Agencement and Traces: A Politics of Ephemeral Theorizing

Abstract

International Relations theory has largely remained an effort at producing forms of theorization concentrating on the transcendence of a spatio-temporal particular and on a double autonomization: as a specific locus of interactions, and as specific mode of knowledge production. International theory can be said to pertain to an ephemeral attempt at theorizing an immanently fluid and ever changing set of processes, in which continuous instantiations and relationalities are actualizing a fleeting and ever elusive assemblage we term ‘international’. This chapter mobilizes the concepts of traces (Ginzburg) and assemblage (fr. agencement, Deleuze) in order to highlight what an ephemeral international theory would look like from an ontological, epistemological and normative perspective.

I would like to thank Michele Acuto and Simon Curtis for inviting me to participate to this volume. All translations are my own as well as all errors that probably remain.