Symposium: Queer IR

[This is a post-publication review symposium] \"Define your terms\" is one of those seemingly-innocuous pieces of advice readily dispensed all the time by professors to their students, especially in introductory courses. Be clear and consistent in your use of words. Have a precise way of elaborating what each part of your argument means: when you say \"state\" or \"war\" or \"woman,\" for instance, those signifiers ought to have clear and stable signifieds to which they correspond. After all, if we don't all agree on the meanings of our terms, how can we even communicate our claims, let alone assess them in pursuit of a progressive cumulation of knowledge? Cindy Weber's call for a \"queer intellectual curiosity\" (2016) makes this seemingly innocuous move appear not so innocent. By urging us to examine how the boundaries between the normal and the perverse break down and are incompletely reinscribed at a variety of \"international\" sites, including in the very writing of \"IR scholarship\" as an exercise in clearly stating what is and is not going on in the world, Weber raises some challenging questions about both the theories and the methodologies through which we generate knowledge. Normalization and domestication, she suggests, are at work all up and down the \"levels of analysis\" and at all stages of the research process, and hence -- much as Foucault suggested -- what appears to be liberation might in fact be a renewed and more subtle form of imprisonment. [...]【本内容为出版后评论研讨会实录】「明确界定你的术语」是教授们在课堂上，尤其是入门课程中，时常随口给出的看似无伤大雅的建言之一。使用措辞时需清晰且保持一致，需以精准方式阐释你论证中各部分的内涵：举例而言，当你提及「国家」「战争」或「女性」时，这些能指（signifier）应对应清晰且稳定的所指（signified）。毕竟，若众人对所用术语的定义未能达成共识，我们连自身主张都无法有效传达，更遑论在追求知识渐进积累的过程中对其进行评估？辛迪·韦伯（Cindy Weber）2016年提出的「酷知性求知欲（queer intellectual curiosity）」倡议，却让这一看似无伤大雅的建言显得并非如此无害。她呼吁我们审视「常态」与「反常」之间的边界如何消解，又在各类「国际场域」中得到不完全的重新界定——其中就包括将「国际关系学（IR, International Relations）学术研究」视为一项明确阐释世界中正在发生与未发生之事的实践。韦伯就此提出了诸多极具挑战性的问题，直指我们生产知识所依托的理论与方法论本身。她指出，规范化与驯化（domestication）过程贯穿「分析层次（levels of analysis）」的各个维度，也覆盖研究流程的所有阶段；因此，正如福柯（Foucault）所揭示的那样，看似解放的表象之下，实则可能是一种更新且更为隐蔽的禁锢。[...]