Whither the International at the End of IR1

Abstract

IR today has a far more expansive sense of the international than it had prior to the third debate era. Exciting as this is, the broadening has also resulted in a certain narrowing. We are now an IR of camps that form around, and develop particularistic notions of, the international and its key relations. Camps follow particular personages and texts, often interact minimally with one another, and can be unfamiliar with texts and theories that do not concern them; increasingly, the camps even develop their own journals. Establishing zones of professional distinction that operate in camp-ish modes, the camps of IR render intellectual exception-taking the norm. In some ways, this means that IR is at an end: there is little agreement today on what the field is about. Yet IR lives on with a structure that simultaneously lets more in and misses elements of the international that lie in spaces between camps. Drawing on a range of writings on “camps” and “the end,” I characterise IR's structure today and propose a route to an afterlife that juxtaposes fragmented knowledges instead of seeking reconciliation or continuing on with separateness. The idea is to construct IR collages, wherein differences, even seeming incommensurabilities, are put together into compositions that suggest locations and links as yet unexplored.