ABSTRACT
The triadic schema leads to abstraction precisely because of the absence of relationalism in its
account: without relations the dialectics of social life lack all content. As stated by Horkheimer,
social movement is reliant on historically situated human subjects (Held, 1980, p. 178) and our
pursuit of how to understand world politics should be approached in this manner. As opposed to
the lifelessness of the triad, then, dialectics is better regarded in at least two ways:
First, as a mental faculty-and one increasingly in danger of being lost to the myopia of con-
temporary international theory-concerned with the exposition of contradictions in social life,
that is, exposing both the limitations or inadequacies of existent relations and the articulation
of the potentialities that reside in these contradictions.13 This involves exposing the limits of
the status quo, the emancipatory possibilities in the present, and the social forces, resources,
and conditions necessary for sublation.
