ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals the workings of epistemological and ontological negations of the postcolonial subject and their violent implications. It engages with Frantz Fanon's understanding of the colonial condition and its legacy. The chapter outlines the universalizing claims of perspectives in International Relations that place primacy on 'norms' as the binding force that holds the international together. It also reveals the formative tensions that persist even as the discipline seeks greater 'inclusion' of non-western voices. The colonial rationality produces epistemologies and ontologies that provide it with the remit to universalize from its starting base. The international understood in a socio-political and juridical sense is not simply a product of relations of power but is cemented together by rules and norms that have meaning for players who are both defined by it and partake in its constitution. Culture is understood broadly as the realm of meaning that constitutes societies and informs their ways of being and doing.
