Description
As part of the critique of methodologies that employ rational causality to yield generalizable conclusions, this paper will consider what Mark Twain’s aphorism – “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” – can tell us about nonlinear methods. In this way, it seeks to appreciate genealogies that rely less on chronology than they do on rhyming, resonance, and rhythm across times and places. To explore “rhyme as method,” the paper will examine the visual global politics of how China’s ideological worldview is shaped by its view of foreigners: Tang dynasty images of barbarians (618-907CE), the Korean War images of Americans, and cosmetic surgery in Taiwan today. Rather than look for direct causal relations, the paper analyzes how these images rhyme across the centuries, and resonate among different countries. E.g. Tang and Korean war images of large-nosed foreigners rhyme in their inclusion of useful difference, and exclusion of evil difference. Visual rhymes thus help us to better understand China’s “worldview” through this study of how Chinese artists and officials “view the world.” The Rhyming Method also underlines how research needs to look beyond IR as official state-to-state relations to see how popular culture and personal experience create global politics.
