Poststructuralism has been characterized by the works of Foucault and Derrida. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida have made significant contributions to the foundation of this idea. 

Poststructuralism has problems with restrictive assumptions like the nature of international system which is anarchic and, restricts the actions of sovereign nation states.

For example foreign policy and nationalionalism (Campbell 1992, 1998; Shapiro), diplomacy (Der Derrian 1992), security (Dillion 1996; Stern 2005), postcolonial politics (Doty 1996), conflict resolution (Bleiker 2005), identity (Collony 1999), war and militarization (Dalby 1990; Shapiro 1997; Zehfuss 2002), humanitarian intervention (Orford 2003) and political economy (De Goede 2005) etc. (Edkins,2007: 88) can be counted among these studies.

Poststructuralist thought begins its assumption by questioning the traditional assertions that there is an outer place from which the world can be observed objectively and theories can be neutral. But this is not possible according to the poststructural approach.

According to Edkins, scholars of IR are necessarily participants in the world politics, not independent observers. So neither theorists nor theories which consist of ideas can not be politically neutral contrarily they do have a political and social impact. 

All of these approaches share similar ideas about the central role of languge to the construction of social life, the historicity of knowledge (it means knowledge is related with power and is historically produced within socio-cultural structures) and rejection of the idea of universal (timeless and spaceless) knowledge.

In the traditional approach, state is considered as natural and necessary. Though poststructuralists oppose to this idea strictly and focus on the creation of state. For it does not exist a priori, according to poststructuralist thinking. As expressed by Cynthia Weber, the sovereign state should not be understood as it was a priori presence; as opposed to traditional belief, the state is an ‘ontological effect of practices which are performatively enacted’.

Poststructuralist critics focus on the construction of modern state in an historical context. According to poststructuralists’ discursive practices, sovereignty plays a major role in making the state the most important and rational actor. This is why sovereignty is considered as the least and most significant common ground for discursive construction of the modern state.

Sovereignty is not an innocent concept as it seems. Because sovereignty not only gives state full authorization over its own territory for assuring its internal integrity, it also legitimizes using violence against “outside” in the name of defending its territory

The most important feature that differentiates poststructuralist approaches from other social theories, including constructivism, is that language/ discourse is the basis of its ontology (Hansen, 2006). While constructivists are interested in what a state’s identity is and how it affects foreign policy, poststructuralists are interested in how any difference is marginalized by discourse as contrast, danger, or threat.

According to this understanding summarized as “language describes the World”, sentences reflect one’s external World. According to Wittgenstein, it is necessary to be able to utter something in order to be verified as empirical and respond to something in the World.

During the 1970’s, Foucault studied on three important and related issues:

1. the transition from subject to subjectivity,
2. the relationship between knowledge and power,
3. the constructive aspect of discourse

According to Foucault, there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations. So, he worked on two new methodologies called archaeology and genealogy to analyze power relations, politics.

Archeaology as a method of analysis that aims to unearth intellectual structures and historical a priori underlying different methods, concepts and theories of an idea and thought that dominates a particular period.

And genealogy deals with the imposition of present on the past. This metodology focuses on the complex relationship between discourse and power, and tries to show that history is shaped within the framework of these relations and does not have continuity.

Derrida, with his work, claimed that no text reflects the reality, that every structure and text (discourse and writing) contain a certain power relationship through dual oppositions and when these are deconstructed, the power relations and the marginalized/excluded ones can be revealed. Derrida designed deconstruction as a method of analysis based on the assumption that nothing in the text is random. Each text contains power relations. Thus, deconstruction focuses on power relations, contradictions, inconsistencies in a given text. Unlike structuralists, Derrida emphasized that the meaning can not be fixed and controlled. He withdraws the concession that is given to first term of binary opposition such as good/evil, sovereignty/anarchy. By which a hierarchy is reversed, Derrida gives an opportunity to re-read the text over the second term.

Unlike structuralists, Derrida emphasized that the meaning can not be fixed and controlled. He withdraws the concession that is given to first term of binary opposition such as good/evil, sovereignty/anarchy. By which a hierarchy is reversed, Derrida gives an opportunity to re-read the text over the second term.

1. Genealogy aims to deconstruct the modern thought that idealizes universal and objective

   perspective.

2. Genealogy tries to show that history is shaped

   by relations of power and knowledge.

3. Genealogy claims that there is no continuity in

   history.

4. Foucault developed the method of genealogy inspired by Nietzsche.

1. Power and knowledge contain each other directly.

2. Power is a structure that can be in play in family relations, or within an institution, or an administration

3. The power can perpetuate itself through the individual whose knowledge was constructed by itself.

4. Power produces knowledge; knowledge makes power possible.

The approach of poststructuralism to language is that the world is constructed by language.