Last things: narrative endings in international theory and history

Abstract

Endings give meaning. We read significance into stories—moral, political, analytical, biographical, historical—from how they conclude. Politics too is in this sense shaped or defined by eschatology: the possibility that the present story has a terminus and may be approaching it. Drawing on philosophy of history and literary theories of narrative structure, we argue International Relations (IR) theorists must take endings seriously as core aspects of how we construct theories to make sense of world politics. We develop a typological account of how endings shape historical theories in IR. We distinguish endings as either optimistic or pessimistic and as either determinate or indeterminate. This yields a two-by-two matrix, in which endings are classified as triumphalist, catastrophic, disenchanted, or renewalist. We unpack these with historical, theoretical, and literary examples. We then consider a countervailing approach, in which theorists attempt to refuse or reject endings. We consider two strategies of refusal: repetition and counter-narrative, again illustrating with examples. We conclude with a brief discussion of implications for historical research in IR.