Description
Abstract: Should IR be a discipline of its own dedicated to ‘the international’ or remain a subdiscipline of Political Science studying ‘international politics’? Alternatively should it be just an academic field where multiple disciplines meet to explore world politics? There is much confusion about what IR is for and what disciplinarity entails. While supporters have tended to conflate disciplinarity with scientism, opponents of IR’s disciplinarity are prone to emphasising only the negative exclusionary aspects. Drawing on a Foucauldian theorisation of what disciplinarity is, I argue that while there are dangers to disciplinarity, ultimately bigger risks are associated with not embracing it in an academic world dominated by multiple academic disciplines. Rosenberg’s suggestion for what IR’s own unique disciplinary subject matter is – multiplicity – provides both an example and part of an explanation for this: given IR’s necessary coexistence with a multiplicity of other disciplines, writing IR’s disciplinarity is today a necessary precondition to avoiding colonisation by other disciplines and transdisciplinary epistemes such as behaviouralism, rationalism and new materialism.
