Poststructural International Relations

The most common examples of comparison in politics are the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato and Aristotle. They examined different polises and identified a number of political systems characterizing the type of political rule exercised in each polis . However, the main task that they were trying to achieve is not to identify the types of government but instead to identify the best form of government, therefore their work mostly contains normative evaluations. This pattern existed throughout human history that it went even beyond the realm of reality into the realm of the abstract boundaries, instances can be given from political literature such as Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’, Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ and also George Orwell’s ‘1984’, and also from academic literature such as Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and Fukuyama’s End of History. All these works present different forms of governing most of them in a polemical way in favour for a specific type of gov...

Revolutionary violence is a manifestation of political violence. Political violence is a subset of political action which includes both non-violent means such as elections and referendums, and violent means such as terrorism, revolution, civil war and genocide. In this regard, revolutionary violence is similar to terrorism as it is a form of communication through violence (Schmid, 2004) . Communication through violence takes place when other, non-violent, means of communication do not bring the expected outcome. Both forms of communication, violent and non-violent, are means in order to bring about change. Arendt defines revolution as “inextricably bound with the notion that the course of history suddenly begins anew” (Arendt, 2006, p. 18) . Emancipation, on the other hand, as Pieterse put it out as an explanatory term (Nederveen Pieterse, 1992) , and there are various approaches to emancipation either as empowerment or as resistance. What is fundamental in regards to emancipation i...

After the 9/11 events, which were perpetrated by radical Muslim extremists, the view of Islam as a religion of violence did not actually emerge, but re-emerged, or more accurately it was revived. More moderate Muslims had to counter this depiction of Islam by arguing that Islam is a religion of peace, and that Jihad is defensive and not offensive, relying on particular contexts in the Qur’an such as “ We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. ”(Quran, 5:32) Or, “ There is no compulsion in religion. ” (Quran, 2:256) Yet such arguments are deemed apologetic and defeatist by other Muslims, prominent among them is Sayyed Qutb . However, in analyzing the Quran, one can find many verses that counter the arguments of both sides and contradict the verses used by each of t...

At times when I think about my future and what I am supposed to do, I feel clueless and hopeless, sometimes I question my interest in my terrorism research and wonder that If I turned to another subject I would have spent my efforts with better results. Yet, I feel interested in terrorism studies, even though my views might seem a little bit deviant from the general views of the terrorism studies literature. However, I never had a desire to appease anyone as much as I desire to point out the thin line that separates reality from the convictions of people. This is largely because of my experience with my beliefs. As I used to hold firm to my previous beliefs until I started questioning them. At this point I drew close inclination with the views of poststructuralists who try to show that there is no ultimate reality but a network of realities that exist in a relationship of competition over mastery, religion is where this relationship is more acute. Most of the views and arguments of po...

The idea of a defence organization in the Middle East has always been a policy goal of many states to protect and preserve their national boundaries and interests. Following the end of WWII, a lot of effort has been made by regional as well as global powers to realize this goal, which commenced with the futile attempt of a British Middle East Command (MEC), followed by the United States’ project of the “Northern Tier” which culminated in the 24 th of February 1955, with Turkey as well as Great Britain, Iraq, Pakistan and Iran signing a regional defence pact known as the Baghdad Pact. The rationale behind each of these states in signing this pact is usually perceived as an attempt to counter the Soviet Communist threat in case the Soviets attempted to extend their influence towards the Middle East and South Asia. Though this perception is true to some extent, it serves no more than a simplification of the underlying motives behind the rationale of these states and lacks the analytic ...