The Concept of a Multipolar World as the Aestheticization of Politics

In 2001 R. Bleiker announced aesthetic turn in IR theory, which presupposed the focus on the intersection between two areas – politics and aesthetics. The vast majority of the works had the emphasis on the politicization of aesthetics in terms of Walter Benjamin, namely, on a process of instrumentalization of aesthetics for political purposes, while the opposite notion of the aestheticization of politics has remained vague. This article aims to compensate such a gap in epistemology and to show the importance of the aestheticization of politics for IR. The author proposes a theoretical and methodological framework that includes the concepts of political-aesthetic hybrids, political-aesthetic logic, superposition, blending and the work of purification as the retrospective separation of the aesthetic from the political. The article provides a ground to consider the concept of the multipolar world in the official discourse of Russia as political-aesthetic hybrid. It contains a sustainable logic linking the multipolar principle in international relations with a harmonious order at the level of the international system and within specific countries/ regions. Future research can focus on some other political-aesthetic hybrids such as "balance of power", "world order", "symmetrical response" to advance our understanding of the field of intersection between international relations and aesthetics. In addition, alternative views on the phenomenon of the aestheticization of politics may be fruitful, but only in the case of consistent conceptualization and, most importantly, operationalization of these models, since many previous theoretical constructions suffered from excessive metaphorical nature and vagueness.