WHY DOES IR REMAIN COLONIAL USIR? ASK THE IR INSTRUCTOR AND THE COLONIAL SUBJECTIVITIES

Abstract

IR instructors’ complex positionalities, as colonial and decolonial subjectivities, are shaped by the USIR colonial matrix of power (CMP). The USIR CMP consists of the colonial neoliberal higher education landscape and research universities and IR’s disciplinary research practices They can contribute to, or challenge, the meaning of IR as the colonial local version of USIR in and beyond the classroom. This adds to growing investigations of IR pedagogy’s role in perpetuating, or challenging, the IR discipline’s coloniality. With interpretive methodology and a decolonial perspective, I analyze 30 Introduction to IR syllabi from 2019-2021 and reconstruct two pedagogical experiences. The analysis showed the majority of content in syllabi was devoted to USIR. The syllabi, and the IR pedagogical space, reproduced the meaning of IR as colonial local USIR. Similar ratios are also seen in IR research, thereby highlighting the division of labour and hierarchy between the two practices and practitioners, facet of USIR CMP. Hence the subject matter choice reflects the powerful role of USIR CMP in cultivating IR instructors’ subjectivities. Nevertheless, the syllabi also revealed instances of IR instructors’ decoloniality through their choice of non-USIR content — transitioning from colonial USIR required readings to non-USIR content in the supplementary lists. However, USIR syllabi pedagogical experience shows the performativity of colonial local USIR as IR since the colonial subject matter and pedagogy co-opt the IR instructor’s decolonial efforts. Similarly, the non-USIR syllabi instructor uses more decolonial practices than colonial pedagogy, despite facing co-option via colonial subjectivities among students. Nevertheless, this classroom promises to dent the performativity of the colonial local USIR as IR due to non-USIR subject matter’s diversity. Thus, I underscore that IR instructors can exercise decolonial pedagogy. However, beforehand, they must engage in decoloniality of their colonial subjectivities and its sources like USIR CMP to keep them visible since they lie at the root of performing colonial local USIR as IR, and in all of our subjectivities.