Identity and International Relations

Drawing on Kant and Hegel, debates in political theory and international relations generally assume that an identity cannot be created without the simultaneous creation and negative stereotypy of an 'other'. Figures such as Schmitt and Huntington accept and even welcome this binary, while others, among them Nietzsche, Habermas and Rawls, look for ways of overcoming it. Drawing on Homer's Iliad and psychological research, I challenge the assumptions on which Kant and Hegel, and their successors, build their argument. The Greco-Roman literary tradition and recent survey and experimental research indicates that identities generally form prior to construction of 'others', that 'others' need not be associated with negative stereotypes, and that even when they are, boundaries between in-and outgroups are quite plastic. Nor must stereotypes be negative. Homer and modern history suggest that identity construction and maintenance often take place through positive, although not necessarily equal, interactions with 'others'.