TimeSpace of the ‘international’?

Abstract

Abstract The ‘international’, the ‘global’, the ‘world’ have become different ways of characterising what it is IR as a field studies. The semantic change signals two dynamics. Firstly, the assumption being that the international has to be replaced or ‘superseded’ with another concept since either the ‘international’ never did or at present does not reflect the ‘reality’ of what exists out there, which presupposes an exact relationship between the signifier and the signified. The second point following from that is the prescription of a development into the ‘change’ in the words whereby a ‘better’ descriptor has to be assigned that is presented as being not only larger in scale but also more progressive. The article argues that the anxieties with respect to the object of study of the field of IR stem from contradictions inherent in the concept of the international, which are not specific to it but are rooted in the way disciplinary knowledge was established and as such cannot be addressed solely through a replacement/superseding. The first section of the article will discuss how disciplinary knowledge was constructed and organised through Wallerstein’s concept of TimeSpace which explains the formation of disciplinary knowledge along three axes: past/present, West/non-West and autonomous domains. The second section will discuss how the three axes of past/present, West/non-West and autonomous domains worked in creating the contradictions of the international. The third section then focuses specifically on what it means to bring in the ‘global’ to overcome contradictions of the international and how the global continues to reproduce the contradictions of the international.