Why a Foucauldian-Inspired Methodological Approach to Analyzing the IR Paradigm?

This chapter makes a case for a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis. It is shown that this methodology can aid us in uncovering the rules of formation for the knowledge relations underpinning the major theories, debates, and policies within IR. This methodology provides the reader with a vantage point from which to discern how these theories, debates, and policies, as discourses in their own right, articulate knowledge about war and peace. By virtue of unpacking the knowledge/power formation embedded in the paradigmatic orientation of IR, discourse analysis works to problematize its regime of truth. The latter is sustained by a certain aggregation of truths and sub-truths formulated to shape the structure of thought and normalize/privilege certain modes of commonsense knowledge practices while marginalizing others, all of which can be highlighted by discourse analysis. In this context, discourse analysis serves a paradigmatic purpose by uncovering the politoxified orientation of truth as a repressive system of commonsense making that brings into fore the power effect, and as the case may be knowledge effect, of IR’s discourses for conceptualizing war and peace.