The darker people, decolonisation and the making of ‘the international’ : a theoretical enquiry

Abstract

This study concerns itself with the constitution of ‘the International’ and the resistance to it. It contends that international relations (IR) constituted ‘the international’ through coloniality. This is the fundamental problem of ‘the international’. However, resistance against coloniality has largely been premised on western epistemic grounds. For instance, coloniality manifests itself at different historical periods, captured herein as ‘regimes of being’. First was the colonial construction, second the liberal construction, and third is the neoliberal construction of ‘the International’, all of which are resisted based on western epistemic terms. To this extent, coloniality is both continuous and continued. Accordingly, given this cycle, the study contends that the problem of this resistance is that it leaves out the ontological features of coloniality, specifically anti-black racism or the ontological difference. This is what accounts for either the failure or the incorporation of resistance against coloniality. And this is the reason why coloniality has survived throughout different historical periods, albeit in weaker epistemic forms. In other words, coloniality, as a tool of domination, first operates through an ontological frame, and secondly through an epistemic frame. This is because these regimes were made possible through the ‘ontological difference’ created during the expansion of western Europe. The problem of decolonial thought is that it approaches the ontological via the epistemic. Accordingly, the study uses Africana existential thought to centre the ontological in the constitution of ‘the international’. This study uses ‘being’ as the basis of domination/ oppression. It uses the method of conceptual history to show how different regimes of beings were constituted in different historical periods. Therefore, the study blends decolonial theory with African existential thought as the guiding theoretical optic from which this study engages in this discussion.