But if we examine the so-called marginal voices in international studies – the post-structuralists, post-modernists and critical theorists – they are as well-represented as the mainstream; they are mainstream now. The truly marginal wouldn’t be at ISA in the first place. Felix Berenskoetter suggested that those at the margin take a position of superiority, the self-appointed cutting edge, closer to a higher truth. They do not need a bridge built to them or to build bridges themselves. They sit under a bridge and leap out to attack the traffic now and again.
Forgive a final stretch of metaphor. There is only land and water, for Heidegger, two substances. A bridge assumes a space between islands, but we focus on how the bridge transforms how we think of the islands (Oliver Kessler and Robert Kissack). There are images of bridges on Euro banknotes to represent communication between the peoples of members states and to suggest a coming-together of identity. But what is the in-between? What is in the divide? Who or what is the water? Politics? At this point, Robert’s opening comment that the Golden Gate Bridge is the most popular suicide destination in the world began to hit home.
Ben O'Loughlin
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Ben’s observations on building bridges between disparate schools of thought echo some of the literature on subalternity I have been looking at recently (no, I don’t get out much). In a way, to build between the subaltern, the marginal or radical, and the mainstream is to rob the former of its identity and thus its power. Once the radical is accepted it cannot hold onto its radicality; its promise of subversion and change is swallowed up, never to be seen again.
Critical theory is a case in point. As Ben notes, critical theory is everywhere: its jargon and demi-gods make up an accepted, ‘cool’ method of critique, while its position tends to reiterate the power of the mainstream rather than give us something else in its place (Marcuse just gave up and delved into the aesthetic realm). Critical theory has been successfully bridged and robbed of its cutting edge. As Zizek has observed, we now know full well what we do, but we do it anyway! In this sense I would suggest there is no longer such thing as radicality in academia (or if there is it is found with the old boys and their classical techniques and concerns). The truly radical cannot just place itself outside of the mainstream, but should construct an alternative way of looking at the world that is incompatible with the mainstream. It sits outside and throws rocks. It refuses to be incorporated because it is right and is not open to negotiation.
Being a radical should by definition be a pretty lonely job. But, to use Ben’s metaphor, the radical is an island that draws people to it by offering something different. The point is that there is no bridge: only those brave enough to swim across the choppy water need apply.
So does all this bridge building – grand unification of the social sciences – in fact limit the potential for change by co-opting and defusing? Here I think I agree with Ben that bridges can be violent.