International relations theory, perspectives from India

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent voices have challenged the Eurocentric gaze in IR . Western hegemony over the discipline has been accounted due to structural, disciplinary, language, institutional reasons, and the monopoly over knowledge production by the West. The big bangs of IR, 1919 and 1648, have played a role in the construction of a Eurocentric IR discipline which is still presumed to be a ‘White man's burden' which needs to theorize the non-West. Conversations within the IR academe to recalibrate IR are incestuous, and the ‘dialogue' is going on within the ‘conclaves' of the various national schools, rather than across the various ‘silos' within the IR community. A more appropriate ‘lens’ to make the study of IR ' Global' would be to adopt an eclectic model and to strengthen perspectives like postcolonialism, Contrapuntal reading, and Marxist perspectives to bridge the gap between the core and the periphery and reign in the silenced narratives.