Description

‘Public diplomacy’ is in vogue like never before. The election of President Obama, the “soft power president” has put the subject back on the policy agenda, Master’s programs and professorships dedicated to the subject have sprung up across the United States, while academic literature has proliferated at a startling rate. However, the current literature remains undertheorised, dehistoricised and, despite the claims of some, profoundly conservative. This paper is an attempt to open up a more critical wing of analysis, going beyond the re-constructive critiques of Snow et al. Drawing on poststructuralist political theory, it argues that the recent increase in interest in public diplomacy is indicative of a ‘narrative of misrepresentation’, which is deeply embedded in the American state’s mythologisation. The subject is historicised by looking at its conceptual roots in the struggles of seventeenth-century England. By revealing the contingencies inherent but ignored in public diplomacy discourse, those who would claim its potential as a more peaceful, ethical form of statecraft are forcefully rebuked.