Description
This paper critically reflects on ongoing efforts to ‘decolonise’ the discipline of IR. Engaging particularly with the nascent school of decolonial IR (which builds on the writings of scholars such as Anibal Quijano and Walter D. Mignolo), it demonstrates that concepts such as ‘coloniality’ are in danger of becoming fixed, linear and homogenous ways of describing past and present modes of colonial/imperial domination; disregarding complexity, overlaps, tension, and contradiction. The paper uses the example of North American settler colonialism to draw attention to a significant blind spot of decolonial IR: a blind spot that, due to its neglect of the specificity of what Jodi Byrd calls 'settler imperialism', leads to the invisibilisation of ongoing Indigenous existence and politics in what is today North America, as well as an incomplete understanding of (US) imperialism. It then draws on alternative concepts developed by Indigenous and Black scholars – most notably Jodi Byrd’s concept of ‘transit’ and Tiffany L. King’s conceptualisation of ‘conquest’ – to map out a different, complex understanding of ‘coloniality’ in our past and present world. It will conclude by demonstrating the implications that this different understanding has for our attempts to ‘decolonise’, in IR and beyond.
