Ethics and foreign policy : negotiation and invention
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Abstract
To what extent can ethics and foreign policy be conceived as possible? Instead of
answering within the implied dichotomy of possibility and impossibility, this thesis
argues for a reconceptualisation of the dichotomy. Ethics and foreign policy are better
understood on the basis of undecidability: neither simply possible nor impossible, but
both at the same time. A deconstructive reading of British (1997-2006) and EU (1999-
2004) foreign policy, both of which make claims to ethics, reveals how the issue is beset
by internal contradictions, paradoxes and aporias. The deconstruction is structured
around the concepts of subjectivity, responsibility and hospitality, each of which
constitutes an important point of undecidability within British and EU representations of
their ethical dimension. The subject of ethics and foreign policy is always haunted and
inhabited by its object, responsibility is necessarily irresponsible, and hospitality
contains an irrepressible hostility. Thus, ethics and foreign policy is best conceived as
undecidably im-possible. However, such undecidability cannot be used to justify
abandoning the goal of an ethical foreign policy. Rather, a Derridean 'negotiation' is
proposed. Negotiation seeks to remain loyal to the dual injunction of deconstruction, an
undecidability which is the condition of ethics and politics, and a decision which
decides, and closes to certain figures of otherness. It requires a permanent questioning,
testing and invention of the promise of ethics and foreign policy. This produces a range
of illustrative suggestions for the possible enactment of an ethico-political foreign
policy, which would refer to and strive for an ultimately unrealisable ethical foreign
policy. This research contributes a fundamental critique and questioning of the
possibility of ethics and foreign policy. It provides a revealing exploration of British and
EU foreign policy from the period, based around responsibility and hospitality. Finally,
the thesis introduces the Derridean notion of negotiation to the discipline, seen as a way
of moving through the potential paralysis brought by the undecidability arising from
foundational questioning