The Mythography of International Politics

Based on the discussion of sources and effects of myths—understood by most authors as a powerful significance-creating narrative or a para­digmatic ‘truth’—, the myth concepts used in this book can be seen to roughly form four broad categories which speak to myths’ different socio­political functions: (a) determining functions (strategy/ideology), (b) enabling functions (strategy/necessary fiction), (c) naturalising functions (social construction/ideology), and (d) constituting functions (social con- struction/necessary fiction) (see Table 2.1).¹³

in very general terms, concepts that grant myths a determining or enabling function stress the instrumental side of myths and the agency of their creators/users but evaluate this use of myth differently, as either the (re-)production of a dominant or accustomed social form, a coping mechanism in view of social constraints, or an instrument of sociopolitical change.

Determining Functions of Myth

Understanding myth as a determining factor is perhaps the narrowest per­spective on the functions of myths in international politics. The idea of myth is that of an instrument in the hands of (ideologically) dominant actors who spin stories, distort language, and stage rituals with the aim to impose/maintain a hierarchical sociopolitical order (Cassirer, Barthes [creators of myth]). Studies of the determining functions of myth typically start from an observation of inequality and hierarchy, and explore who the

Table 2.1 Socio-political functions of myth

myth creators are (politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, experts, academics, economists etc.); how, faced by complex sociopolitical conditions hardly under their control, they employ myths to create/maintain the hierar­chical sociopolitical order (through second-order semiological systems, spinning of powerful narratives etc.); and what motives and interests exist behind the instrumental myth re-/production.

Methodologically,¹⁴ this sort of mythography focuses on written/spo- ken text and other symbolical representations and practices, and analy­ses their content and effects. While not necessarily relying on the false/ true dichotomy underlying ‘myth busting’, this perspective nevertheless assumes that myths depend predominantly on conscious acts and have more or less direct and explicit causal links with politics. While in this sense being limited in its analytical scope and possible contribution to knowl­edge about the social world, this approach is compatible, for instance, with current research into the strategic side of political communication (e.g. Miskimmon et al. 2013) and may add interesting takes on how ‘strategic narratives’ work socially (e.g. through socialisation, work on significant cultural narratives) to the debate.

Through its underlying reliance on an instrumentalist understanding of myth (as narrative or ideology), this category also entails that the mythog- rapher can posit herself ‘outside’ of myth production, as exemplified in Barthes’s ‘non-mythical language of the Left’. She should be aware, how­ever, that the idea of an ‘outside’ of myth creates a taxonomy understood as ‘not only an epistemological instrument (a means for organizing infor­mation) but [...] also (as it comes to organize the organizers) an instru­ment for the construction of society’ (Lincoln 1989, 7-8, cf. 131-70). In this sense, myth concepts such as Barthes’s constitute an ideology in themselves, which, albeit counterhegemonic, is inherently unable to escape the hierarchy-creating effects of classification (Lincoln 1989, 7).

Enabling Functions of Myth

Concepts focussing on the enabling functions of myth open the analytical aperture to the creative, proactive, and subversive sides of myth. Myths are understood here as clever coping strategies for organisations or indi­viduals dealing with societal influences or dilemmas (Meyer and Rowan, Lincoln), or are attributed the potential of a mobilising force or strategic instrument for sociopolitical change (Sorel, Lincoln).

The ‘work of myth’ (its effects) and the ‘work on myth’ (its actualisa- tion) are seen as multi-sited interactions of actors with different sociopolit­ical positions engaged in public and hidden discourses and practices (Scott 1992). The link between power struggles, changing power relations, and associated myths is conceptualised as a complex relationship in which cat­egories like dominant/subordinate become blurred. While often a form of coping or an instance of gradual change, myths may gain broader emanci­patory potential through the possibility to harness the power of narratives and their ability to evoke sentiments.

Methodologically, an analysis of the enabling functions of myths in international politics would identify central significance-creating narratives or paradigmatic beliefs; trace the ‘work on’ them over time and/or by dif­ferent actors, including counter-narratives; and explore whether changes in, or substitutions of, myths have taken place and to which effects.

For example, Dany and Freistein (Chap. 12) point to the agency of civil society organisations that, albeit limited, has become possible through the myth of civil society as constituent part of global governance. The potential or hope of a different future the myth carries is enough for civil society actors to cling to this powerful narrative despite its as-yet mea­gre tangible results. Müller and Sondermann (Chap. 13) show how the continuous ‘work on myth’ in the case of development aid provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has gradually expanded the agency of non-Western states in development matters. Since the goals of development aid are always yet to materialise in the ‘near future’, the constant need for work on myths such as ‘aid effectiveness’ has opened up new possibilities for non-traditional donors to participate in aid governance structures.

Studies of this emancipatory or enabling side of myths contribute to our understanding of international politics in that they highlight the power of ideas not only in maintaining but also in gradually altering the social world.

Naturalising Functions of Myth

With concepts stressing the naturalising, depoliticising, and dehistoricis- ing functions of myth, we enter the field of myths as social constructions. Here myth is part of the diffuse, productive power that structures knowl­edge and thereby sociopolitical conditions in certain, hierarchical ways while at the same time hiding the political and historical nature of these processes. The orders to which myths, among other forms of productive power, contribute seem natural and without alternative rather than con­tingent and a product of historical and political processes.

‘Myth’ here either designates widely held societal beliefs, such as the modern Western belief in rationality (Meyer and Rowan) or the related, even broader enlightenment belief in the power of positivist science (Horkheimer and Adorno); or ‘myths’ are the medium through which ‘truths’ about social reality are created and transmitted, such as the ‘war­lord’ myth that cements the hierarchy between (civilised) Western and (non-civilised) non-Western states (Levi-Strauss read through Bourdieu, see Goetze, Chap. 7), the myths of bourgeois society transmitted through everyday cultural products (Barthes), or the ‘truths’ about militarism that underpin the international policy of security sector reform (Yanow read through Foucault, see Millar, Chap. 9). This category of myth concepts is compatible with post-positivist strands in IR research and may add addi­tional research angles and methodologies to these strands.

The role of the mythographer here is mainly that of an ‘uncoverer’. Weber’s unearthing of myths that underpin mainstream IR theories offers an illustrative example. Drawing on the notion of unconscious ideology, she defines an IR myth as ‘an apparent truth, usually expressed in slogan form, that an IR theory relies upon to appear to be true? (Weber 2010, 2).

The myth function in IR theory is the transformation of what is particular, cultural, and ideological [...] into what appears to be universal, natural, and purely empirical. It is naturalizing meanings—making them into common sense—that are the products of cultural practices. Put another way, the myth function in IR theory is making a “fact” out of an interpretation (Weber 2010, 6-7, original italics).

‘Uncovering’ myths through critical enquiry and theorising, in Cox’s (1981) sense, aims at questioning, historicising, and re-politicising accepted ‘truths’, and it is to this understanding that most studies in this book seek to make a contribution. At the same time, however, concepts that point out the naturalising functions of myth also set certain limits to the role of the mythographer as ‘uncoverer’, since she can neither be out­side language nor outside society.

Constituting Functions of Myth

In their understanding of myth as socially constructed, necessary or unavoidable fiction, concepts that stress the constituting functions of myth represent the broadest and most radical perspective. They point to the unavoidable social urge to create meaning and significance through powerful narratives or widespread paradigmatic beliefs (Blumenberg, Cassirer, Yanow, Horkheimer and Adorno, Levi-Strauss); highlight the socialisation and cultural conditioning through which myths take effect in all of us (Blumenberg, Lincoln); and lead to the realisation that all our knowledges are cultural constructions from which there is no ‘outside’ and no escape (Derrida).

From the ‘constituting’ perspective on myths, Weber’s critique of the unspoken side of IR theory falls short of accounting for the true scale of her claims. While she acknowledges that ‘alternative perspectives on international politics’ have their own biases and their own ‘mytholo­gized understandings of the world’ (Weber 2010, 222), she nonetheless concludes that these are to be the preferred mythologies as they repre­sent ‘deviant’, subordinate knowledge.

Millar (Chap. 9), for example, points to the dangers implied in myth­unaware critique, showing how critical voices are complicit in fostering the myth of militarism as a fundamental building block of an understanding in which violence by democratic states is seen as ‘deviant exception’ to a general rule of peaceful democracies. Thereby, critical voices also become complicit in naturalising the everyday reliance of democracies upon the (potential for) political violence.

If we subscribe to the ‘constituting’ view on myths, this ultimately means that we also have to bid farewell to the idea that we can ‘explain’ the world and ‘solve’ its problems based on advances in scientific and philosophical knowledge. This realisation is the biggest contribution the ‘constituting’ category can make to the study of international politics. Be it due to our human urge to create meaning, our socialisation, or the cultural constructedness of our knowledge about the world, we cannot completely escape exposure to, and complicity in, myth making. Rather than being treated as a marginal concept, ‘myth’—and all the ambiguities it represents—should therefore be embraced as a central way of looking at international politics.