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2. Reflexive Discourse and Flattery as Counterpower
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two Reflexive Discourse and Flattery as Counterpower At a news conference on 27 December 2004, a bleary-eyed Jan Egeland, the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, provided the latest updates regarding the massive humanitarian crisis unfolding immediately after an earthquake in the Indian Ocean had precipitated a series of tsunamis that impacted bordered areas. Asked a general question about the practice of foreign aid, Egeland responded, We were more generous when we were less rich, many of the rich countries. And it is beyond me why are we so stingy, really, when we are—and even Christmas time should remind many Western countries at least how rich we have become. And if actually the foreign assistance of many countries now is 0.1 or 0.2 percent of their gross national income, I think that is stingy, really. I don’t think that is very generous. (United Nations 2004) The U.S. response to these comments was remarkable. As the “we” indicates , Egeland was referring to all Western countries and their general aid contributions, yet for many Americans (and their leaders), it seemed that Egeland was speci‹cally targeting the United States. We would probably, at ‹rst glance, consider this to be an overly sensitive American response. Yet by the following day, the Bush administration would increase the amount pledged to tsunami relief to $35 million (from the initial $7–15 million), and by the end of the week, the pledge amount increased again to $350 million. Meanwhile, Bush of‹cials indignantly defended America’s foreign aid donations. In this sense, the “rational” material needs of a state seemed less important than dis73 con‹rming the words an of‹cial working for an international organization used to describe the United States. This was shocking behavior for an administration and a broader “exceptionalist culture” that generally bemoans the corruption of the United Nations and its own commitments to foreign aid donation in general. What mattered in the aftermath of the Asian Tsunami was not only the U.S. commitment to the international community but its commitments and responsibilities to how it viewed itself. Being considered “stingy” challenged the aesthetic vision of a pristine U.S. Self. As a result of his general remarks on foreign aid, Egeland triggered a contentious debate in the United States about who or what America was, and it also generated the basis for the need to react to this aesthetic challenge. This chapter investigates and develops two levels of what I call re›exive discourse, the dialogue of one actor to insecuritize a materially powerful target into acting according to the latter’s sense of aesthetic integrity and self-identity. These two levels are in›uenced, in turn, by two accounts of social theory. Level 1 explicates how the ontological security of a powerful actor is challenged by re›exive discourse and that this can be explicated using some insights from Giddensian sociology. Level 2 explicates how re›exive discourse includes elements of what Foucault titles “›attery”—tactics I discuss as “bundling” and “self-›agellation.” While Egeland used the latter two elements to help assuage the damaged ego of the United States (smoothing out the aesthetic rupture of his “stingy” remark) and thus helped generate the aesthetic context for American action thereafter, ›attery also can be what Foucault calls a “mendacious discourse” which arti‹cially in›ates the “Self” of the target. After developing the concept of ›attery, I provide a brief illustration of its “mendacity ” in the form of the dialogue that the Iraqi National Congress, a dissident group living in the United States prior to the Iraq War, used to convince the United States to intervene on its behalf. The chapter begins by situating re›exive discourse among other approaches to discourse (including post-structuralist, communicative, and instrumental approaches) and then examines the U.S. response to the recent Asian Tsunami and how the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs (inadvertently) used re›exive discourse immediately following the disaster when he suggested that Western nations were being “stingy” with their initial aid offers. As the work of Patrick Jackson (2006) and others (see Kratochwil 2007) advised, I do not make the case that Egeland intentionally used re›exive discourse; it is more likely that he accidentally stumbled upon, with the American response, a process 74 • defacing power [54.205.179.155] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 11:50 GMT) that is not usually assumed to operate in the policy world.1 I focus...