ABSTRACT
Given the case made in the opening chapter for approaching global politics in terms of hermeneutic situations and encounters, Chapter 2 dives into the hermeneutic approaches to meaning. It begins by introducing the concept of performance as a way to capture hermeneutic encounters and delineates its use for the purpose of this book to critique the literature of the so-called practice turn as well as poststructural approaches. The chapter then moves on to discuss the role of language and knowledge, especially in terms of the hermeneutic concepts of “horizon”, investigating how horizons are imbued in sense-making and in generating new knowledge. This conceptual discussion provides the foundation for methodological debates in the next chapter.
