TY - JOUR
T1 - Creating a state
T2 - A Kleinian reading of recognition in Zimbabwe’s regional relationships
AU - Gallagher, Julia
N1 - Julia Gallagher is a lecturer in International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on Africa in international politics, and particularly on ideas of Africa and of the international. She has published two books, Britain and Africa under Blair: in pursuit of the good state (2011) and Images of Africa: creation, negotiation and subversion (2015), both with Manchester University Press, and articles in African Affairs, Millennium, the Review of International Studies and International Theory. Julia is currently writing a book exploring Zimbabwean ideas of the international.
PY - 2016/6/1
Y1 - 2016/6/1
N2 - This article contributes to recent debates about mutual recognition between states, and more broadly to discussions of the role of emotion in IR. It challenges ‘moral claims’ made in some of the literature that inter-state recognition leads to a progressive erosion of difference or a pooling of identity; and underlying assumptions that recognition constitutes a stage in the development of states that have already established internal coherence. Instead it claims that processes of recognition are fractious and unstable, characterised by aggression and self-assertion as well as affection and the creation of a ‘we-feeling’; and that such processes are an enduring feature of state identity. Using the case of Zimbabwe – a state that is clearly fractured, with an apparently insecure collective identity – the article explores how recognition both challenges and reinforces state selfhood through dynamics that are bumpy, intense and unstable. It moves on to develop a theoretical interpretation of these dynamics drawing on the work of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, showing links between individual psychic anxiety and collective needs for a state that exists uneasily but inextricably in relation to others. The article concludes that international recognition works as a way both to establish and challenge state coherence.
AB - This article contributes to recent debates about mutual recognition between states, and more broadly to discussions of the role of emotion in IR. It challenges ‘moral claims’ made in some of the literature that inter-state recognition leads to a progressive erosion of difference or a pooling of identity; and underlying assumptions that recognition constitutes a stage in the development of states that have already established internal coherence. Instead it claims that processes of recognition are fractious and unstable, characterised by aggression and self-assertion as well as affection and the creation of a ‘we-feeling’; and that such processes are an enduring feature of state identity. Using the case of Zimbabwe – a state that is clearly fractured, with an apparently insecure collective identity – the article explores how recognition both challenges and reinforces state selfhood through dynamics that are bumpy, intense and unstable. It moves on to develop a theoretical interpretation of these dynamics drawing on the work of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, showing links between individual psychic anxiety and collective needs for a state that exists uneasily but inextricably in relation to others. The article concludes that international recognition works as a way both to establish and challenge state coherence.
KW - statehood, recognition, object relations theory, Melanie Klein, Zimbabwe
U2 - 10.1177/1354066115588204
DO - 10.1177/1354066115588204
M3 - Article
VL - 22
SP - 384
EP - 407
JO - European Journal of International Relations
JF - European Journal of International Relations
IS - 2
ER -