International Studies Review (2011) 13, 657659

Selng in the Hall of Mirrors: Beauty, Power, and Transgression

Review by Ken Fraser

Political and International Studies, University of New England

Defacing Power: The Aesthetics of Insecurity in Global Politics. By Brent Steele. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. 234 pp., $65.00 hardcover (ISBN 978-0-472-11732-1).

One is often struck by the way the politics of toddlerdom resemble those of international affairs. A transgressional method of self-denition is one clear example, which Brent Steele elucidates as part of this useful and highly readable book, an exploration of the effects of aesthetic considerations on the workings of power. It is a timely contribution. The centrality of emotional responses has increasingly been argued in International Relations (IR) theory (most recently by Jeffery 2011), and clearly aesthetics are an important catalyst and or expression of emotions. Steeles theoretical viewpoint, an amalgam of post-structuralism and classical realism, posits political power as a Self-making mechanism, which Self may be challenged, as its nature is revealed, through aesthetic considerations. The book thus also makes a considerable contribution to ontology in IR theory. A prescriptive dimension is less rigorously founded. Some of the strongest and most original analysis comes in those places when Steele distances himself from his more prescriptive assumptions. In doing so, he is enabled to explore a transgressional account of (counter) power. This is based on his elaboration of an aesthetic theory of power, a systematic account of what he rightly identies as a commonly shared intuition regarding the importance of the sublime and the revolting in politics. Here Steele is to be commended for his attention to the psychological, imaginative, and especially rhythmic strata of power. Rhythm is given the least attention of the three, a pity, in my view, since rhythmic and cyclical aspects of world politics are not generally given enough weight. He mentions celebratory displays, often accompanied by patriotic music, but the inuence of rhythm in the Self-making orchestration of powerlike the inuence of music in counterpowercould have been further elaborated. Steele rightly emphasizes the structurationist view of the routinized manner in which agents afrm and support structures that work back upon the agent by providing meaning to the latters existence (p. 36). The powerful Selfs reaction to aesthetically problematic (p. 1) exposure may manifest in a range of ways, all of which change it in some aspect. It is thus inherently insecure and manipulable, and must be reinforced as it is reformed, much like the self of the toddler. In relying on Hans Morgenthau and other classical realists, as well as Foucault, Steele puts his nger on a growing realization in the eld that critical IR theory is not that far removed from classical realism in its fullest expressions. One need only have seen Leni Riefenstahls Triumph of the Will to know what Steele is getting at here. He mentions this work in a footnote (p. 43) on ritualized violence. The footnote is a little ambiguous, talking about destruction produced by the spectacle of Nazi aesthetics; whereas, the spectacle does not produce the destruction, but facilitates it through beautifying and ritualizing an ideal of perFraser, Ken. (2011) Selng in the Hall of Mirrors: Beauty, Power, and Transgression. International Studies Review, doi: 10.1111/j.14682486.2011.01067.x 2011 International Studies Association

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Selng in the Hall of Mirrors

fect teleological attainment. Steeles counterpower, as I understand it, lies in the revelation of ugly and noisome destruction, hitherto concealed by the perfect composition of spectacle. Morgenthau loathed what he saw as the empty posturing of the policy of prestige. Steeles cases are well used, with the cumulative effect of evoking the United States in a kind of carnival hall of mirrors, exposed to various distortions of its imagined Self, some taken from those moments when its own exercise of power has been revealed as out of line with its self-imagebrutal at My Lai and Abu Ghraib, pathetically ineffectual at Saigon and New Orleans. Excellent cross-referencing and signposting throughout make the theory easily graspable, as the chapters enumerate manifestations of counterpower: instrumental attery; that courageous honesty (Foucaults parrhesia) that disturbs the ontology of power (p. 101); and the capacity of images to interrogate the powerful Self. The argument is beautifully structured, without a section out of place or superuous. Steeles writing is lucid enough at worst, verges on the poetic at moments, and strays into purple only rarely. It is undeniable that the ill thought, the emotive, repulsion and ecstasy have a strong inuence on political life. Steele has mostly succeeded in bringing a commendable academic rigor to the study of what are, in the end, nonrigorous responses. Only in the conclusion does he begin explicitly to explore the question of whether the vulnerability, insecurity, unpredictability and fragility of power is a normatively benecial development (192; emphasis in original). However, the normative assumptions behind much of the preceding argument are the books main weakness. Exercises in counterpower are still exercises of power and may therefore be motivated by the full range of human drives. Similarly, protection of the powerful aesthetic Selfof the state, saydoes not seem, prima facie, to be necessarily a bad thing. Steeles formulation of power as a form of transgression (p. 7) seems to imply an inherent illegitimacy, especially regarding the vitalist bravado, strut, toughness and physique of US foreign policy (p. 11). Could it not be said, however, that power is always, ipso facto, legitimate, at least to someone, somewhere: power contaminates the truth (p. 120), but where do we nd uncontaminated truth? If transgression is a formation by the Self of its own limits...that are never realised until they are crossed (p. 7), then some central part of the Self must be not only aesthetic but moral. Steele analyses only one case in which the use of US power, motivated by aesthetic considerations, has resulted in what might be termed a positive outcome on the ground: the United States cash response to an accusation of stinginess after the 2004 tsunami (p. 73). Are there no others? He does, however, though somewhat perfunctorily, disclaim a polemic against power writ large (p. 12), and quotes Ned Lebow on the authority conferred on actors in recognition of the benets [they have] provided for the community as a whole (p. 183). Steele illustrates one of his central propositions, that by the logic of insecurity (p. 7) aesthetic power facilitates its own challenges (p. 158), with one of the most insightful, erudite, lyrical, and deeply chilling passages in the book, on popular support for torture in the United States. He uses Sartres nausea to alert us to the extreme danger of normalizing the afrmation of vitalism through violence. The book is not an attempt at a grand theory of international politics. Indeed, Steele is one of those, like Betts, for example (2010:193), who discount the possibility, or at least efcacy, of such a thing. It is, rather, an examination of a particular aspect of power relations, and how this aspect might be countered. Putting it this way, however, misses Steeles point that counterpower is often spontaneous and unpredictable. The recent political upheavals in the Middle East are testament to this, and to the importance of timing, triggered as they were by the actions of one stallholder in immolating himself in protest at

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his daily humiliations (how one longs to inquire his posthumous opinion of the conagration he ignited!). Steeles theoretical insight, from which activists and norm entrepreneurs might benet as much as scholars, is deliberately focused on the ways in which aesthetic challenges to power reveal the internal constraint of the logic of the aesthetic Self (p. 181). Given that the inherent insecurity here is ontological, perhaps some guardians of the aesthetic stratum of power are right to react, or at least have good reason to fear the consequences concerning the entity in which they nd their particular niche. Some kinds of inherent insecurity, however, may actually strengthen that Self. Thus, the democratic tendency to overreact to aesthetic challenges to national Selves (p. 10) may indeed manifest as increased aid, or the inquiry into My Lai, or the legal reforms stemming from the civil rights movement. This looks like evidence of the exibility and resilience of democracy, anchored in its beautiful bedrock of legitimacy, as opposed to the brittle and vile insecurity of oppression. References
Betts, R. K. (2010) Conict or Cooperation? Three Visions Revisited (Book Review) (The End of History and the Last Man, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order and The Tragedy of Great Power Politics). Foreign Affairs 89 (6): 186194. Jeffery, R. (2011) Reason, Emotion, and the Problem of World Poverty: Moral Sentiment Theory and International Ethics. International Theory 3 (1): 143178.