ABSTRACT

Heeding the insights arising from the conception of diplomacy as the “mediation of estrangement,” this chapter engages the “genres of man” that animates both modern diplomacy and “colonial difference” in order to reflect on the limits and possibilities of critical diplomatic theory. The fragments and entanglements that make up this essay explore a variety of “transculturation” (Mignolo, 2012) and “translation zones” (Apter, 2006) where identities and meanings are constructed, negated, and negotiated and reads these as the scene for reflection on, and performance of, a critical, translational, a more life-affirming “diplomatic method.”