Practicing existentialism in international political theory: Hermeneutics of the written self

In the last decade, International Relations theory has experienced an ‘existential turn’: a rediscovery of existentialist philosophy to better understand our age of global anxiety. Yet this turn remains largely textual rather than embodied, analysing existential concepts from a textual distance rather than embracing the lived, subjective perspective of one immersed in the world. To amend this, the article employs, not the text, but the spirit, of Martin Heidegger’s existential hermeneutics: combining International Political Thought (IPT) with autoethnography to analyse the author’s own experiences of friendship during the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, it offers a path to practice existentialism rather than merely read it. Beyond advancing the existential turn, the article introduces a vital methodological innovation to IPT, which historically relies on detached textual analysis. By demonstrating the insights gleaned from personal experience, this study elevates lived autoethnography from a fringe anomaly to a central mode of interpretation for IPT.