ABSTRACT
Introduction Whether a cosmopolitan liberal, an abstract and rational realist or a light-footed ironic post-structuralist, too often International Relations (IR) theorists have used a conceit of placelessness, an Archimedean point outside the world and politics from which they can diagnose the dynamics of power.1 The political implications of these inter-national, abstracted and bloodless theories of world politics have been highlighted by Richard Ashley and R.B.J. Walker (1990) among others. This critical turn in IR theory inaugurated a period of reflection of culture, identity and discourses, and while Foucault became central to a certain part of the discipline, other contemporary important critical philosophical voices did not find an audience. Edward Said (1935-2003) was a prominent humanities scholar, founding almost single-handedly the field of post-colonial studies with Orientalism (1978). While he came to the attention of IR scholars during his engagement with Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis (2000), Said had long been engaged in questions at the heart of the discipline, and there has been recent recognition of this with a special forum in Millennium (2007). This chapter reads Said back into IR through a meditation on his use of exile, experience and the intellectual as critical concepts.
