Is IR Theory White? Racialised Subject-Positioning in Three Canonical Texts

Abstract

Racism is a historically specific structure of modern global power which generates hierarchies of the human and affirms White supremacy. This has far-reaching material and epistemological consequences in the present, one of which is the production and naturalisation of White-racialised subject positions in academic discourse. This article develops a framework for analysing Whiteness through subject-positioning, synthesising insights from critical race scholarship that seek to dismantle its epistemological tendencies. This framework identifies White subject-positioning as patterned by interlocking epistemologies of immanence, ignorance, and innocence. The article then interrogates how these epistemological tendencies produce limitations and contradictions in international theory through an analysis of three seminal and canonical texts: Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979), Robert Keohane’s After Hegemony (1984) and Alexander Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics (1999). It shows that these epistemologies produce contradictions and weaknesses within the texts by systematically severing the analysis of the international system and the ‘West’ from its actual imperial conditions of possibility. The article outlines pathways for overcoming these limitations and suggests that continued inattention to the epistemological consequences of race for International Relations (IR) theory is intellectually unsustainable.

On whiteness in critical security studies: The case of nuclear weapons

“…Howell and Richter-Montpetit deserve credit for directing the attention of critical security studies to the question of methodological whiteness and epistemic racism. Although it is increasingly acknowledged that central works in mainstream international relations suffer from such issues (Sabaratnam, 2020), it is important to remember that critical theory, too, can be (and has been) complicit in the reproduction of racism and whiteness (Hobson, 2007). In this piece, I have shown the need for more reflection on such in-built biases in the case of nuclear weapons scholarship.…”

“…Bearing in mind that international relations theory, including critical international relations theory, has contributed to the reproduction and hence naturalization of whiteness in world politics, a healthy dose of suspicion about epistemic racism and methodological whiteness is clearly warranted (see, for example, Hobson, 2007;Sabaratnam, 2020;Vitalis, 2015). Yet there are also some in-built limits to the critical ethos of suspicion.…”

Critical privilege studies: Making visible the reproduction of racism in the everyday and international relations

“…Taking the social violence of systemic (structural, institutionalized) racism as its starting point, my essay assumes that race ‘is a central organizing feature of world politics’ (Zvobgo and Loken, 2020), that ‘epistemic racism is intrinsic to Western knowledge structures’ and pervades international relations theorizing (Howell and Richter-Montpetit, 2020: 4; see also Gruffydd Jones, 2016; Sabaratnam, 2020), and that ‘taking the problem of racism seriously in the field of [international relations] 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). My forum intervention, then, takes up Olivia Rutazibwa’s (2016: 199) call ‘to contribute to a radically different, anti- or non-racist [international relations] and everyday’, and I do so by examining how the everyday and everywhere power relations of white privilege make the reproduction of racism ‘not only possible but also invisible and acceptable’ (Rutazibwa, 2016: 196).…”

On the necessity of critical race feminism for women, peace and security

“…It is as if BIPOC faculty cannot simultaneously be the knowers and the objects of knowledge -they cannot be the repositories of GPS/WPS knowledge and also those in charge of crafting the field, embodying the expertise and speaking authoritatively (see Haastrup and Hagen; Pan; this issue). This is one of the ways in which whiteness is not only foundational to GPS/ WPS, with its longstanding connections to the fields of IR and Law (Howell and Richter-Montpetit 2020;Sabaratnam 2020), but also productive of the dividends associated with academic capital accumulation. And amongst the diverse feminist approaches to, and within, GPS/WPS, why have the feminist political economy theorists not considered this lopsided division of labour, production and representation in academia?…”

“…If such academic fields make their life through the same ideas of race and civilisation as traditional academic disciplines (Howell and Richter-Montpetit 2020;Sabaratnam 2020) what are the consequences for those practitioner communities (or communities of practice) that institutionalised forms of GPS/WPS are speaking to? If critical race feminist theory is used without attention to a politics of representation or stigmatised and banned by political parties, what space is there for activists and grassroots organisations to challenge the ongoing epistemic dominance of global north institutions?…”