Cultural Studies: new perspective for International Relations?

The main goal of this article is to show, in which way the main assumptions of cultural studies may be useful for development and enrichment the explanatory perspectives of international relations theory. Since that discipline concerns about social and cultural mechanisms, by which power is being created and reproduced, it opens in front of global system scholars a new analytical dimension, located so far rather outside to the main stream of their interests. Cultural studies theorists aspire to reveal, of how is it happening, that coherent and complex structures of knowledge, so called discoursive formations, determine certain forms of social reality, among which some groups obtain privileged position to the others. This case was related to international relations topic by Edward Said in Orientalism, a well-known and respected thesis, that combine the main assumptions of cultural studies with the matter of colonial and post-colonial domination. That is also why the deconstruction of western orientalistic discourse becomes the key aspect of this article.To make E. Said’s remarks clear enough, they need to be preceded, however, by general reflection about cultural studies as such and their connections with cognitive constructivism and widely grasped postmodernism. The first part of this article is dedicated to these thoughts. The second (middle) part contains basic arguments of discourse theory formulated by Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, because without them it would be impossible to understand a specific meaning of „power” in cultural studies – the power by forcing and legalizing certain descriptions of reality. Showing the essence of this category seems to be indispensible to explain, in which way, according to E. Said’s opinion, the orientalistic discourse became an instrument of western imperial domination over territories and societies of Orient. This problem will be considered in the last part of the article.The main goal of this article is to show, in which way the main assumptions of cultural studies may be useful for development and enrichment the explanatory perspectives of international relations theory. Since that discipline concerns about social and cultural mechanisms, by which power is being created and reproduced, it opens in front of global system scholars a new analytical dimension, located so far rather outside to the main stream of their interests. Cultural studies theorists aspire to reveal, of how is it happening, that coherent and complex structures of knowledge, so called discoursive formations, determine certain forms of social reality, among which some groups obtain privileged position to the others. This case was related to international relations topic by Edward Said in Orientalism, a well-known and respected thesis, that combine the main assumptions of cultural studies with the matter of colonial and post-colonial domination. That is also why the deconstruction of western orientalistic discourse becomes the key aspect of this article.To make E. Said’s remarks clear enough, they need to be preceded, however, by general reflection about cultural studies as such and their connections with cognitive constructivism and widely grasped postmodernism. The first part of this article is dedicated to these thoughts. The second (middle) part contains basic arguments of discourse theory formulated by Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, because without them it would be impossible to understand a specific meaning of „power” in cultural studies – the power by forcing and legalizing certain descriptions of reality. Showing the essence of this category seems to be indispensible to explain, in which way, according to E. Said’s opinion, the orientalistic discourse became an instrument of western imperial domination over territories and societies of Orient. This problem will be considered in the last part of the article