Telos 202 (Spring 2023): Narratives of Belonging is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats. Online subscribers have access to the full issue at the Telos Online website. The following is an excerpt from the issue’s introduction by Hartmut Behr and Felix Rösch, who are the issue’s guest editors.
Introduction: Narratives of Belonging—The Interrelation between Ontological-Epistemological Observations and Narrative Methodology
Hartmut Behr and Felix Rösch
1. Introduction
In a recent editorial, the Lancet reported that one of the consequences of pandemics is the detrimental impact “on the mental health of affected populations,” and the current COVID-19 one is no different. Since its outbreak at the end of 2019, “depressed mood, anxiety, impaired memory, and insomnia” are constant companions of people around the world. Many even experience “stress, burnout, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.” Amongst its concerns, the Lancet notes the rising “misuse of substances” as a consequence of these mental health problems.[1] One of the reasons for this global mental health crisis is the way the pandemic affects peoples’ practices of community building and rituals of belonging. Having to wear masks, being required to keep at least 1.5 meters apart, not being able to meet (vulnerable) friends and family members, and even more drastic measures like weeklong lockdowns fundamentally disrupted everyday lives and reduced opportunities to socialize. What is normally taken for granted is being challenged. Around the world, these measures have been met by increasing demonstrations, often based on conspiracy theories and against commonsense precautions for preventing a potentially lethal disease. This conflict between reasonable precaution and emotional stress and pressure suggests disruptions of common narratives of belonging.
The COVID-19 pandemic, however, only accentuates a development that has been observed for several years and has been subsumed under headings like postmodernity, post-democracy, late modernity, and liquid modernity.[2] Hitherto unquestioned narratives of belonging lost their appeal and were put in question from the entire range of the political spectrum. In this process, populist parties in particular, seeking recourse in (often nationalist) pasts that never existed and that often no longer fit common left–right distinctions, profited from the resulting unease: from Fidesz in Hungary, Vox in Spain, and PiS in Poland to the populist takeover of conservative parties like the Republicans in the United States and the Tories in the United Kingdom and left-wing parties like PDP-Laban in the Philippines.
Our intention with this special issue, however, is not to further investigate the reasons for the rise of populism. This has been done before.[3] Rather, we take a step back by acknowledging that this development shows that despite different linguistic, spatial, and cultural socializations, trying to establish ways of living together that offer ontological security is intrinsic to human life.[4] Assuming that this desire for a sense of belonging is an anthropological constant, even as the conceptualization of respective articulations as “identity” is problematic, this special issue and its contributions aim at stimulating a reflection upon this tension between “identity” as a concept and idea that is deeply entrenched in our philosophical, political, and social language and a more flexible, conceptually and politically open articulation of humans’ quest for belonging. In other words, contributions to this special issue offer maquettes, “the small preliminary sketches sculptors make as a way of experimenting with forms and materials before setting their sights on the final product,” as Jean-Paul Ghobrial notes,[5] that identify contemporary narratives of belonging in Western and non-Western contexts. These contributions are to be seen as Ansatzpunkte in Erich Auerbach’s sense,[6] aiming to be concrete starting points from which the wider subject matter can be approached. Hence, in getting a deeper understanding of exchanges of personal and intellectual constellations, our special issue aims to identify potential anthropological constants in global thinking about narratives of belonging. Insights into what it is that unites, rather than divides, people might prove beneficial in finding ways for more sustainable peaceful human relations globally. As our contributions are Ansatzpunkte, they do not, and cannot, claim to cover narratives of belonging globally. Their scope is necessarily limited, for two reasons: they focus mainly on the Asia-Pacific, and the disciplinary background of most authors is International Relations. Nevertheless, we hope that they can offer a good starting point to engage the very questions that are outlined below.
As we discuss in this introduction, the following three questions provide the framework for locating the discussions instigated by the articles collected here: (1) Why are the concept and the politics of “identity” problematic? (2) What concept(s) can replace “id-entity”? (3) What are the methodological consequences for researching discourses of belonging?
Continue reading the introduction as well as the other essays in the issue at the Telos Online website (subscription required). If your library does not yet subscribe to Telos, please visit our library recommendation page to let them know how.
1. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, “The Intersection of COVID-19 and Mental Health,” Lancet 20, no. 11 (2020): 1217. For early engagements in the social sciences and humanities, see for example the COVID-19 online supplemental issue of International Organization 74, suppl. 1 (2020); and the special issue on “Pandemics that Changed the World: Historical Reflections on COVID-19,” Journal of Global History 15, no. 3 (2020).
2. See, for example, Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1984); Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 1990); Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. Mark Ritter (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1992); Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 2000); Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy (Oxford: Polity Press, 2004); Oliver Marchart, Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, and Laclau (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2007); Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, trans. Jonathan Trejo-Mathys (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2013).
3. See, for example, Tim Luke, “Neo-Populism: Fabricating the Future by Rehabbing the Past?,” Telos 94 (Winter 1992): 11–18; Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist,” Government and Opposition 39, no. 4 (2004): 541–63; Russell A. Berman, “Brexit, Immigration, and Populism,” Telos 176 (Fall 2016): 187–88; Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (London: Penguin, 2017); Hartmut Behr, “The Populist Obstruction of Reality: Analysis and Response,” Global Affairs 3, no. 1 (2017): 73–80; Paulina Ochoa Espejo et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Populism (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2017); Adrian Pabst, “On the Convergence of Liberalism and Populism,” Telos 185 (Winter 2018): 201–4; Georg Löfflmann, “America First and the Populist Impact on US Foreign Policy,” Survival 61, no. 6 (2019): 115–38; Brent J. Steele and Alexandra Homolar, “Ontological Insecurities and the Politics of Contemporary Populism,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 32, no. 3 (2019): 214–21; Christopher S. Browning, “Brexit Populism and Fantasies of Fulfilment,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 32, no. 3 (2019): 222–44.
4. For the debate on ontological security in our own discipline (International Relations), see Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma,” European Journal of International Relations 12, no. 3 (2006): 341–70; Brent J. Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State (London: Routledge, 2008); Jelena Subotić, “Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change,” Foreign Policy Analysis 12, no. 4 (2016): 610–27; Maria Mälksoo, “The Transitional Justice and Foreign Policy Nexus: The Inefficient Causation of State Ontological Security-Seeking,” International Studies Review 21, no. 3 (2019): 373–97; Zeynep Gülsah Çapan and Ayşe Zarakol, “Turkey’s Ambivalent Self: Ontological Insecurity in ‘Kemalism’ versus ‘Erdoğanism,'” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 32, no. 3 (2019): 263–82.
5. John-Paul A. Ghobrial, “Introduction: Seeing the World like a Microhistorian,” Past and Present 242, suppl. 14 (2019): 21.
6. Erich Auerbach, “Philology and ‘Weltliteratur,'” Centennial Review 13, no. 1 (1969): 14.
