Counterpoints and the Imaginaries Behind Them

Abstract

The central question of this forum has been asked in other contexts and, sadly, will remain with us for the foreseeable future: “What is or can international political sociology be beyond the European and North American traditions in social and political thought?” The answer would be obvious if the terms of the question were not themselves already beholden to centuries-old traditions of social and political thought. These are vested in certain ideas of “politics” associated with sovereignty and “state” as exclusive foundations of order. It does not much matter whether “Man” is held to be natural, an individual, or person. These notions or categories are all imbued with a modern understanding of historical consciousness and agency that is egotistically self-referential, violently exclusionary, and pathologically delusional. Without these features, it would have been easier to study the state, global order, or civil society and to orient analyses toward imaginaries of order, security, justice, and peace that did not defer to national mythologies and representations and to the identities and “spaces” that they produce. I agree with Pinar Bilgin that the identities and phenomena that structure global politics do not conform to our categories (see below). I undertake this assignment therefore with the proviso that I do not intend my categories to be impermeable and stable.