On misperceptions and misunderstandings: rhetoric, global disorder, and the Global South

This article asks a fundamental question: why are policymakers, despite having substantial interest at stake in mitigating global disorder and resolving crisis of liberal internationalism, seemingly unable to address it? What structural factors account for the novel acceleration of global disorder and crisis in our world? In contrast to explanations focused on faltering American hegemony, this article answers that the problem lies in the circulation of rhetoric between the Global North and South. The article theorizes the problem through examining three rhetorical modalities available to policymakers, oriented respectively to the past (forensic), the present (epideictic), and the future (deliberative). In the face of crises, many Global North policymakers engage in different rhetorical performances for building order and averting disorder, each carrying distinctive procedural and substantive logics. However, the configuration and circulation of these different types of rhetoric generate misperceptions and misunderstandings among many Global South states, particularly on their substantive expectations of change. Global South policymakers frequently read top-dog rhetoric on the crisis as an opportunity for greater insertion into the system and for substantively changing international ordering practices. When this fails to materialize, the result is a general discontentment that becomes a structural problem. Using illustrations of American foreign policy rhetoric on order and disorder, its receptions and the rhetoric of Indian policymakers, the article also shows the usefulness of the theoretical point for diagnosing persistent tensions in India-US relations. Such theorizing opens avenues for further investigating how the circulation of rhetoric works in the deep-rooted material inequalities and in the expectations of change in the hierarchical international system.