Theory, Theorists, Theorizing someone else’s International: Critical Pedagogy in International Relations

• In Event: Educational Alternatives against imperialism and neo-colonialism: Global Examples of Concrete Praxis

Proposal

“Theory is always for someone, and for some purpose” (1981), Robert Cox reminded International Relations (IR) scholars decades ago. While critical traditions inside IR burgeon, its resonance seems lost on many IR theory classrooms, whose practices and politics remain bound in canonical readings of the field’s purpose and potentials. Using ethnographic data gathered at The Graduate Institute during my PhD dissertation research, the agenda of this paper is to deconstruct an IR theory classroom through the scholarship of bell hooks and Paolo Freire. Offering the argument that teaching to transgress is a crucial step towards reclaiming the power that the study of the international is imbued with, the paper analyzes syllabus readings and evaluation mechanisms derived from 27 years of MA-level theory syllabi. Teaching to transgress against what bell hooks aptly captures as “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (1994, p.248), to educate future experts or academicians of the International is a fundamentally important project in the face of co-existing and interrelated global crises. Emphasizing the socio-politically contingent nature of Colonial Modernity (2000, p.536), I interrogate my data in search of a post-capitalist imaginary of global politics that starts in and hinges on the classroom of a university system increasingly shackled by the exercise of neoliberal capillary power. I do note here that the empirical scope of the paper is limited to the sites where data was gathered, but that some of these phenomena are emblematic of international order making- an argument I will extensively flesh out in the paper. In so doing, I hope to offer the argument that International Relations is an intellectual space whose students and faculty supposedly go onto affect international order, and that struggle over the political commitments of the discipline itself and the practicalities of its teaching therefore is both worthy and crucially important.

The literature I turn to in the construction of the argument includes several volumes of disciplinary publications relating to the demographics and politics of scholarly production International Relations (inter alia Gofas et al. (eds), 2018). Particularly, publications referred to conceptualizations of world politics (particularly Hobson, 2012, Vitalis, 2015, and Kamola, 2019), the bibliometrics of International Relations (Kristensen 2018, 2013 and Colgan 2016, 2017 and Teele & Thelen 2017) and recent publications on the stakes of pedagogy in International Relations (Dyvik et al. (eds.) 2017, Frueh et al. 2020, Martill & Schindler 2020) help construct the notion that International Relations is a troubled but necessary social science. Particularly, the ‘International’ as a potentially pluralistic and multidisciplinary primary locus of scholarship as well as its simultaneous co-constitution in Colonial Modernity are important themes that emerge from these publications. Nevertheless, at the practitioner level, the discipline’s intellectual incentive structures make it such that a lot of the energy of this scholarship remains frustrated- they remain in contrast to the actualities of teaching IR theory to prospective academics and practitioners of the International. Locating and resisting these persistent contradictions require sustained scholarly attention.

In order to find the tools of resistance, I thus turn to scholars like Quijano (2000), Freire (1970) and hooks (1994), for their incisive commentary and ability to locate the disciplinary pains of International Relations as emblematic of the commodification of higher education according to exploitative and exclusionary market logics. The classroom is a meaningful site to access both the pains of International Relations and its potential to invite students to encounter difference and build towards a more permanent redressal of the Imperial debris that shapes much of contemporary academic International Relations. In other words, to tap into the rich literature on critical pedagogy in the context of framing the International. This praxiological perspective on decolonial scholarship, through class discussions, transgressive pedagogical practice, and inclusive reconstructions of course syllabi for the purpose of reframing canonical texts as socio-politically contingent can perhaps offer a scalable form of resistance. Furthermore, interrogating disciplinary mythmaking on account of its exclusionary and hierarchical underpinnings can help reconsider the stories told about where IR comes from, what it does and is, especially at a global moment wherein education is of crucial import and the object of increasing political scrutiny. Through these reflections, the aim of the paper is to develop a series of interventions towards resistance at the local, institutional, and international level.

The purpose of submitting this paper proposal for consideration, given my background as primarily an International Relations Scholar, is twofold. The first is to seek the advice of a comparative and international education audience, whose expertise of institutional arrangements, development of curricula and institutional incentives for faculty and administrators in all likelihood far exceeds that conveyed to me via my own training. Particularly, both the call to action contained in the 2023 CIES conference theme and in the SIG 21st Century Socialism and Education: Global Alternatives to Patriarchy, Racial Capitalism, Militarism, and Climate Change inspire me and elicit a strong conviction that audience and discussant feedback would be invaluable to a disciplinary contribution with hopefully multidisciplinary resonance. The second is to present data analysis based on disciplinary practice that is perhaps not as readily available to subject matter experts specialized in the analysis of education as object of research and embedded in Comparative/International Education as an immediate disciplinary context.
Education indubitably stands among the most powerful tools towards a more equitable world - I truly believe that given the global nature of the interlocking crises that we face today, the International Relations classroom remains a vitally important liminal space. Despite its entrenchment in the reproduction of the systems of oppression that govern capitalist Colonial Modernity, its potentialities render it a site of practice worth struggling for.

Author

• Bart Sebastiaan Gabriel, The Graduate Institute, Geneva