ABSTRACT
One of the more stubborn features of Western international relations (IR) is its refusal to embrace its own peculiarity. This refusal, however, is not as simple it seems. On an initial reading, it allows a particular intellectual practice with particular imaginaries and rationalities to serve as a universal reference for all IR theoretical practices with alternative imaginaries and rationalities. The distinctiveness of difference emerges against the image of this universal reference. Negation of its own peculiarity creates a general narrative in which other particularities can be effectively subsumed or discarded. In this manner, a naturalized meta-narrative is also deployed to manage internal dissent. The latter is typically assumed as a form of domestic squabble ready for arbitration under established disciplinary rules. In extreme cases, however, naughty dissenters who refuse to be co-opted are given the option of exile to the borderlands of the discipline, stripped of effective power, but with the right of protest. For both domestic exile and erasure of ‘foreign’ elements, the boundaries are vigorously defended with strict enforcement mechanisms to determine what does or does not constitute IR. Epistemology and methodology provide the gatekeeping function to place questions of ontology or history on the margins. In other cases, a particular classification of the international becomes the determining factor to grant entry or rejection.
