Erzsebet Strausz - Writing the Self and Transforming Knowledge in International Relations: Towards a Politics of Liminality

Erzsbet Strausz is Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick, UK.

Edited by:
Jenny Edkins
Aberystwyth University

Nick Vaughan-Williams
University of Warwick

Writing the Self and Transforming Knowledge in International Relations

Towards a Politics of Liminality

Erzsbet Strausz

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Erzsbet Strausz

First published 2018

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2018 Erzsbet Strausz

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ISBN: 9781138300965 (hbk)

ISBN: 9780203732953 (ebk)

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There are many people I would like to thank for enabling, supporting, encouraging, inspiring and making just so much better both this book and the writing process behind it. More than anything else, however, I want to convey the feeling and energy of immense gratitude that accompanied the making of this text from beginning to end. This gratitude arises from big and small wonders, everyday miracles and acts of sharing that more often than not left no particular trace behind. Yet they lived on and continued to gently stretch the horizons of the possible, bringing grace to everyday movements and faith in the unexpected. Besides acknowledging others invaluable contribution to what may look like a single-authored monograph, I would like use this space to affirm the power of genuine care, presence and solidarity in academia and beyond, and the inevitable condition of the co-production of knowledge as a source of strength, creativity and transformation. While this book has mostly been written in the first person perspective of I, it has been shaped and formed in and through encounters, relations and relationships for which I feel truly blessed. Everyone who touched that life material that came to be articulated in this form I am proud to call my co-author.

This project started as a PhD dissertation and evolved in some unpredictable ways since its submission. It is the product of various microcosms living, breathing and growing together; that is, imaginative, associative worlds-in-a-world weaving in and out at different stages and phases of life, work and writing. I think of them fondly for what they continue to make possible: experiences, connections and shifting landscapes that keep providing the most productive material for thinking about who I am and what I do as a person and a scholar.

The first I would call Aberystwyth. I came to Aber nearly ten years ago on a brief visit from Hungary with my friend Natalia Szablewska, who thought I should at least have a look at a British university before I would make substantive decisions about my future. She was right: the five years that I spent in the Department of International Politics as a PhD student and later as a teaching fellow were life changing. The Aberystwyth Postgraduate Research Scholarship was that miracle that allowed me to move to the UK and restored my confidence in things working out eventually. I owe a heartfelt thanks to lots of friends, teachers, mentors, and colleagues who helped me find out what brought me to the place where the tracks end and all the adventure began as I began to learn about the world outside my comfort zone and unlearn my place in it. I am immeasurably grateful to my supervisors, Howard Williams, Alistair Shepherd and Carl Death for their generous support and guidance throughout the many hurdles on the path of intellectual emancipation. I cant thank enough especially Alistair and Carl for the trust they placed in me in my final year when I changed my project and decided to write it anew as an autobiographical piece six months before the submission deadline. Experiencing the freedom to pursue what came from heart and felt like the right project for me, however risky and unusual it might have been remains one of the most important inspirations in both my pedagogical practice and research. Through this I understood that empowerment starts with seeing and affirming ability and inner resourcefulness: that even the most unlikely ideas can be realized and we are capable of figuring out how. Conversations with Hidemi Suganami and his careful reading of my work taught me an ethos and mode of engagement grounded in genuine curiosity and attention that transcends disciplinary boundaries and conventions. My PhD examiners, Louise Amoore and Jenny Edkins made my viva not only a thoroughly enjoyable but also a deeply transformational event a real rite of passage that introduced me to an academia that is open, accommodating and empowering, one in which my experience book could be addressed and assessed on its own terms, in the very spirit of what it aspired to offer to the world, knowledge and community. Here I would like to thank Jenny in particular for her mentorship throughout the years and for reminding me that another university is indeed possible.