I had a similar thought when I was reading Fish's piece. Of course, while the book he was reviewing was on "French theory," I wonder the extent to which the linguistic turn is really "French-inspired" vice Wittgensteinian, or for that matter Rortyan. I do agree that there's an incommensurability issue that you hit when you start talking about dueling epistemologies - it's the problem Wendt faces in that he chooses positivism, which lets him interact with Waltz and Keohane (and thus be relevant in the hegemonic IR discourse) but in doing so rejects most of the other work in constructivism.
Very interesting. But I'm not sure that constructivists and realists are such worlds apart, as Ward Thomas' analysis of international norms governing the use of force suggests.
(Nor are feminists, and realists, I think, but that's neither here nor there.) Although I continue to teach IR theory as if they are "world apart" for the sake of indoctrinating my students, invariably the brightest students write fantastic papers identifying how it's a combination of constructivism and realism that helps explain the 2002 US National Security Strategy, for example.
You last words on the "rugged" terrain suggested by the commenters to Fish's post prompt me to point you to this piece by C Bush over at Printculture:
http://www.printculture.com/item.../item-
1886.html
Cheers.
Commenting by HaloScan.com
