CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Bronfman, Anton |
|---|---|
| Title | 'Mediated' Mystification: towards a typology of the diplomatic mystique |
| Summary | This thesis seeks to advance a typology of the diplomatic mystique, which elaborates upon the function of mystification in three separate diplomatic realms – the public, the professional, and the private. At the public level, mystification nurtures the representative authority of the diplomat and is part of a multifaceted tacit agreement with the public. Professionally, mystification is both an inadvertent product of technical requirements, as well as a more fundamental example of how diplomats construct a sociability driven by the normative ideal of mediating estrangement. Finally, private mystifications are employed by the estranged Self of the diplomat to manage a liminal disposition particular to the social practice of diplomacy. While utilizing the typology to advance a differentiation that can push back against the collapse of all levels of mystification into one, I equally pay attention to the co-constitution of the three levels. To do so, I employ popular representations of diplomacy, specifically the recent Netflix hit The Diplomat, as a heuristic device through which to analyze the impossibility of perfectly fragmenting the three levels. Analytically speaking, disentangling the ‘whole’ of the diplomatic mystique can clarify not only diplomacy’s operationality, yet also its normative stakes. However, disentanglement should not entail demystification, especially if the latter is understood as the removal of absurdity and contradiction from diplomatic practice. |
| Supervisor | Astrov, Alexander |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/bronfman_anton.pdf |
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