A Fanonian Critique of Lebow's A Cultural Theory of International Relations

Abstract

Ned Lebow's new project is not so much a cultural theory of international relations as an affective praxis of modernity. Lebow seeks to elucidate the psychical drivers of intersubjective identity formation that dynamically constitute status hierarchies in societies. And through this understanding Lebow holds that present-day possibilities of structural transformations in international relations might be clearly guided by practical reason. In what follows I mount a sympathetic critique of Lebow's affective praxis based upon its effective circumscription of psychical life to elite European men. Lebow pays hardly any attention to the psychic drivers of colonisation and decolonisation as felt by the colonised. Using the work of Frantz Fanon, I shall suggest that shifting the focus to the colonial and post-colonial world brings to light a set of considerations on the psychic sources of affect in modernity that remain obfuscated when the European elite man is conflated as the modern subject.