Deep Dive: Reshaping Power Dynamics in International Cultural Relations

Tobias Rohe: Hello and welcome back to “Die Kulturmitter:innen. Deep Dive – Experts on International Cultural Relations.” My name is Tobias Rohe.  It’s a pleasure to be with you again!

Colonial structures are still embedded in cultural institutions and international relations. Decolonization in art and cultural diplomacy challenges these structures – and art can serve as a political tool to promote alternative narratives and foster more equitable perspectives. In International Cultural Relations, this approach opens opportunities to reshape power dynamics and transform institutions like museums, for example, into more pluralistic and inclusive spaces.

With our guests today, Sarah Smith and Lynda Jessup, I will talk about how a decolonizing perspective in International Cultural Relations can help dismantle colonial structures in cultural institutions and establish art as a medium for more just and inclusive relations.

Sarah Smith – you are an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University in London, Canada – and there you hold the Canada Research Chair in Arts, Culture and Global Relations – A warm welcome to you!

Sarah Smith: Thank you. Great to be here.

Tobias Rohe: And Lynda Jessup, you are Vice Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen's University on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples – which is located in the city of London in Canada – welcome to Die Kulturmittler:innen Deep Dive!

Lynda Jessup: Thanks for having me.

Tobias Rohe: Now, let's get straight to the subject, shall we? Both of you are founding members of the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, in short, NACDI.

Sarah Smith: Yes, I'd like to take that. The North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, or we refer to it by the acronym NACDI, this is a group of scholars and practitioners across North America, that was established in 2017.

So, both Linda and myself are founding members, along with Jeffrey Brison and Sascha Priewe. And the network really came together through shared research interests in culture and global relations. So, we identified North America as a framework for the network in order to move away from an identification with a particular state like Canada or Mexico.

And since our founding, NACDI has grown to become quite a broad network, including many members from across North America, as well as beyond, and we really have three related goals for NACDI as a network. These are establishing cultural diplomacy as a critical practice, bridging the divide between academics and practitioners, and disrupting the dominance of state-based diplomacy.

And I'd like to explain those just briefly so that listeners fully understand our aims. With our primary objective, establishing cultural diplomacy as a critical practice - what we're talking about there is that international cultural relations have historically been seen as an affirmative activity, mobilizing a relatively unproblematized culture. But instead, we're aiming to advance a reflexive practice that fully engages with scholarship and experience-based knowledge by those who are trained in critical approaches to culture.

So, we're responding to calls for analyses of cultural diversity, informed by the methodologies and approaches of the cultural disciplines. So, this means centring the work of those in the creative arts and the humanities and social sciences. So, for instance, people in disciplines like history, art history, cultural studies, fine arts, communication studies, you know what I'm saying?

But this is really an intervention in the scholarly literature that's been dominated to date by political science, policy studies and international relations. And in terms of our second objective, bridging gaps between academics and practitioners, what we're doing there is really trying to bridge gaps between knowledge creators, bearers and users.

So, rethinking academics and practitioners in the study of cultural diplomacy, and I think this is one of the key contributions that NACDI is making. And I say that because our project is really proposing a rethinking of what academic and practitioner are in the field. So currently in the field cultural diplomacy is seen in terms of diplomatic practice.

So, it's academics might be best understood as those in political science, IR, in diplomatic studies and practitioners being diplomats, policy makers and foreign ministry officials. But what we're calling for is a radical expansion of the academic category. So, beyond those working in certain disciplines that are traditionally engaged in cultural diplomacy research. So, what this means is, we really want to expand that field to encompass academics and practitioners on the cultural side of cultural diplomacy. So, bringing in artists, educators, administrators, activists, entrepreneurs, NGOs, all sorts of other people who are very active in the cultural sphere.

NACDI is insisting on the inclusion of workers and scholars from the cultural fields, not just to bring them into conversation with each other, but also to enable those on the cultural side to inform those on the diplomatic side. And lastly, this idea or goal that we're advancing of disrupting the dominance of state-based diplomacy, and it is very much related to the first two goals, but there's of course an entrenched trend towards understanding international relations only through Westphalian states. So, what we want to do is instead bring the study and practice of status diplomacy into a deeper or more active critical space. So, understanding that states are important diplomatic players, but they are one of many diplomatic players.

So, we think this is a real way to open things up. And of course, drawing attention to this larger field of diplomatic action is tied to work to recognize and undo the dominance of Western epistemologies. So tied into efforts to advance decolonizing.

Tobias Rohe: I see. Now, you mentioned, how central decolonization is to NACDI’s work.

We see diverse power dynamics worldwide, which are rooted in colonial histories. In what ways do international cultural relations reproduce or maybe challenge these power dynamics from your perspective?

Lynda Jessup: Okay, so if we're thinking about reproducing or challenging these power dynamics, I think I'd start by saying that ICR reproduces these dynamics.

It perpetuates, you know, that myth of culture's neutrality. That is by, you know, advancing the diplomatic field's perception of culture as this benign entity, through which cultural relations practitioners advance long term goals seemingly independent of the strategic interests of the state, is really something of a myth.

You know, we talk about building trust and we talk about trust as though it's interest free, when history of colonialism tells us otherwise, right? The history of diplomacy itself tells us otherwise. Trust is - I would say - largely, if not primarily, cultivated for the primary purpose of pursuing one's own agenda.

And so, there's a real distrust of trust out there. We have a legacy to overcome. International cultural relations organizations speak about being arm's length from the state. You know, without at the end of the day kind of acknowledging the fact that that arm is attached to a body. The point is anyway, that cultural workers are always already involved in the politics of culture that underpin the building and management of cultural relations.

That's what we're trying to get out. We want to draw attention to the larger field of diplomatic activity that's currently obscured by the normative power of the Euro Atlantic international system. You know, the challenge then was to address this reproduction. We see the decentering of status, cultural diplomacy and by extension, ICR, International Cultural Relations, as a way that international cultural relations can begin the work that's needed to challenge the power dynamics.

Now we're advancing a methodology. There probably are many methodologies and the more the better, I would say. Ours is to increase reflexivity and critical space for discussion across disciplinary formations that currently function to separate the cultural and the political and in doing so, centering status diplomacy as a taken for granted field of diplomatic activity.

So, we want to push against that. This persistent recentering of status diplomacy in the diplomatic field. And we're suggesting three moves, to create this critical space, to engage with it. First to Sarah's mentioned, we want to suggest including people whose approaches and practices actively foreground critical approaches and understandings of culture.

So, you know, as she says, advocating for the inclusion of academics and practitioners on the cultural side of the cultural diplomacy divide or the cultural relations divide for analysis of cultural diplomacy informed by those methodologies and critical approaches that are identified with the Euro American Academy's cultural disciplines, as we call them.

And then secondly, we're suggesting that we interrogate state centrism. And the centrality of nation state-based understandings of culture in the study and practice of cultural diplomacy and of global relations more broadly. You know, this statism isn't an accident. In the Euro American Academy that produces the scholars and practitioners of international cultural relations, the take it for granted unit of analysis and practice is the nation.

You know, we speak in sociology of Mexican society, in political studies of Japanese politics, in anthropology of Canadian culture, in the fine arts of Korean music, Chinese art, of Russian dance. You know, this speaks to the centrality of state-based understandings and state-based knowledge production to the ways in which we think through how we conduct global cultural relations.

So NACDI's aim then is to generate conversation across those institutionalized systems of knowledge production, that currently uses the academic disciplines to separate the cultural and the political. And then lastly, our third move, if you don't mind me going on here, is to suggest folding the insights that we gain from all of this, you know, this critical deep dive, into reflection on culture's role in cultural diplomacy, culture's role in cultural relations as an expression of Eurocentric’s separation of nature and culture, of the way in which those two things stand apart from one another.

This reproduces Western ways of thinking, it reasserts this universalizing claim to nature/culture as separate entities, that deny other ways of knowing and being in the world. I mean, we know that the idea of culture as standing apart from nature is not shared globally, and yet cultural relations and cultural diplomacy keeps advancing it as a universal.

So, my point is that as a function of Western knowledge systems, the cultural relations approach to diplomacy and by extension international cultural relations speaks to the political order of still settling states. It's colonializing.

Tobias Rohe: I see.

Lynda Jessup: So, we need to generate critical space, right? It's a space that's necessary to do the decentering that involves accepting autonomous world use as such, you know, rather than trying to assimilate other ways of living and knowing into Eurocentric frameworks and practices, you know, as has been the Western practice todays.

This project's not about inclusion, it's about decolonization. That's essentially it. Not sure if that all makes sense, but you can see through the three moves how we're trying to move forward.

Tobias Rohe: Yeah. The centering on cultural practitioners, maybe that is one thing we can talk about. Contemporary art and art in general as a tool to promote decolonization.

Now, in your research, you examine how artworks and cultural institutions as well as exhibitions can shed light on issues of cultural diplomacy. So, in what ways can contemporary art challenge colonial narratives? You were talking about that anyway before. In what ways can contemporary art challenge colonial narratives in diplomatic contexts? How can it practically work?

Lynda Jessup: I think we have to broaden our notion of what a diplomatic context is. You know, as I was saying, broaden our understanding of that field of diplomatic activity and to see state-based notions of diplomatic activity as just one type. If we think about that, well, you know, as I think about all the practitioners working in the cultural field, I can pick up on that idea of challenging, colonial narratives in a diplomatic context.

That question brings to mind the work of many artists, but picking an example, there's a ceramic tapestry by a Montreal based artist, Nadia Myre, and it's a public artwork that's installed in that Park Hyatt Hotel in downtown Toronto, so in the heart of the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee.

And it's entitled “Where the Beavers, Deers, Elks, and Such Beasts Keep”. Now, “Where Beavers, Deers, Elks, and Such Beasts Keep” is the product of a research creation project that Nadia Myre has its focus on Wampum, the Wampum belt covenant entitled “A Dish With One Spoon”. Now the Dish With One Spoon Wampum belt covenant is a century old agreement between the Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee to share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes where their traditional territories lie. So, on the ground, this meant that, you know, hunting and gathering parties that encountered one another in the field agreed to peaceful interaction and respect for one another's sovereignty as nations. So, and it's a small belt, a lovely belt. It consists of seven rows of white tubular beads with a purple lozenge, people often see as a dish, in the center.

And it's used, the belt is used as a mnemonic device in the oral tradition of diplomacy among indigenous peoples and Europeans. So, you know, it would be a mnemonic device, that would prompt the speaker when the covenant was invoked, as it was, for example, in the1701 Great Peace of Montreal, which involved, peace between Indigenous peoples in the area and the French.

Now, today, A Dish With One Spoon has become familiar to settlers in the context of land acknowledgements. Now, in her work, Myre addresses the deterritorialization, but it's the deterritorialization of A Dish With One Spoon that occurs when A Dish With One Spoon is treated as a metaphor, as it often is among settlers, when it's seen as a metaphor for multiculturalism.

You know, there's A Dish With One Spoon that we all have to share, or environmentalism, the way in which we all care for the environment or some other present day preoccupation that serves colonial narratives of progress. This idea now, A Dish With One Spoon, it's part of a narrative, we're moving on from the past now toward a settler future, bigger and better, multiculturalism, environmentalism.

Now these narratives blur the territorial rights of the individual Indigenous nations in the agreement. You know, and these are nations that speak to other political orders, other authorities, traditions, structures of thought, you know, ways of being that stand often apart from it, often in a very critical relationship to the interstate system, you know, the Euro Atlantic interstate system.

So instead, these narratives work to incorporate Indigenous people into colonialist narratives of acceptance and belonging. You know, into diversity and inclusion, into a flat, dehistoricized pluralism is what I think political anthropologist Audra Simpson calls it. So, in treating A Dish With One Spoon as a metaphor, Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang would argue, is a move to innocence on the part of settlers. It's a strategy, a move to sidestep complicity with the colonializing project. So, as they point out, decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization is about repatriation of land and ways of life. So, what Myre and other artists are doing is mobilizing understandings of the Wampum Belt as a function of diplomatic relations to entice viewers to engage in a political field where indigeneity, their indigeneity, Myres indigeneity pushes against settler colonialism.

So, her work does this by reasserting the identification of Yee Tuck and Wayne Yang with the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee and the Anishinaabe, so with indigenous land. So, she quietly challenges people to examine, just to sit with her work as she says, and examine their taken for granted understandings and to recognize themselves as political actors in this everyday practice of colonialism and its refusal.

So, these artists, they're actually revealing that the cultural field is a field of everyday colonialism. So, what does that say about ICR?

Tobias Rohe: I don't know the artist you're talking about, Mrs. Myrte, is she non-Western or Indigenous?

Lynda Jessup: Yes. Yes, she is Indigenous. She's Montreal based right now, but she is Anishinaabe.

Tobias Rohe: I see.

Lynda Jessup: And she engages in the practice of beading as an Anishinaabe artist. Beading is a traditional form of the Anishinaabe.

Tobias Rohe: I was just about to ask, what role can non-Western and Indigenous artists play in reshaping international cultural relations?

Sarah Smith: I think that's an important question. Like, what role do non-Western and Indigenous artists play in reshaping ICR?

I don't think, I believe Linda agrees with me on this, I don't think it's a responsibility or task of non-Western and Indigenous artists to reshape international cultural relations. Non-Western and Indigenous artists are not in the service of Western agendas. But instead, I mean, it's an important question because I think reshaping international cultural relations, I see this really as a shared task and one for which the responsibility lies with practitioners and scholars who continue to constitute the field right now.

So, artists are but one of many cultural relations practitioners. So, as Linda is very carefully pointing out, their work is engaging and critical, but international cultural relations will not be reshaped based on artist's work alone. So, I think it's important to recognize our task, our challenge.

And again, this of increasing reflexivity. So, those who advance international cultural relations don't universalize all epistemological perspectives. And I want to bring up another example. So, the panel, Linda and I recently convened on November 4th, a panel as part of ICRRA's annual conference. And so this was titled “Unsettling Settler Diplomacy” and it brought together a historian along with three artists and the panelists contributed… their discussion highlighted really contemporary indigenous art practice, indigenous diplomacies.

They also discussed Wampum belts. And I think in highlighting this contemporary use of Wampum, the speakers also revealed the larger diplomatic field in which Western status diplomacy is but one type of diplomatic activity. So, in some ways, I see the panel is demonstrating that it's not about incorporating autonomous worldviews into reformed international cultural relations.

It's not, I think, Linda, you were putting it as quoting Audra Simpson, this flat historical pluralism, but the work that needs to be done is to increase reflexivity to make these different epistemologies apparent. So, when I think about scholarship on international cultural relations, there's really a pressing need for scholars to engage with histories of Indigenous diplomacies.

There's a real glaring absence in this literature and this just reflects the limitations of Western research, which is locating its authority in a canonical literature that is in turn focused on Western diplomatic practice. So, I think the point is that decolonization is not a project of inclusions, but a recognition of different epistemic positions or autonomous worldviews.

Tobias Rohe: At the end of our talk, let's come back to the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance. You are both members of this network and it is a network of institutions, academics and practitioners in the field of international cultural relations. So, it's something you were already talking about is very important to you to bring together institutions, academics and practitioners.

So, these kinds of networks like the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance, they allow to bring multiple perspectives into conversation. Now, did you in the ICRRA find common ground in your conceptual understandings of decoloniality or where there are differences and if which?

Sarah Smith: Yeah. I mean, I should start by saying, of course, we're both members of ICRRA and it offers such a wonderfully engaged and critical global community.

And for me personally, it's been an opportunity to connect with and learn from others and to advance shared interests through events like the annual conference that we hold. And as you know, this year this conference has focused on decolonizing and grappling with what that means and how it impacts international cultural relations.

So, coming together as part of the organizing committee, I think it became clear the importance of engaging globally and explaining perspectives and definitions and understandings of decolonizing. And this is not that the conference was to present kind of a final cohesive statement by ICRRA members. The conference is really designed to kind of open a door into this larger conversation that ICRRA members are having.

I really think one of the wonderful things about ICRRA is that there are so many different projects and interests that are being advanced by the ICRRA network, by the ICRRA group. And so, we find common ground in our shared interests in valuing and seeking to better understand culture and international relations.

But the way that ICRRA comes together as an alliance, it really allows for a multiplicity of perspectives and approaches. And really, as a group, I think what we're trying to do is, as Linda describes, it's this decentering of international cultural relations to reveal a broader field of diplomatic activity.

So, we're trying to bring critical understandings of culture into conversations about ICR. So, these can be, you know, so those people who are involved in ICR can be scholars, practitioners, can be self-reflexive about culture and start to critically assess their implication in international cultural relations as a colonialist practice.

Um, but the other thing that ICRRA has really coalesced around, I think one of our concrete tasks as a group is to kind of realize what our aims for ICR is, is accomplished through diversifying ICRRA's membership. And I wanted to bring this up because we've made big strides with this regard. And those people who are members of ICRRA, everyone has really affirmed this desire to broaden our membership to ensure that ICRRA is really a global alliance.

And we've also really been coalesced around this idea of broadening our membership with respect to the global south. You know, this is so vital for ICRRA because we cannot know the research challenges until we have interactive problem framing that involves participants from the global south as well as the global north.

Or, you know, put another way, the global north cannot set the agenda. So, I've been really pleased to see members of ICRRA support this and to see our membership expanding. And we've had new members to ICRRA sharing their research on the third panel of the conference just last week. So, I think I'm really excited to see where that brings us.

Tobias Rohe: Did you find any concrete research tasks that has to be tackled by the ICRRA?

Sarah Smith: I mean, I think our concrete research task is to expand our membership to be truly representative. So that when we are deciding on the work that needs to be done, where critical attention should be, that this is framed by everyone, that this isn't simply, you know, a project of the global north or the west, but this is something that is going to take into account different perspectives and positions.

Tobias Rohe: All right, Sarah Smith, Linda Jessup. Thank you very much for these insights and for your time. It's been a pleasure to have you here in this podcast.

Lynda Jessup: Thank you.

Sarah Smith: Thank you so much.

Tobias Rohe: If you like to learn more about the research of Lynda and Sarah, the NACDI or the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance, take a look at the show notes, and follow the links that are listed there.

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For all other information on the Forum for International Cultural Relations, visit our website at culturalrelations.ifa.de. That's all from my side, I say thank you for listening! My name is Tobias Rohe. Till next time…