Imagining Disarmament, Enchanting International Relations

Matthew Breay Bolton

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030177157
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030177164
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the global politics of disarmament through emerging international relations (IR) theories of discourse and imagination. Each chapter reflects on an aspect of contemporary activism on weapons through an analogous story from literary tradition. Shahrazade, convenor of the 1001 Nights, offers a potent metaphor for the humanitarian advocacy seeking to moderate the behaviour of violent people. The author reads Don Quixote in Cambodia's minefields, reflects on Lysistrata at Greenham Common and considers how tropes in The Tempest were enrolled in both Pacific nuclear testing and efforts to resist it. The book draws on ethnographic fieldwork in communities affected by weapons and disarmament advocacy at the UN and calls for a re-enchantment of IR, alive to affect, ritual and myth. 

© The Author(s) 2020

Matthew Breay BoltonImagining Disarmament, Enchanting International Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17716-4_1

Begin Abstract

Act 1. Shahrazad: Disarming Charm

Matthew Breay Bolton¹

(1)

Department of Political Science, Pace University, New York, NY, USA

Matthew Breay Bolton

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Each night, to save her own life, Shahrazad is spared by her discursive skill, able to persuading a murderous ruler to stay her arbitrary execution. This ancient story, from the 1001 Nights, is a potent metaphor for disarmament advocacy, which seeks to persuade violent people to moderate their behavior. Traditional international relations (IR) scholarship has focused on the role of “hard power”—military and economic might—as the driver of change in the global system. However, academics and practitioners are increasingly realizing the role of narrative, stories and imagination in shaping what is seen as possible. In demonstrating the power of disarmament activists’ persuasion, this chapter highlights and reviews the insights of the “discursive turn” for IR.

Keywords

DisarmamentInternational relationsImagination 1001 Nights DiscourseNarrativeMythology

End Abstract

Let me be open with you from the beginning. Through telling stories of international relations (IR) in a strange and unfamiliar way, I seek to enchant you, the reader. I want to embolden your imagination and persuade you of the possibility of disarmament.

I draw my inspiration from the disarming charm of Shahrazad, beguiling narrator of the 1001 Nights , that ancient and cosmopolitan collection of tales from Arabic, Indian and Persian traditions. In the prologue of The Arabian Nights (as the text is sometimes called here in the so-called West), we find the framing narrative that envelops all of the shorter stories nesting within its pages. We are introduced to Shahrayar, the “invincible, energetic, and implacable” king of “India and Indochina ” (Haddawy, 1990, p. 3). But we learn that Shahrayar’s power over his subjects has limits. One day, Shahrayar embarks on a hunt, leaving his brother, Shahzaman, behind at the palace. As Shahrayar heads for the wilderness, Shahzaman looks out the window and is shocked to see his brother’s wife, 10 light-skinned “slave-girls” and 11 cross-dressing, enslaved black men all making love in the palace gardens. Shahzaman is alarmed that despite their low station, women, slaves and people with darker skin all have agency, even “though my brother is king and master of the whole world” (p. 4).

When Shahrayar learns from his brother of the queen’s orgiastic exertions, “his blood boiled” (p. 7). He orders his vizier to execute her and killed all his concubines himself. Stirred to a misogynistic rage by his sense of impotence, he vows to “save himself from the wickedness and cunning of women.” He swears that everyday hence he will marry a woman “for one night only,” ordering his vizier to kill her the next day before finding him someone new:

He continued to do this until all the girls perished, their mothers mourned, and there arose a clamor among the fathers and mothers, who called the plague upon his head, complained to the Creator of the heavens, and called for help on Him who hears and answers prayers. (p. 11)

Enter Shahrazad, eldest daughter of the vizier. “[I]ntelligent, knowledgeable, wise and refined,” Shahrazad “knew poetry by heart,” had studied history, literature, philosophy and medicine and “was acquainted with the sayings … of sages and kings” (p. 11). Unlike her father, who has convinced himself that he “cannot disobey” the king, Shahrazad has a plan. To the vizier’s distress, she insists he allow her to marry Shahrayar, so she can “succeed in saving the people or perish and die like the rest” (p. 11). Her father tries to dissuade her, insisting that women should obey men, but Shahrazad ups the ante: “if you don’t take me to King Shahrayar, I shall go to him by myself and tell him you have refused to give me to one like him” (p. 15).

After conspiring with her sister, Dinarzad, Shahrazad marries the king. Shahrayar takes her to his bed and as he begins to “fondle her,” he is surprised when she begins to weep. Baffled, the king asks her “Why are you crying?” She tells him that before she dies in the morning she wants to say goodbye to her sister. Shahrayar sends for Dinarzad and allows her to “sleep under the bed.” Excruciatingly, Dinarzad waits until the king has “satisfied himself with her sister.” Then she clears her throat and pipes up from beneath the mattress: “Sister, if you are not sleepy, tell us one of your lovely little tales.” Obtaining the king’s permission, Shahrazad instructs him: “Listen” (p. 16).

She spins a tale about a merchant who bargains with a murderous demon for a stay of execution, but dawn breaks before Shahrazad can conclude her story. She falls silent, leaving the king “burning with curiosity to hear the rest” (p. 18). Dinarzad exclaims “What a strange and lovely story!” but Shahrazad demures: “What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night if the king spares me and lets me live? It will be even better and more entertaining.” The king takes the bait, deciding to “spare her until I hear the rest of the story; then I will have to put her to death” (p. 18).

The next night, and for many nights after that, Dinarzad is permitted to continue sleeping under the royal bed, and since it would be beneath the dignity of the king to beg, each night she turns to her sister and asks her: “tell us one of your lovely little tales” (p. 20). Shahrazad draws out her stories; each character themselves tells long yarns of magical objects, enchanted cities, epic sojourns and legendary romance. Reading the Nights feels like peeling back narratives to find infinite layers of story tucked inside each other. Each morning, Shahrazad teases the king with the pleasures yet to come: “tomorrow night … will be even better … more wonderful, delightful, entertaining, and delectable if the kings spares me and lets me live” (p. 21). Following the 21st night, Shahrayar is so enthralled by his wife’s gifts he decides he is “willing to postpone her execution even for a month” (p. 55). Only four nights later, in “amazement, pain and sorrow” at the plight of Shahrazad’s characters, the king is willing to extend her life “even for two months” (p. 62). As each tale seamlessly merges into another, we dare to hope that our narrator, through her enrapturing art, is slowly teaching the king’s shriveled, psychopathic heart a modicum of humanity. Her characters slip hints of an alternative way to govern:

Behold a peaceful city, free from fear,

Whose wonders make it a gorgeous heaven appear. (p. 94)

The original text ends abruptly, after the 271st night, tempting endless scribes, translators, hucksters and storytellers to add their own tales (including that of Aladdin), hoping to complete the remaining 730 nights. Husain Haddawy, the Nights’ authoritative translator into English, is unimpressed by these imposters but cannot help appending his own postscript: “Tradition has it that in the course of time Shahrazad bore Shahrayar three children and that, having learned to trust and love her, he spared her life and kept her as his queen” (p. 427).

Today’s gender politics rightly lead us to suspect the claim that a woman can love a violent, damaged man into gentleness. I could not help but cringe at Shahrazad’s exclamation in the BBC TV version: “If I can make him listen to my stories, maybe he’ll change” (Barnes, 2000, Episode 1, 41:19). But there is a grim humility to the original, truncated text. It offers not a utopian vision of “happily ever after” but rather the possibility that through discursive skill we can stay executions one night at a time. This is the role I believe disarmament campaigners can play in global politics. We cannot promise a world free of all strife. But perhaps we can persuade violent people to give us respite, to reduce their arsenals a little at a time, to renounce particularly odious weapons. We do this by flattering their sense of honor, enthralling them with our art and weaving them into a fabric of norms and commitments. From Shahrazad we learn that the storyteller can move people, she has—we have—agency. But it is a cyclical task and often a dangerous one.

Like Haddawy, my encounter with Shahrazad tempts me to add my own tales, from more recent times. And so, before attending to the more serious scholarly tasks of reviewing the literature and the book’s theoretical approach, I offer you three anecdotes. At their core they are true, though they are stylized here in honor of the great storyteller herself.¹

The 1002nd Night: The Story of the Princess and the Hibakusha

When it was night and Shahrazad was in bed with the king—now a constitutional monarch constrained by the rule of law, a vigorous civil society and international norms—Dinarzad said to her sister, “Please, if you are not sleepy, tell us one of your lovely little tales to while away the night. Maybe you could provide the reader of this book a real world example of what the author is trying to get at.” The king muttered, “T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Act 1. Shahrazad: Disarming Charm
• Act 2. Quixote: Tilting at Landmines
• Act 3. Lysistrata: Meaningful Human Control
• Act 4. Caliban and the Nuclear Ban
• Back Matter