Postcolonial international relations
Postcolonial international relations is a branch of scholarship that approaches the study of international relations using the critical lens of postcolonialism. This critique of IR theory suggests that mainstream IR scholarship does not adequately address the impacts of colonialism and imperialism on current day world politics. Despite using the language of post-, scholars of postcolonial IR argue that the legacies of colonialism are ongoing, and that critiquing international relations with this lens allows scholars to contextualize global events. By bridging postcolonialism and international relations, scholars point to the process of globalization as a crucial point in both fields, due to the increases in global interactions and integration. Postcolonial IR focuses on the re-narrativization of global politics to create a balanced transnational understanding of colonial histories, and attempts to tie non-Western sources of thought into political praxis.
Postcolonial IR developed through the study of postcolonialism as a rejection of colonialism, and parallels postmodernism or poststructuralism in the skepticism towards and departure from the dominant ideologies of modernism and structuralism, respectively. Postcolonial IR is critically introspective into the study of International Relations, often in attempts to disturb dominant models of theorization to relocate IR temporally and spatially. Some scholars of postcolonial IR critique postcolonialism as well for taking too much of a cultural and civilizational approach, rather than connecting colonialism to political and economic structures of the modern world. Many scholars have attempted to bridge the studies of postcolonialism and international relations, and have often taken interdisciplinary approaches that consider various social aspects such as race, gender, and class. Additionally, scholars of postcolonial IR have also critically analyzed systems such as capitalism, patriarchy, and militarism as modes in which colonization has impacted political issues such as governance and sovereignty. Some prominent scholars that have informed the approach of postcolonialism include Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, amongst many others.
Postcolonial IR's critique of mainstream IR studies of capitalism claims that the legacies of the exploitation of labour through colonization and imperialism are not acknowledged enough as current global economy. Aimé Césaire's essay Discourse on Colonialism rejects the claim that capitalism is simply the pursuit of wealth and power, and emphasizes the European colonial empire's desire to "civilize" pre-colonial societies. This concept is also highlighted by Rudyard Kipling in their conceptualization of "The White Man's Burden" to bring Western ideologies in order to enlighten morally "primitive" colonized peoples. Postcolonial IR traces the global economy to exploitation in the forms of transatlantic slavery, such as through the British East India Company, Royal African Company, and the Dutch East India Company, as well as conquest and genocide of indigenous peoples, in order to create conditions suitable for European colonial expansion. As such, the labeling of the "Third World" in the economic and political sense during the Cold War can be viewed from a postcolonial IR perspective to embody racialized and colonial meanings instead. For instance, some scholars of Postcolonial IR argue that the institution of development aid has reinforced these inferiority narratives by creating systems in which Western countries, through agencies such as the IMF, benevolently bring modernization to Third World countries.
History
The study of postcolonial international relations has emerged only recently as a subfield in the discipline of international relations, but there have been previous postcolonial approaches to international relations that were not systematically recognized as such, or were excluded from dominant narratives.For instance, a group of scholars at Howard University including Ralph Bunche, Alain Locke, and Merze Tate among others, considered race, empire, and decolonization in the context of global colonial dynamics. These scholars, active in the first half of the 20th century, challenged dominant theoretical assumptions about global racial hierarchies that informed the early mainstream developments of International Relations. They were focused on systemic factors that disadvantaged Black people globally, such as the Jim Crow laws in the United States and global colonial exploitation by Europeans. This school of thought developed parallel to and in response to early mainstream international relations in North America that evolved based on perceived threats to the white supremacist system through the increased spatial concentration of Black people, culture, and intellectualism. The work of these scholars can be considered postcolonial because they stressed global solidarity of liberation movements, questioned racial hierarchies that placed Black people at the bottom, and explored the relationship of race and empire in shaping global power dynamics. Influential in postcolonial IR theory, scholars like W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke have considered the impact of national imperialism on modern war and international affairs. They have also formulated cultural theses about diasporas, cultural self-determination, and cosmopolitanism.
It can be argued that the discipline of international relations has become less open over the years, becoming less receptive to cultural perspectives other than the dominant Western narrative. In 1968, postcolonial African scholar Ali Mazrui published an article on issues of the Global North and South relations in World Politics, one of the leading journals of international relations. In the 1960s and 1970s, the discipline was more engaged with the so-called "Third World", a stance that reflected a general political interest of the West in the decolonization movements of the former European colonies. Through scholars like Mazrui, whose origins and perspective situated them outside the western mainstream of the discipline, for a few years, scholars within mainstream international relations were influenced to ask questions about the "Third World" in a more postcolonial context. One example of this is Australian scholar Hedley Bull, who is said to have been influenced by Mazrui through a close professional adversarial relationship. Shortly after, however, international relations scholars turned away from this development. In the 1970s and 1980s, international relations became more westernized, dubbed the "American Social Science", and excluded postcolonial scholars like Mazrui that would challenge some of the foundational theories of international relations. This time period also gave rise to positivism in international relations, which centers empiricist observation and a more scientific approach, as many academic contributions to the discussion are overlooked when they are not explicitly labeled IR by their authors or other academics later on. Political scientist Mae C. King is among the Black female scholars who wrote on race and foreign and military policy in the 1980s and 1990s but have gotten little recognition within postcolonial IR. Notably, since the 1990s, there have been a number of scholars publishing on the relationship between International Relations and race, including Neta Crawford and Shirin M. Rai.
Approach
Postcolonial IR is an evolving academic approach that has diverse methodologies, usually addressing the hierarchies and structures of power between colonial states and colonized regions, sometimes described as the North–South divide. Postcolonial studies are traditionally situated in the humanities, which has had two main consequences in the context of their connection to international relations. Firstly, they have been marginalized in the disciplines of political science and international relations due to their unscientific character. This has made the utilization of a postcolonial lens on International Relations more difficult, since there is barely any practical academic overlap between the two disciplines at universities. Secondly, postcolonial thought is frequently understood to not be political enough. This is a critique often echoed in relation to postmodernist thought, for example Edward Said's critique of Foucault for the lack of space for materialist thinking and active resistance in his works.Postcolonial approaches in political science are also present in other subfields such as postpositivism and critical political theory that overlap with postcolonial IR. This proliferation of specialized subfields, combined with its own uncertainty about its identity and positionality, complicates engagement with postcolonial IR.
Confronting Eurocentrism
Much of initial postcolonial IR critiqued mainstream international relations as overlooking European imperialism as to create a Eurocentric narrative of global politics, with postcolonial scholars aiming to expand knowledge production to the contributions of non-Western perspectives. Eurocentrism is often also accompanied by the term "Orientalism", coined by Edward Said in their 1978 book, which describes the ways in which the "East" has been depicted by Western society as being underdeveloped and inferior. Postcolonial IR compares global colonial power dynamics to critique the subjectivity of the cultural and ideological "Other" of international relations, which is embodied by the portrayal of colonized countries and their people as subordinate to European nations. Spivak uses the concept of the subaltern to describe those that are excluded from cultural hegemonic discourse, and have very little or no agency to speak on their oppression. Said argues that taking a political stance of those experiencing ongoing victimization from colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal world order is essential to disrupt European hegemonic power.Postcolonialism in international relations provides the opportunity to give agency to the Third World, pluralizing the subaltern voices heard in the discipline. In mainstream IR, efforts to naturalize historical discourses and accounts of knowledge further emboldens the discipline's Eurocentric roots and in turn, accounts of history. It is through Europe's 18th century international scientific exploration and planetary consciousness that modern Eurocentrism has found itself at the core of mainstream knowledge production. If the concept of a modern state has been exported from Europe to the rest of the planet, one has to look to Europe and its history to understand modern state politics. Therefore, IR's Eurocentrism has been justified, locking in its political interests and obstructing the space for an understanding of past international political systems and the possibility of non-Eurocentric knowledge structures.
Although a postcolonial lens of international relations is becoming increasingly established, it is still marginalized in the wider field of international relations, and there is no consensus among scholars on how to combine postcolonial studies with international relations. Some scholars advocate for the establishment of a postcolonial international relations study that employs reflectivist and interdisciplinary thinking and considers how non-Western thought might transform international relations theory. Some others argue for an alternative outside of the field of international relations because an integration of the two disciplines might limit postcolonial studies and reduce its challenging position in relation to the larger discipline. A middle-ground approach to the question suggests to keep an intellectual distance without completely disengaging from critique of international relations. Proponents of this approach argue that a marginal disciplinary position for postcolonial thought provides advantages to pointing out academic and cultural erasure in knowledge production and the field of international relations. They further insist that there is a need for a continued postcolonial critique of international relations, since the field plays a significant role in the understanding and management of international affairs on the political stage. A revisionist approach to international relations has historically been met with resistance because it would mean a confrontation with the Eurocentric understanding of the discipline.
Through IR's discourse on the proliferation of an international society, the discipline does not depart from its logocentric tendencies. Logocentrism "assumes the priority of the first term and conceives the second in relation to it, as a complication, a negation, a manifestation, a disruption of the first."