Description
Emancipation is a central component critical thinking and, the raison d’être of a ‘critical IR’. However, 'Critical IR’, both historically and in the present day, has both an aversion to and a deeply problematic understanding of emancipation. It either draws on Euro-centric under-standings of emancipation and its inherent universalised norms or refuses normative think-ing altogether. This panel is based on the premise that in order to conduct a critical analysis of international politics, we need to rethink the relation between normativity and emancipa-tion. This is a theoretical task with enormous practical consequences given the present con-stellation of crises – economic, political and ecological-which which we are confronted.
Specifically, the panel will engage with the following themes:
• The conceptualisation of emancipation in IR and political theory
• The relation between normativity and emancipation in IR/political theory
• Genealogical accounts of the role of emancipation and/or the relation between emanci-pation and normativity in IR
• Ontological and/or epistemological problems of emancipation.
• Emancipation in concrete (empirical) fields of study such as peace studies, climate change politics and gender studies
• Decolonial and non-Eurocentric accounts of emancipation
• The panel will conclude by posing the question between emancipation and ontology in IR
