Geniuses, exiles and (liberal) postmodern subjectivities

This article argues that Ashley and Walker's ‘dissident exile’ and Mill's ‘genius’ are virtual mirror images of one another due to the fact that both subject formulations rely on the concept of individual autonomy. Postmodern iterations of subjectivity such as those found in the work of Ashley and Walker place a great deal of emphasis on alterity and ethical engagement, striving to move beyond the ethical limitations of Enlightenment liberalism that valorises the atomised, sovereign individual. But both Mill's genius, who can choose his or her own mode of existence or plan of life, and Ashley and Walker's dissident exile, who engages in self-making in a register of freedom, are inextricably bound up with and reliant upon one of liberalism's seminal concepts: autonomy. The implications of this in terms of theorising new forms of subjectivity in international relations are significant because replacing autonomy with heteronomy or recasting autonomy in relational terms fails to fully acknowledge how central autonomy is to the entire project of critique. The critical attitude that Ashley and Walker, as well as Mill, exhibit emanates from within Enlightenment liberalism; since the very act of critique rests on the exercise of individual autonomy, perhaps the most we can hope for in terms of new iterations of subjectivity may only be one that is more expansively ‘liberal’.