The Arts : A Fruitful Resource for Teaching International Relations

Interview with Frédéric RAMEL, Professor in Political Science, Head of the Political Science Department, Doctoral School and CERI, Sciences Po.

When did the interest in the use of arts for teaching international relations begin ?

Towards the end of the 1990s, a pedagogical interest in the arts began to blow. At this time, cinema productions are the preferred materials, mainly used to introduce the theories of international relations. 9/11 also played an amplifying role by generating a set of movies and TV series dealing with both the event itself and policies adopted in the frame of a “war on terror”. Since then, the International Studies Association – one of the main scholarly organization in this field – organizes panels on this aspect on a regular basis during its annual congress. It even created, last year, a new section named “Science, Technology, Art and International Relations”, that aims at clarifying the pedagogical uses of audiovisual supports. One has to keep in mind that this interest more fundamentally refers to a spirit of openness which drives the teaching of international relations. For instance, these classes were the first in which role plays and simulations have been applied to pedagogical purposes.

What are these supports used for in courses at Sciences Po ?

Whatever tradition they belong to (sociology of international relations, international political sociology), professors at Sciences Po stand out of a mainly American approach. In other terms, movies are not used to become familiar with schools of thought (realism, liberalism, constructivism…) but rather to introduce a particular issue. This way, they can help the student to understand better changes in contemporary warfare, in particular those which affect forms of combat. Watching the landing scene in Saving Private Ryan, then the scene depicting the departure of UN troops from Rwanda in Sometimes in April allows to identify immediately a denationalization of warfare. The fighters are not the same. But these movies do not only have an illustrative function. They allow an access to knowledge through other means. Within the Master in International Relations of the Doctoral School, the documentary film Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait, which deals with the war in Syria, was screened with the participation of the film-maker. It was followed by a debate. This screening shed a different light on the conflict, distinct from the lectures and the students’ research. This is particularly appreciated, as it implies a paradoxical change of standpoint. Change of standpoint as compared to the traditional tools of the lectures. Paradoxical, because a fiction embedded in acute topicality brings the observer nearer to the understanding of international facts, rather than farther.

Until now, you mainly talked about movies. What about the other visual supports used for pedagogical purposes? How to deal with them ?

Images can be used in any of their forms, whether they belong to art history, to popular culture, or even to marketing and advertising. I fully agree with Laurence Bertrand Dorléac in one of the previous interviews. From a methodological point of view, the students should get familiar with the tools which enable them to decipher images: the value of the context, the emphasis on production processes, the modalities of circulation. To these basic elements, one should add interpretation tools which are specific to images, such as the framing or the iconology. In this respect, knowing how to spot icons on the world stage enriches the students’ education. They will be able to identify them and understand better their use which is sometimes contradictory. The icon does not refer to the diplomacy of celebrities around show-business figures who serve a cause or promote an intergovernmental organization. This aspect, of course, should not be overlooked in a time where branding logics and the strengthening of reputation largely shape the strategy of international players. But an icon refers to figures who become references.

Images also serve to identify changes occurring in diplomatic practices. For instance, in one of the seminars I present, I let the students react to two very different representations, both from the point of view of the historic context and from the point of view of the support: The Ambassadors by Holbein (1533) and a few panels from the comics Quai d’Orsay. Both the representations allow to identify the diplomatic functions: to represent, to negotiate, to inform. However, the modalities of these functions undergo transformations. The act of informing, in the painting by Holbein, lies in the need to look at it obliquely, from the side. Indeed, only by standing at the side of the painting does a strange shape appear in it, a human skull, through the process of anamorphosis (an image which is hidden and distorted). The diplomatic message implies both secrecy and discretion. If Quai d’Orsay bears similarities with such an attitude, in particular through the figure of the chief of staff, sober, on the move and seeking to maintain confidentiality, the comics lays the emphasis on the rhetorical dimension and public diplomacy.

Paradoxically, social sciences overlooked the study of images for too long. Yet, as revealed by the famous painting by Rembrandt The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, to show and to demonstrate are separated only by a difference of degree, not of nature. In an international relations course, the message goes beyond. This field of analysis has often been erroneously held as that of cold calculation and of the rationality of state actors dominating the stage. When they observe the production, the narration and the circulation of images, the students are awakened to another aspect which is too often neglected: that of emotions and affects, which fully belongs to the international reality. There is no way to substitute an approach to another, but to show that the “international arena” is not hermetic to sensitivity. It can even less be in an era in which distant strangers’ fate is no longer unknown thanks to the promptness of digital communication tools.

How can the arts contribute to pedagogical experimentation ?

Paradoxically, Roland Bleiker’s article, which was an aesthetic milestone in the field of international relations (‘The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory’, Millennium. Journal of International Studies 30, 2001), does not deal with the pedagogical dimension. However, he calls for new perspectives. To put the student at the center of this new perspective is the main objective of pedagogical innovations. One of my goals in the seminar “Arts and International Relations”, which I teach at PSIA, is to make the student a creator of artistic forms. Besides the writing of a paper by each student, according to the principles of the research in international relations, the evaluation is based on an “artistic action” within Sciences Po. This action is carried out in a group of 5 or 6 people. Along with developing skills in the organizational field (to build a project, to stick to a schedule, to ensure coordination within the group…), the students must account for their own learning through a summary document similar to lessons learned. This exercise is a rocky path, because there often are administrative constraints on organizing this kind of event when it is not incorporated to a wider program under the responsibility of the Office of Arts. Nonetheless, such actions show that learning does not only result from transmission, but also from a reflexivity that students can experience themselves. They can be carried out in various ways:

• By collaborating with an artist, the students make a new artwork, which leads them to reflect upon a dimension of the international relations, such as the meaning of international cooperation (“Meeting Point”, with the Malagasy artist Joël Andrianomearisoa, 2014);
• By drawing on the work of an artist, the student reproduce an installation which becomes a source of dialogue with the participants regarding the meaning they give to national identity and cosmopolitism (“Identity Constellation”, on the model of “Identity Tapestry” by Mary March, 2015);
• By creating themselves an installation on a selected theme within the field of international relations, such as the representations of “war on terror” (“The Black Box of US vision of Islamic extremism”, 2015).

This is a way of teaching which is rather pragmatic and based on the connection between experience and learning, as well as on the development of a reasoning rather than memorizing facts. This is also a certain vision of research, as we tend to forget the researcher is also a creator.