RE-THEORISING DIPLOMACY THROUGH CHRONOPOLITICS: SPEED, TECHNOLOGY AND THE MEDIATION OF ESTRANGEMENT
RE-THEORISING DIPLOMACY THROUGH CHRONOPOLITICS: SPEED, TECHNOLOGY AND THE MEDIATION OF ESTRANGEMENT

Summary/Abstract: A poststructural investigation of contemporaneous International Relations, allows in Edkins’ assessment, for “[p]rocesses of humanitarian intervention, development, securitization, diplomacy, democratization” to be researched through the “mechanisms of normalization, technologization, and depoliticization seen in the practices of International Relations”). Theorist James Der Derian has envisioned a genealogy of diplomacy – which he regards in his seminal work “On Diplomacy”, as “mediation of western estrangement”, beginning with “mytho-diplomacy” dating from biblical times and passing through the “proto-diplomacy” of city-states, arriving to the phase of “diplomacy” between states, moving on to “anti-diplomacy”, “neo-diplomacy” and the contemporaneous phase of “techno-diplomacy” which mediates between people and states. The estrangement – Der Derian posits in an article published in “Review of International Studies” – is seen “as a ubiquitous spiritual, religious, or social process which has been active in history”, and which has “required a mediation”. This study analyses aspects pertaining to the concept of diplomacy, especially in its techno-political and anti-diplomatic iterations through a chronopolitical framework, where chronopolitics is according to Wallis, descriptive “of the relation of time-perspectives to political decision-making”. The study further examines Der Derian’s theory of estrangement as well as the politics of time and references the theorization of speed as developed by French philosopher Paul Virilio, and referred to by Der Derian.

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