We traditionally see diplomats as mediators. They build bridges between
nations and they repair them when they break. During a crisis, diplomats
‘keep it cool’ and try to prevent the crisis from worsening into armed conflict.
Diplomats are the men and women who keep the international system running
despite its fundamentally conflictual nature. At least, this is how diplomats
have portrayed their profession for hundreds of years. However, the focus of this contribution is how diplomacy in general is seen
as mediating among states, peoples and ideas — and why this is an incomplete
view. From James Der Derian’s understanding of diplomacy as ‘the mediation
of estrangement’, over English School-inspired pluralists such as Paul Sharp,
to Costas Constantinou’s post-structuralist call for humanism, diplomacy is
seen as the practice of dealing with differencThis short contribution is therefore concerned with the way in which scholarly understandings of diplomacy as the mediation of estrangement raise — but also evade — questions of power and responsibility