In Search of the Unicorn: The Magical, the Imaginary and the Spatio-Temporal Ordering of Knowledge

Abstract

The article argues that the pre-modern/modern divide has a ‘regulative function’ in the narratives of the international and continues to be central in the reproduction of spatio-temporal hierarchies. The interrogation of spatio-temporal hierarchies in International Relations (IR) has predominalty focused on either searching for new origins or making the ‘non-West’ co-present but has not sufficiently interrogated the fixity of the past of Europe. The article will focus on the narrative of the disenchantment of the world and how it structures what is legitimate knowledge, what is past and what is inside and outside through three illustrative examples of different processes of ordering knowledge that fix the past of Europe. The first example will discuss how the division of alchemy and chemistry occurred, and how alchemy was delegitimized. The second example will focus on how the narrative of the magic as ‘past’ and the present as modern, scientific and rational came to be naturalized through the writing of history. The third example will discuss the search for the unicorn which continued long after the assumed disenchantment of Europe. The aim is to further the discussion how these processes order knowledge in a way that not only fixes the past of Europe but also structures how ‘ Europe’ and the ‘past’ is approached in IR.