From Knowledge to Wisdom: Uncertainty and Ontological (In)Security in Iran’s Foreign Policy

Abstract

AbstractIt has become the convention to associate the exposure of foundational indeterminacies in a state’s identity with change. Many of the ontological security and poststructuralist works in international relations argue that revealing such uncertainties is a threat to the status quo—maintaining the existing narratives and practices used for constituting subjectivity. The article claims that such a revelation does not necessarily lead to a rupture; moreover, it can be used to keep the status quo. It investigates the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran to show how a polity can try to conceal uncertainties related to self-identification and simultaneously embrace them. In the case of the former, Iran pursues certainty in regard to its self through a process of othering: Its identity is constituted in opposition to certain antagonistic others. In the case of the latter, the Iranian subjectivity is articulated in a non-Western context, where the modern gaze of knowledge-seeking and categorizations is rejected. Instead, an “authentic” mode of wisdom is introduced that makes it possible to incorporate indeterminacies and incompatibilities in self-identification. As a result, both concealing and embracing identity-related uncertainties serve the reproduction of the status quo.