Bakhtin: From Substance to Process more

9 Bakhtin From substance to process Xavier Guillaume Introduction The work of Mikhal M. Bakhtin1 has become important in different forms of social understanding, but it is also elusive, so much so that it is hard to charac- terize any one approach as Bakhtinian. There are indeed several ways in which we might trace his influence in international relations in particular, without there being any one authentic 'Bakhtinian approach'. At best what can be achieved is a sound, issue specific transposition of some of his ideas; this is the point of departure for this chapter. The chapter itself will focus on ways of applying Bakhtin's work because it can be used to analyse self and other relations (Guil- laume 2002a, 2006, 2007; Neumann 1996). Nonetheless, Bakhtin's potential is not limited to the identity/alterity nexus, nor to the field of literary studies from which it emerged. Instead, as some writers have argued, his work can inform how, epistemologically, the field of international relations is shaped and how it works (Guillaume 2002b; Neumann 2003), and how it can engage both with world literature and poetics (Holden 2003; Moore 2009a). Indeed, as the many edited volumes dedicated to his work illustrate (Bell and Gardiner 1998; Hitchcock 1998; Mandelker 1995), Bakhtin has been a major influence and source for the development of new approaches in a range of disci- plines. Unfortunately, like all thinkers deemed to transform a field of study, Bakhtin has also become something of an intellectual (and fashionable) icon - a cliche even - in the field of the humanities and the social sciences (Emerson 1997: 3). IR scholars, however, have largely neglected Bakhtinian scholarship or, with a few exceptions, have offered rather cursory treatments of his work (Holden 2003). This chapter will not be dedicated to an evaluation of IR scholar- ship and its (mis)appropriation of Bakhtin. Rather, it will highlight, translate and adapt elements of Bakhtin's work into the field of International Relations. As we will see, identifying and adapting Bakhtin's conception of transactions (Dewey and Bentley 1991 [1949]: 101-102), relations between identity and alterity, or what can be summarized as dialogism, helps us develop a processual account of the identity/alterity nexus. The word dialogism itself is problematic in Bakhtin's work and a source of discussion among Bakhtin's scholars. Indeed, the word scarcely appears in his work. Nonetheless I adopt the term here to enrich one 96 X. Giiillaume specific aspect of Bakhtin's contribution, the problem at ique of the identity/alter- ity nexus. Following Mustafa Emirbayer, the very terms or units involved in a transaction derive their meaning, sig- nificance, and identity from the (changing) functional roles they play within that transaction. The later, seen as a dynamic, unfolding process, becomes the primary unit of analysis rather than the constituent elements themselves. (1997: 287) More specifically, I will concentrate here on three aspects of Bakhtin's work which might contribute to process-based approaches to the international. First, through his conception of dialogue, 1 will ground a distinction between two dimensions of what can be understood as 'dialogue': a normative dimension and a sociological dimension. This distinction is important because IR theorists that draw on the idea of dialogue often conflate these two dimensions, thus limiting the sociological dimension of the identity/alterity nexus. Second, 1 will address how one can consider identity as a dialogical process. This development is important because it opens up the field of IR to phenomena, related to the iden- tity/alterity nexus, that would otherwise be difficult to discern, due, in part, to the territorialized conception of identity found in IR theory. Finally, I will argue the case that processual approaches to the international are engaged with the political. Indeed, a common criticism of such approaches is that they lack a sense of the political, of the 'expression of a particular structure of power relations' (Mouffe 2005: 18). Here I will draw on Bakhtin's notion of the chronotope to underline how one can approach the study of constellations of power relations by delimiting hegemonic and counter-hegemonic representational positions, positions that represent both domination and resistance. The different conceptions of dialogue To start, I would like to distinguish between what one could term dialogic approaches and dialogical approaches to the 'international'. Dialogic approaches refer to the idea of dialogue as an exchange between interlocutors and concen- trates on the normative problem of reciprocity and recognition. In contrast, dia- logical approaches focus on the characterization of the processes, the trans-actions at the heart of any forms of identity formation, performance or transformation, whatever normative qualifications this form might take (Giiil- laume 2002a, 2007; Nielsen 2002: 35, 214 note 11). At first glance, while it seems that the former logically includes the latter, this is not necessarily the case. As Charles Taylor notes, when discussing the notion of dialogue in Bakhtin: 'we need relationships to fulfil, but not to define, ourselves' (1994: 33). This draws attention to the dialogic dimension of dialogue, rather than a dialogical approach, which sees relations in conjunction with contexts and expressions as necessary for defining ourselves (Guillaume 2002a). This distinction is at the heart of Bakhtin's conception of dialogue. In 'The Problem of Speech Genre', he states: Bakhtin: from substance to process 97 The expression of an utterance always responds to a greater or lesser degree, that is, it expresses the speaker's attitude toward others' utterances and not just his attitude toward the object of his utterance. ... However monological the utterance may be ... however much it may concentrate on its own object, it cannot but be, in some measure, a response to what has already been said about the given topic, on the given issue, even though this responsiveness may not have assumed a clear-cut external expression. ... The utterance is filled with dialogic[al] overtones, and they must be taken into account in order to understand fully the style of the utterance. After all, our thought itself... is born and shaped in the process of interaction and struggle with others' thought, and this cannot but be reflected in the forms that verbally express our thought as well. ... The interrelations between inserted others' speech and the rest of the speech (one's own) ... are analogous (but, of course, not identical) to relations among rejoinders in dialogue. (Bakhtin 1986 [1952-53]: 92, author's emphasis) Within IR, Bakhtin's notion of dialogue is primarily understood in its dialogic form (most notably in the work of Der Dorian (1993) and Neumann (1996)). The relation established between a self and difference is one in which to be a poten- tial total and finite self is to be a being 'unable not to participate in the event of co-being' (Nikulin 1998: 395-396, author's emphasis). It is therefore impossible to conceive a finite being as a totality outside the normative dynamics of the relations linking it to difference. For Bakhtin, to reach a relationally finite and total self would mean that one had to integrate through dialogue the vision that a multitude of other selves (alterity) possess of the world (Bakhtin 1990 [1920-23]: 36). Naturally, within IR, the ethical concern with regard to differ- ence and the normative potential of the concept of dialogue was present prior to Bakhtinian interventions. Such an example can be found in Thomas Risse's (2000) adaptation of Jiirgen Habennas' communicative action framework. It is striking, however, to note that the main impetus for the use of the notion of Bakhtinian dialogue derives from Tzvetan Todorov's work, which Iver Neumann describes as 'the first fully fledged application of the self other problematique to a historical discursive sequence' (Neumann 1996: 155). It is worth remembering too that Todorov was deeply influenced by Bakhtin, with his well-known La conquete de I'Amerique, which directly followed his book on Bakhtin, establish- ing what may be called a 'Todorov link' (Todorov 1981, 1982). In IR, the 'Todorov link' can be traced in a number of pieces that examine identity politics, ethics and philosophy (Blaney and Inayatullah 1994, 1996, 2004; Shapcott 2001; Connolly 1989). In IR theory, the normative aspect of dialogue is often taken, implicitly at least, as the foundation for a sociological understanding of transactions. For example, in addressing the possibility of dialogue between cultures, Naeem Ina- yatullah and David Blaney argue that a problem arises, which stems from moder- nity's drive for an 'empire of uniformity' (2004: 32-43). A dialogue between alter egos is seen as an ethical imperative to go beyond the 'splitting' between a 98 X. Guillaume self and an other, that is, 'the breakdown in the mutuality of interaction between self and other' (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: 11, see 162-169 as well). There is a 'temptation' for the self in the 'reflexes' (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: 11, 15) of othering or, in the term they borrow from Todorov (1982: 58, 67-68, 308-309), of the 'double movement': difference is transformed into inferiority and equality is seen through the lens of sameness. It is through this mechanism that 'the self comes to know and act toward the other' (Inayatullah and Blaney 1996: 75). It is only a temptation, though, because agents are able to enter a dia- logue among different equals, alter egos, insofar as they have 'the capacity and willingness ... to distance themselves from their position in the global hierarchy and bring themselves closer to the other' (Blaney and Inayatullah 1994: 45). To be closer means to actually find the other within oneself thus empathically devel- oping a sense of co-suffering with the other (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: 9-16). Todorov's 'double movement' seems to act as the sociological process by which a self necessarily interacts with difference; it becomes a self by othering difference. This sociological process is one that social agents attempt, at least normatively, to escape from. Indeed, one is left with the feeling that Blaney and Inayatullah are conflating the specific mechanism of othering with the more general processes of identity formation, performance and transformation; themes that can also be spotted in the work of David Campbell (1998) and William Con- nolly (1991). Of course, all these authors distinguish, analytically, between oth- ering as a specific mechanism and a general process of identity formation. Practically however, their own narratives and normative orientations blur this fundamental distinction. In contrast, Bakhtin's notion of dialogue, while inte- grating this normative dimension, is not as restrictive, offering space for a socio- logical conceptualization of identity formation independent, but not detached from, the normative concerns: a point flagged up in Iver Neumann's work on collective identity formation (1996). Indeed, Bakhtin's conception of dialogue 'is not always the fruit of peaceful coexistence' precisely because Bakhtin 'is not a philosopher of the ideal speech situation and [he] is not a philosopher of agreement' (Wall 1998: 205). This point is brought into sharp relief, when turning to his use of carnival and parody, essential aspects of his doctoral dissertation, published in English as Rabelais and his World (Bakhtin 1984 [1965/1968]). Evidently, Rabelais and his World not only demonstrates that power relations existed between classes during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, but it also serves to introduce contestational practices in societies, illustrating their potential transformative power within either a society, in the form of a 'popular-festive culture of laughter' (Hirschkop 1999: 275-276, 283-285), or in a literary genre, in the Menippean satire (see also, Gardiner 1999; Morson and Emerson 1990: 433-470). By offering a con- ceptualization of the notion of dialogue stressing an inherent processual - and as we will see - a political character, Bakhtin's work can open up IR theory to a more refined approach to the identity/alterity nexus, highlighting the role of soci- ological processes. Bakhtin: from substance to process 99 Identity as process Writing on the relation existing between the writer and his/her hero and of the necessity for the former to detach him/herself from the latter (if he/she resembles the author too much), Bakhtin affirms that this activity of putting things in per- spective - in other words to perceive him/herself under another referent - is a daily act of our existence. Generally, we can say of the other that he/she is a transgredient element of our own conscience (Bakhtin 1990 [1920 23 ): 15-16). Transgredience is the necessary relation and dependence that self establishes with alterity, with multiple alternative self-understandings and self-representations. Bakhtin explains that a self alone cannot feel and be itself within its own realm of existence. Human beings, he suggests, have an 'absolute need for the other, for the other's seeing, remembering, gathering, and unifying self-activity - the only self-activity capable of producing his outwardly finished personality' (Bakhtin 1990 [1920-23]: 35-36). This idea of finitude, however, should not be equated with the 'absorption' of difference by the self, whatever form this 'absorption' might take (integration, assimilation, extinction, sublimation). Instead, Bakhtin posits the continuous separation and simultaneity of each self- understanding and self-representation (Holquist 1990: 20; Todorov 1981: 150). While the idea of finitude might echo the dialogic dimension highlighted earlier, it is important to replace this idea of transgredience with its dialogic^/ dimen- sion. A first step in this direction is to understand that an identity is a process, because it belongs to a dynamic network of meanings; identity thus represents a certain position in a field of relations. As expressed by Bakhtin: There is neither a first nor a last word and there are no limits to the dialogic[al] context (it extends into the boundless past and the boundless future). Even past meanings, that is, those born in the dialogue of the past centuries, can never be stable (finalized, ended once and for all) - they will always change (be renewed) in the process of subsequent, future develop- ment of the dialogue. At any moment in the development of the dialogue there are immense, boundless masses of forgotten contextual meanings, but at certain moments of the dialogue's subsequent development along the way they are recalled and invigorated in renewed form (in a new context). Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will have its homecoming festival. (1986 [1974]: 170) Transposed to the identity/alterity problem at icpte, an identity, here taken as expressed through utterances, is formed through constant transactions within a network of signifiers in relation to which it acquires contextual and enunciative meanings, its context and expression (Guillaume 2002a). From a processual per- spective, then, an identity is best understood as a social continuant; that is, as a process that is both stable in time and yet capable of change (Guillaume 2007). In other words, identity is never static, but is understood as an ongoing event that might simply reproduce itself or might evolve in one way or another. 100 X. Guillaume Finally, identity is best approached through a 'narrative prism' for it 'pro- vides an opportunity to infuse the study of identity with a relational and histor- ical approach that avoids categorical rigidities by emphasizing the embeddedness of identity in overlapping networks of relations that shift over time and space' (Somers 1994: 607). For Margaret Somers, an identity is to be understood as 'plotted' through a multitude of commitments and identifications (1994: 616-617). Identities are filtered by the structures and the horizons through which individuals, groups, societies or political communities determine what the good is, or to what or whom one should be associated or opposed. These different identities are not equivalent to one another; indeed they tend to be hierarchically articulated, and function in a variety of different ways, across cultural, societal or contextual plains (Smith 1991: 3-8). There are 'evaluative criteria' allowing one to see if some of these issues are felt contingently, or to discern if these cri- teria are circumstantial (Somers 1994: 617). However, one should be aware of two key problems inherent in this approach (Brubaker and Cooper 2000). First, there is a risk of reification when considering narrative identity. That is, whether narrative identity is an actual identity, or a spatially and temporally circumscribed crystallization or constellation of power relations. Second, there is also the problem of reproduction and reification linked to readings of narrative identity. For Brubaker and Cooper this can be seen in the uncritical adoption of 'categories of practices as categories of analysis' (2000: 5). Indeed, 'Identity' might be a category felt by a subject (T feel that I am Swiss'), which might in turn, be taken as an 'object' of or category of analysis ('what is Swissness?'). The same signifier ('Swissness') might not necessarily be associ- ated with the same referent since there is necessarily a discrepancy between what 'identity' is for those who are subjectively feeling and referring to such a cat- egory (whether reflexively or not), and for those who are trying 'objectively' to make sense, analytically, of this category. In fact it is precisely this discrepancy, this dissymmetry between a cognizant and a cognized, which lays the epistemic foundation for a processual reading of identity (Amorim 1996: 22-23, 31, 59). One advantage of the narrative approach to identity is that 'identity' as a fic- tional (narrative), subjective (individual) and intersubjective (collective) phe- nomenon is not studied as a voiceless/reified 'object' since this will tend to characterize it as a monolithic and unchanging thing and not as a plural, dynamic and contingent process. If, as I have suggested, 'identity' is a narrative instance, we thus have to adapt our conceptual lens to this situation. Identity has, in this view, no fixed or essentialist quality, and as we try to understand how it is con- tinuously constructed, we cannot imply that it has this character if we are to maintain this constructivist perspective (Brubaker and Cooper 2000: 27-28). Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper (2000) may help here in their distinction between three ways to divide such an encompassing phenomena as 'identity', for they note that the latter can be first a dispositional, situated subjectivity and/or second a dispositional, situated intersubjectivity and/or (third) a relationality. From a dialogical perspective, each can, ideally, be compounded as expression, context and relation. Bakhtin: from substance to process 101 In sum, collective identity is then in a dialogical trans-action with alterity, that is to say that the boundaries of identity, as a social continuant, are the reflec- tion of the interweaving of its expression, its context and its relations to other social continuants, as well as to sets of events and phenomena. From this per- spective, when considering an identity's specificity, emergence, performance and transformation, three dimensions are especially important: its expressivity, 'how' it is performed, its context, 'where' and 'when' an identity is performed, and its re/ationality, in regard to 'whom' it is articulated or not. If an identity's constitution, performance and transformation are always dialogically linked to other identities or social events, the characterization of these links can be explored once they are conceptualized as continuous relations, a continuous 'dia- logue' between a multitude of social continuants. However, to establish which social continuants are the principle constituting influences in, say, a specific 'national identity', it is crucial to concentrate on how this is expressed through self-representation. In short, a Bakhtinian analysis points us through methodol- ogy to specific research questions, to suggest that analysis should pay attention to a 'national identity's' scope, style and content for these particular reasons. All in all, approaching identity as a dialogical process with alterity can provide a better way not only to understand a series of phenomena challenging our spatial comprehension of the 'international' but also provide a tool for theo- rizing the 'international' as a series of complex and varied processes in itself, both constituted by and constitutive of these phenomena (Guillaume 2007). It is commonly held, whether implicitly or explicitly, that the 'international' is a (modern) place and location defined by its organizing principle, sovereignty (Agnew 1994). When using Bakhlin's processual conception of the identity/ alterity nexus, the 'international', however, is more likely to be viewed as a problematique constituted through a multitude of subordinated processes. Process to politics The question of power and, ultimately, of the political, in relation to what is in essence a 'scheme of intelligibility', or 'a matrix of operations permitting to inscribe a group of facts within a system of intelligibility' (Berthelot 1990: 23) is evident when turning to read politics as process. From a process-based perspec- tive, power is not to be understood as something one possesses so much as a relation emerging 'out of the very way in which figurations of relationships ... are patterned and operate' (Emirbayer 1997: 291). Power both reflects the rela- tive position that social agents entertain and the constitution of these social agents' identity (Bourdieu 1994: 53-57). What a process approach helps us to do, is to grasp complex configurations of power relations from which an 'iden- tity' emerges, or through which an identity is maintained and performed. Many of these configurations would otherwise be edited out of spatial conceptualiza- tions of the 'international' and identity because either they would be present in accounts of IR theory shaped by an inside/outside dichotomy - or would be sub- jected to a form of 'process reduction', that is to say a movement by which the 102 X. Guillaume 'possible separation of interrelated things into individual components - "vari- ables" or "factors" occur - without any need to consider how such separate and isolated aspects of a comprehensive context are related to each other' is made possible (Elias 1978: 1 12 116). Elsewhere, I have argued (Guillaume 2009) that within the framework of a dialogical approach to the international, the political should be understood as an expression of particular structures and constellations of power relations. This constellation of power relations is itself subject to challenging and conflicting utterances about what is the dominant 'ordinary model of legitimacy' (Boltanski and Thevenot 1991: 86-87). The political is the realm where different political grammars are in a constant state of flux, for political grammars are 'expressive vehicles for exemplary definitions of normalcy and deviance, recipes of duties and obligations, and syntaxes of self and other' (Brown 1987: 122). In other words, the political is reflective of a situation of heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981 [1934-35]: 263, 270-275), where centripetal and centrifugal utterances are com- peting while living in 'complex space-time configurations that are produced ... by different actors and are only able to reach relative, incomplete and temporary adjustments; they therefore are unachieved and open historical systems' (Bayart 1985: 351-352, author's own translation). Thus, conflict over particular issues, or grammars, is indicative of the political, insofar as it is the manifestation of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses participating in the formation, performance and transformation of a collective identity. Contestation and resistance are important aspects of the formation, perform- ance and transformation of collective self-understanding/representation. In his work, Bakhtin has stressed the importance of contestation and resistance most notably through his use of irony and the camivalesque (1984 [1965/1968], 1986 [1970-71]). In order to flesh out these aspects of the political, it is useful here to turn to Bakhtin's notion of the chronotope (1981 [1937-38]). Bakhtin developed this notion in an essay on time-space relations in literary genres in order to tackle the 'intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships' (1981 [1937-38]: 84). The chronotope was also useful for Bakhtin, because it drew attention to multi-temporality, the site in which an epoch, an author, an utterance or an audience are embedded (1986 [1970-71]: 134). A chronotope is 'the field of possible action, in which particular stories are told' (Morson 1991: 1082-1083). As Bakhtin puts it, '[o]ut of the actual chronotopes of our world (which serve as the source of representation) emerge the reflected and created chronotopes of the world represented in the work (in the text)' (1981 [1937-38]: 253). For Bakhtin, then, the chronotope both makes possible and concretizes representation; the chronotope is the hitter's 'representational significance' (1981 [1937-38]: 250). In terms of the politics of representation, chronotopes therefore represent two distinct yet parallel moments. While Bakhtin (1981 [1937-38]) considers chronotopes to be literary markers defining genres, as each specific narrative form is delimited both by its temporal settings and its spatial configurations, chronotopes can nonetheless be used to enrich IR. First, they capture the condition of possibility of representation as Bakhtin: from substance to process 103 such. In a certain epoch the available forms, contents and meanings of an utter- ance are limited by the way they are embedded in time and space. Chronotopes point towards the contingent context in which a representation occurs.2 Indeed, an 'identity' can be understood as being expressed within and delimited by chro- notopes. In this way, chronotopes are thus an articulation of space and time that shape experience (Bakhtin 1986 [1936-38]). As Benedict Anderson (1991: 22-36) argued, the apprehension of time is related both to imagined time and the experience of common spatiality - in his example through the media of print- capitalism - and it is this relation that gives rise to a sense of community. 'Modernity' can, for instance, be seen as a chronotope in the field and the discip- line of IR. In their IR nexus, modernity is a spatial marker defining what the international is - a 'where' delimited by the modern sovereign state that limits our object of enquiry. It is also a temporal marker defining 'when', which offers a reading of the international in terms of expected norms and development whether in terms of liberal governmentality or in terms of an analysis of interna- tional political economic relations. Second, if one wants to move away from the process of identity formation, performance and transformation, chronotopes can also be seen as a way to map and analyse practices of everyday resistance (de Certeau et a/. 1990). Michel de Certeau distinguishes between the strategic dimension - referring to the power relations that some social agents can develop through their ability to delimit and define, even if only partially and symbolically, an environment 'as their own' and through which they will manage their relations to others - and the tactical dimension of resistance. According to de Certeau the latter refers to an art de [aire (art of doing) and an art de dire (art of saying) developed through time by social agents who can only deploy themselves, and their possible actions, in an environment that they cannot delimit or define 'as their own' (one has only to think about the consumer in a supermarket). While strategies 'bet on the resist- ance that establishing a place offers in relation to time; tactics bet on a cunning use of time, of opportunities that time offers and of the games that time introduces in the foundations of power' (de Certeau et al. 1990: 63, author's own translation). Since using tactics offers no gain but only a fleeting moment of ^appropriation over an environment that is designed to impose itself symbolically or physically on us, chronotopes can help us determine how social agents represent their own art de [aire and art de dire by tracing how they narrate or enact these 'arts'. In order to animate my argument about the application of chronotopes to IR, I will turn briefly to examine tactics of resistance based on humour in the environ- ment of Eastern Germany and East Berlin during the Cold War. For example it would be impossible, without taking into account the chronotope of the 'Wall', to appreciate how individuals used humour to offset the repressive nature of the communist Eastern bloc (Stein 1989). Some writers have argued that humour has an intricate relation with power and social protest (Speier 1998 [1975]; 't Hart 2007). In this way, humour, and particularly humour that is political in character, is strongly dependent on an audience. And, moreover, the articulation of humour can clearly be both oppressive and subversive. Nonetheless, it is no 104 X. Guillaume surprise to note that Eastern Europe and Russia during the Cold War proved to be places in which ' the longest, largest and most widespread instance of humour' was used 'as social protest' (Davies 2007: 291). As an art de dire, political humour can sometimes be used to empower. But the act of empowerment should be seen as resistance to power and perhaps, more importantly, as a reappropria- tion of power through the use of parody. In this sense, chronotopes such as the Wall are useful prisms through which to interpret how social protests were enacted. Indeed, while [t]he Wall in the West is visible, everyday. It is not a topic. In some circum- stances, The Wall can be seen to chronotypically represent the socialist time of the East and the spatial yearning for the West. The Wall in the East is invisible, everyday and a topic - which is very much taboo. (Stein 1989: 86, 92^100) Political humour in West Berlin was indeed not as pervasively tainted by this chronotope as it was for East Berliners. Moreover, to identify chronotopes such as the Wall or Berlin itself enables us to identify the 'shifting of boundaries' of the self. This is illustrated, for instance, in the multiple versions of a play, 'Wrongful Detention' (Freiheilsberaidnmg), around which narratives evolve, and which move the landscape and changing time of Berlin, from separation to reunification to post-unification. In its latest version, The text itself ... by ridiculing in absentia the sole representative of west German dominance and making common cause with an implicitly east German audience, re-empowers both them and the audience. There is a sense ... of east German nationhood through narration, not as a binary oppo- site to any perceived notion of west German nationhood, but simply as a moment of resistance to a superficially successful attempt to drown a nation's sense of identity, however 'imagined' that sense might be. (Hollis 2000: 129) But this also indicates a second point; chronotopes exists in multi-temporal- ity, that is to say that the conditions of possibility of representation are multiple and parallel. For instance, in the interwar period it is interesting to note that Italian fascist narratives, predominantly uttered by the fascist elites, were informed by chronotopes such as the 'revolution' or 'Rome', encapsulated as they were in the idea of romanita (Stone 1999; Visser 1992). The idea of a fascist colonial empire and of its destiny was very much narrated around the chronotope of Rome and its empire while the emphasis on modernity and speed were articulated through the chronotope of the fascist revolution. These con- flicted with non-fascist narratives informed by chronotopes that were neither national in scope nor historical in style, partly due to the role of regionalism in Italy. Furthermore, they also had to face alternative and conflicting understand- ings and representations of certain chronotopes. One such example stemmed Bakhtin: from substance to process 105 from the relationship between chronotopes of political identity and those advanced by the Church, whose symbolic interpretation over the dead differed from that of the fascist movement. The black shirt and the black cassock were fighting for the meaning over one's death: a Christian's death or a fascist's death (Berezin 1997: 196 244). These alternative chronotopes might have varied in shape and strength and provided conflicting or supporting stories, but, most importantly, the fascist narrative chronotopes coexisted, in the same time and space as the other chronotopes; indeed, each was often constructed in relation to the other. The fascist's use of certain chronotopes had, thus, to provide a legitimizing performance and discourse explaining why they arrived at the position of domi- nation (Bakhtin 1981 [1937-38]: 252). Thus, by paying attention to chronotopes at play we are able to move towards a 'concrete sense of possibilities - of poten- tial actions and potentialities of meaning' (Wall and Thompson 1993: 48). Chro- notopes then, are useful insomuch as they can be used to make sense of the political, allowing analysis to interpret constellations and representations of power relations, to examine differing hegemonic and counter-hegemonic posi- tions and to explore where these positions interact. They thus represent a specific tool to consider more globally what political grammars are at work in a specific society, field or discipline. Conclusion Far from exhausting Bakhtin's contributions to the field of IR, this chapter has advanced a reading of aspects of his work, so as to engage with the identity/ alterity problematique in the field of IR. Starting from his conception of dia- logue, I highlighted the processual facet in Bakhtin's thought; a facet that encompasses a conceptualization of identity as a multilayered process as well as a possible 'methodological' approach to the question of power within this prob- lematique through the concept of the chronotope. This processual facet provides IR with a better way not only to understand a series of phenomena challenging our spatial comprehension of the identity/alter- ity nexus but also provides a tool for theorizing the 'international' as a series of complex and varied processes in itself, both constituted by and constitutive of these phenomena. It is still commonly held that the 'international' is a (modern) place, the boundaries of which are constantly reified. But the 'international' has been defined by its organizing principle, sovereignty, thus (de)limiting its space at the interface among states' actors. In contrast, I have argued here that the 'international' is more effectively read as process, which itself is constituted by a multitude of subordinated processes. The concept of chronotope was introduced to illustrate how we can approach different articulations of collective self-understandings and self-representations by recognizing how these articulations are narratively enabled, how they can be sites of resistance and how they exist as a constellation of power relations, that is subject to challenging and conflicting utterances. Chronotopes help us to shed 106 X. Guillaume some light to an understanding of the political where different political gram- mars are conflicting to emerge as the relevant and legitimate one. In other terms, they help us to comprehend the political as heteroglossia. Notes 1 On Bakhtin's life, work and concepts in general one can refer to the work of Michael Brandist (2002), Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist (1984; Holquist 1990), Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson (1990; Emerson 1997) and Tzvetan Todorov (1981). 2 The chronotope should not be confounded with Foucault's notion of 'episteme' as he developed it in Les mots et les chases (1966), though they bear some intuitive resem- blance. Episteme, in Foucault's sense, strictly refers to the 'relations existing in a spe- cific epoch between the different scientific domains' (Foucault 2001 [1972]: 1239). International Relations Theory and Philosophy Interpretive dialogues Edited by Cerwyn Moore and Chris Farrands Routledge Taylor &. Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK