Evil in International Relations

With her contribution to the current special issue of International Politics , DIIS researcher Mona Kanwal Sheikh advances a research agenda on performative evil.  She argues that both responses to and justifications of evil are closely linked to the way political actors, the policy community and academics assign evil content.

Sheikh’s outline of a performative approach to evil is inspired by the way performativity is conceptualised in the securitisation theory of the Copenhagen School of security studies. As a basic trait it differs from descriptive and normative/philosophical approaches to evil by abstaining from taking part in substantial evaluations of what ends justify or ought to justify what means. Instead, it observes the mechanism by which claims to counter evil legitimise extraordinary measures. An important aspect of understanding this mechanism of ‘evilisation’ is, she argues, to understand the parameters of legitimacy that are at play in different contexts, that is, what exactly given cultures and audiences find extremely awful and thus outside the realm of rational explanation, or what is found to be a just response when confronting the appointed evil.

The article initially investigate the various ways evil has been part of international relations (IR) thinking. It then moves on to outline a performative approach to evil and its advantages, particularly when it comes to safeguarding the IR community against political bias and cultural insensitivity.

For more, see Appointing evil in international relations
International Politics 51: Issue 4 (July 2014) 492-507; advance online publication, May 16, 2014
Special Issue: The Existence and Use of “Evil” in International Politics
Guest Editors: Anna Geis and Christopher Hobson