REPRESENTING ALTERITY: WHY TYPES (IDEAL OR OTHERWISE) DO MATTER IN IR THEORY.

This article initiates an inquiry into the role models play in the context of postmodern international relations. The opening for such an inquiry takes its direction from Campbell's (1993: 87) request for "a mode of representation...an account of ethics and responsibility that can inform contemporary international political practice but that is no longer dependent upon the unsustainable notion of autonomous agency." The debate is framed via the theoretical trajectories staked out between Judith Butler and Seyla Benhabib over their conflicting views on feminism's need for a model and Weber's delineation between ideal types and ideal models. The discussion is further developed through an examination of Linda Zerilli's analysis of what she claims to be misfocused debates over the exclusionary character of the category 'women.' The debate is then extended along the lines of John Seery's query regarding the self that is constructed out of postmodern models of political interaction. After tracing out the fault lines of these theoretical debates I thought it would be instructive to juxtapose the following types: Haraway's cyborg, Ashley's IC and Ashley and Walker's dissident exile in order to examine how these types function within the terms of a postmodern theoretical trajectory of thought. Specifically, I am interested in tracing the ethical content that underwrites these types. This is extremely significant because if postmodern theorists can be shown to rely upon and posit types, and if it is possible to trace the ethical commitments that underlie these types, then this will provide the opening for us to not only discuss the ethical commitments in postmodern IR scholarship, but more importantly, to consider if the positing of such models or types indicates foundational commitments that may in effect serve to ground a postmodern emancipatory politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]