`Exorcismus Theoriae':

Abstract

Recently, concerns have been raised among a growing and diverse group of IR theorists that the basic concepts and categories we employ to describe, interpret and explain the world around us are no longer useful or illuminating. There is a sense, in other words, that the discipline's predominant way-of-seeing the world — what some have called a state-centric/billiard-ball bias — has become a kind of ontological blinder. This article addresses the question of how we go about shedding this blinder. The main argument is that the prevailing epistemology that underpins mainstream theorizing in the field (referred to in the article as the spectator theory of knowledge) works against such a liberation. The article puts forward an alternative epistemology, called philosophical holism, and distinguishes its main strands. It then describes a method (called therapeutic redescription) that is derived from the American pragmatic strand of this epistemology, and in particular from the work of the pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. The article argues that this method can help theorists break free from the conceptual blinders that hold them captive. The final section of the article illustrates how this method could be used in conjunction with recent allusions in the field to neo-medievalism or a new medievalism.