Discussion of the Forum: A conversation between Arlene B. Tickner, Andrew Hurrell and Amitav Acharya

The interrogation of diference and the quest for what it might mean to do International Relations diferently have been at the heart of a dissident scholarly agenda within the feld for several decades. Various forms of critique rooted in historiography, sociology of knowledge, and approaches such as feminism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, decolonial theory, Black radical theory and indigenous theory have underscored the myopic nature of IR’s self-narratives, the negative implications of U.S. and Western dominance, and the link between positivism as the sole gauge of scientifc knowledge and epistemic violence. Additionally, the study of scholarship outside the North/West has shed light on the potential mismatch between key concepts, categories and theories, and the lived experiences of world politics outside the core. A shared concern with the marginalization and erasure that are practiced by the discipline has been at the root of most of this work, as have calls for thematic, theoretical and epistemological opening with an eye to making IR more plural, if not more “global”.