ABSTRACT
Kōanizing IR seeks to awaken the discipline of International Relations (IR). It aims to prove that the two key features of world politics, multiplicity and difference, can serve as sources of learning and stimulation rather than what they are now, targets of fear and rejection. With their sensibility for the absurd, the unconventional, and the hermeneutic, Buddhist kōans open a heterotopic (out-of-the-normal) space for irreverence and questioning, creativity and playfulness. The goal: enlightenment. From this basis, we can turn from five centuries of epistemic violence via colonial knowledge production to a greater sense of understanding and compassion in and for the global. Ontological parity begins it all: kōanic non-duality, for example, considers duality along with non-duality. Emphasis on one over the other would amount to another kind of epistemic violence. Kōanic holism thus offers a philosophy, method, and moral purpose for dissolving the most violent legacy of colonial episteme: Self vs Other.
