ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 provided the rationale behind the move to a more processual reading of the identity/alterity nexus in IR theory. It singled out the inherent problems and artificiality of the corporate/social divide in conceptualizing the nexus from the perspective of both social and political theory. It then builds upon the existing processual literature which generally limits itself to analyzing a specific mechanism, othering. As noted, othering is but one possible mechanism participating in the more general process of identity formation, performance and transformation, even though it might predominate in certain socio-historical contexts. Chapter 1 thus developed the basis for a fully processual understanding of the identity/alterity nexus by highlighting how identity can be conceptualized as a process. This chapter continues the task of providing a processual understanding of the identity/alterity nexus through a dialogical approach. This approach, inspired by Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, considers identity to be the dialogical interweaving of an identity’s expression, its contextuality and its relations to alterity. This conceptualization enables us to consider identity as a superordinate, continuous and multiplanar process by switching the emphasis from the identity of a social entity to an identity as a social continuant. Social continuants, even collective political identities, are not necessarily
polities; even identities that have cast themselves as “national” often face a variety of sometimes conflicting articulations. What is often occluded in IR theory is precisely this on-going struggle for meaning, an essentially political struggle between alternative articulations of collective political identities. This struggle may reach a point where a network of signifiers comes to cohere into a self-understanding/representation. A dialogical approach is interested precisely in comprehending how a particular articulation of a collective political identity comes into coherence, maintains its status, and/or is transformed into a potential source of mobilization of persons and resources through which other collective identities (political or not) become possible. These articulations reflect contending and conflicting interpretations of differentiated collective self-understandings and representations. In order to grasp this political dimension of the nexus, two methodological tools are offered. First, narrative matrices are discussed as performative frameworks and networks of signifiers
(de)limiting the conditions of possibilities of the politics of alterity, the second methodological tool. The politics of alterity points us to specific discourses of difference and material practices oriented to alterity. But before turning to these different elements, it is important to understand what it means to take a dialogical approach in IR.
