Description
In recent years, a growing number of scholars began to advocate for more geographical inclusiveness and cultural diversity in International Relations (IR) as outlined in the Global IR project (Acharya, 2013, 2014, 2016). They assumed national and/or regional schools of thought from the Global South, such as Asian, Latin American, African, Chinese, Indian or Brazilian, as necessary antidotes to the problem of Western-centrism in IR. Notwithstanding the positive steps taken by Global IR scholars in promoting much needed epistemic diversity, I argue in this paper that claims for more representation from non-Western states, regions or civilizations, often rely on uncritical assumptions about the relationship between geographical location and knowledge production. I draw from anti-colonial/post-colonial intellectuals like Frantz Fanon to claim that too often the Global IR debate, even if inadvertently, reproduces ‘territorial essentialisms’ wherein difference from the West is proclaimed so to secure an illusory space of authenticity and autonomy for non-Western knowledge traditions. I build on the example of émigré scholars, such as the author of this paper, to propose the recasting of Global IR as grounded on the emergence of multiple and intellectually hybrid communities of knowledge that are not dissolved in the reified image of Western/non-Western regional and national academies.
