Week Three: Post-Colonial and De-Colonial Theories of IR

What is the central focus of post-colonial and decolonial IR?

Centre on the concept of race and ideas related to coloniality and Eurocentralism

Though IR is the interconnection and interactions of states, we as individuals are intertwined in IR through consumerism, etc. Consider Australia’s Sovereignty:

-          Consider: Australia is a sovereign state. However, the internal sovereignty is debated because Aboriginal sovereignty was never ceded.

o   Coexistence of Aboriginies and crown sovereignty was affirmed in the 1992 Mabo decision (overturn Terra Nullius, ‘land belonging to nobody’.)

“It is in the 16th century controversy over colonisation in the earliest days of European expansion into the New World that international law itself had its beginnings. International law originated in the debate over what norms and principles should apply to the relationship between indigenous peoples and colonisers. It was only later that international law evolved into a system based on state sovereignty, exclusive jurisdiction, territorial integrity and non- intervention in domestic affairs. The state-centred system of international law came to deny that individuals, indigenous societies, and even those nations deemed not to be sufficiently 'civilised’, could be subjects of international law or have rights under such law”. -Marks

Ultimately, the declaration of Terra Nullius occuring is simply proof of the interlinking of international law with

Colonialism.

-          Essentially Terra Nullius was able to be enacted because it was a product of its time. It was interested and informed by racial power.

In this lens, race is not simply a category. Rather, it shows how racism is not simply interpersonal, but it’s

structural, diffused and can be implicit rather than explicit.

“Racism and racial oppression are manifest in ideas and discourse, for example about racial hierarchy; and in racist behaviour, such as verbal insults and practices of discrimination, humiliation or violence. While of the highest significance, these do not exhaust the reality of racial oppression. Racial oppression constitutes a form of unequal social power in society, and is reproduced not only through intentional acts but also, more routinely, as a result of structural forces arising from the configuration of social relations” (Jones 2008, 916)”.

What is Racism?

“Racism is the belief, practice, and policy of domination based on the specious concept of race... It is not simply bigotry or prejudice, but beliefs, practices, and policies reflective of and supported by institutional power, primarily state power”
(Henderson 2015, 20).

How does racism affect states? Consider the intertwining of IR and racist law => intertwining with racism

-          It affects distribution of resources, privilege, marginalisation, etc.

What is the global conlour line?

• Not simply an account of majority and minority;

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea” (W.E. B. Du Bois quoted in Anievas, Manchanda and Shilliam 2014, 2)

“Taking the problem of racism seriously in the field of IR means viewing it not merely as an issue of stereotypes or cultural insensitivities, but as a colonial technology of life and
premature death built on ideologies of whiteness and white supremacy” (Rutazibwa 2020)

Postcolonial theory and approaches in our understanding IR?

Core theoretical proposition: processes and legacy continue to shape and inform our understanding of IR. Politics and etc today continue to drive this racialized hierarchy, and these derive from the colonial project.

Through the post-colonial lens, why is ‘post’ important?

“The ‘post’ in postcolonial functioned, therefore, not as an escape from history
but as a marker of limits: to think beyond colonialism was to unavoidably grapple with the intellectual and practical legacies of empire.” (Rutazibwa and Shilliam 2018, 5)”

How to effectively use theory of postcolinialism in IR?

1) Pay attention to hierarchy; (the way race structures certain states to be subordinate) (global north and south but also within the smaller regions)

2) Examine overt and covert Eurocentrism;

3) Analyse whether and how the South is afforded recognition and autonomy; and

4) Understand that “rather than the North being rendered geographically and temporally distinct to the South (i.e. ‘things are simply different over there’ and ‘they are behind us’), global politics is more adequately apprehended in terms of an interconnected space constituted by actors who exist contemporaneous to each other” (Rutazibwa and Shilliam 2018, 4)

What is the decolonial theory and approach?

-          Moves to undo the effects of colonisation, the racialized power

-          Rooted in social movements outside of academia, often originating from people doing grassroots work or social movements.

Key difference between decolonial approaches in IR and post-colonial approaches?

Remember: post colonial -> understand world politics. De colonial -> grassroots

What is the decolonial approach in IR?

1) Acknowledge that the discipline situates “the West in a ‘flexible positional superiority’ of being the knower, of being human, of being civilised” (Capan 2017, 3);
2) Are attentive to how the “system of [IR] knowledge is maintained through the continued designation of ‘difference’ ..., whether it is civilised/barbarian, modern/traditional, advanced/backward” (Capan 2017, 3);
3) Problematize and challenge “the spatial and temporal geo-political divisions of knowledge production” (Capan 2017, 9); and
4) Are ultimately “concerned with ‘having a more critical understanding of the underlying assumptions, motivations and values which inform research practices”’ (Smith quoted in Capan 2017, 9). Radical consciousness of the self.

How does race and racism function in International Relations?

1.      Consider concept of state sovereignty

2.      Who we listen to and why

3.      Racism is embedded in the institutional system and it’s a series of actions, not interpersonal but rather institutional

a.      The racial contract

4.      The roots of Westphalia

5.      Ideas of sovereignty and who gets to be a state ‘linear distance with Europe’s goals’ – Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh

a.      Reinforces eurocentrism

Links to feminism and patriarchal ‘protection’ and ideas of femininity

In Jabri’s view, the process of decolonisation suggests the international was never neutral to begin with. This is because:

The moment of decolonisation → the international did not transform into a decolonised international, but continued to be structures in and through European colonisation

Jabri on the interventionalist state:

It seeks to construct a hegemonic structure to legalise a political economy of development → eg nationalisation of Suez Canal and international response to it - military action from the West.

According to Getachen, what was decolonisation?

Decolonisation was a project of reordering the world that sought to create a domination free and international egalitarian order.

It is not a moment of nation building and recasts anticolonialism as worldmaking.

• IF worldmaking continued, it would’ve provoked an entirely different outlook to what exactly sovereignty is

What are the links of the Black Panther Party to 3rd worldist liberation movements?

10 point programs → centrality of anti-capitalism and community justice to BPP

Some key events formative to decolonial internationalism?

• Afro-Asian conference meeting represented 51%; arena for discussion against neocolonialism, capitalism etc

An interesting take from Getachen on sovereignty’s ties to colonialism?

• At the time of the Afro-asian conference, not all states were recognised, largely due to the fact that they were on a “linear continuum based on approximation to the ideals of European state”

  • → basically, because they need other states recognition to be sovereign, if they didn’t bend to the will of the other states, theyh would not recieve it

Decolonisation is understood as the process whereby

previously colonial states gained their independence

Within IR what exactly does the post-colonial lens do?

• It refocuses attention on the constitutive role played by colonialism in the creation of the modern world and sees IR as hierarchical rather than anarchical.

  • It views IR as complicit in reproducing colonial power relations and seeks normatively to resist practices of colonialism in its material and ideational forms, whether political, economic or cultural

Scholars like Nandy argue that decolonisation did not necessarily bring freedom, because colonialism is a

‘state of mind’ that is characterised by the persistence of a common bond between the coloniser and colonised.

In a sense, all IR is ‘postcolonial’ because it

developed in the context of decolonsation, where overseas colonies became independent.

→ thus it refers to ‘after the onset of colonialism’

How do postcolonial theorists deviate from anticolonial nationalists?

They question the ‘methodological nationalism; of IR - division of the world into nation states → considered as a European concept.

To Frantz Fanon, what did colonialism do to non-Europeans?

It dehumanised and radicalised them, as the nferior race → they hence put on ‘white masks’ and became alienated from themselves and only through revolution could they be themselves again (Marxist roots)

What was the major thing Edward Said did in his postcolonial study of IR?

Traced the roots of Israel’s establishment to the British, and saw how the dispossesion of the Palestinians was linked to Orientalist stereotypes

• Also consider that the humanities and literature are complicit in legitimisation of colonisation → hegemonic ideas of the West, ‘white man’s burden’ and the gendered dimension of the Orient as irrational, mystical and feminine, while the Occident was rational modern and masculine.

What are Orientalists stereotypes:

Arabs are irrational and fanatical, and helped construct the ‘Orient’ as a sphere distinct from the West in popular imagination.

For Said, what is orientalism?

A discourse, a set of statements that constructed rather than represented reality - and sewed to naturalise the claims of the Orient

How do postcolonial approaches differ from other ‘critical approaches in IR?

Viewing the assumptions of the discipline as Eurocentric - based on generalised European experience

Postcolonialism criticises the Eurocentrism of IR by seeking to ‘provincialise Europe’ in 3 main ways:

1. Questioning the myth of IR’s historical origins of Westphalia

2. Interrogates the theoretical claims and assumptions, believing all of them to be built upon Western political theory, philosophies

3. ‘Worlding’ and creating a ‘pluralistic universalism’ by including non-Western ideas, etc.

How do post colonial approaches see colonialism and nationalism?

Colonialism → precondition for the emergence of capitalism and modernity

nationalism and development seen as ‘derivative discourses’ of Western modernity insofar as they are based on these conceptions of time, culminating in the transition to higher stages of humanity.