Características y Factores del Clima Organizacional

Memory, the 'linguistic tu rn ,' and the 'singularity of political novelty.'

Before proceeding with my next chapter, I would like to make a detour and talk briefly about the implications the current project has had for my understanding o f the nature of remembering. It was not from the outset that I was aware of the important connections between testim ony/bearing w itness and memory. In fact, it was only after a significant number of my academic books were lost in the trans- Atlantic mail and I was forced to recover their names from a long list of bibliographic material that I was made aware of the role of memory in research. Since I had never been one with a good memory, not only was I unable to remember the titles of all the books, but by this point I was only partially certain of the books’ relationship to my thesis. As a consequence, I was faced with the task of piecing back into a whole the remnants of my compromised memory for names, facts and dates on one hand, and my altogether disrupted relationship to my project’s future on the other. A process of

careful reading selection turned into a tabula rasa and I was only doubtfully

optim istic about my actual ability to fill in the blank spaces of my impoverished mental archive.

In the m onths to follow, I read new books, wrote various outlines, becoming the anti-product of what had been a professionally nurtured reliance on knowing through reference, archiving, summary, and past experience(s). The following chapter on the relationship between memory and bearing witness will be based both on research experience and on my ideas regarding the nature of truth-claims. I am driven to these topics because of a belief that if we agree to view testim ony as the conscious effort to make past experiences iterable, then an equally conscious effort is needed to understand the nature of “iterability” vis-a-vis one’s relationship to the

past. This chapter will argue that different contexts give rise to different m odes of remem bering and bearing witness.

Recall my discussion so far. Chapter One addressed the juridico-political

‘exception’ and the nature of bearing witness to being a hom o sacer as envisioned by

Giorgio Agamben. Chapter Two demarcated the philosophical potential of literature and testim ony reflected through the prism of Jacques Derrida’s singular engagement with the event of poetry. Chapter Three discussed the specific instance of Paul Celan’s poetic oeuvre as a moving forward, going through, and an address. I suggested that the work of poets has important implications for understanding how the human being comports itself both privately and as part of a collective, as well as for our relationship to the language o f witness. The last, Chapter Five, will

problematize the engagement of academic political science with the refugee regarding questions of singularity, security, everyday performativity and the nature of

situational testim ony to being and getting along in the world.

Though not stated explicitly, so far I have been earning the right to interrogate the academic practices and beliefs of International Relations against what I will address as a “politics of singular novelty” defined as the interplay between an understanding of the world as dynamic, m essy and unpredictable realm and the hum an making up this universe as a singular, finite, and insecure being. I believe that these premises do not lead the researcher to anarchy, apocalyptic thoughts, negative conceptions of the world, or abstract theoretical renditions of real life events, but to a potentially and infinitely contingent, multi-faceted, individually- informed conception of the political universe within which we work and that defines the boundaries of our inquiries. Following from my discussion so far, what I will pose as the puzzle in this chapter are the following two questions: first, why is it that n e ith e r D errida nor Agam ben address m ore closely the question of m em ory and

second, what are the specific implications a discussion o f memory (and bearing w itness) has for the study and practice of international relations?

Though seem ingly unrelated, these questions are derived from the same premise, namely, that an understanding of the ways language and m emory work to constitute the process of bearing witness is directly related to how one addresses the subjects that make up the inquiries of international relations. That is, if “the

productive power of language makes meaning unlimited, ”399 then the task of thinking politics differently alerts to the interactive, heterogeneous relationship between theory and practice. The task of thinking politics differently also means asking the following basic questions: “What is it that political scientists do as political scientists and toward what end?” and “Where do we as political scientists come from and where are we headed anyway?” Ivan Brady answers the last question thus: “The same places as the rest o f us (including poets), through the same formative processes as hum an beings, anchored in the same heavily constructed, self-defining, cultural

fields.”4°° The task of thinking politics differently means thinking the experience of

being human differently.

So far my engagement with Derrida and Agamben has been quite theoretical, though important practical implications were drawn from Agamben’s “remnants” and Derrida’s linguistic “resuscitation.” Paul Celan’s “going through language” alerted to the factual, theoretic, poetic and rhetorical elem ents that help turn all lists into stories. What is more, he alerted to the fact that “poetry can ground theories o f the

world that actually involve our interactions with it, not just abstractions from it.”4 Q1

Next, I will examine the question of memory beyond the theoretical implications derived from the work of the two continental philosophers of interest here and enter

399 Iv a n B r a d y . “In D e f e n s e o f t h e S e n s u a l.” Q u a l i t a t iv e I n q u i r y 19, n o . 4 ( 2 0 0 4 ) , 6 2 3 . B ra d v , “In D e f e n s e o f th e S e n s u a l,” 6 2 4 .

in an engagem ent with the methodological, theoretical and practical implications that a capricious concept such as ‘m emory’ can offer for the study of politics.

I will lim it my discussion of political science to International Relations (IR), though m y engagement with general concepts such as the nature o f being, truth- claims, and sovereign power will be informed by political science as such. For example, sovereign power will be addressed not as a “technology of governance”402 but rather, as “thought which poses a particular kind of challenge to thinking about politics” that “requires a form of political philosophizing in which the project of thought (politics) is in question because the very form of thinking (philosophy) is itself at issue.”403 The political itself, after Richard Beardsworth, will be understood as “a m om ent of transformation.”404

I will take to task IR’s underlying assum ptions as a positivist, deterministic, and rational discipline w hose com m itm ent to the business of truth-telling follows its causally-informed methodologies, security-conscious thinking and an Enlightenment idea o f progress. In an effort to build bridges between the various levels of my engagem ent so far, “memory,” a fluctuating though unavoidable link to the past, will serve as a mediator between the Derridean concept of singularity on the one hand,

Agamben’s juridico-political exception on the other and finally, what I see as the

generalizing facticity of academic political science. The inclination to extreme objectification characteristic of IR will be addressed critically for its claims on objectivity, on being able to predict, calculate and appeal to the affirmative power of truth-claims without accounting for the inherent distortions and reductions of its subject matter.403 I will begin my discussion by briefly referring to the thought of

402 J e n n y E d k in s. P o s t s t r u c t u r a l i s m a n d I n t e r n a t i o n a l R e la tio n s . (B o u ld e r , Co: L yn n R e in n e r , 1 9 9 9 ), 5.

4°3 D illo n , P o litic s o f S e c u r i t y , 3.

404 B e a r d s w o r th , D e r r i d a & t h e P o l i t i c a l . 2 5 5 . 4"-4 B r a d v , “In D e f e n s e o f th e S e n su a l," 6 2 3 .

Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben and by imm ediately asking the following question: “What form does memory take in their historical, politically-informed, philosophical oeuvres and to what purpose?”