Narrating Enemies in World Politics

• In Event: Narratives, Ideas, and Ideologies in International History

Abstract

Why and how do national narratives about former enemies change? Post-conflict nations often construct their narratives around “foundational” enemies from which peoples came to exert a sense of autonomy. Yet, given the complex nature of founding traumas, who becomes the dominant “enemy” and how narratives about them evolve are far from predetermined. Because these narratives are purposefully curated to legitimize the exercise of political sovereignty and rule, changing them entails risks of instability. Meanwhile, ongoing shifts in the international and domestic environments can generate significant but conflicting incentives for narrative change. This dilemma is exemplified by the cases of postcolonial, postwar, and post-authoritarian Taiwan and South Korea. Despite shared traumas of Japanese colonialism and wars against their communist rivals, Taiwan and South Korea have developed divergent national narratives about their former enemies. What explains their narrative trajectories? In this paper, I argue that national narratives change over time as state actors adopt particular narrative strategies to meet the demands of their narrative challengers. Which strategy they adopt, in turn, depends on (1) the source of pressure for narrative change (external cues versus internal search) and (2) the goals of the state vis-à-vis counter-narratives (incorporation versus inhibition). To demonstrate empirically, I conduct a historical comparison of Taiwanese and South Korean national narratives, combining a quantitative, hand-coded content analysis of 516 commemorative speeches from 1948 to 2020 with a qualitative analysis of archival and elite interview data. My interdisciplinary theoretical framework and mixed-method research design provide a novel approach to understanding how nations in post-conflict settings narrate their enemies—and thus, themselves.

Author

• Eun A Jo, Cornell University