Killing in the name of: authors and authority in CSS

Abstract

ABSTRACT Thirty-two years after the publication of Ashley and Walker’s (1990) article, ‘Speaking the Language of Exile: Dissident Thought in International Studies’, critical IR still fails to de-centre structures of white, male authority. This essay will consider the charge of patricide (and related imputations) directed at those who have arguably done precisely this – insofar as they have explicitly, and without apology, illuminated the racist underpinnings of Foucauldian and Copenhagen School ontologies and, hence, the very foundations of a great deal of scholarship in Critical Security Studies (CSS). Far from just another barb in a fractious debate, this essay will argue that the charge of patricide deserves our attention. It reveals a great deal about what is at stake – not only in terms of what can be said, what can be heard, and who can speak, but also in terms of what drives these delimitations: our emotional attachments to authors in general and white, male authority structures in particular.