*Originally published in 2020. Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work.

The discipline of International Relations (IR) comes full circle after completing a centenary. Its first chair was established in 1919 at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. At the end of a century, IR is still grappling with the familiar issues of conflict and instability. The movement for a ‘Global IR’ revolves around deconstructing the big bangs of IR, the myths of 1648 and 1919. A burgeoning literature by revisionist scholars   attempts to debunk the myths of 1648 and 1919, yet the myths persist because   disciplinary IR is constructed and given meaning through the popular course “texts” that persist with these myths.  For example, Baylis and Smith’s “Globalisation of World Politics” and Ken Booth and Steve Smith’s “International Relations Theory”. Using  deconstruction as method  any movement towards a Global IR will have to revolve around a rewriting of IR texts to include perspectives and historical anecdotes from the global South that seek to deconstruct  European exceptionalism and the classical cannons of IR theory. This will also have to entail a cross national dialogue between and within the national ‘Silos’ of IR, whether it is Chinese, Indian or Korean IR. Language as a vehicle to evolve IR to a more democratic and global perspective becomes critical by empowering scholars of IR to develop, give meaning, interpret the discipline and to develop knowledge systems that are more de centred from its Eurocentric core.

In the past few decades there has been a burgeoning critical movement denouncing Western dominance in IR. If there is one area where we see a globalism of the discipline, after the initial calls made by Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan as to ‘why is there no non-western IR theory?’, there is a near consensus among scholars of IR of its Eurocentric vein. Yet, although the discipline’s Eurocentric orientation is widely acknowledged, it is important to keep interrogating it because in theory and praxeological IR we have not been able to plug the loopholes in the core/ periphery divide in IR scholarship. Therefore, it is imperative that newer aspects must be contributed towards the movement for a ‘Global IR’ to solicit a varied response to Eurocentrism than what has already been articulated and acknowledged in IR scholarship. Many times, what may be articulated need not necessarily be acknowledged or accepted in scholarship. Example, although revisionist scholars disparage the genesis of the discipline from the widely accepted Big Bangs of IR 1648 and 1919, in pedagogical sources popular textbooks of IR hardly acknowledge it and persist in anchoring IR’s origins on the Big Bangs of IR. This also underlies the importance of rewriting and rereading texts as a way to decolonise the discipline, the classroom as well as the universities.

Scholarship, both from the West and Non-West, has articulated the need for a more inclusive IR representing the voices from the Global South. A growing critical movement has denounced western monopoly of the IR discipline and the worldwide production of knowledge (Weaver 1998). A recent empirical study has countered this critical literature by citing local factors that have disincentivised the internationalisation of the discipline rather than the ‘presumed’ western dominance.

The construction of the West is not only polemical but also hegemonic, privileging the thinking of the West (self) as against the Non-West (other) in order to rationalize the actions of the west. The historical and cultural aspects of the third world are conspicuously missing in the books of IR and therefore the discipline is viewed by its critics as exclusionary, parochial and Eurocentric. The IR discipline applies western values of the ‘self’ (superiority, civilized and dominant) and thinking on the ‘other’ which is often (inferior, uncivilised and subordinate). Therefore, IR literature noticeably excluded the study of colonialism and imperialism which have had a significant impact in shaping western history

It was claimed that IR originated in the West as a tool in the hands of policy makers to impose peace and conflict prevention. The goal posts of mainstream IR were simply to predict and avoid wars with states as the primary, unitary actor, depersonalised and acting on its own. Political phenomenon was analysed in the Global........

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