Postcolonial Encounters in International Relations examines the social and cultural aspects of the political violence that underpinned the French colonial project in the Maghreb, and the multi-layered postcolonial realities that ensued. This book explores the reality of the lives of North African migrants in postcolonial France, with a particular focus on their access to political entitlements such as citizenship and rights. This reality is complicated even further by complex practices of memory undertaken by Franco-Maghrebian intellectuals, who negotiate, in their writings, between the violent memory of the French colonial project in the Maghreb, and the contemporary conundrums of postcolonial migration. The book pursues thus the politics of (post)colonial memory by tracing its representations in literary, political, and visual narratives belonging to various Franco-Maghrebian intellectuals, who see themselves as living and writing between France and the Maghreb. By adopting a postcolonial perspective, a perspective quite marginal in International Relations, the book investigates a different international relations, which emerges via narratives of migration. A postcolonial standpoint is instrumental in understanding the relations between class, gender, and race, which interrogate and reflect more generally on the shared (post)colonial violence between North Africa and France, and on the politics of mediating violence through complex practices of memory.

"Chowdhry and Nair, along with the authors of this volume, make a timely, vital, and deeply necessary intervention in international relations - one that informs theoretically, enriches our knowledge of the world through its narratives, and forces us to confront the differentiated wholeness of our humanity. Readers will want to emulate the skills and sensibilities they offer.." Naeem Inayatullah, Ithaca College This work uses postcolonial theory to examine the implications of race, class and gender relations for the structuring or world politics. It addresses further themes central to postcolonial theory, such as the impact of representation on power relations, the relationship between global capital and power and the space for resistance and agency in the context of global power asymmetries.

This volume uses the concept of ‘norms’ to initiate a long overdue conversation between the constructivist and postcolonial scholarships on how to appraise the ordering processes of international politics. Drawing together insights from a broad range of scholars, it evaluates what it means to theorise international politics from a postcolonial perspective, understood not as a unified body of thought or a new ‘-ism’ for IR, but as a ‘situated perspective’ offering ex-centred, post-Eurocentric sites for practices of situated critique. Through in-depth engagements with the norms constructivist scholarship, the contributors expose the theoretical, epistemological and practical erasures that have been implicitly effected by the uncritical adoption of ‘norms’ as the dominant lens for analysing the ideational dynamics of international politics. They show how these are often the very erasures that sustained the workings of colonisation in the first place, whose uneven power relations are thereby further sustained by the study of international politics. The volume makes the case for shifting from a static analysis of ‘norms’ to a dynamic and deeply historical understanding of the drawing of the initial line between the ‘normal’ and the ‘abnormal’ that served to exclude from focus the 'strange' and the unfamiliar that were necessarily brought into play in the encounters between the West and the rest of the world. A timely intervention, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, international relations theory and postcolonial scholarship.

This book explores narratives produced in the Maghreb in order to illustrate shortcomings of imagination in the discipline of international relations (IR). It focuses on the politics of narrating postcolonial Maghreb through a number of writers, including Abdelkebir Khatibi, Fatema Mernissi, Kateb Yacine and Jacques Derrida, who explicitly embraced the task of (re)imagining their respective societies after colonial independence and subsequent nation-building processes. Narratives are thus considered political acts speaking to the turbulent context in which postcolonial Maghrebian Francophone literature emerges as sites of resistance and contestation. Throughout the chapters, the author promotes an encounter between narratives from the Maghreb and IR and makes a case for the kinds of thinking and writing strategies that could be used to better approach international and global studies.

This volume uses the concept of ‘norms’ to initiate a long overdue conversation between the constructivist and postcolonial scholarships on how to appraise the ordering processes of international politics. Drawing together insights from a broad range of scholars, it evaluates what it means to theorise international politics from a postcolonial perspective, understood not as a unified body of thought or a new ‘-ism’ for IR, but as a ‘situated perspective’ offering ex-centred, post-Eurocentric sites for practices of situated critique. Through in-depth engagements with the norms constructivist scholarship, the contributors expose the theoretical, epistemological and practical erasures that have been implicitly effected by the uncritical adoption of ‘norms’ as the dominant lens for analysing the ideational dynamics of international politics. They show how these are often the very erasures that sustained the workings of colonisation in the first place, whose uneven power relations are thereby further sustained by the study of international politics. The volume makes the case for shifting from a static analysis of ‘norms’ to a dynamic and deeply historical understanding of the drawing of the initial line between the ‘normal’ and the ‘abnormal’ that served to exclude from focus the 'strange' and the unfamiliar that were necessarily brought into play in the encounters between the West and the rest of the world. A timely intervention, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, international relations theory and postcolonial scholarship.

International relations theory has broadened out considerably since the end of the Cold War. Topics and issues once deemed irrelevant to the discipline have been systematically drawn into the debate and great strides have been made in the areas of culture/identity, race, and gender in the discipline. However, despite these major developments over the last two decades, currently there are no comprehensive textbooks that deal with race, gender, and culture in IR from a postcolonial perspective. This textbook fills this important gap. Persaud and Sajed have drawn together an outstanding lineup of scholars, with each chapter illustrating the ways these specific lenses (race, gender, culture) condition or alter our assumptions about world politics. This book: covers a wide range of topics including war, global inequality, postcolonialism, nation/nationalism, indigeneity, sexuality, celebrity humanitarianism, and religion; follows a clear structure, with each chapter situating the topic within IR, reviewing the main approaches and debates surrounding the topic and illustrating the subject matter through case studies; features pedagogical tools and resources in every chapter - boxes to highlight major points; illustrative narratives; and a list of suggested readings. Drawing together prominent scholars in critical International Relations, this work shows why and how race, gender and culture matter and will be essential reading for all students of global politics and International Relations theory.

Engagements with the postcolonial world by International Relations scholars have grown significantly in recent years. The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Politics provides a solid reference point for understanding and analyzing global politics from a perspective sensitive to the multiple legacies of colonial and imperial rule. The Handbook introduces and develops cutting-edge analytical frameworks that draw on Black, decolonial, feminist, indigenous, Marxist and postcolonial thought as well as a multitude of intellectual traditions from across the globe. Alongside empirical issue areas that remain crucial to assessing the impact of European and Western colonialism on global politics, the book introduces new issue areas that have arisen due to the mutating structures of colonial and imperial rule. This vital resource is split into five thematic sections, each featuring a brief, orienting introduction: Points of departure Popular postcolonial imaginaries Struggles over the postcolonial state Struggles over land Alternative global imaginaries Providing both a consolidated understanding of the field as it is, and setting an expansive and dynamic research agenda for the future, this handbook is essential reading for students and scholars of International Relations alike.