Abstract
The aesthetic turn in international relations (IR) has raised important questions about the boundaries of the discipline. This article seeks to tackle the question of (inter)disciplinarity by taking the concepts of world politics, world literature, and world cinema and asking how far they can be investigated within a single intellectual framework. It addresses “world politics” by discussing a range of recent publications which have dealt explicitly with IR's disciplinarity. “World literature” has a specific intellectual history, as a term coined by Goethe in the early 19th century and now undergoing a revival in the context of debates in the fields of comparative literature and postcolonial studies. “World cinema” is of more recent provenance, and is currently becoming a major concern of film studies. While some common threads can be identified in debates around these concepts in different locations, caution is advisable because existing disciplinary demarcations cannot be simply abandoned or easily overcome. In conclusion, the article suggests that IR as a discipline manifests some of the “organized hypocrisy” identified by Stephen Krasner in the norm and practice of sovereignty.
Published Version
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