ABSTRACT
So often in IR we ask questions about what we have learned – what is the original contribution of this research? How could you tell? Did this project use reliable methods to provide evidence for this hypothesis? Does this research program have potential for knowledge accumulation? What do we do this for? Will this be worthwhile if we come close to science? If we can call IR science, can we call what we do knowledge? Or progress? I argue that these questions are at least partial representations and at worst, quite simply, the wrong questions. When it comes to standards for knowledge cumulation in IR, the closer that you look at those standards’ foundation and substance, the less stable they appear. This chapter explores what is made invisible in traditional understandings of knowledge in political science, the disciplinary politics of knowledge construction, and the exclusionary impacts of knowledge-policing standards. Given these problems, there is advantage in valorizing failure in knowledge production, and understanding knowledge cumulation in IR as productive fantasy. The chapter concludes by contending that the future of the discipline is in the manifestation of the productive fantasy of knowledge cumulation in argumentation. The chapter uses the democratic peace research program as an example of the ways in which the fantasy of knowledge production is produced and reified, and to envision possible alternative futures for IR.
