The best there is? Communication,objectivity and the future of Critical International Relations Theory

Introduction

Of the various critical approaches introduced into International Relations (IR) with the critique of Positivist and Neo-Realist approaches to the discipline, one of the most influential has been that of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas’s influence has been manifested in the elaboration of accounts of reason as an intersubjective communicative process, of society as intersubjectively constituted, and in the application of these accounts in pursuit of normative progress and emancipatory transformation in world politics (Ashley, 1981; Hoffman, 1987; Linklater, 1998). The central normative claim of Habermasian critical IR theory has been that international political arrangements should be based upon procedures of transnational communication through which individuals could participate in the communal generation of international norms and decisions, thereby taking control of global forces which currently exert an arbitrary influence upon their lives (Linklater, 1998). For some scholars, this intersubjective, practical reason has already been at work in world politics, and the critical task is that of identifying its operation and the means by which its influence might be extended (Ashley, 1981; Linklater, 1998).

The appeal of this communicative Critical Theory lies, in part, in the way in which it draws together the epistemological and normative turn taken by early critical scholarship in IR with empirically grounded proposals for political action; as we shall see, the theory of communicative action provides an account of epistemic and moral activity which is grounded in the pragmatics of everyday linguistic interaction. However, it has been less apparent that this account of praxis depends upon the success of Habermas’s attempt to depart from earlier forms of Critical Theory, which focused on the relationship between humanity and nature. This article will describe how one of the most original thinkers of the early Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno, was aware of the appeal of communicative interaction as a critical resource, but warned that the pursuit of communication between subjects could not, in itself, be the route to emancipation.

The critique of a form of reason in which the rational subject is ‘purified’ of any relationship with its own objectivity or that of the world is central to Adorno’s argument. From this perspective, proper intersubjective communication would, somewhat counter-intuitively, involve a new relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. Adorno warns that the neglect of this relationship in pursuit of communication between subjects will result in the betrayal of the goals of Critical Theory.

It will be argued here that, in keeping with Adorno’s warning, the enthusiasm for communicative reason amongst critical IR scholars has left questions about the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity unresolved. These questions return to haunt Habermasian Critical IR Theory, undermining its claims to have identified the basis for emancipatory praxis in world politics by revealing that it has excluded a range of human experiences and relationships from the realm of reason. In doing so it risks participating in the elevation of the sort of formalism in international life — the rule of norms and structures remote from the experiences and interests of concrete, particular human individuals — which critical IR scholars have wanted to overcome.

We shall also see that Adorno’s notion of communication between subjectivity and objectivity, of ‘objective’ communication, points towards an alternative understanding of praxis for critical IR. By maintaining a true sensitivity to human needs and diversity, this form of Critical Theory remains true to the impulse which lies behind the turn to communication in IR — to the concern with identifying a form of practical, moral reason through which individuals can participate in the creation of a world which is truly their own — whilst pointing to a new set of practical and normative concerns for the discipline.

Communication and praxis

Critical IR Theorists have been somewhat selective in their appropriation of Habermas’s Critical Theory. One the one hand, his identification of communicative interaction as a form of activity distinct from the instrumental action more typically associated with international politics has been influential. On the other hand, elements of the theoretical background to this innovation — especially his discourse theory of truth and validity and the role of the notion of praxis in Frankfurt School Critical Theory — tend to have been ignored (Haacke, 1996). The best way into our topic is to consider the way in which IR scholars have used Habermas’s communicative turn, before considering the significance of these background issues for IR. We shall see that much of the power of the explicit uses of communicative Critical Theory in IR derives from this neglected theoretical background.

Andrew Linklater has suggested that, compared with the Marxian theory which preceded it, the advantages of Habermas’s theory for IR theorists lie in two areas: it offers a ‘more adequate’ account of international realities and ‘an improved normative standpoint’ (Linklater, 2007a: 49). According to Linklater, Habermas’s account of the social significance of communication oriented towards mutual understanding appears to support an empirically richer account of society than approaches based on individualism or materialism and offers a normative standpoint well suited to dealing with cultural plurality.

Belief in the empirical richness and normative sophistication of Habermas’s Critical Theory has, over the last 25 years or so, inspired IR scholars to apply his work to the problems of the discipline. Linklater’s own work has tended to emphasize Habermas’s ‘improved normative standpoint’. In The Transformation of Political Community (1998), Linklater seeks to identify the normative resources that could be drawn upon to overcome inter-communal estrangement and the powerlessness experienced by most of the world’s inhabitants in the face of seemingly arbitrary global social, political and economic forces. Arguing that, by simply asserting certain universal values and truths, earlier critical theories have fallen prey to a hidden Eurocentrism, Linklater draws on Habermas’s work to advocate the substitution of ‘procedural universals’ for universalistic interpretations of the good life (Linklater, 1998: 38–41).

Following Habermas, procedural universals are, for Linklater, generated through ongoing processes of communicative interaction in which the participants aim to achieve mutual understanding and in which the only standard by which competing claims are assessed is the ‘unforced force of the better argument’ (Linklater, 1990: 215–216). In this way, it is possible to distinguish ‘merely local truths from those with wider acclaim’ whilst recognizing that universality is dynamic and social, rather than monolithic and absolute (Linklater, 1998: 39–41, 79). Although they are ongoing, implicit in such procedures is the ideal of a ‘universal communication community’ in which all inhabitants of the world would be free to participate in the communicative shaping of their shared reality (Linklater, 1998: 8).

Whilst Linklater has tended to focus on the normative implications of Habermas’s work, other IR theorists have drawn on Habermas’s theory in attempts to formulate more accurate empirical accounts of international political practices. One area to which the theory seems especially well suited is that of diplomatic negotiations and decision-making processes. Thomas Risse (2000) has argued that, compared with rational choice and social constructivist theories, the theory of communicative interaction promoted by Habermas can support a more complete account of processes of negotiation in international politics. Risse describes instances — diplomacy at the end of the Cold War and international discourse about human rights — where he believes cooperation can be explained primarily on the basis of Habermas’s theory of communicative action in which the participants seek mutual understanding. He suggests that when they engage in such action, practitioners are prepared to change their preferences and values in a manner which rational choice theorists cannot account for (Risse, 2000: 7).

Whilst the empirical or normative implications of Habermas’s theory should not be ignored, the significance of communicative action for IR cannot be fully captured by these two categories (Deitelhoff and Müller, 2005: 178; Linklater, 1998: 88). A key goal of the Frankfurt School was the identification of praxis, described by Martin Jay as ‘a kind of self-regulating action, which differed from the externally motivated behaviour produced by forces beyond man’s control’ (Jay, 1973: 3–4). Praxis would need to be informed by theory, but theory would not legislate for it. Rather, the two would stand in a dialectical relationship: theory without praxis would be empty, praxis without theory mere blind action (Sullivan and Lysaker, 1992: 90). The power of the Habermasian position lies in the account of praxis as communication it can supply for IR. With a successful account of praxis, elements of existing forms of behaviour could be drawn upon to identify a form of global political interaction which would overcome the blindly instrumental action found in both the global system of states and the structures of global capitalism.

This is certainly a normative and empirical task, but the pursuit of praxis involves more than the description of facts and identification of normative principles. As is well known in IR, much of the significance of Frankfurt School Critical Theory lies in its account of the way in which knowledge is, contrary to appearances, inseparable from social interests and practices (Ashley, 1981). The members of the School noted that the rise of a scientistic worldview, in which a concern with objective facts squeezed out normative reflection, allowed theory to become complicit in the blindly instrumental practices found in modern societies (Habermas, 1972; Horkheimer, 1972). Awareness of these issues surrounding theory and practice was central to the critique of Positivist Neo-Realism in IR, from which the concern with communication would emerge (Ashley, 1981; Cox, 1981).

Frankfurt School Ctical Theorists sought to explain how it might be possible to identify both a theoretical perspective aware of its own role in political practice and a form of practice which did not blindly promote instrumental reason. The task is one of identifying a form of knowledge which is consciously practical, and a practice which is also cognitive (Bernstein, 1995: 10). With this praxis, it would become possible to structure society in accordance with human needs.

Habermas’s theory of communication is just such a theory of praxis; communicative praxis is the means by which society can progress without succumbing to the rule of instrumental reason. Habermas has wanted to find a means of criticizing not only positivism, but also those (generally poststructuralist) philosophers he believes have succumbed to relativism and thereby conservatism (Habermas, 1987). Whilst the former sterilizes truth by reducing it to the reflection of facts, the latter undermine the notion and suggest that we are better off without it. In each case, the results are conservative, since the context-transcending force which accompanies truth disappears, to be replaced either by blind reflection of the social status quo or by the loss of the progressive aspects of enlightenment.

For Critical Theorists, the pursuit of truth is integral to praxis. For all their rejection of absolute, ahistorical truth, Habermas’s predecessors in the Frankfurt School were uncompromising in their refusal to simply relativize or abandon the concept (Horkheimer, 1978: 428–429). Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas each describe cognition as a social, historically situated activity with moral significance (Adorno, 1976: 25; Habermas, 1984; Horkheimer, 1972). Truth is connected to the possibility of transcending the supposedly unproblematic facts of present society and looking towards a new form of social interaction.

Habermas himself has made clear that moral cognitivism is at the heart of his work; he wants to show that normative and practical matters ‘admit of truth’ (1990: 43), and has reflected on the nature of truth throughout his career (Habermas, 1984, 2003, 2005). Whilst he has adjusted his theory of truth over the years, it has remained central to his attempts to outline ‘a post-metaphysical and yet non-defeatist conception of rationality’ (Cooke, 2001: 3).

Habermas’s relationship with the notion of truth is complicated by his attempt to move away from the ‘philosophy of consciousness’, which focuses on the relationship between individual mind and reality, and from which he believes the theories he criticizes have failed to escape (Habermas, 1984, 1987). He argues that his predecessors in the Frankfurt School failed to identify the sources of praxis because the communicative, intersubjective dimension of human activity was obscured in their theories, which were shaped instead by the concern with relations between subjectivity and objectivity (Habermas, 1984: 386). Without recognition of the importance of communicative intersubjectivity, humans seem to be condemned to engage in behaviour which is concerned with controlling the objective world, and this interest in control obstructs any attempt to construct a more rational and just society (Habermas, 1972).

Habermas characterizes his own theory as a paradigm shift to ‘the philosophy of language’ in which the importance of intersubjective communication as the source of a form of reason oriented to mutual understanding rather than technical control becomes apparent (Habermas, 1987: 296–297). His theory of communication is an account of praxis which aims to overcome the cul-de-sac into which the concern with subject–object relations supposedly leads. Something like this turn away from the subject–object plane to that of intersubjectivity has played a key part in the development of Critical IR Theory.

It might seem that Habermas’s turn away from the subject–object relationship risks undermining the notion of truth altogether, leading to the collapse of the critical project which has sought to show that truth and progress are inextricably linked. Habermas has adjusted his theory of truth over the years (Habermas, 2003: 8), but its implications for his critical social theory have remained remarkably consistant. In broad terms, his strategy has been to reconcile his linguistic turn with the concerns of Critical Theory by making the pursuit of truth a pragmatic precondition of linguistic communication which imbues communicative action with a progressive force.

Habermas argues that participants in communication must necessarily raise validity claims which could potentially be assessed by others. Moreover, the participants must have an implicit understanding of the conditions under which such claims could be redeemed. In the best-known manifestation of Habermas’s theory, these conditions are the ‘ideal speech situation’ in which all relevant actors acknowledge no authority other than the unforced force of the better argument, are free to participate, can do so free from constraints and are united in the aim of reaching mutual understanding (Habermas, 1998: 22; see also Habermas, 1984). Although he has since abandoned appeal to the ideal speech situation (Habermas, 1984: 25), Habermas has maintained that ‘valid norms must be capable in principle of meeting with the rationally motivated approval of everyone affected under conditions that neutralize all motives except that of cooperatively seeking the truth’ (Habermas, 1984: 19).

It is important to emphasize that Habermas does not equate truth with any actual consensus, since to do so would undermine the context-transcending force by which it is defined. As a result, discourse is always directed beyond the immediate social context in which it takes place (Habermas, 1987: 322). Moreover, truth not only involves the notion of the ‘harmony of minds’ which would occur under ideal conditions, but also that of ‘harmony with the nature of things’. The historical emergence of this last notion means that, in modern societies, validity claims are always directed beyond mere social consensus (Habermas, 1985: 71–72). In keeping with his rejection of the philosophy of consciousness, however, this orientation to an objective world is simply a pragmatic assumption and precondition of intersubjective communication, rather than an ontological condition. ¹ As we shall see, this stance contrasts with that of Adorno, for whom truth involved the practical articulation of new relations between subjectivity and objectivity.

It is also important to note that the context-transcending force of truth is, for Habermas, pragmatically grounded in the structures of everyday communication, and its operation can be identified through empirical investigation (Cooke, 2001: 2). There is no other way of assessing validity claims than through actual discourse, and the idealizations of communication are ‘rooted in the facticity of everyday practices’ (Habermas, 2003: 18). Thus, although it is the formal preconditions of communication (the raising of validity claims) which make it the basis for praxis, these characteristics only operate through particular discourses. Habermas can thereby avoid the asocial universalism of more traditional accounts of reason and progress which, as we have seen, are a cause of concern for Linklater (1998: 41). This balancing of the formal with the particular is key to the success of Habermas’s Critical Theory, and has major implications for the way in which praxis is understood. We shall return to the issue of formalism in our examination of Adorno below.

Whilst the discipline of IR has seen little explicit discussion of Habermas’s theory of truth or the account of praxis which it sustains, the idea that communicative reason represents a form of socially progressive epistemic interaction has been the basis on which many IR theorists — and not just Critical Theorists — have dealt with the aftermath of the collapse of the Positivist ‘view from nowhere’ (Kratochwil, 2000; Patomäki, 2002: 160; Rengger, 2001: 98). As a result of this collapse, it became necessary to elaborate on the connection between epistemic and political practices (Fluck, 2010). From an IR perspective, Habermas’s theory is one of the most appealing accounts of such practices, since it locates cognition within the social activity of communication between subjects rather than in the figure of the individual subject standing over objective reality, which has been associated with Positivism and the politically suspect notion of sovereignty (Ashley, 1988).

At the same time, the collapse of the ‘view from nowhere’ in IR seemed to bring with it the threat of epistemological and moral relativism; once the sociality of knowledge and morality had replaced the sovereign subject’s detached surveillance of facts or recognition of universal values, it became difficult to identify any position from which the critical project could be pursued. This problem was especially acute in the context of IR theory, which was presented with the greatest possible plurality of perspectives (Rengger, 1988: 82–83). By linking validity with ongoing procedures of intersubjective communication, Habermas’s theory offers an account of moral cognition in a pluralist world; progress no longer requires a ‘view from nowhere’, since existing communicative practices possess a context-transcending force. Thus, recognition of the social-groundedness of values and beliefs, of their particularity, which is especially stark in an international context, does not point to relativism, but to a pre-existing seam of procedural universalism in pluralistic social life which might be fostered in pursuit of peace and emancipation (Hoffman, 1987; Linklater, 1998).

IR and the spectre of objectivity

Habermas’s turn, in pursuit of praxis, from subject–object relations to communicative intersubjectivity has fitted well with the broadly constructivist mood which has prevailed amongst post-Positivist IR scholars. For the majority of the latter, the very notion ‘object’ has almost entirely negative connotations, having been seen as at best naive but very often as complicit in social domination. It is perhaps for this reason that IR scholars have been so ready to accept Habermas’s account of praxis as a matter of intersubjective communication. In doing so, however, they have neglected the position of his predecessors, in which, as we shall see, questions about the relationship between subjectivity, objectivity and praxis were central.

The first Critical Theorists in IR rightly detected a ‘scandalous anti-humanism’ in the ‘objectivism’ of Positivist scholars; the pursuit of scientific objectivity left little room for reflection on the norms and values which give human life meaning (Ashley, 1984: 237). Moreover, theoretical attempts to identify the facts about an objective reality were associated with the pursuit of technical control by a detached sovereign subject. The link between ‘objectivism’ and the violence of a world of nation-states could then be drawn; in each case it was asserted that the world was experienced by an individual, asocial actor (the scientist or statesman) who must disregard moral considerations, and to whom the world appeared as a value-free system of atomistic units (facts or states) (Ashley, 1984; Cox, 1981).

The task of the critical IR scholar was to be that of breaking down the objectivist distinction between subject and object (George, 1989: 274–275). This was to be achieved by showing that objective reality was intersubjectively constituted, the product of ideas and discourses which played out in the interaction between subjects. Questions about the values and interests which both drove and emerged from the intersubjective processes through which social life is constituted could then be shown to be central to the study of IR. It could also be shown that there was an alternative to the reign of sovereignty both in theory and in politics, since constitutive intersubjectivity was incompatible with the notion of the sovereign individual and with the assumption of an atomistic nation-state (Ashley, 1988; Linklater, 1998). This critique extended beyond Positivism to Marxist theories of world politics; the alleged lifeless economism and complicity in domination of much Marxian theory could be traced to its concern with objective reality and to the belief that the Marxian theorist was a scientist pursuing objective truth (Cox, 1996: 56–57).

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that critical IR scholars were attracted to those theories — not only Habermas’s critical theory, but also poststructuralist theories — which emphasized the intersubjectivity through which objective reality was supposedly constituted. The underlying assumption of much critical IR scholarship has been that the theoretical concern with and practical orientation towards objectivity is in some sense inherently opposed to non-instrumental political practice, or at least to non-violent global interaction. The reorientation to intersubjectivity, and therefore communication, seems to provide the cure, and the notion of objectivity has seemed simply to evaporate in the glare of constitutive intersubjectivity.

Of course, the early critical IR scholars and their various descendants are right; the separation of subject and object by Positivists and some Marxists is problematic. However, post-Positivist IR theorists have tended to bypass rather than engage with the extensive reflection about the subject–object relationship and praxis which characterized earlier forms of Critical Theory. Habermas’s predecessors were engaged in a very different form of theorizing to Positivists and orthodox Marxists, and the problems which concerned them do not disappear so easily. Habermas’s account of praxis is central to the success of communicative Critical IR Theory, and yet its plausibility is dependent upon his resolution of problems identified by his predecessors in their own engagement with the question of praxis.

Before considering the way in which one member of this earlier generation engaged with the problem of praxis, we can confirm the significance of the question of subject–object relations for IR by identifying the symptoms of its neglect in a series of criticisms which have been directed against Habermasian IR theory. Through these apparently diverse criticisms, the spectre of objectivity, which was supposedly dispatched with the critique of Positivism and Marxism, returns to haunt Critical IR Theory, and points to a set of issues relating to subject–object relations which have been repressed rather than addressed in IR. We shall see in a moment that these are precisely the issues addressed by Adorno, and that they have significant implications for the way in which communication can be deployed in a theory of praxis for IR.

The first of the interventions in question came in response to Linklater’s The Transformation of Political Community, which (1998: 3) calls for a ‘triple transformation’ of political community according to which it comes to be defined by greater universalism, greater sensitivity to cultural difference and greater material well-being. The development of a universal communication community seems to provide the key to effecting this transformation; it offers a means of negotiating between universality and difference in world politics, whilst requiring increased levels of material well-being as a precondition of participation in communication (Linklater, 1998: 165).

Responding to Linklater’s book, Norman Geras (1999) argues that the socio-economic forces involved in capitalism are inherently opposed to the participation of certain social classes in shaping the norms and institutions of which their social reality consists; through its very nature, capitalism involves the exploitation of some sections of society by others. Geras (1999: 163) argues that if the most disadvantaged of the world’s inhabitants are to become participants in the discursive shaping of global politics, it will not be enough to concentrate on the creation of rights and institutions which foster inter-communal discourse. The emancipation described by Linklater could not be achieved discursively, but would only occur once the economic exploitation integral to capitalism was overcome. Geras (1999: 163) argues, therefore, that ‘a truly dialogic perspective leads straight back into the social theory inaugurated by Marx’. In other words, whilst enhanced transnational communication is a worthwhile goal, it is not in fact best pursued by drawing on any form of communicative interaction which is available under current conditions of capitalism. Emancipated relations between individuals cannot be separated from emancipated relations between individuals and the world.

Linklater (1999: 173–174) acknowledges that discourse could not occur without sufficient levels of material well-being, the achievement of which will require the transformation of the global capitalist system. However, Geras’s criticism suggests more than that a sufficient level of material security is necessary for there to be universal participation in discourse; it suggests that praxis cannot be reduced to discursive interaction of the kind advocated by many IR scholars, and that, properly conceived of, it must involve a transformation of the (economic) interaction between humanity and nature. An emancipated relationship with material conditions is not, then, a precondition of proper communication, but would rather inhere within it. Acknowledging this, however, would undermine the Habermasian assertion that intersubjective communicative interaction can be distinguished from the instrumental reason through which humanity interacts with nature.

A similar dissatisfaction with the emphasis on intersubjective communication is apparent in a second critique. Critical Realists working in IR have argued that positions such as that of Habermas reflect a problematic ‘anthropocentrism’ (Bhaskar, 1978: 34; Patomäki and Wight, 2000: 217). On this view, the problem with Critical Theory, and also other post-Positivist theories and Positivism itself, is that they attempt to understand political and social reality by reflecting on the characteristics of cognizing subjects (Joseph, 2007: 350; Patomäki and Wight, 2000). For realists, this obscures the fact that for there to be any knowledge at all, there must be a reality which is independent of it; cognition, social or otherwise, cannot be cut off from the relationship of subjects to a world which both precedes the activities of any existing human beings and exerts a causal power over them, affecting their ability to pursue their goals (Bhaskar, 1998: 25). Of course, the social world could not exist without human activity, but it also remains rigid in the face of our thoughts and aspirations.

Critical Realists do not look to an Archimedean vantage point over an objective social world, since intersubjective epistemic activities do play a part in constituting social reality (Bhaskar, 1998: 36). Nevertheless, they do believe that any account of society which ignores the weight of objectivity is incomplete. The attempt to understand political reality by prioritizing an intersubjective epistemic activity such as communication can then be seen to represent a form of hubristic abstraction of the very kind Critical IR Theorists reject in positivism, perpetuating the illusion of intersubjective power. A truly critical IR theory must confront our relationship with these social structures rather than explain them away as the product of intersubjectively held beliefs or discursive practices (Patomäki and Wight, 2000: 25).

Perhaps the most significant of the three interventions is the most recent — that of Linklater himself. In his more recent work (2007b: 140; 2010; 2011: 12–13), Linklater has expressed doubts as to whether communicative interaction could be a sufficient basis for moral learning in world politics. In place of his previous emphasis on the progressive power of communication, he considers the neglected ethical potentialities which ‘arise from corporeality and embodiment’ (Linklater, 2007b: 139). He has suggested that by examining reactions to the physical suffering which humans can experience as a result of their corporeal nature, it might be possible for Critical Theorists to gain a greater understanding of moral learning processes and increasing levels of cosmopolitan solidarity in international society (Linklater, 2007b: 148–149). Significantly, Linklater draws attention to the differences between the work of early Frankfurt School theorists and the communicatively oriented theory of Habermas, suggesting that the ‘linguistic turn’ in critical social theory failed to capitalize on early Frankfurt School reflections on the ‘suffering and solidarity’ of corporeal human individuals (Linklater, 2007b: 145). He endorses the claim that Habermas has participated in a problematic ‘decorporealization of Critical Theory’ (Linklater, 2007b: 146).

Together, these three criticisms form a pattern which suggests that Habermasian Critical Theory participates in the exclusion of a set of considerations which might be loosely grouped together under the heading ‘objectivity’. This is to be distinguished from the ‘objective’ facts of Positivism; it loosely applies to those features of human experience and society that cannot be fully subsumed under the forms in which rational subjectivity currently presents itself, and upon which the possibility of that subjectivity depends. It seems that, as Linklater notes, something might have been missed in Critical IR Theorists’ acceptance of the Habermasian ‘linguistic turn’.

Most significantly, in each of the three criticisms, this exclusion appears as a praxeological problem: for Geras, at issue is the assumption that emancipatory practice can be detached from the relationships, material and social, inherent to capitalism; for Critical Realists, the failure to give adequate consideration to the objectivity of social structures prevents post-Positivists from producing a truly critical account of world politics; for Linklater, the corporeal aspect of human experience has been suppressed, along with the instinctual and emotional features of interaction, with the result that communicative Critical Theory provides insufficient resources for attempts to identify the sources of future global solidarity.

Subject and object in Critical Theory

This constellation of concerns and criticisms points to the relevance for IR of the materialist Critical Theory of the early Frankfurt School. Reflection on the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity was integral to the way in which Habermas’s predecessors considered what more free and harmonious social relations might involve and how they might be achieved. It is perhaps the fear of objectivism described above that has led IR scholars to neglect this strand of Critical Theory, and thereby, as we shall see, to ignore an alternative approach to the pursuit of praxis in world politics.

We have seen that Habermas believes the concern with subject–object relations to lead into a praxeological cul-de-sac. Rather than engage in a detailed assessment of his critique of his predecessors, however, and given the limited role that their philosophy has been allowed in the development of Critical IR theory, it will be more illuminating to outline the arguments of one of the most original of their number — Theodor Adorno — and then to consider the implications of his position for IR. Adorno can help us to elaborate upon the criticisms of Habermasian IR theory just outlined and to look to an alternative approach to praxis for Critical IR Theory.

Adorno’s Critical Theory is not easily summarized and is open to various interpretations. It has also recently enjoyed something of a revival amongst Critical Theorists (Bernstein, 1995; Holloway et al., 2010; Honneth, 2000; Richter, 2010; Wellmer, 2009). However, its particular significance for IR arises from Adorno’s anticipation of the appeal of communication as a resource for Critical Theorists, and his account of the perils of ignoring subject–object relations in its pursuit.

In an essay entitled ‘Subject and Object’, Adorno argues that the present understanding of communication is:

so infamous because the best there is, the potential of an agreement between people and things, is betrayed to an interchange between subjects according to the requirements of subjective reason.

Moreover:

If speculation on the state of reconciliation were permitted, neither the undistinguished unity of subject and object nor their antithetical hostility would be conceivable; rather, the communication of what was distinguished. Not until then would the concept of communication, as an objective concept, come into its own. (Adorno, 1978: 499–500)

These statements, the full meaning of which will be elaborated in the remainder of this article, are intriguing from the perspective of Critical IR Theory because Adorno acknowledges the potential importance of intersubjective communication to peaceful social relations, but asserts that a theoretical and practical turn to any currently discernible form of communication cannot take us beyond ‘subjective’ (or ‘instrumental’) reason. Instead, the hopes that currently attach to the concept of communication, and that are so apparent in IR, will only begin to be fulfilled once it is understood and pursued in terms of ‘communication’ between subject and object in which the concrete and particular is no longer excluded from reason and cognition.

In order to understand the counter-intuitive notion of subject–object communication and its implications for Critical IR Theory, it is necessary to outline of the main elements of Adorno’s critical philosophy. Whilst the relationship between subjects and objects is central to his Critical Theory, the first thing to note is that Adorno (1978: 498) refused to define either term. In ‘Subject and Object’, he describes a dialectical relationship between the two which makes the reduction of either to the other problematic. On the one hand, he argues, attempts to think ‘objectively’, such as those criticized by post-Positivists in IR, rely on the problematic assumption that the knowing subject and the object known can be entirely separated. This simply conceals a ‘latent’ elevation of the subject, familiar to critical IR scholars, to a position where it can supposedly capture the world with its concepts (Adorno, 1978: 505). The power of this elevation is all the stronger because it fails to recognize itself as such. Thus, ‘objectivism’ is in fact something of a misnomer when applied to positivism — what we have is an instance of extreme subjectivism.

If Positivists overestimate the power of the subject, the emphasis on constitutive subjectivity also grants the subject excessive power; it succumbs to the illusion that current social conditions are such that we are masters of our fate, capable of forging reality as we please (Jay, 1984: 59). Like critical scholars in IR, Adorno is keen to blur the distinction between subject and object. However, he believes that any attempt to overcome it entirely through the identification of constitutive subjectivity is little more than a consolation, comforting individuals with the promise of a power that they do not presently possess (Adorno, 1978: 508).

Against these positions, Adorno argues that subject and object ‘mediate’ each other; human reason is shaped by objective conditions but, at the same time, we cannot understand objective conditions other than as they are mediated through our current understanding (Adorno, 1978: 499). The task of Critical Theory is that of identifying a form of reason which does not rely on the futile elevation of present forms of subjectivity, and which is sensitive to its own place in an objectivity which it can never quite subsume. Philosophical recognition of the latter, of the inevitable inadequacy of ‘subjective’ reason, is at the core of Adorno’s ‘negative dialectics’ (Adorno, 1973). The idea that reality ‘goes into’ the subject’s concepts ‘without remainder’ is the main ill of all forms of subjectivism (Adorno, 1973: 5).

Thus, whilst he sets subject and object in a dialectical relationship, Adorno asserted the ‘primacy of the object’ against the enlightened worldview in which the subject ‘swallows the object, forgetting how much it is an object itself’, that it is ‘an object also a subject’ (Adorno, 1978: 499, 502). In fact, we find that for Adorno, as a result of subjectivism:

the concepts of what is subjective and what is objective have been completely reversed. Objective [supposedly] means the non-controversial side of things, their unquestioned impression, the façade made up of classified data, that is, the subjective; and they [mistakenly] call subjective anything which breaks through that façade, engages the specific experience of a matter, casts-off all ready-made judgements and substitutes relatedness to the object for the majority opinion of those who do not even look at it, let alone think about it — that is, the objective. (Adorno, 1974: 69–70)

Adorno believes this inversion to be more than a philosophical mistake. His philosophical critique of subjectivism, and the account of subject–object relations upon which it relies, sustain his critique of the pathologies of enlightened reason — his account of the deep links between modern subjectivity and human suffering. At times working with his colleague Max Horkheimer, Adorno provides an account of the rise of the modern subject to the position of ‘dictator’ over ‘things’ as a result of which it has been forgotten how much humans are themselves objective creatures (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972: 9). The possibility of separating subject and object first emerges with the division between master and labourer, and is perpetuated in modern times by the logic of capitalism which prioritizes exchange value over use value (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972: 14). It is (although not entirely) a ‘coercive development’, one which elevates the abstract interchangeability of concepts and commodities over the significance and value of particular objects, amongst which are included human individuals (Adorno, 1978: 498).

This subjectivism, which lies behind the rise of conceptual thought, permeates politics by reducing individuals to the status of abstract subjects (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972: 13). Apparently free and rational individuals become incapable of genuine rationality because they fear anything which cannot be captured with the concepts of enlightened thought. This fear is not simply theoretical, but is ‘none other than the fear of social deviation’ from the social structures established by the rule of exchange value (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972: xiv). Any attempt to transcend these structures is seen as meaningless, at best being relegated to a ‘cognition-free special area of social activity’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972: 25).

Thus, the elevation of subjectivity over objectivity creates a society of reified, formalistic structures from which it appears to be impossible to depart; the ‘façade of classified data’ which is mistakenly associated with objectivity in most modern philosophy is in fact a social achievement on the part of subjectivism. Whilst they are in some sense real and causally efficacious, these structures are also illusory to the extent that they obscure the social tension on the basis of which they have been erected; behind the formal and supposedly progressive aspects of modernity lie the specific experiences of particular subjects. Despite the aura of freedom and rationality which accompanies modern subjectivity — and which, Adorno (1978: 500–501) is at pains to point out, is no mere illusion — modern society is defined by a contradiction; the process of enlightenment through which humanity has increased its power and freedom is based on repression which manifests itself both in social domination and in the sterile formalism which arises from the appropriation of life by the systems of subjectivist reason.

The limits of communicative reason

This critique of subjectivism and of the elevation of the formal aspects of enlightened subjectivity means that Adorno’s attitude to the question of praxis differs in significant ways from the Habermasian approach which has been so influential in IR. Unlike Habermas, he sees little possibility of deploying enlightened reason in pursuit of praxis in anything but a radically altered form. In particular, because formalism lies at the heart of the pathologies of modernity, there is no hope of drawing, as Habermas does, on any neglected formal aspects of reason as the foundations for praxis.

As a result, in contrast with Habermas, Adorno is less immediately concerned with identifying a previously unrecognized form of praxis with which to redeem Enlightenment rationality, than with explaining why it will prove so difficult to do so (Rengger, 2001; Sullivan and Lysaker, 1992). The difficulty in question is described at the start of Dialectic of Enlightenment: whilst ‘the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty’, it is also the case that ‘the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972: 3). Consideration of this ‘dual relationship of progress to cruelty and liberation’ is at the centre of Critical Theory (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972: 169).

To Adorno’s critics, including Habermas, his engagement with this question has seemed excessively pessimistic; despite the undoubted political and social problems of the modern world, progress is surely undeniable across a range of spheres of human endeavour. However, Adorno is not concerned with denying progress, but rather with investigating the connection between the undeniable achievements of modern, enlightened subjects and the appalling violence and domination which have been integral to modern societies. Rather than simply identifying possible sources of progress, Critical Theory must be equipped to deal with this ‘dire proximity of progress and barbarism’ (Bernstein, 2010: 48).

This form of critical theorizing, which concerns itself with the dark side of society’s apparently brightest achievements — in this case, the rise of modern, rational subjectivity as the basis for social and political interaction — can be traced back at least as far as Marx’s critique of liberal politics in ‘On the Jewish Question’ (Bernstein, 2010: 45). There, Marx describes how liberal rights in the political sphere are dependent on economic exploitation which occurs in civil society (Marx, 2000a). At the heart of this critical theory lies a materialism which challenges the triumphalism of the modern subject by confronting it with its historical, social and material underpinnings (Bernstein, 2010: 35, 46). From the perspective of this materialist strand of critical thought, it is the assertion of purified, formalistic subjectivity that leads to the proximity of liberation and cruelty.

The Habermasian reply to Adorno’s critique of subjective reason is, of course, that he focused on the relationship of the individual subject with nature whilst remaining blind to the existence of communicative interaction and its emancipatory potential (Habermas, 1984: 366). From Adorno’s perspective, however, this is no answer at all. As we have just seen, his point is not that there is no basis for progress in modernity; he both insists that the development of modern subjectivity must be seen as an achievement and is aware of the appeal of communication (Adorno, 1978: 499). Rather, the point is that the progressive potential of modern subjectivity is accompanied by increased potential for domination and violence. Whilst the actions of modern human subjects do at times increase their well-being, this does not mean that they can be seen as praxis rather than action; they cannot be detached from a way of life that blindly reproduces domination and violence. Thus, whilst the communicative reason that Habermas identifies as the key to the emergence of modern society might contain something of the progressive force he describes, this does not necessarily mean that it is the basis for praxis.

It is at first difficult to see how the sort of communicative action advocated by many IR scholars could have any such pathological dimension. As we have seen, Habermas seems to offer IR the possibility of a form of practical reason which, unlike more traditional forms of universalism, can reconcile different viewpoints without erasing them. He also seems to offer a means of restraining the excessive formalism that accompanies the assertion of universal values, since the rules of interaction are only deployed in the context of particular discourses. In addition, by granting them membership of a global communication community, Habermasian praxis would apparently allow ordinary people to take control of global forces that currently exercise an arbitrary influence over their lives. All this appears to be offered on the basis of the substitution of practical, intersubjective communication for abstract subjective reason. In practical terms, the pursuit of communicative reason in world politics surely represents a radical departure from the politics of sovereignty, state craft and capital.

That this form of communication might not succeed in avoiding the sort of subjectivist abstraction that concerns Adorno is already apparent in the three criticisms of Habermasian IR theory described above. Geras reveals that whilst enhanced communication might improve inter-communal relations by undermining sovereignty, it would be wrong to think of it as a form of praxis since it is compatible with the continuation of blind economic exploitation. Critical Realists show how the communicative theory perpetuates the illusion of a form of purified subjectivity. Linklater shows that significant aspects of human experience risk being suppressed by the emphasis on intersubjective communication, which, as a result, represents a truncated basis for transnational moral learning. Like Adorno, each critic is concerned that the turn to communication conceals the assertion of a purified reason similar to that which lurks within Positivism, Neo-Realism, Liberalism and other ‘traditional theories’ criticized by critical IR scholars. Each critique suggests that communicative Critical Theory risks undermining the very emancipatory aims in pursuit of which it has been introduced into IR.

Adorno can help us extend these criticisms. He shows that the suppression of objectivity is detrimental to relations between subjects because it sustains a formalism which obscures the interests and experiences of particular human beings in favour of the procedural exchange of abstract concepts and commodities. As long as this suppression persists — as long as objectivity is denied — any communication we pursue will be ‘an interchange between subjects according to the requirements of subjective reason’, which sustains social structures that are currently a source of suffering (Adorno, 1978: 499–500).

Thus, whilst Habermas avoids the formalism involved in the assertion of sovereign subjectivity, objective facts and absolute values, he does not avoid the more fundamental problems of subjectivism. Communicative reason can only be established as a pre-existing source of praxis by ignoring the extent to which formalism is at the heart of the pathologies of modern reason and of the paradoxical association of liberation with cruelty in particular. From Adorno’s perspective, the pursuit of praxis could not be furthered by drawing on any as-yet-neglected formal aspect of enlightened reason such as the validity basis of speech. Any promise contained within such a characteristic of language would still come up against the distance modern subjectivism has established between reason and objectivity, a gap which means that reason is currently condemned to participate in the reproduction of the social sources of human suffering. Whilst, as noted above, Habermas has helped IR theorists to formulate a critical position which looks to real discursive procedures rather than the assertion of abstract universal rights, he only salvages progress by accepting rather than overcoming the exclusions which troubled Adorno.

The suggestion that, despite his attempts to ground the context-transcending power of truth in real social interaction, Habermas’s Critical Theory does not eniterly escape the formalism feared by his predecessor has been taken up by Jay Bernstein. Bernstein argues that the emphasis on rational discourse is as abstractive as the Archimedean pretensions of Positivism; the discursive pursuit of validity claims excludes ‘interference’ in processes of reasoning by those affective or corporeal factors peculiar to the life and experiences of concrete, particular subjects (Bernstein, 1995: 105–106). Such factors are relegated to the very ‘cognition-free’ area of activity mentioned by Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1972).

Bernstein (1995: 144) points out that the exclusion in question repeats that with which Liberal and Kantian theory attempt to enact when they emphasize formal ‘legal and juridical relations between individuals, but remain blind to other forms of relationships, familial, erotic, fraternal and the like’. He also argues that it repeats the same operation as a result of which the assertion of objective scientific truth is also the assertion of purified subjectivity (Bernstein, 1995: 105–106). Adorno and Horkheimer themselves criticized Kant’s call for a form of ‘apathy’ which excludes such matters from ethical reasoning, and suggested that such an attitude to moral questions cannot be separated from the pathologies of subjectivism described above (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972: 96). Bernstein argues that what is being excluded in these cases is the rational interpretation of the needs of concrete, particular human beings (Bernstein, 1995: 148). Despite his best intentions, Habermas’s communicative Critical Theory only salvages progress by limiting practical reason to procedures that exclude the concrete and particular.

It is, in part, just such formalism against which critical IR scholars have, in a variety of ways, already been struggling. Its primary manifestation in global politics is the system of sovereign states from which normative considerations and cultural particularities are exiled in favour of the rational interaction of sovereign units. In keeping with Habermas’s attempt to identify a pragmatically grounded reason, Habermasian scholars have sought to identify a form of global interaction that might undermine the promotion of this system by placing communal moral cognition at the centre of world politics. As Linklater is aware, this approach also goes some way to avoiding the formalistic abstractions of more traditional approaches to world politics, which rely on the assertion of fixed universal values (Linklater, 1998: 41).

However, whilst communicative action might be deployed to undermine the abstractions of the states-system, it does not address the more fundamental formalism which is described in Adorno’s critique of subjectivist reason. As Geras shows, the softening of social and cultural boundaries through communicative reason is compatible with continued domination by a socio-political system based on the abstractions of the exchange principle. Linklater has shown that the concern with enhancing international structures of communicative interaction risks establishing an ethical system that sidelines bodily experiences and emotions, and that is therefore insensitive both to the human experience of suffering and the solidarity which recognition of that suffering can generate.

The risk is that, just like other forms of progress, and despite the intention behind it, an attempt to establish a universal communication community would perpetuate the social manifestations of the subjectivist pathology. As Bernstein shows, it is difficult to see how such a system can cater to individual needs, since the pursuit of purified communication could not confront, but would rather continue, the processes through which deviation from established systems of social life which are at odds with the needs of concrete individuals becomes increasingly difficult (Bernstein, 1995). In the international sphere, the pursuit of such communication might overcome the form of state-based global interaction which has prevailed at a particular point in human history, but it would not be in a position to overturn the concurrent experience of global socio-political structures as a ‘weight’ and source of suffering.

Contrary to the assumptions of many IR theorists, then, it is not clear that communicative action can provide a basis for global praxis. Rather, it shares in the dual nature of other forms of enlightened reason; in some respects liberating, it would participate in the maintenance of practices remote from the experiences and interests of material human subjects. It would do so because, despite Habermas’s attempt to ground progress in actual practices of communication, it repeats the attempt to purify reason and thereby promotes the same formalism in social life as Positivism and the assertion of political sovereignty.

These are important considerations in IR; in their eagerness to promote global praxis, Critical IR Theorists should not lose sight of the ease with which domination and nihilism attach themselves to progressive political practices. Adorno offers a means for Critical IR theorists to consider the risks which accompany attempts to take control of the transition from a world of antagonistic political communities to cosmopolitan interaction. Crucially, his critique of subjectivism shows that a set of apparently distinct concerns about the way in which communicative Critical IR Theory deals with objectivity are in fact a coherent constellation which reveals the continuation of a fundamental social pathology of which critical IR scholars have already been partially conscious.

Objective communication

Whilst it helps us to draw together the concerns behind materialist critiques of communicative Critical IR Theory, this critique of subjectivism will do little to reassure those who, like Habermas, suspect that Adorno’s position is one of ‘traditional “contemplation”’ and negativity, condemned by the ‘philosophy of consciousness’ to ‘renounce its relations to practice’ (Habermas, 1984: 366). If all attempts to initiate a progressive politics are accompanied by unavoidable ‘cruelty’, surely the pursuit of praxis is futile.

It is certainly true that, for Adorno, the assumption that the theorist is in a position to legislate for practice reflects the dictatorial attitude of the modern subject (Adorno, 2010). However, whatever his wariness in making prescriptions regarding praxis, his philosophy reflects adherence to Marx’s quest of salvaging human activity from both the abstractions of idealism and the distortions of capitalism. From this Marxian perspective, whilst objectivity cannot be understood in isolation from human activity, the latter must be understood as ‘objective’ as well as ‘subjective’ (Marx, 2000b: 171). Remaining in this materialist tradition, Adorno aims to show that we can only gain a better understanding of praxis if we begin to understand rational behaviour in terms of the interaction between subjectivity and objectivity. The element of ‘anti-praxism’ in his work arises not from a rejection of practical concerns, but from a determination not to drown praxis in theory (Wilding, 2010). A form of progressive reason which would escape the pathologies of modernity would be one in which rational subjectivity is reconciled with, rather than suppressive of, the objectivity which it can never subsume — an impure reason.

In fact, despite the critique outlined in the previous section, Adorno’s cautious materialist Critical Theory is not entirely at odds with the desire for a world politics in which social reconciliation consists in free communicative interaction. In the passage from ‘Subject and Object’ quoted above, he does not condemn the appeal to communication in general, but rather the assumption that we can extract any pure form of intersubjective communication from existing social practices and use it as the basis for any political programme. He not only makes the negative point about the betrayal of the ‘best there is’ to the ‘requirements of subjective reason’, but also refers to the positive goal of ‘agreement between people and things’ (Adorno, 1978: 499–500). Thus, Adorno’s is a sympathetic critique of the appeal to communication; meaningful communication is a desirable goal, but it cannot be found ready-made in a world which has long been the dictatorship of the subject. Rather, it must be constructed on the basis of the interaction between subjectivity and objectivity. In this way, it might be possible to avoid the slide back into formalism found in Habermasian Critical Theory.

The key to an Adornian reworking of Critical IR Theory is the notion of communication between subject and object. This idea and its implications become clearer if we consider that, because Adorno believes subjects cannot be set apart from objectivity, relations between subjects and objects are also relations between subjects (Bernstein, 1995: 153). As we saw above, the objectivity in question is, in part, a matter of the experiences and needs of particular human individuals. For Adorno, if rational subjectivity could be reconciled with this objectivity rather than erasing it, it would cease to participate in the production of abstract social structures and could instead be directed towards the fulfilment of human needs. We therefore find that ‘[i]n its proper place … the relationship of subject and object would lie in the realization of peace among men as well as between men and their other’ (Adorno, 1978: 500). The intersubjectivity emphasized by Habermas and Critical IR Theorists can only be properly understood and pursued via the attempt to forge an alternative understanding of subject–object relations, and this requires, in part, an alternative understanding of relations between subjects.

What such a form of social interaction would involve is further apparent if we return to the characteristic critical theoretical concern with the relationship between truth and the good life. It was described above how a theory of truth is integral to Habermas’s account of praxis. Habermas socializes truth whilst retaining its context-transcending force, and thereby seems to avoid the abstractions of traditional theories whilst retaining the progressive power of Enlightenment rationality. The simultaneously social and transcendental nature of truth is integral to rational communication. The problem with Habermas’s position was apparent in Bernstein’s criticisms; even a consciously communicative, social truth such as Habermas’s is one in which practical reason turns out to have been purified; detached from the objective and particular and established, despite Habermas’s intentions, as part of a formalistic system. As Adorno feared, the desire for praxis risks betraying Critical Theory to the very abstractions from human needs which it set out to criticize.

Adorno’s tentative attempts to outline a non-subjectivist reason also include an account of social, moral truth. He rejects the equation of truth with appeal to the facts as an instance of ‘ignominious adaptation’, which leads humans to ascribe ‘meaning to senseless compulsion’ (Adorno, 1974: 98). In other words, the suggestion that truth involves correspondence between concepts and facts reflects acceptance of the formalistic systems which compel individuals to act in a manner that perpetuates their own powerlessness. As for other Critical Theorists, including Habermas, so for Adorno truth is to be equated not simply with the accurate reflection of the surface appearances of social life, but with the ‘hope’ and the urge to resolve conflict which points beyond current realities (Adorno, 1974: 22).

For Adorno, whilst truth is a social matter, it is nevertheless ‘objective’ (Adorno, 1973: 41). As explained above, objectivity means something very different for Adorno than it does in those forms of objectivism which have been the focus of criticism for critical IR scholars. It is not something passive, to be captured by the cognizing subject, but an element of human activity and experience. As a result, truth is, for Adorno, unintentional; rather than being a matter of the sovereign subject capturing a passive ‘objective’ world with concepts, or of constructing it through intersubjective interaction, truth involves the expression of objectivity in subjectivity (Buck-Morss, 2004: 39–40). In theoretical terms, this means that Adorno does not look for truth in accuracy or as agreement, but in the way in which surface-level cultural phenomena express underlying relationships and tensions (Buck-Morss, 2004: 40).

Just as a Habermasian attitude to truth lies behind many of the assumptions about the progressive power of discourse in IR, so Adorno’s truth is at the heart of his account of praxis. According to Adorno, truth would ultimately be a social achievement rather than a theoretical one. A ‘true’ society would be one in which subjectivity and objectivity interacted in the manner suggested by unintentional truth, with the objective elements no longer dominated by the subjective (Adorno, 1976: 25). Thus, truth is approached through the social articulation of new relations between subjectivity and objectivity in which the latter is expressed though the former.

Returning to the observation that subject–object relations are also relations between subjects, this would entail a form of interaction in which the participants had not been purified of objectivity. Communication between subject and object would be communication in which these characteristics were internal to the process of practical reasoning. The powers of the enlightened subject would no longer obscure the primacy of objectivity, and rational, communal reflection about the needs of concrete, non-purified human beings would guide social life. Thus, the Critical Theory of subject–object relations sustains a radical understanding of intersubjectivity.

Concealed within the negativist critique there is, then, a positive, albeit necessarily tentative, praxeology. Adorno locates objectivity alongside individual and collective subjectivity as part of a tripartite constellation — subject–object–intersubjectivity — the elements of which could be balanced to achieve peaceful social relations (Jay, 1984: 65). Such relations would be based on a form of praxis in which the elements of objectivity discussed above are not excluded from practical reason. In the absence of this exclusion, a non-formalistic mode of social organization would be possible, one in which reflection on the needs and experiences of concrete human individuals shapes the structure of social organization rather than mastering them with abstract social structures and systems. This is, in many respects, the same goal that Habermas wants to pursue by using the formal pragmatic characteristics of communication as the basis for the pursuit of procedural universalism.

As mentioned above, the ideal of a non-formalistic world politics is already present in Critical IR Theory. Adorno can help us to consider the sorts of rational interaction which might be capable of bringing the world closer to the realization of this ideal. From the insight that communication must take place between subjects and objects, several pathways emerge for Critical IR Theory. We can conclude by briefly considering two possible areas of investigation.

First, as Linklater has already indicated, it suggests the need to develop an international sociology of moral learning sensitive to the moral significance of the shared vulnerability of corporeal human individuals (Linklater, 2007b). Such a line of inquiry points towards a form of cosmopolitanism sensitive to the way in which the apparently progressive universalization and institutionalization of norms can suppress the needs and experiences of concrete human subjects. Such concerns have already been expressed by Poststructuralists in IR regarding cultural particularity. Indeed, Linklater took up Habermas’s Critical Theory in part as a means of showing how Critical Theory can deal with this suppression of difference (Linklater, 1998: 38–39, 41).

However, the notion of communication between subject and object suggests that we must tread carefully in pursuing the sort of sociology proposed by Linklater. Whilst Linklater recognizes that the neglect of materialism in much of Critical IR Theory has left it morally stunted, Critical Theory requires more than identification of a common aversion to suffering. Rather, as we have seen, if the abstractions of subjectivism are not to be perpetuated, the objectivity which explains this capacity for suffering must be incorporated into praxis. A materialist Critical IR Theory needs to investigate the ways in which we can move beyond recognition of the capacity of others to suffer — recognition which is possible from the perspective of subjectivism and therefore compatible with the continuation of formalism — and towards the identification of a practical reason from which the objectivity of which this capacity speaks is not excluded.

Second, in searching for praxis, Adorno shows that IR theorists need to take care not to be seduced by the most obvious examples of communicative activity, significant as they may be. It was described above how in being so seduced, we risk betraying the goals of Critical Theory to a form of political organization which, despite its claims to the contrary, cannot be truly sensitive to human needs. For example, Risse (2000) gives the example of the mutual understanding achieved by the leaders of the Soviet Union and United States at the end of the Cold War. Of course, such reasoning as was involved in this case may have played an important role in undermining the mutual suspicion of the Cold War. However, this is a prime example of ‘communication between subjects according to the requirements of subjective reason’. This form of communication between the representatives of sovereign states is quite compatible with the perpetuation of an international system which is experienced as an arbitrary constraint and source of suffering by most of the world’s inhabitants. This is because such communication will, of course, have excluded the corporeal, emotive and natural from the realm of practical reason. In more practical terms, this means that world politics continues to be guided by a set of practices which consign rational reflection about concrete and particular human needs and experiences to a ‘cognition-free special area of social activity’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972: 25).

Even the possibility, offered by modern technologies, of increased popular participation in communication which reshapes the international environment must be approached with caution. This is apparent in the case of the role of the social networking technology which aided the revolutions of the ‘Arab Spring’. The role of social media in initiating and maintaining the momentum of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt cannot be denied. However, the influence of such forums for communication emerged in interaction with a constellation of other interactions and modes of expression which took place in squares, alleyways, suburbs, cafes and factories (El-Ghobashy, 2011).

This is not the place for anything but the most cursory reflection, but it is worth noting the strand of Adornian objectivity that runs through the revolutions, from the hunger and economic exploitation which contributed to the frustration of populations, to the actions through which this frustration was expressed — the seizures of key areas of the urban environment and graffiti on the bodies of both the demonstrators themselves and the machinery of oppression, including tanks and the trucks of Egyptian riot police (El Zein and Oritz, 2011).

From the perspective of a materialist Critical IR Theory, these actions, experiences, and expressions contain a cognitive and rational dimension that expresses both suffering and the hope for a new relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. Remote from events ‘on the ground’ as such considerations might seem, such a Critical Theory would be well equipped to reflect on the actual and potential relationships between this constellation of material factors and the new forms of reality-shaping intersubjective communication and expression that appear to be offered by social media.

Conclusion

This article has sought to identify a new approach to Critical IR Theory by considering two exclusions from IR — Adorno and objectivity. By using Adorno as a means of introducing reflection about objectivity, it has been possible to elaborate on the problems that lie behind some key criticisms that have been levelled against the Habermasian position in IR. In particular, we revealed the fear that the latter succumbs to the temptation to purify human reason and thereby risks the promotion of a form of social organization which, like other forms of enlightened reason, is a potential source of cruelty and suffering despite its explicit intentions.

However, what appears, at one level, to be a clash of paradigms and attitudes — philosophy of language versus philosophy of consciousness, discourse versus corporeality, intersubjectivity versus objectivity — turns out to be, in many other respects, a matter of pursuing common goals in a different way. By turning to Critical Theory’s past it has been possible to articulate a sympathetic critique of Habermasian Critical IR Theory, one which shares the concern with praxis and the view that replacing mutual estrangement with social reconciliation should be the goal of international political thought.

Nevertheless, consideration of Adorno’s Critical Theory reveals an alternative path for Critical IR Theory, along which the task facing critical IR scholars is the exploration of new ways of articulating the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. The unintentionality of theoretical truth provides a hint of what an emancipated society would be like — one of non-alienated objective activity, where human subjects stand in a non-instrumental relationship to the objectivity of which they are a part. From this perspective, the goal of critical international thought cannot simply be that of providing more adequate accounts of existing practices or prescriptions for action, but must rather be that of considering the openings that exist for a politics that will not reproduce global structures which weigh upon the human subjects as a source of suffering. Such openings reveal the possibility of a form of practical reason which is truly capable of enhancing the lives of concrete human subjects.