International Relations

Crossings and Candles
194
18
Crossings and Candles
PETER VALE
‘It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness’
W. L. Watkinson 1838–1925
An old lesson teaches that endings are more difficult to write than beginnings.
This may be so, but I have found it difficult to even begin writing about the
world International Relations (IR) makes without reflecting on a near-fortyyear
career in both the theory and practice of IR. This is because my
intellectual engagement in IR is indivisible from who I am. To make the same
point in a slightly more elevated mode, although trained in the tradition that a
scholar’s gaze is objective, my academic pilgrimage has been one of
continuous crossings between the personal, the political and the professional.
My early professional life was conducted during a particularly nasty period of
apartheid in South Africa. Not only was the minority-white-ruled government
cracking down on all forms of political dissent, it was also wedded to a fierce
anti-communism. In these circumstances it was difficult to exercise academic
objectivity when it came to thinking about the world. Those years taught me a
valuable lesson in life and learning: to believe that there is a totally objective
or value-free view in IR is to call up the old Russian saying that ‘he lied like
an eye witness!’ We all come to understand the world through our own
experiences. Because of this, even the most objective person has
predetermined understandings about the world.
A standard dictionary definition of international relations runs that the term ‘is
used to identify all interactions between state-based actors across state
boundaries’ (Evans and Newnham 1998, 274). This is certainly suggestive of
the scholarly field of IR but unhelpful in explaining the international
relationships that fall between the cracks of the discipline’s many boundaries
and the personal anxiety and fear around these issues. After all, at the height
of the Cold War there was real fear that the entire planet would be destroyed
by nuclear warfare. In these circumstances, it was difficult not to be anxious