Interview – Deepshikha Shahi
Deepshikha Shahi is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at the O.P. Jindal Global University, India. She is the recipient of the Alexander Von Humboldt Fellowship for experienced researchers, and the Co-chair of the European International Studies Association’s standing section on “Globalising IR”. Her research interests revolve around Global International Relations, practice theory, philosophy of science, pedagogical practices, politics of knowledge-production, and Indian politics. She is the author of Global IR Research Programme: A Futuristic Foundation of ‘One and Many’ (2023, Palgrave Macmillan), Advaita as a Global International Relations Theory (2019, Routledge), Kautilya and Non-Western IR Theory (2018, Palgrave Macmillan), and Understanding Post-9/11 Afghanistan: A Critical Insight into Huntington’s Civilizational Approach (2017, E-International Relations). She is the editor of Sufism: A Theoretical Intervention in Global International Relations (2020, Rowman and Littlefield). Her writings have appeared in the European Journal of International Relations, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, Global Intellectual History, and All Azimuth, among others.
Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?
So far as the possibilities of research innovations in the field of International Relations (IR) are concerned, we are certainly living through exciting times. Since the contemporary world order appears to be ridden with delivery deficits when it comes to dealing with global crisis-situations (as evident from recent performances of the UNSC vis-à-vis the Russia-Ukraine war, or the WHO in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic), the debates about the need to create a new world order are gaining momentum. This, in turn, has added fresh impetus to the ongoing discussions on “worlding”, that is, the academic agenda of drawing insights from Western as well as non-Western philosophies/narratives/cosmovisions/worldviews/actors with a view to fulfill a twofold objective: first, theoretically recognize the existence of the multiple worlds that remain differently defined by diverse peoples scattered across the globe (world-making); and, second, practically prescribe the mechanisms to nurture cooperative relations between these multiple worlds (world-ordering).
For me, what is particularly intriguing about these world-making and world-ordering exercises is the fact that they deviate from the orthodox Kantian Western-centric mannerisms. Going beyond the (neo-)Kantian Western-centric mannerisms of doing IR that maintain an unbridgeable duality (or separation) between science and metaphysics, subject and object, self and other, West and non-West, theory and practice etc., several de-Kantian world-making and world-ordering exercises – especially the ones that subscribe to Global IR – have begun to explore a variety of alternative research trajectories that propagate “non-dualism” or “monism”. The non-dualism of the recent Global IR interventions (as exemplified through Tianxia, Advaita, Sufism, Buddhism, and Ubuntu) has initiated ingenious inquiries of “science-metaphysics conflation”, “subject-object collapse”, “self-other merger”, “West–non-West complementarity”, and “theory-practice interface”, thereby seeking to alter the customary presuppositions of social sciences by way of foregrounding the suppressed knowledge-forms of the multiple worlds that collectively shape global realities.
How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?
The three key realizations that summarize the decisive shifts in the way I understand the world are: (i) realism is not realistic; (ii) myth is real; and (iii) ideal is practical. I was made to believe that the theoretical insights and policy proposals emerging from realism were based on an accurate vision of reality “as it is” (not “as it ought to be”). But systematic studies of numerous lived political experiences over time have confirmed that realism can neither explain nor resolve certain persisting problems. John M. Hobson, Vineet Thakur and Peter Vale narrate how realism fails to offer a historical explanation of the advent of sovereign-states in Europe as it does not take into account the political impact of the exchanges between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, or the interstices of race, empire and science in South Africa. Besides, Seth A. Johnston clarifies how realism is unable to respond to transnational........
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