Lust/Caution in IR: Democratising World Politics with Culture as a Method

Abstract

International Relations (IR) needs democratising. Currently, IR theorising remains under the hegemony of a singular worldview (`warre of all against all') with a singular logic (`conversion or discipline') for all actors and activities. This top-down, state-centric and exclusivist approach is fundamentally anti-democratic for a field of inquiry and practice crowded with multiple worlds. The Humanities, we propose, will help to mitigate these totalitarian tendencies by expressing and examining what hegemonic IR cannot but must: that is, a richness of being in global life. We present Ang Lee's Lust/ Caution (2007) as an example. If seen as an allegory for Taiwan—China relations, this film shifts attention from the national security state, a defining concern for hegemonic IR, to the transnational solidarities that bind peoples and societies despite inter-state conflicts, thereby offering a way out of the statist impasse that incarcerates the region. This approach extends beyond recent calls for a `linguistic' or `artistic' turn in IR. Culture, we argue, can serve as a method.