Alternatives 19 (1994), 371-397

Bridging International Relations

-

and Postcolonialism

Phillip Darby and A. J. Paolini"

A. F. Davies once observed that the state of an intellectual discipline,

like that of a distant nation, may sometimes be read off from its al-
liances.' Here we suggest a corollary proposition that the state of a
discipline may be read off from its postures of diplomatic isolation-
ism. Recent developments in the humanities and social sciences have
involved critiques of the foundational assumptions of old disciplines
and the establishment of new configurations of knowledge, directed
to different purposes. Occasionally, these developments occur at the
interstices of well-recognized disciplinary domains, as with the new
historicism situated between the study of history and English. In such
cases, there are likely to be pressures for some kind of engagement
between scholars in both disciplines and between old and new bodies
of knowledge. Mostly, however, the new formations have come into
being not by negotiating an intermediate space between two estab-
lished disciplines, but by opening up new areas of enquiry and de-
veloping discourses of a distinctive kind. In these circumstances,
there is much less likelihood that there will be meeting points be-
tween old and new, and chances are that each will insist on its own
space and cling to its own language, methodology, and publishing
outlets.
Such is the case, we argue, with international relations and post-
colonialism. Our basic theme is that in a period of increasing spe-
cialization in the humanities involving a proliferation of disciplinary
studies, new discourses need to be positioned in relation to tradi-

*Phillip Darby is associate professor in Political Science, University of Melbourne;A. J.

Paolini is assistant lecturer in Politics, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. The
authorswish to thank Grant Parsons and Kirsty Major, both of the Departmentof Political
Science, University of Melbourne, for reading the manuscript and for their stimulating
comments.

371
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372 Bridging infernational Relations and Postcolonialism

tional ones. It is only when the points of contact and the zones of s e p
arate interest have been plotted that we can begin to appraise the
continuing relevance of the old configurations of knowledge and the
claims of the new to be at the “cutting edge.” The point has a special
salience in the present context because both international relations
and postcolonialism have been self-referential to an unusual degree.
Given the need to situate the two discourses in relation to each
other, this paper addresses three areas, which taken together land-
scape much of the relevant terrain. First, we review the geneologies
of both discourses with the aim of tracing their present trajectories
and bringing out their discursive presuppositions. Second, we exam-
ine certain sites of engagement where the two discourses might have
been expected to have intersected. The fact that they have not calls
for interrogation. Third, exploring key differences in the approaches
of international relations and of postcolonialism, we go on to argue
that a dialogue between the two discourses would be mutually pro-
voking and therefore enriching.
Before beginning our analysis proper, there is the prior issue of
whether international relations and postcolonialism have sufficient
shared reference points to be situated in relation to each other. At
this stage, they have hardly begun even to eye each other across the
disciplinary gulf, so we will be examining potential areas of com-
monality or conflict rather than connections already made. More
than this, our concerns relate only to a part of each discourse, namely
that which bears upon the North-South encounter in either its his-
torical or contemporary manifestation. However, questions are nec-
essarily raised about the relationship between that part and the
discourse as a whole. In the case of international relations, account
must be taken of how the approach to the international system and
to the maintenance of order in world politics conditions thinking
about the North-South encounter. In the case of postcolonialism,
there is a need to recognize that the treatment of the Third World’s
relations with the West or the North is driven by the desire to re-vi-
sion the cultural politics of Third World societies. Of course, there i s
a good deal of artificiality in attempting to separate the play of inter-
national politics at the center (the old East-West conflict) from that
on the North-South axis, or the external environment from the in-
ternal. This contention is at the heart of postcolonialism, and it is
fundamental to its challenge to established modes of thinking. For
the moment, we can simply say that our engagement is with the major
part of postcolonialism-because the understanding of the Third
World as dependent and subordinate underwrites the discourse-

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 Phillip Darby and A. 1.Paolini 373

whereas it is with a minor part of international relations-because

the colonial world and its successor states have been seen as marginal
to world politics.
There is one other preliminary point to be made. It is apparent
that within both international relations and postcolonialism there
has been a substantial measure of disagreement about appropriate
objects of study and how they should be pursued. It might even be
contended, on the basis of the heterogeneity of concerns in interna-
tional relations and the various metamorphoses of postcolonialism,
that neither has sufficient internal solidity to be ranged against the
other. What needs to be established in both cases, therefore, is either
the existence of an agreed core or at least some consensus about what
constitutes the central issues. There is also the contention that a dis-
ciplinary study cuts a channel of commonality for itself through its
use of language, concepts, and the very process of contestation. With
these considerations in mind, it is necessary to briefly review the ge-
nealogy of both discourses.
Until recently, international relations has been largely isolated
both from other disciplines and from broader interdisciplinary de-
bates in political and social theory. The exceptions, although no-
table, have been quite rare: Lasswell’s use of psychology to explain
insecurity in world politics; Marxist and neo-Marxist critiques of as-
pects of international relations (for example, its influence on the de-
pendency school) ; and the work of sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein
(again obvious in the dependency debates). Preoccupied with its
myths of origin and confident about its historical point of departure,
international relations has been reluctant to explore its position in
relation to other areas of scholarship.
A large part of the intellectual isolation of international relations
can be attributed to the dominant role played by the so-called realist
school. International relations has been self-enclosed precisely be-
cause realism has carried so much before it in defining the proper pa-
rameters of study. Having cemented the idea of the basically
anarchical nature of state relations as the defining feature of world
politics, realism has been successful in delineating both the form and
content of the discipline. Power, order, states-the key ingredients of
the realist paradigm-have dominated the larger international rela-
tions agenda.
Realist closure and the general lack of self-reflexivity in interna-
tional relations have come under increasing challenge over the last
few years. Ecological imperatives have generated concerns about the
inadequacies of thinking anchored in the primacy of state interests.

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374 Bridging International Relations and Postcolonialism

There i s a rapidly growing literature on gender and the need to over-

haul ideas about power and statehood in the light of feminist per-
spectives. Perhaps even more significant is the emergence of the
so-called "third debate," wherein ideas influenced by postmodern or
poststructural theorists have been employed to question the whole
basis of the discipline. In many respects, this "postpositivist" move-
ment*represents the first genuine attempt from within international
relations to critically interrogate the assumptions, frameworks, and
concerns of the discipline-so much so that Yosef Lapid views the en-
terprise as constituting a "disciplinedefining debate.'" The writings
of Richard Ashley, R. B. J. Walker, Michael Shapiro, James Der
Derian, Robert Cox, Simon Dalby, and many others have encouraged
a deliberate questioning of the epistemological premises of the disci-
pline, with the result that in some quarters attention has turned to is-
sues of representation, discourse, textuality/narrative, and culture.
What is at issue, therefore, is the very manner in which international
relations as a discipline, and international relations as a subject mat-
ter, have been constructed. Undoubtedly this represents a significant
break with tradition, yet it would seem at this stage that postpositivism
has had a strictly limited impact on the discipline as a whole.
Nevertheless, unlike previous challenges and debates, it is not unrea-
sonable to suppose that it will not so readily be reincorporated or ap-
propriated by the mainstream. Nor, judging by the interests and
publications of an increasing number of international relations schol-
ars, will it be so easily ignored. It may be, of course, that instead of
changing the nature of international relations as a disciplinary study,
the effect of the rethinking now taking place will be to establish a new
discourse so that we will have both traditional and postpostivist inter-
national relations running their separate courses.
It is good deal more difficult to map the nature of what has loosely
become known as the "postcolonial discourse." It has tended to de-
fine itself by a process of expansion and, some critics would argue, by
a nebulous tendency to carry too much before it because it floats so
freely across many disciplines and concerns, Unlike the closure of in-
ternational relations, postcolonialism has made a virtue out of chang-
ing ground and being open-ended. Despite being a comparatively
young discourse, it has displayed a concern with its shifting frames of
reference. This latter preoccupation is not surprising given the
overtly deconstructionist stance of much postcolonial theory: a
Derridean focus on one's own position within a particular discourse
or "textual practice" (that is, the process of reading or engaging with
a particular text) is usually taken for granted.

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 Phillip Darby and A. J. Paolini 375

The discourse of postcolonialism had its origins in the study of the

fiction of excolonial countries and in the push to discern commonal-
ities both in content and in form. Initially directed to writing within
the British Commonwealth, the project broadened out to survey the
literature of the Third World as a whole. From such beginnings, es-
sentially of a comparative nature and located within a single disci-
pline, there has been a remarkable expansion in scope and
methodological reach, so much so that John McClure and Aamir
Mufti in their introduction to a special issue of Social Text argue that
in postcolonialism we are witnessing the emergence of a "new dis-
course of global cultural relations."' While elements of such expan-
siveness can be seen on the part of individual writers, we need to be
more circumspect about characterizing the discourse as a whole in
such ambitious terms. To this point, what has driven postcolonialism,
and thus what constitutes the core of the discourse, is a focus on the
relations of domination and resistance and the effect they have had
on identity, in, through, and beyond the colonial encounter.
Whatever the lubricious nature of the term, the prefix "post" is testa-
ment to the fact that the problems that lie,at the heart of the c o b
nizer-colonized relationship are seen to persist beyondccolonialism
and are relevant today to what Wole Soyinka has characterized as the
"process of self- apprehension" in the Third World.5
In this respect, literature has come to play a less pivotal role, hav-
ing been dislodged by more generalized concerns about the
Eurocentrism of Western scholarship and the nature of identity in
the non-European world. Tied to this development has been the
greater prominence given to "Third World" intellectuals such as
Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha. Equally important,
what is characterised as "colonialism" is not merely the experience of
Western imperialism in the non-European world, which ended at
Some particular juncture in history. Rather, colonialism has come to
signify a continuing set of practices that are seen to prescribe rela-
tions between the West and the Third World beyond the indepen-
dence of the former colonies. The importance of reinterpreting the
colonial experience is relevant to contemporary identity. In the
process of resistance, the "native voice" is repositioned and empow-
ered. This is seen as instrumental in overcoming an enduring posi-
tion of otherness and subordination. Not only does the "empire write
back," as the title of an early postcolonial collection argues: but post-
colonialism challenges continuing "orientalist" representations. In
this sense, just as Said's orientalist thesis has a more general applica-
tion, so too does the colonialist characterization in postcolonialism.

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376 Bridging International Relations and Postcolonialism

A review written in 1987 by Benita Parry captures something of the

changing nature of postcolonialism in that she does not use the pre-
fix “post” in her analyses of writers such as Gayatri and Bhabha.’ This
indicates both how recent the currency of postcolonialism is and its
chameleon character.
The expansion of postcolonialism has had much to d o with the al-
liances it has entered into, particularly with European social theory.
Aside From the initial Commonwealth literature/literary criticism
phase, we can locate two further overlapping but nevertheless distinct
movements in postcolonialism. The concern with resistance and re-
covery marks the second image of postcolonialism, and the engage-
ment with ideas of ambivalence and hybridity derived from
contemporary social theory characterize the third movement that has
now come to dominate the postcolonial discourse.
Framing the second movement are the works of Third World schol-
ars such as Albert Memmi, Octavio Mannoni, and especially Frantz
Fanon, who utilized Freudian and other psychoanalytic perspectives
to focus on the colonizer-colonized relationship and posited the ne-
cessity of resistance and rejection. In particular, the need to recover
precolonial culture, language, and identity in a process of resistance
to colonization not only influenced radical nationalist movements,
but defined the later approach of writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o
and the Nigerian critic, Chinweizu. Edward Said, although deriving
some inspiration from Foucault,* was clearly influenced by the
Fanonian need to subvert dominant Eurocentric characterizations. It
should be noted, however, that the call for resistance does not always
go hand in hand with claims of precolonial authenticity-at least not
in Said. Although clearly oppositional in his stance toward Western
imperialism or orientalism, Said in a recent interview rejects notions
of ethnic particularity and a homogeneous return to Islam as realis-
tic solutions. Like Bhabha, he instead accepts the ‘migratory quality
of experience.“ Despite the need to distinguish between the call For
resistance and the need to recover some pure identity, there is a lin-
gering tension in Said’s claims about the point of resistance. In an
earlier analysis, Said described the revisionist postcoIonia1 effort to
reclaim histories and cultures from imperialism as “entering the var-
ious world discourses on an equal footing.”lO Elsewhere, he argues
that postcolonial writers “hear their past within them” as “urgently
reinterpretable and redeployable experiences in which the formerly
silent native speaks and acts on territory taken back from the colo-
nialist.”ll The belief in resistance and recovery, in unproblematically
restoring or indeed discovering the native voice/identity, marks a dis-

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 Phillip Darby and A. 1. Paolini 377

tinct tendency in postcolonialism. Arun Mukherjee points to this ten-

dency as prevalent in the writings of many postcolonial critics such as
Stephen Slemon, Helen Tiffen, and Diana Brydon, in which a con-
cern with a “discursive resistance to colonialist power” (Slemon and
Tiffen) or a “retrieval or creation of an independent identity”
(Tiffen) distinguish their analyses of Third World literature.’* A fur-
ther feature of this second movement is its Manichean, self versus
other frame of reference, which characterizes the colonizer-colo-
nized relationship very much in terms of polar opposites. Said is an
example here, as is Abdul Jan Mohamed’s work on African literature.
Notwithstanding the poststructural influence on both these writers,
the Manichean nature of their perspectives distinguishes them from
other more consciously postmodern theorists as Spivak and Bhabha.
A parallel movement has occurred in Indian historiography, in
which “subaltern studies” have attempted to rewrite a history that it
sees as dominated by both a colonialist and bourgeoise-nationalist
elitism. Seeking to contest the ideological nature of this historiogra-
phy-for instance, the Cambridge History series-writers in this mas-
sive endeavor have given voice to the so-called “subaltern,” who has
resisted elite domination throughout history. Dipesh Chakrabarty has
defined “subalternity” as the ”composite culture of resistance to and
acceptance of dominance and hierarchy.”” Ranajit Guha has argued
that the Cambridge historians have ”wished away the phenomenon of
resistance,” and that without a recognition of the subaltern’s role,
historiography perpetuates a serious misrepresentation of power re-
lations under colonialism.” Thus, although distinct from post-
colonialism per se, the revisionism of subaltern studies mirrors that
of the broader postcolonial movement: in subverting the mental and
intellectual categories of Eurocentric scholarship, it seeks to uncover
a more authentic indigenous history.
Although the concern with resistance can be seen across the post-
colonial discourse, the emphasis on recovery and opposition is par-
ticular to the range of writers and perspectivesjust described. A third
movement is less sanguine about any prospect of recovery and indeed
proceeds from a less totally oppositional standpoint. It is in this body
of writing that the influence of deconstructive and postmodern the-
ories is most clear. The work of Homi Bhabha, in particular, views the
colonial encounter as inherently ambivalent for both the postcolo-
nial subject and the West. Utilizing many of Derrida’s ideas, Bhabha
sees categories of otherness and difference as imbued with an in-
evitable ambivalence due to the hybrid and syncretic nature of post-
colonial societies: “The place of difference and otherness, or the

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378 Bridging Internntwnal Relations and Postcolonialism

space of the adversarial . . , is never entirely on the outside or im-

placably oppositional.”15The subjects of colonial discourse are seen
as involved in splitting, doubling projection, mimicry; what is dis-
avowed is repeated as something different, a hybrid.16Gayatri Spivak
argues similarly: ”I am critical of the binary opposition
coloniser/colonised. I try to examine the heterogeneity of ‘colonial
power’ and to disclose the complicity of the two poles of that opposi-
tion as it constitutes the disciplinary enclave of the critique of impe-
rialism.”” Spivak extends her focus to gender and the position of
subaltern women. What both Bhabha and Spivak effectively do, via
narrative and textual deconstruction, is to reposition the colonial
and postcolonial relationship along less essentialist lines, highlight-
ing a more heterogeneous and syncretic dynamic. This is also true of
Caribbean postcolonial writing and theorizing which, deploying the
idea of “creolization” in culture and literature, is seen by Ashcroft,
Griffiths, and Tiffen as being ”the crucible of the most extensive and
challenging postcolonial literary theory.”I8
Postmodernism pervades this third movement of postcolonialism.
The focus on the particular and the marginal, the heterogenity of
meaning and narrative, the questioning of Eurocentric positivism
and universalism, the ambiguity toward modernity, the critique of
Western individualism, and the interest in constructions of self and
other-all bear the trademarks of recent critical social theory. Not
surprisingly, Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffen argue that these concerns
“clearly function as the conditions of the development of postcolo-
nial theory in its contemporary form and as the determinants of
much of its present nature and content.”19
These same intellectual accents have also framed much of the third
debate in international relations, although their overall effect on this
discipline has been much less sweeping. Still, a narrow bridge be-
tween postcolonialism and international relations has been con-
structed upon which similar interests in culture, identity,
representation, and narrative can traverse. The two movements de-
scribed here can be seen as overlapping and propelled by the same
underlying dynamic of resistance, whether it be to specific instances
of colonial power and representation, or to the Eurocentric nature of
scholarship in generaI. Although it is necessary to keep in mind the
points of difference between the two movements, it is valid to cast
postcolonialism as the more all-inclusive enterprise. The nub of post-
colonialism can be seen as oppositional and redemptive. Despite the
refinements of Bhabha and Spivak, there is a conscious privileging of
the Third World and of marginality as proper foci of study.

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 Phillip Darby and A. 1.Paolini 379

Postcolonialism seeks to reclaim the moral and emotional high-

ground in its interrogation of Western modernity. Whether it be the
Third World intellectual or writer in Western academe, or the subal-
tern or native voice-however fractured and hybrid it has become-
the impetus is on the margin as the key repository of a radical and
subversive political standpoint. It is precisely because of this privileg-
ing of marginality that so much energy can be invested in determin-
ing who can speak. Within this alternate space, postcolonialism has
tended to be allembracing and, ironically, it has acted to "colonize"
and refashion aspects .of scholarship previously the domain of
Western academe, such as literature, history, and social theory. Ideas
about the emotional stance and radical space cleared by postcolo-
nialism will be explored in a later part of this paper.
The foregoing survey makes plain the differences in background
and approach between these two disciplinary discourses. The task
now is to enquire into potential issues of commonaIity and points of
contact. Apart from the postmodern link, the two discourses might
have been expected to have crossed paths in several areas relating to
the NorthSouth encounter. That they have not-at least in any sus-
tained way-calls for some examination of how these areas have been
tackled or why they have been bypassed within both discourses. Three
issues stand out: imperialism, orientalism, and culture. What is re-
markable about these three issues is the lack of dialogue between the-
orists of international relations and theorists of postcolonialism. If
there is a scope for connection, it has not been on terms that are mu-
tually recognized. Let us consider why.
The second expansion of Europe, its causes and consequences, has
attracted remarkably little interest on the part of international rela-
tions scholars. This neglect has left its mark on the course and con-
cerns of the discipline. Indeed, it is by no means fanciful to suggest
that had the discipline directed its attention to the phenomenon, and
had it taken account of the developments in imperial historiography,
international relations might have taken a substantially different tra-
jectory. As the discipline stands now, imperialism receives cursory
treatment in the standard texts as a historical category, reaching back
almost unchanging to classical times. Essentially it is depicted as a sys-
tem for the augmentation of power. Often there is some considera-
tion of its "economic roots," although the relationship between
power and economics is seldom pursued in any depth. For much of
the postwar period, analyses of imperialism were then put into ser-
vice to explain the rise of the Cold War or the operation of the cen-
tral balance. What is absent is any sustained attempt to explore the

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380 Bridging International Relations and Posfcolonialism

workings of nineteenth-century imperialism, which might have led to

rethinking the international politics of the Third World or to a recog-
nition of the significance of cultural factors in world politics.
The root of the problem was that Asia, Africa, and other non-
European territories were seen to be outside the civilized world. The
European states acquired title and ruled in their own right. Hence,
imperial relations were not international relations and they fell out-
side the proper concerns of the discipline. It was thus left to other
fields of study to grapple with the processes that played such a large
part in determining the future of the peoples, societies, and states
that now constitute more than two-thirds of the world; processes, one
might add, which had far-reaching reverberations within Europe it-
self.
In many respects the processes of nineteenth-century imperialism
would not have been to the taste of mainstream international rela-
tions in any case both because they breached the distinction between
the external and the internal and because they invoked issues of what
we would now call cultural politics. But it is precisely because these
processes jarred with the prevailing disciplinary norms that they had
within them the capacity to generate rethinking. In any event, it was
not until 1984, with the publication of The Expansion oflntemzational
Society, edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, that a belated step
was taken in the right directionPoAlthough a patchy work, this vol-
ume proclaimed the transformation of the international system from
a society fashioned in Europe and dominated by Europeans into the
global society of today, and it attempted to consider why this had oc-
curred and what its consequences might be.
In the case of postcolonialism, the question of imperialism has, of
course, been fundamental to the agenda throughout. For the most
part, the dynamics of expansion have been incidental to the concern
with its consequences-consequences for subject peoples and more
generally for global society-and how we should think about it.
Earlier, when postcolonialism took its cue from Commonwealth liter-
ature, the perspective was firsthand: imperial overlordship experi-
enced by its subjects, or objects as the discourse mainly put it. Chinua
Achebe summed up the position of many of his contemporaries
when, confronted with the argument that he overemphasized the
colonial experience, he asserted: “It’s the most important single
thing that has happened to us, after the slave trade.*’ More recently,
that experience has been refracted through the lens of social theory
with the result that more is imputed than directly felt and the level of
analysis has moved from the micro to the macro.

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 Phillip Darby and A. J. Paolini 381

The question of why the explosion of writing about orientalism in

the past decade and a half has had so little effect in international re-
lations probes deeply into the discipline. Here we may take the ne-
glect of Edward Said's Orientalism as emblematic. Said's book is
perhaps neither as original nor as revelatory as is often assumed," yet
its impact was little less than extraordinary. It was taken up in several
different disciplines; it spawned new causes and ways of reading; ar-
guably, it launched its own scholarly project. Yet not only did it fail to
dent the casings of international relations, it received only occasional
mention in the literature.
The explanation must begin with Said's disciplinary background
and theoretical stance. Said, a professor of English and comparative
literature, wrote OrientaZisms' as a "counter-history of the European
literary tradition,"P' which broadened out to a cultural critique of
forms of Western domination in the "Orient." Thus, while the themes
of the book are grounded in ideas about power relations, the frame-
work is literary and cultural. This, in itself, is justification enough to
have it ruled out of court in traditional international relations. More
than this, the main body of Said's literary and cultural material was
drawn from the annals of British and French imperialiSm. If one of
Said's objectives was to point to the contemporary hold of orientalist
ideas, it was the history of how these ideas were developed that en-
gaged most of his attention. The ambience of nineteenth-century im-
perialism would hardly have recommended the project to
international relations, and still less because the surface politics of
the narrative was studded with figures such as Gertrude Bell, Sir
Richard Burton, and Lord Cromer. The third part of the book, enti-
tled "Orientalism Now," might have been expected to elicit more in-
terest, but, despite its title, in large part it retraces earlier themes.
Only the fourth subsection, headed "The Latest Phase," takes up as-
pects of the US experience, but this pertains mostly to Islam and
breaks little new ground. Said himself refers to it as "a new eccen-
tricity in Orientalism, where indeed my use of the word itself is anom-
alous.'ma
There is one other aspect that needs to be flagged at this point: the
expansive and consciously theoretical notions of power employed by
Said. These stand in sharp contrast to the tradition in international
relations, which has not been concerned to interrogate the concept
of power beyond a statist affirmation of its centrality to the "national
interest." We will return to this issue at a later stage, but, put bluntly,
in the mainstream of the discipline there is little recognition of
knowledge and representation as forms of power. Yet even at the mar-

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382 Bridging Znternational Relations and Postcolonialism

gins of international relations, where the old orthodoxies are under

challenge, Said's work has not been taken up. There is, for example,
no citation of Orientalism anywhere in the postmodern collection of
readings edited by Der Derian and Shapiro-an intriguing omission
given the book's focus on power as knowledge and representation.P6
The notable exception here is R. B. J. Walker, who began to address
Said in one of his early essays, reprinted in Culture, Ideology and World
Order.p7The only comparable literature in international relations that
picks up some of these issues is the work on images and (mis)per-
ceptions in conflict resolution and peace research by people such as
Elise and Kenneth Boulding, Harold Issacs, and Ole Holsti. The treat-
ment here, however innovative at the time, now appears essentially
traditional.
When it comes to our third issue-the status accorded to culture-
again we find a gulf between the two discourses. Whereas postcolo-
nialism has defined itself in terms of culture, international relations
has articulated its concerns in a way that pushes culture to the pe-
riphery. In large part, the explanation of the latter follows from the
centrality of the state and the hold of realism in the discipline.
Culture has been seen as subsumed by the state and hence lying out-
side the domain of international politics. A less obvious explanation
for the neglect of culture of international relations is the very diffi-
culty of the concept itself. Raymond Williams, in his Kqrword~,'~has
highlighted the complex and complicated nature of "culture." It has
been used in several distinct intellectual disciplines with various
senses. This "complex of sense" makes it difficult, according to
Williams, to agree on one meaning." The confused nature of the
word "culture" and the many debates surrounding the concept could
be seen as one of the reasons culture has been neglected in interna-
tional relations, which tends to feel more comfortable with "hard,"
concrete terms such as the state and order. In this respect, culture has
perhaps been perceived as suspiciously loose and too imprecise for
analysis.*
Yet the increasing significance of culture for the study of politics
has meant that the internal/external demarcation has become tenu-
ous. Faced with the explosion of such cultural phenomena as Islamic
fundamentalism and "ethnic cleansing," international relations has
had to concede the importance of the internal to an understanding
of international politics. Culture can no longer be swept under the
carpet, nor can the traditional lines of analysis be adhered to with the
same confidence. However, where concessions have been made, for
the most part they have been reactive and inserted within the old ref-

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 Phillip Darby and A. J. Paolini 383

erential frames. It may be that where there has been an attempt to

address the cultural realm, as in Bull and Watsons1,the understand-
ing of culture has been of a significantly different cast from its use in
other disciplines. Thus, for example, in emphasizing the shared po-
litical culture of certain societies of states, Hedley Bull has only
touched the tip of the iceberg so far as culture goes.
Bull notwithstanding, there have been attempts in international re-
lations to address the cultural realm.54Ali Mazrui confronts interna-
tional relations head-on by claiming that "culture is at the heart of
the nature of power in International Relations."ss Mazrui sees ideol-
ogy, political economy, and technology as deeply rooted in the cul-
tural realm, and views the North-South divide as an increasingly
cultural one. Cultural identity is held to be an issue of increased sig-
nificance in the contemporary world-so much so that, according to
Mazrui, we may be witnessing the "gradual unravelling of identities
based on the state, a declining of identities based on political ideol-
ogy-and the revival of identities based on culture."" Peter Worsley's
earlier account of world development makes similar claims.s5The in-
ternationalization of culture-youth cults, religious revivalism, con-
sumerism, feminism-are seen as "powerful evidence that a sense of
common identity and a shared culture can give rise to social move-
ments that quickly transcend the boundaries of any particular soci-
ety."%Both Mazrui and Worsley thus see culture as a key determinant
of political and economic processes. Even the generally econocentric
Immanuel Wallerstein has shifted ground to view culture as "the key
ideological battleground" of the opposing interests within the mod-
ern world capitalist system."
These attempts to engage culture seemingly amount to a re-
spectable interest on the part of international relations, and it is in-
structive to consider the intellectual background of the three writers
discussed. Wallerstein is a sociologist, and the essay cited above was
published in a collection of sociological articles on nationalism, glob
alization, and modernity. Mazrui has always cut a distinctive path in
international relations, and his concerns have had more to do with
the problems of Third World justice and identity than with main-
stream issues. Worsley, similarly, has been steeped in the problems of
development and dependency in the Third World. We thus see that
many of the perspectives that have enlivened the discipline have
come from outside it and draw on different source material.
Something similar may be said of R. B. J Walker. Certainly he has mar-
ried a consideration of culture with the issues of order, power, and
states, but his bearings have been taken from broader analyses of

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384 Bridging Infernational Relations and Postcolonialism

modernity.58Without belaboring the point, such an analysis is very

much the exception. Walker himself recognizes as much: T h i s kind
of literature . . . has emerged largely on the margins of International
Relations as an institutionahed discipline. It remains obscure, even
alien to those whose training has been primarily within the positivis-
tic, realist, or policy-oriented mainstream~."~~
The contrast with postcolonialism could not be starker. Where in-
ternational relations has ignored culture, or at most grudgingly con-
ceded it a minor role, postcolonialism has elevated culture to an
extraordinary degree. Although the understanding of culture has
changed as the discourse has evolved, culture has been at the heart
of postcolonialism from the outset. In the first phase of postcolonial-
ism, culture was grounded in the literary context and understood
very much in terms of the clash of values engendered by the colonial
encounter. Following postcolonialism's move away from specific texts
to a more generalized account of domination and resistance betiveen
North and South, culture has attained larger explanatory significa-
tions. It has come to encapsulate the very site of struggle and differ-
ence between the so-called margin and the center; the pivot upon
which an emergent postcolonial identity develops. On one view, how-
ever, culture has been overdone. In its attempt to be at the cutting
edge of academic discourse, postcolonialism can be accused of hav-
ing overstretched the analytical utility of culture. Yet such a perspec-
tive underplays the significance of the cultural reorientation; it is
precisely through culture that postcolonialism mounts a fundamental
challenge to the epistemological bases of established regimes of
thinking such as international relations. In this respect its effect has
been overwhelmingly positive.
To this point, the burden of our analysis has been to suggest that
international relations and postcolonialism pass like ships in the
night. We have highlighted possible intersections and potential sites
of engagement, the idea being that both discourses might be en-
riched through a process of cross-fertilization. Such enrichment
would follow partly from the very fact of difference. We now want to
direct attention to three key areas of difference in which engagement
might have real significance, not only for each discourse but more
generally for our broader concern with approaches to the North-
South divide. The first relates to power and representation, the sec-
ond to modernity, and the third to emotional commitment and
radicalism. In the process of contestation and comparison, the hope
is that we can get a better handle on understanding issues such as
power and modernity as they bear upon the relationship between the

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 Phillip Darby and A. 1.Paolini 385

North and South, Both discourses have distinct strengths and weak-
nesses and bring different perspectives to bear on the issues at hand.
In seeking a dialogue and making assessments about what we might
learn from their differences, we can begin to bridge the discourses to
their mutual benefit.
The first sphere of difference identified between postcolonialism
and international relations concerns the relations of power and dom-
ination between North and South. As is evident from our earlier re-
marks, each discourse employs a distinctive understanding of the
processes at work. Power has been a fixation of international rela-
tions from the outset, yet it has been understood in unproblematic
terms. It has been seen to reside mostly in the military and economic
spheres, and the key referents-capability, threat, and force-have
been approached onedimensionally. One needs only to read the twin
concepts used interchangeably with power in postcolonialism-rep-
resentation and knowledge-to realize how differently this discourse
conceives the nature of power. In broad terms, postcolonialism, often
invoking Foucault’s view of the power/knowledge nexus, views power
as operating at the very point of textual representation and the con-
struction of language and discourse; that is, the way,in which we
frame events and phenomena around us necessarily carries relations
of power that serve dominant interests. In short, representation
structures relations between the West and the Third World very much
in favor of the former. In international relations, although there has
been some limited recognition of the power of ideas and rhetoric (in
conflict resolution, for example), there has been no significance at-
tached to the power of representation. Indeed, the play of ideas and
language, through morality or ideology, has been surgically removed
from a consideration of power relations. They are seen as smoke-
screens for underlying interests, or as dangerously subjective ele-
ments that distract from the rational pursuit of power. Either way,
they are treated as fairly insignificant to a proper understanding of
international politics.
The reference points of each discourse, and in particular their sig-
nificance for an understanding of how relations of power affect the
Third World, are worth exploring before undertaking a more com-
parative analysis. The reference points of international relations are
relatively easy to locate. Power is related to interests and possessed by
states, most of all by great powers. It is knowable and basically linear
in the way it effects behavior and relations. Outcomes of the exercise
of power are often zero-sum. For a Morgenthau, the pursuit of power
is the highest possible virtue in world politics. For a rationalist such

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386 Bridging International Relations and Postcolonialism

as Bull, the pursuit of power is necessary for establishing order, upon

which other goals such as justice and human rights may be attained.
Power is thus invested with varying degrees of moral significance.
Given that power is directly related to capability and resources,
great powers are able to yield dominance over lesser ones and are
usually able to get their way. In this framework, because of its chronic
instability and the lack of significant leverage vis-54s resources, the
Third World is mostly assigned a subordinate role. The exceptions,
such as the oil-producing Arab nations (members of OPEC, the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), are obvious and
readily explained. Even so, as the fate of Kuwait attests, such power is
tenuous. Where a major power fails to achieve its ends, as with the
United States in Vietnam, the means are rarely to blame; rather, mis-
calculation, lack of will, poor strategy, and even perhaps a small con-
cession to misperception are offered as explanations. The scenario
for the Third World is bleak, to say the least. Because power is seen
to work in the way outlined by realism, the Third World is marginal-
ized and on the 'back burner." Such conceptions have led some writ-
ers, such as Ali Mazrui, to dispute that the North-South struggle is
solely about power, as traditionally defined; as far as the states of the
Third World are concerned, justice and human rights are the pri-
mary objectives. Thus, the argument runs, the South acts differently
from the West."' This type of argument is notable for two reasons.
First, it concedes that the West does pursue power and the maxi-
mization of national interests, and thus affirms the realist paradigm.
Second, it is mostly dismissed out of hand in mainstream interna-
tional relations as a romanticization of Third World motives and
methods.
In summary, the pursuit of power is invested with coherence, clar-
ity, and logic, and it is ensconced in a statetentric straitjacket. The
neat, enclosed conceptions and analyses advanced do little to capture
the more complex nature of power relations. Yet one can concede a
certain utility in the emphasis on the obvious material bases of power
that postcolonialism tends to overlook in its attention to less visible
manifestations of dominance. It at least reminds us, however inci-
dentally to the focus on great powers, of the very real disparities in
capabilities and resources that continue to structure North-South re-
lations and need to be navigated.
Postcolonialism, by contrast, is little concerned with notions of the
national interest, state power, or capability. Its key reference points
are power as representation, or power as knowledge. These are pri-
marily discursive practices that inevitably work to bolster the ascen-

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 Phillip Darby and A. 1.Paolini 387

dency and interests of the West. The focus is not so much on the o p
erational aspects or properties of power, as in international relations,
but on how it both enables and is enabled by the control over ideas,
information, and communication. The ability to interpret and repre-
sent phenomena within the Western framework of understanding
and interests is taken to be the ultimate expression of power. It is be-
lieved to tell us more about relations of domination between North
and South than the traditional measures used in international rela- .
tions. From Fanon to Jan Mohamed to Bhabha, the connecting
theme is that Western representations construct meaning and "real-
ity" in the Third World. Concepts such as "progress," "civilized," and
"modern" powerfully shape the non-European worId.
This approach is exemplified in Timothy Mitchell's application of
the orientalist thesis to colonial Egypt in the nineteenth century. In
CoZonisingEsypt, Mitchell refers to colonial power as the ability of the
metropole to "enframe" Egypt; that is, to order and make it legible so
as to circumscribe and exclude those elements not amenable to
Western sensibilities and, close behind, to Western interests."
Mitchell argues that "modern colonialism was constructed upon a
vastly increased power of representation, a power that made possible
an unprecedented fixing and policing of boundaries; an unprece-
dented power of portraying what lay 'outside.' " Power is determined
not so much by the obvious resource disparities between Britain and
Egypt, but by the ability of the colonial order to establish an absolute
boundary between the West and the non-West, the modern and the
past, order and disorder, self and ~ t h e r . 'The
~ Foucauldian shadow is
obvious here: dominant representations create "regimes of truth,"
which tend to exclude and marginalize while at the same time "nor-
malizing" that which was previously threatening. Akin to Marx's own-
ers of the means of production, postcolonialism locates power in the
control over the means of representation.
The type of representational power just described is only one part
of the (post)colonial encounter. Although the West is able to nor-
malize the non-West, such relations of dominance necessarily call
forth resistance. This is the flip side of the power dynamic in post-
colonialism: although marginalized and dominated, the other fights
back. To return to Mitchell, the colonizing process never fully suc-
ceeds because regions of resistance and voices of rejection are pro-
duced.'5 These are celebrated precisely because they offer hope;
domination is never total. This serves as an important contrast to in-
ternational relations, in which, short of the extreme of revolution,
the prospects of weaker powers or actors are decidedly meager. As in

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388 Bridging lnternutiond Relations and Postcolonialism

every zero-sum conflict, the loser loses absolutely. In postcolonialism,

the dominated can always carve out a space for meaningful dissent.
Postcolonialism thus moves away from a mere instrumental view of
power and holds out the prospect of resistance for the marginalized
peoples of the Third World. In this respect, it provides an important
corrective to the narrow understanding of power in international re-
lations, which leaves little space for other actors. It also directs atten-
tion to the level of textuality as significant in shaping power relations.
Postcolonialism articulates the possibility of resistance at levels other
than the state; that is, cultural and local, which hardly figure in in-
ternational relations. In this way, it seeks to be an empowering dis-
course for the South, although how far it actually addresses the
concerns of Third World peoples is another matter.
The emphasis on the textual and representational envisions other
problems. Whereas international relations can be rightly admonished
for giving scant attention to the power of ideas and knowledge, post-
colonialism at times pushes the argument too far. There is a certain
ease with which representation is taken to equal, or more specifically
to serve, power. Representation is usually taken to be functional to
the attainment of metropolitan power and interests. Yet, surely cer-
tain representations can be profoundly counterproductive. The US
experience in Vietnam is a case in point. The type of "enframing" of
Egypt that Mitchell describes can also be held to be corrosive of im-
perial interests. Indeed, Mitchell admits as much by pointing to the
inevitable resistance that takes place. In other words, rather than
being simply a contribution to domination, representations often can
be viewed as sources of weakness. A particular representational
framework can run counter to perceived interests. Knowledge can be
based on quite irrational or misguided premises; Bhabha often re-
minds us that coloniaIism was shot through with fantasy and desire.
The assumptions of Western reason and progress, often taken to be
the discursive tools of domination of the South, can prove to be dys-
functional.
The issue also arises of how one escapes the type of representa-
tional power that produces "orientalism" in the first place. What
strategies are available to the Third World? Given that representation
is tied to information and communication, and given the obviously
unequal access to technology, it is difficult to envisage how the Third
World might go about implementing a new representational regime.
One recalls the almost forgotten push for a new information order in
the 1970s as recognition of the very real material considerations in-
volved here. It begs the question of whether a counternarrative, typi-

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 Phillip Darby and A. 1. Paolini 389

fled by postcolonialism, is sufficient in itself to refashion asymmetri-

cal relations of power. This brings to the fore other questions con-
cerning resistance. What is the exact relationship between resistance
and domination? The two are seen to coexist in postcolonialism. Yet
the significance of the resistance outlined is questionable, given the
obvious persistence of Western hegemony. In other words, is resis-
tance simply appropriated?
This dilemma can be illustrated with reference to the interesting
work undertaken by James Scott on the "weapons of the weak." The
unavoidable conclusion drawn from the various techniques of "hid-
den" resistance lauded by Scott (foot-dragging, rumor, folktales) is
that they end up only marginally affecting relations of dominance."
Overall, one is left with the impression that postcolonialism exagger-
ates both Western dominance and Third World resistance. In the case
of the former, the irony of the representational focus is that, as in in-
ternational relations, power is taken to possess a certain coherence
and logic in the way it is able to effortlessly dominate the Third
World. In the latter, it is not clear how effective resistance actually is.
Our second category of difference flows from the relationships of
the two discourses to modernity. In outline, internationpl relations is
the dutiful child of modernity whereas postcolonialism is in large
part a revolt against it. It must be said that the idea of modernity, and
even more the formulation increasingly favored to catch its political
operationalization-"the modernity project"-is understood in a
very expansive fashion. Nevertheless, for all its analytical looseness, it
brings to our attention the breadth of the processes of thought
spawned by the European Enlightment, which were taken to be uni-
versal and thereby escaped questioning. As a result, our awareness is
enhanced by the cultural specificity of many Western articles of faith
and by their rootedness in a particular moment of time.
The exposure of the relativity and contestability of so much estab
lished thought is of major potential significance to both international
relations and postcolonialism. Indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration
to claim that there are few issues in either discourse that are beyond
modernity's problematizing reach. It is our contention, however, that
neither discourse has faced up to the challenges involved. In ways re-
flective of their respective disciplinary predisposition, each has re-
sponded to modernity according to its own lights: international
relations by ignoring it, and postcolonialism by turning it to the pur-
poses of resistance. Let us consider each discourse in turn, noting its
general orientation to modernity and then commenting on the im-

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390 Bridging International Relations and Postcolonialism

plications of modernity for two issues of particular relevance to the

future of the Third World, the nation-state and development. .
Despite the critiques of its postmodernist wing, international rela-
tions as a whole has been little disturbed by the wash from the debate
about modernity. That the mainstream scarcely feels it necessary to
respond to postmodernist criticisms is testament enough to the con-
tinuing sustenance provided by the discipline's intellectual inheri-
tance. Although there exists disagreement about what should be
done, it would be difficult to deny that in many important respects
the discipline was shaped by the interests and ideals of the
Enlightment, and that ever since it has been deeply involved in the
global elaboration of Western reason and modernity. Nor is there
likely to be much dissent from the proposition that modernity is
deeply implicated in the nation-state and development projects. John
Ruggie has demonstrated how the idea of the nation-state, tied as it
is to an exclusive form of territoriality, was a construct of European
thought in the space-time frame initiated by the Renaissance and that
it represented a break with what went before or existed elsewhere."
Development did not fully emerge until the nineteenth century, and
it drew on the doctrine of progress. Shaped within the crucible of im-
perial trusteeship and internationalized by the mandate system of the
League of Nations, it did not fully flower in international relations
until after World War I1 with the Marshall Plan and the Point Four
Program.
It is possible that the contemporary processes working toward the
fragmentation of states and the problems associated with revisioning
the European Community will force rethinking within international
relations about the nation-state in the context of modernity. As yet,
however, the process has barely begun. There is even less likelihood
that, within the discipline, development will be prised from its mod-
ernist anchorings. The pattern is now well established that the more
imaginative critiques and reorientations of development thinking
take place in development studies, and there is no reason to expect
that the center of gravity of the development debate will shift back to
conventional international relations,
In a number of basic respects, postcolonialism is a discourse about
moderhity critically received. Modernity is revealed as one of the
faces shown by European imperialism and its successors, neocolo-
nialism and globalization. Its disabling effects are presented as a ra-
tionale for Third World doctrines of resistance. In varying degrees, it
underpins the case for the retrieval of traditional culture and the al-
lure of precolonial values. From the early days when postcolonialism

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 Phillip Darby and A. J. Paolini 391

was the edited voice of Third World fiction, the threat posed by the
modern to national autonomy and the sense of self-worth led writers
to challenge its appropriateness to Afro-Asia, or at least to emphasize
its costs. Later, when postcolonialism came to draw heavily on
European critical thought, a new note of negativity was inherited
from postmodernism. Thus, throughout time, postcolonialism's main
thrust has been deeply skeptical about modernity and, for the most
part, oppositional to it.
Yet postcolonialism is not immune from the needs of contempo-
rary life. The idea of the modern has an attraction as well as a re-
pugnance. It holds out the promise of material betterment; it still
hints at futures liberated from the oppressions of the past. Ashis
Nandy captures something of this dilemma when he writes of the
love-hate, identification-counteridentificationdynamic at the heart
of India's mediation of the West and modernity.MNandy argues for
the impossibility of rejecting the effects of three hundred years of
colonialism: T h e absolute rejection of the West is also the rejection
of the basic configuration of the Indian traditions."" The self cannot
be rigidly defined or separated from the "nonself." This, according to
Nandy, is part of India's postcolonial "strategy for ~urviyal."~~
The result of such ambivalence is often a nominal endorsement of
the idea of the modern, at least in relation to economic development,
but an insistence that it not be a Western version, that it grow from
indigenous roots. A character in B. Kojo Laing's Search, Sweet Country
puts it this way: "Let's have a little machine life, yes; but I hate the
type that we see in other land^."'^ In this novel the author wrestles
with how the modern might coexist with the traditional, but more
usually, both in postcolonial fiction and theory, having made a ges-
ture toward the modern the writer returns to an oppositional stance.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o's recent fiction illustrates the pattern clearly. In
Mutiguri, for example, there is no serious attempt to envisage the
place of the modern in the new Kenya; nor is there any clear distinc-
tion between Westernization and modernization.50
When we turn to postcolonialism and the nation-state, it is neces-
sary to distinguish between state and nation and to recogize that the
discourse has more to say about the latter than the former. In terms
of its general orientation and political bearing, postcolonialism's re-
lationship to the state is adversarial. The modern state is an alien con-
struct imposed upon Asia and Africa and therefore to be resisted in
the interest of making alternative futures possible. This is the thrust
of much recent postcolonial theory. But the discourse is less clear-cut
than this would suggest. Consider, for example, the strategy of a p

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392 Bridging lnternational Relations and Postcolonialism

propriation, which implies that the state can be redirected to new

purposes. As far as the nation is concerned, postcolonialism reinvig-
orates the category in the hope that it can serve as a vehicle for the
recovery of national identity and the articulation of a new politics. At
least potentially, the nation is positioned in opposition to both
modernity and the state as it now exists, but the ramifications of such
thinking remain to be worked through and there are dissenting
voices. In contrast to international relations, then, postcolonialism
acknowledges no over-arching category that brings together the gov-
ernment unit with the sense of national being, and by implication it
is hostile to the very idea. In this respect, therefore, postcolonialism
implicitly challenges one of the fundamental tenets of international
relations.
This brings us to the third significant area of difference between
the two discourses, that of disciplinary politics. Essentially what we
are concerned with here is the question of political leaning and the
issue of emotional commitment. It is our contention that in both re-
spects the two discourses are at opposite poles; international rela-
tions constitutes part of the rearguard of the old formations of
knowledge whereas postcolonialism is representative of the new. It is
instructive to compare the starting points of the two discourses in this
respect. International relations begins at the center in several senses.
Born in Europe, it crossed the Atlantic after World War 11, and was
then extended to the South, but with remarkably little modification
in light of the different circumstances it encountered. The concern
throughout was with the center with the great powers, the gIobaI bal-
ance, and the framework of international order. This was written into
both the League of Nations and the United Nations and it permeates
almost every aspect of realist thought. Hence international relations
was and is the discourse of those who hold power. Its development
was to a very large extent tied to where the major decisions were
taken, both in terms of states (the United States after World War 11)
and in terms of areas of specialized attention (strategic studies, deci-
sionmaking, and the study of great powers). The paradigms of the
center thus became the staple of the periphery. Models of deterrence
derived from the superpower conflict worked this way downward in
the hierarchy of conflict. Morgen thau's classic text was widely trans-
lated and repeatedly reissued, and still today structures teaching in
the discipline throughout much of the Third World.
A. P. Thornton once wrote that "power is neither used nor wit-
nessed without em~tion."~' To all intents and purposes, international
relations proceeds on the opposite tack. In particular, there is the

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 Phillip Darby and A. J. Paolini 393

long-standing attempt of the mainstream to divorce values and moral-

ity from the warp and weave of the discipline. This reached its most
extreme form in Morgenthau's enunciation of the science of inter-
national politics. Although not consciously articulated, a similar cast
of mind informs much of the scholarly work in the field, especially in
strategic studies. Yet for all the emphasis on political detachment-
on the need to keep the ground rules free of partisan contamina-
tion-the discipline privileges the dominant by tying together the
interests of great powers and the stability of the system. Hedley Bull
may well be right that there can be no justice without order, but order
as it has traditionally been conceived in international politics is of a
very particular kind.
Postcolonialism made its entry into academe as the voice of the dis-
possessed. It was the discourse of those who had been stripped of
their authority, culture, and history. Hence the first objective was self-
recovery. Over time, this led to a widening concern because the self
could not be tackled in isolation: it was necessary to move out and
challenge the center. Resistance thus became the central theme in
the treatment of Third World literatures, and various ancillary no-
tions such as subversion and appropriation took their plqce alongside
it. The fictional texts elevated to the canon were mostly selected on
the basis of their oppositional stance. Subaltern studies followed a
broadly similar trajectory with its concern to recover Indian resis-
tance and in the process to marginalize Europe, with the difference
that its objects were set out in declaratory fashion at the outset. In
postcolonialism's most recent formulation there has been a rather
different privileging of the experience of the marginalized. In turn-
ing to the testimony of those who have been displaced, exiled, and
subjugated, there is the expectation that we will "learn our most en-
during lessons for living and thinking."5*The very experience of re-
jection thus becomes an enabling one, and the lessons it teaches are
relevant not simply to the dispossessed but to the possessed as well.
There is, however, a problem when we attempt to relate the dis-
course back to the North-South conflict and especially to the situa-
tion of the South. The oppositional stance to the centrality of the
West does not appear to have much purchase on the structures of di-
vision between North and South. Moreover, there is a feeling that
postcolonialism's concerns relate more to current debates within
Western academe than to the situation of the Third World dispos-
sessed. Two lines of thought offer some elaboration and explanation.
First, postcolonialism is best understood as a new political sensibility
and as such it is not readily translated into a program for North-South

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394 Bridging International Relations and Postcolonialism

action. The problem is compounded by the rejection of established

boundaries and the lack of an agreed agenda. It is of the nature of
the discourse that the essay is favored over the full-length study and
that the points at issue are set by the process of contestation. Second,
postcolonialism is able to hold high the torch of radicalism precisely
because it distances itself from mainstream economic and political
material. If account were taken of work done in the old humanities,
postcolonialism's radical edge might not have the same sharpness,
but the discourse would bear more directly on the problems of the
Third World.
There is, however, another view, and by extension it bears on the
whoIe question of the relationship between postcolonialism and in-
ternational relations. What we have drawn attention to in terms of
postcolonialism's easy radicalism, its ostensible disregard of the struc-
tural determinants of North-South relations, and even its seeming
distance from the material aspirations of Afro-Asian peoples, are
perhaps manifestations of the nature of the discourse itself. Post-
colonialism provokes and challenges precisely because it is not held
back by the constraints of disciplinary orthodoxy. It has been the
fundamental contention of this paper that there should be an en-
gagement between postcolonialism and international relations; that
each approach would benefit from being situated in relation to the
other; that the opening up of differences would spark rethinking and
perhaps suggest new avenues of enquiry.
This does not mean, however, that postcolonialism and interna-
tional relations should be approached in the same manner or be ex-
pected to yield the same kind of contribution, Dialogue should
proceed on terms that acknowledge that the two have different
strengths that are intrinsic to their intellectual formations. In the
case of postcolonialism this would involve recognition that its imagi-
native and critical capacities are tied to its free-floating character,
The challenge it presents to international relations is not only about
its neglect of the Third World and about the way its construction of
international politics distorts thinking about the Third World, but to
the very epistemological basis of the discipline and its implication in
a global design to serve Western interests. This is a challenge that
needs to be advanced and debated.
But if postcolonialism is conceded a more ecumenical status, in
programmatic terms it cannot stand alone. That is to say, postcolo-
nialism cannot of itself be the principal repository of scholarly un-
derstanding of the North-South relationship and the architect of
Third World futures. Here international relations has a leavening

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 Phillip Darby and A. I. Paolini 395

role to play, and any notion that it should be left to its traditional con-
cerns and its established ways of thinking needs to be resisted.
Whatever its inadequacies, international relations grasps many of the
obvious levers of power, and it acknowledges some of the basic im-
pediments to the processes of global change.

Notes

1. A.F. Davies, "Political and Literary Criticism4ome Resemblances,"

MelbourneJournal of Politics 1 (1968-69), p. 19.
2. Mark Hoffman, "Restructuring, Reconstruction, Reinscription,
Rearticulation: Four Voices in Critical International Theory," Milhnium:
Jozlrnal of International Studies 20 no. 2 (Summer 1991), p. 169.
3. Yosef Lapid, T h e Third Debate: On the Prospects of International
Theory in a Post-positivist Era," International Studies Quarterly 33 no. 3,
(September 1989), pp. 236-237.
4. John McClure and Aamir Mufti, %troduction," Social Text 31/32
(1992), p. 3.
5. Wole Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the A h c a n World (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976). p. xi.
6. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffen, eds., T p Empire Writes
Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literatures (New York and London:
Rutledge, 1989).
7. Benita Parry, "Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse,"
Oxford Literary Review, 9, nos. 1-2 (1987), pp. 27-59.
8. In a recent interview, Said makes clear that he was influenced by the
first part of Foucault's Discipline and Punish, but that aside from this, Yound
.
very little in his work . . to help in resisting the kinds of administrative and
disciplinary pressures that he described so well in the first part. So I com-
pletely lost interest in his work. The later stuff on the subject I just found very
weak, and to my way of thinking, uninteresting." Gramsci looms larger in
Said's thinking on power, indicating a more traditionally Marxist influence
rather than a decidedly poststructural one. See Edward Said, Radical
Philosophy 63 (Spring 1993), p. 25.
9. Ibid., p. 28.
10. Edward Said, "Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's
Interlocutors," Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter 1990), p. 219.
11. Edward Said, "Intellectuals in the Post-Colonial World," Salmagundi,
nos. 70-71 (Spring-Summer 1986), p. 55.
12. Arun P. Mukherjee, T h e Exclusions of Postcolonial Theory and Mulk
Raj Anand's Untouchable: A Case Study," Ariel22, RO. 3 (July 1991), p. 29.
13. Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Invitation to a Dialogue," in Ranajit Guha, ed.,
Subaltern Studies N (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985),.p. 376.
14. Ranajit Guha, "Dominance Without Hegemony and its Historiography,"
in Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies VT (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1989), p. 299.

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 396 Bridging International Relations and Postcolonialism

15. Homi K, Bhabha, “SignsTaken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence

and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817,” Critical Inquiry 12
(Autumn 1985), p. 152.
16. Ibid., p, 153.
17. Gayatri C. Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,”
in Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies 1.7 (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1989), p. 5.
18. Ashcroft, Criffiths, and Tiffen, note 6, pp. 145-154.
19. Ibid., p. 155.
20. Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, eds., The Expansion of International
Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
21. From “An Interview with Chinua Achebe,” Times Literary Supplement,
Feb. 26, 1982, p. 209.
22. For example, many, although certainly not all, of its themes were antic-
ipated in a discussion between Arnold Toynbee and Raghavan Iyer during a
UNESCO radio program in April 1959, reproduced in Raghavan Iyer, ed.. The
Glass Curtain Between Asia and Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965),
pp. 329-349.
23. Edward Said, Onentalism (New York Pantheon, 1978).
24. Said, note 8, p. 23.
25. Said, note 23, p. 291.
26. James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro, eds., Znternational/Zntertextual
Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington
Books, 1989).
27. R. B. J. Walker ”East Wind, West Wind: Civilizations, Hegemonies, and
World Orders,” in R. B. J. Walker, ed., Culture, Ideology and World Order
(Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1984). p. 17.
28. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society
(London: Fontana, 1976).
29. Ibid., pp. 77-80.
30. This point has been made by Jongsuk Chay in the preface of his edited
Culture and International Relations (New York Praeger, 1990), p. xi. In that
book, R. B. J. Walker argues similarly: “No doubt those who like their concepts
to be precisely and operationally defined may find culture to be frustratingly
vague and tendentious. They are likely to be perplexed by the variety of mean-
ings given to it.” R. B. J. Walker, “The Concept of Culture in the Theory of
’ International Relations,” in Jongsuk Chay, ed., Culture and International
Relations (New York Praeger, 1990), p. 7.
31. Bull and Watson, note 20.
32. Aside from the writers covered in this paper, Walker has identified oth-
ers who have attempted to treat culture as a serious aspect of international re-
lations: F. S. C. Northop, Adda Bozeman’s work on cultural difference in
history, Hedley Bull and R J. Vincent on the international system as a form of
political “community”with shared values and culture, and Richard Falk and
other normative world order theorists. Yet, with the exception of Bozeman
and Northop, whose focus is historical, most of these treat culture largely as
an adjunct to their broader concerns.
33. Ali A. Mazrui, Cultural Forces in Wurld Politics (London: Heinemann,
1990), p. 8.
34. Ibid.. p. 250.

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 Phillip Darby and A. I. Paolini 397

35. Peter Worsley, The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1984).
36. Ibid., p. 58.
37. Immanuel Wallerstein, "Culture as the Ideological Battleground of the
Modern World-System," in Mike Featherstone, ed., Global Culture: Nationalism,
Globalization and M o h n i t y (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990), p. 39.
38. R. B. J. Walker, "Culture, Discourse, Insecurity," Alternatives 11, no. 4
(October 1986), p. 495.
39. Walker, note 30, p. 8.
40. AIi A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Afncana (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press,1967), chap. 8.
41. Timothy Mitchell, Colonking Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), p. 33.
42. Ibid., pp. 167-168, 171.
43. Ibid., p. 171.
44. SeeJames C. Scott, Weapons ofthe Weak:Everyday Forms of Resistance (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985); and James C. Scott, Domination
and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transrripts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1990).
45. John Gerard Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing
Modernity in International Relations," International Organization 47, no. 1
(Winter 1993), pp. 139-174.
46. Ashis Nandy, T h e Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recover9 of Self Under
Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 87. I
47. Ibid., p. 75.
48. Ibid., p. 107.
49. B. Kojo Laing, Search Sweet Country (London: Heinemann, 1986), p.
188.
50. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, M a t i g a ~(Oxford: Heinemann, 1987).
51. A. P. Thornton, The Impm'al Idea and Its Enemies (London: Macmillan,
1966; first published 1959), p. xiv.
52. Homi K. Bhabha, "Freedom's Basis in the Indeterminate," October 61
(Summer 1992), p. 47.

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