Writing Visual Global Politics: in Defence of a Pluralist Approach-a Response to Gabi Schlag, 'Thinking and Writing Visual Global Politics'

摘要

I am delighted and honoured to respond to Gabi Schlag's generous and insightful review of Visual Global Politics. She endorses our open-ended "search for thinking space" and finds that one of the book's "primary strength" lies in our effort to embrace "pluralism and diversity" in the study of visual global politics. At the same time, Schlag believes that this very attempt to eschew disciplinary boundaries leads to "missed opportunities". The first and most important one has to do with the need for "a genealogy of visual IR". Schlag highlights the benefits of historicising the "visual turn" in international relations (IR) research. Doing so, she stresses, would reveal the "conditions of possibility of research practices" and show how visuality has emerged and become a major topic of disciplinary inquiry. Schlag's second key point follows this disciplinary self-reflection. She flags the importance of advancing "a critical engagement with methods" as a way of addressing the ambiguity and fluidity of the visual. This methodological move is seen as essential to demonstrate that ensuing research is legitimate and can produce "inter-subjective" knowledge.