Violence, the Subject, and the Beyond: Achille Mbembe and Violence in International Relations Theory

A double‐barrelled question underpins this special edition: can International Relations (IR) be decolonised? If so, how? I argue that IR's insistence on more‐or‐less concretised subjects, which engage in dialectical relations of struggle, renders the discipline (and the practice it engenders) c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Australian journal of politics and history Vol. 69; no. 3; pp. 481 - 502
Main Author Ó Guaire, Keagan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Brisbane Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2023
Subjects
Colonialism
Decolonization
International relations
Slavery
Violence
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Summary:A double‐barrelled question underpins this special edition: can International Relations (IR) be decolonised? If so, how? I argue that IR's insistence on more‐or‐less concretised subjects, which engage in dialectical relations of struggle, renders the discipline (and the practice it engenders) constitutionally blind to the origins of colonial violence. Traditional theory necessarily elides the violence which forges legible concrete actors and which culminates in colonialism and slavery. I offer a critique of this theoretical structure through Achille Mbembe's reading of Bataille, Fanon, Hegel, and Kojève, and I close by touching on the decolonising potential of Édouard Glissant's work for academic IR. I conclude that IR can indeed be decolonised, but it must become something quite unrecognisable if it is to do so.
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ISSN:0004-9522
1467-8497
DOI:10.1111/ajph.12946