Archives Are Part of International Knowledge, Not Merely Happenstance

Abstract

In Beyond Eurocentrism and Anarchy: Memories of International Order and Institutions Siba Grovogui begins with a lyrical form of subversion as he speaks to those in International Relations whom he finds participating in moral justifications of a politics of death. Grovogui's assemblage of the colonial archive points to its operation at multiple registers. It is a site of contested possibility and regenerative change and it belongs to the whole world for a world otherwise. As a response to Grovogui's book, this essay argues that open-ended, multiple engagements can disrupt strategies of bifurcation problematizing asymmetrical zonings and scale making, thereby redefining the nature and terms of science (itself a naturalized modern knowledge formation) without fantasizing a greater sense of knowing or transcendence from ontological specificities and multiplicities.