Anti-colonial Global Inequality and Justice

On Saturday morning, when I was assembling my thoughts to write another paper for my International relations (IR) class, I felt ambivalent, wary and hesitant. Surprisingly, for a brief moment, I was overwhelmed with the sensation of emancipation. As I consciously began to excavate the surface of my uneasiness, I came across fear. Fear of rejection, of failing, of not confining to (Western) imperial standards of academic writing and scholarship. Standards and practices that have been taught, or should I say imposed over me, for so many years. This fear permanently resides in the collective memory of the ‘Other,’ the backward, the illiterate, the savage, the barbarian, the non-Western, and the non-modern. This is the fear what Kumarakulasingam felt at school every day, a fear of “imminent assault” if we dare go against the ‘norms’ (Inayatullah, 2011; 34). What is worse, this fear is not merely confined to the realm of knowledge; it encompasses and actively shapes our individual and collective lives, our imaginations, our bodies, our histories, our borders, our modern day state and its infrastructure, our culture, and even our civilizations. As I read the paper prompt again, I felt a cool refreshing breeze across my face and adrenaline rush in my veins. A breeze, only a prisoner can feel when he/she steps out of the dense, high walls of prison for the very first time. A rush of blood that heralds beginning of a new life. A new life for self and ‘other’.

The conception of writing an “Alternative IR” has unleashed me –for a brief moment- from the constraints of ‘standard’ norms and practices. I wish to employ this brief moment of freedom in ‘writing’ a response that would exhibit a methodological, ontological, and epistemological in...

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...nd justice,” anti-colonial IR,” and, “politics of postcolonial engagement” entails perpetual struggle against Western imperial project at every front. Struggle against knowledge production, against identity creation, against globalization, and against global injustice. It is, therefore, time to halt ‘free fall,’ open our eyes and realize that we are far from our project. We are still confined in western ways of knowledge production and practices. Despite my best effort to free myself from imperial standards, and norms, I end up writing a Western-styled piece. Maybe, because I do not have any concrete alternative to look to and take guidance from. What we need is our own alternatives. Our own modes of knowledge production, identities, standards and practices that are more humane, sensitive and relevant to us.

Works Cited

Inyatullah, N. Post colonial IR.