Postcolonial/Decolonial Critique and the Theory of International Relations
https://doi.org/10.24833/2071-8160-2021-3-78-23-38
Abstract
The article is devoted to the discussion of the role of postcolonial/decolonial critique and its contribution to the theory of international relations. Intersecting with multiple disciplines and area studies, the postcolonial/decolonial critique offers a broad view not only on the cultural heritage of colonialism/imperialism as such, but also on the more complex and multifaceted challenges facing international relations – the coloniality of power and geopolitics of knowledge – and conditions of their emergence. Postcolonial/decolonial approaches foster critical engagement with Eurocentric narratives in social sciences, countering teleological or linear representations of modernity. Despite its importance, postcolonial/decolonial thought penetrated the theory of international relations rather late. The two fields of intellectual quest have developed not only separately, but they have often diverged in their very epistemological constitution. Based on a review of an extensive literature, the author explores the links between the production of postcolonial knowledge and the theory of international relations. Thus, the author illuminates the problems of modern political science and international studies, on the one hand, and on the other hand, emphasizes the need to make the theory of IR accessible to a variety of new global perspectives. The formation of integrative approaches in the study of world politics should provide a new consolidation of both political science and international studies and a productive interaction of these areas of knowledge.
About the Author
Aziz Elmuradov
Bielefeld University, Research Training Group “World politics: The Emergence of Political Arenas and Modes of Observation in World Society”
Germany
Germany
Aziz Elmuradov – PhD, Research Associate, Faculty of Sociology
Universitätsstraße 25, Bielefeld, Germany
References
1. Acharya A. 2011. Dialogue and Discovery: In Search of International Relations Theo- ries beyond the West. Millennium ‒ Journal of International Studies. 39(3). P. 619-637. DOI: 10.1177/0305829811406574
2. Acharya A., Buzan B. 2010. Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and beyond Asia. London: Routledge. 256 p.
3. Bhabha H.K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. 440 p.
4. Brown C. 1994. “Turtles all the Way down”: Anti-Foundationalism, Critical Theory and International Relations. Millennium ‒ Journal of International Studies. 23(2). P. 213-236. DOI: 10.1177/03058298940230020901
5. Chakrabarty D. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Differ- ence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 336 p.
6. Chan S., Moore C. (eds.). 2009. Approaches to International Relations: Vol. 4. Non-Western Approaches to International Relations. London: SAGE.
7. Chandra U. 2013. The Case for a Postcolonial Approach to the Study of Politics. New Politi- cal Science. P. 479-491.
8. Chaturvedi V. (ed.). 2012. Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial. London: Verso. 384 p.
9. Chibber V. 2013. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. London: Verso. 256 p.
10. Dabashi H. 2012. The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism. London: Zed. 296 p.
11. Dirlik A. 1994. The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capital- ism. Critical Inquiry. 20(2). P. 328-356.
12. Dussel E. 1993. Organization Studies and Epistemic Coloniality in Latin America: Think- ing Otherness from the Margins. Organization. 13 (4). P. 463-488.
13. Elmuradov A. 2021. Uzbekistan between Modernity and Tradition: Subject and Symbolic Order, in C. Pierobon, N. Becker and S. Schlegel (eds.), Central Asia after Three Decades of In- dependence. Politics and Societies between Stability and Transformation. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
14. Fanon F. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: Grove. 251 p.
15. Fanon F. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove. 186 p.
16. Fituni L.L., Abramova I.O. 2020. Politicheskaya teoriya dekolonizatsii: imperativy sovre- mennogo prochteniya (The Political Theory of Decolonization: The Imperatives of a Modern Reading). Polis. Politicheskiye issledovaniya. 6. P. 26-40. (in Russian)
17. Fukuyama F. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
18. Go J., Lawson G. (eds). 2017. Global Historical Sociology. Cambridge University Press. 310 p. Go J. 2016. Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 264 p.
19. Grosfoguel R. 2002. Colonial Difference, Geopolitics of Knowledge, and Global Colonial- ity in the Modern/Colonial Capitalist World-System. Review Fernand Braudel Center. 25(3). P. 203-224.
20. Hall M., Hobson J.M. 2010. Liberal International Theory: Eurocentric but not Always Im- perialist? International Theory. 2(2). P. 210-245. DOI: 10.1017/S1752971909990261
21. Hobson J.M. 2004. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. Cambridge, U.K.: Cam- bridge University Press. 394 p.
22. Hobson J.M. 2007. Is Critical Theory Always for the White West and for Western Impe- rialism? Beyond Westphilian towards a Post-Racist Critical IR. Review of International Studies. 33(S1). P. 91-116.
23. Hobson J.M. 2012. The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760-2010. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. 392 p.
24. Huggan G. (ed.). 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies. Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press. 752 p. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199588251.001.0001
25. Inayatullah N., Blaney D.L. 2004. International Relations and the Problem of Difference. New York: Routledge. 288 p.
26. Jabri V. 2014. Disarming Norms: Postcolonial Agency and the Constitution of the Interna- tional. International Theory. 6(2). P. 372-390. DOI: 10.1017/S1752971914000177
27. Kaviraj S. 2001. In Search of Civil Society. In Kaviraj, S. Khilnani, S. (eds): Civil Society: History and Possibilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28. Ling L.H.M. 2002. Postcolonial International Relations: Conquest and Desire between Asia and the West. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave. 255 p.
29. Ling L.H.M. 2014. Decolonizing the International: Towards Multiple Emotional Worlds. International Theory. 6(3). P. 579-583. DOI: 10.1017/S175297191400030X
30. Matin K. 2013. Redeeming the Universal: Postcolonialism and the Inner Life of Eurocentrism. European Journal of International Relations. 19(2). P. 353-377. DOI: 10.1177/1354066111425263
31. McClintock A. 1992. The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term “Post-Colonialism.” Social Text. 31/32. P. 84-98. DOI: 10.2307/466219
32. Mignolo W. 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 416 p.
33. Mignolo W. 2003. Globalization and the Geopolitics of Knowledge: The Role of the Hu- manities in the Corporate University. Nepantla: Views from South. Duke University Press. 4. P. 97-119.
34. Mignolo W.D. 1993. Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse: Cultural Critique or Academic Colonialism? Latin American Research Review. 28(3). P. 120-134.
35. Mignolo W.D. 2002. The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference. South Atlantic Quarterly. 101(1). P. 57-96.
36. Mignolo W.D. 2007. Delinking ‒ the Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloni- ality and the Grammar of De-Coloniality. Cultural Studies. 21(2-3). P. 449-514. DOI: 10.1080/09502380601162647
37. Morozov V. 2015. Russia’s Postcolonial Identity: a Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 217 p.
38. Nkrumah K. 1965. Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. New York: International Publishers. 280 p.
39. Quijano A. 2000. Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology. 15(2). P. 215-232. DOI: 10.1177/0268580900015002005
40. Quijano A. 2007. Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. Cultural Studies. 21(2-3). P. 168- 178. DOI: 10.1080/09502380601164353
41. Sabaratnam M. 2013. Avatars of Eurocentrism in the criTique of the Liberal Peace. Security Dialogue. 44(3). P. 259-278
42. Said E.W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon. 368 p.
43. Said E.W. 2003. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin. 432 p.
44. Sen S. 2002. Uncertain Dominance: The Colonial State and Its Contradictions (with notes on the history of early British India). Nepantla: Views from the South. 3(2). P. 391-406.
45. Seth S. 2013. Postcolonial Theory and International Relations: A Critical Introduction. Lon- don: Routledge. 216 p.
46. Shani G. 2007. “Provincializing” Critical Theory: Islam, Sikhism and International Rela- tions Theory. Cambridge Review of International Affairs. 20(3). P. 417-433.
47. Shani G. 2008. Toward a Post-Western IR: The Umma, Khalsa Panth, and Critical Interna- tional Relations Theory. International Studies Review. 10(4). P. 722-734.
48. Shilliam R. (ed.). 2011. International Relations and non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Co- lonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity. London: Routledge. 288 p.
49. Smith L.T. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London; Dunedin, New York: Zed Books; University of Otago Press. 220 p.
50. Spivak G.C. 1988. Can the Subaltern Speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. P. 271-313.
51. Spivak G.C. 2003. Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia University Press. 136 p. Tickner A.B. 2003. Hearing Latin American Voices in International Relations Studies. In-
52. ternational Studies Perspectives. 4(4). P. 325-350.
53. Tickner A.B. 2013. Core, Periphery and (Neo)Imperialist International Relations. Euro-
54. pean Journal of International Relations. 19(3). P. 627-646. DOI: 10.1177/1354066113494323 Tickner A.B., Wæver O. (eds.). 2009. International Relations Scholarship around the World.
55. New York: Routledge. 368 p.
56. Tlostanova M. 2019. The Postcolonial Condition, the Decolonial Option and the Post- Socialist Intervention. In Albrecht M. (ed.), Postcolonialism Cross-Examined: Multidirectional Perspectives on Imperial and Colonial Pasts and the Newcolonial Present. Routledge. P. 165-178.
57. Wallerstein I. 1979. The Capitalist World-Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press. 305 p.
58. Wallerstein I. 2004. World-Systems ANALYSIS: An Introduction. Durham, NC: Duke Uni- versity Press. 128 p.
59. Waltz K. 1979. Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw Hill. 250 p.
60. Young R.J.C. 2001. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
61. p.
62. Zarakol A. 2011. After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. 297 p. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511921421
Review
For citations:
Elmuradov A. Postcolonial/Decolonial Critique and the Theory of International Relations. MGIMO Review of International Relations. 2021;14(3):23-38. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.24833/2071-8160-2021-3-78-23-38
Views:
4047
Email this article 