Suchergebnisse

Fino a tempi relativamente recenti – più o meno fino alla fine della guerra fredda – la triade realismo, pluralismo, strutturalismo ha espresso un ruolo analogo a quello di una sorta dilimesdisciplinare e, come tale, ambiguo nei riguardi dello spazio cognitivo oggetto di indagine. Espressione della forza di programmi di ricerca ormai istituzionalizzati da una presenza accademica pluridecennale, la stessa triade ha delimitato anche la frontiera dell'identità disciplinare, i limiti all'interno del quale la riflessione sistematica sui problemi della politica internazionale poteva veder riconosciuto il proprio diritto di cittadinanza nell'ambito della teoria delle R.I.

The political role of international theoretical discourse is an essential & most contested issue in the IR contemporary debate. The resistance of traditional perspectives to the inclusion of self-reflective elements on the agenda of international political analysis reflects the inadequacy of the theoretical framework to bear the ambiguous relation between political & theoretical discourse. I argue that metaphorical analysis has the potential both to offer an important self-reflective contribution to IR discipline & to discard its theoretical boundaries -- as defined by positivist & neopositivist assumptions. Political metaphors establish meanings that frame both political & theoretical discourse. The distinction between these two, albeit possible on analytic grounds, is in practice much less tenable; the cognitive representations of each commonly spill over to the other. Once metaphorically established, the meanings attached to these representations play a role that is both influential & latent or, more precisely, influential because latent. The analysis of political metaphors offers the opportunity to shed some light on & investigate the latent meanings that theoretical discourse assimilates from political discourse & vice versa. However, the theoretical requirements of metaphoric analysis are not compatible with the main assumptions that constitute the theoretical framework of IR traditional perspectives. The second part of the article presents reasons why metaphoric analysis, while comfortably adaptable to critical & constructivist research programs, does indeed "threaten" IR disciplinary boundaries -- as defined by the realist, pluralist, & structuralist triad -- but it also offers the opportunity to expand them toward grounds that appear more acceptable both socially & theoretically. 1 Table, 84 References. Adapted from the source document.