ABSTRACT
Identity is at the ontological and epistemological center of poststructuralist discourse analysis; it is, as discussed in chapter 2, produced through and constitutive of foreign policy, and it is relationally and discursively constituted. As particular constructions of identity underpin and legitimize policies, the broader political and ethical ambition is to show how these constructions impose particular constraints on which subjects can gain a legitimate if circumscribed presence and which foreign policies might in turn be meaningfully proscribed. It is therefore pertinent to develop an analytical perspective through which the empirical complexity of identity construction can be brought out and which more specifically allows not only for the construction of a national Self and a radically different and threatening Other, but also for degrees of difference and Otherness. As this chapter argues, even if constructions of radical Otherness constitute a crucial component of foreign and security policy, it is only parts of foreign policy that appropriate such radical measures, and even the radical Other is often situated within a more complicated set of identities.
