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The knowledge that has dominated the globe for more than a century first emerged in the early modern period in Europe, and subsequently became globalized through colonialism. Despite the historical and cultural specificity of its origins, modern Western knowledge was thought to have transcended its particularities such that, unlike pre-modern and non-Western knowledges, it was 'universal,' or true for all times and places. Deriving its critical energies principally from postcolonial theory, 'Beyond Reason' breaks new ground to argue that the assumed 'truths' of social scientific reason are products of the specific circumstances of Western modernity, and thus that the social sciences are a parochial form of knowledge spuriously claiming universality.

What can postcolonialism tell us about international relations? What can international relations tell us about postcolonialism? In recent years, postcolonial perspectives and insights have challenged our conventional understanding of international politics. Postcolonial Theory and International Relations is the first book to provide a comprehensive and accessible survey of how postcolonialism radically alters our understanding of international relations. Each chapter is written by a leading international scholar and looks at the core components of international relations – theories, the nation, geopolitics, international law, war, international political economy, sovereignty, religion, nationalism, Empire etc. – through a postcolonial lens. In so doing it provides students with a valuable insight into the challenges that postcolonialism poses to our understanding of global politics.

"Postcolonial theory has had the most impact in disciplines such as literature and, to some degree, history, and perhaps the least impact in the discipline of politics. However, there is growing interest in postcolonial theory within politics, and interest in especially high in the subfield of international relations. This text provides a comprehensive survey of how postoclonial theory shapes our understanding of international relations"--

Modern societies, and the modern knowledge that was seen to be both an emblem and a precipitating cause of their modernity, have long been seen as marking a great historical advance. Modernity, we have been assured, by the social sciences in general and sociology in particular, is not only different from premodernity and contemporary nonmodern societies, these differences are also signs of intellectual, moral and material progress. In recent times, however, there have been a chorus of criticisms of the core presumptions that undergird modern knowledge. Such criticisms are sufficiently widespread and intellectually serious that the superiority and universality of modern western Reason, which could previously be taken for granted, now have to be argued for. Such defences of the universality of modern knowledge invariably draw on Kant and/or Hegel, as in the case of the two contemporary defenders of modern western knowledge, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas, whose arguments this article will outline and evaluate. It argues that neither convincingly shows that there are transhistorical and transcultural standards by which we can uphold the superiority and universality of modern knowledge, and concludes that there are no grounds to cleave to the idea of 'progress'.

In recent times it has been argued that thinking with the concept of 'modernity' entails, or at least makes one prey to, Eurocentrism. Those who are troubled by this have sought to rethink the concept such that one can 'think with' modernity, while avoiding, or even challenging, Eurocentrism. This article surveys some such attempts, before moving on to argue that the question of whether modernity is principally a European phenomenon or not cannot be adequately framed without considering the knowledge within which the question comes to be posed; for the knowledge through which we represent and understand modernity is itself, in its origins, European (and modern), and thus the relations between this knowledge and the 'real' that it purports to characterize, also need to be interrogated. Doing so, the article suggests, complicates the task of understanding modernity in non-Eurocentric terms, and leads to the recognition that the concept of modernity is not simply a means by which we describe, grasp or apprehend a phenomenon external to it, but that it is itself involved in the production of the modern. If this is so, we are (West and non-West) modern, though not in the way that we have hitherto presumed.

A partir del análisis de las críticas a la concepción instrumentalista de la educación y al aprendizaje memorístico de los estudiantes indios desde mediados del siglo xix, el autor reflexiona sobre el vínculo existente entre el conocimiento moderno y la formación de sujetos cognoscentes. El artículo muestra cómo dichos estudiantes, partiendo de sus prácticas educativas tradicionales, rearticularon tanto la manera de adquirir los conocimientos escolares —mediante la memorización acrítica—, como la propia función social de la educación británica —con la única intención de obtener un empleo en la administración colonial—. Evitando interpretaciones convencionales, que suelen malinterpretar las prácticas y saberes indígenas, el autor explica este proceso como la supervivencia de un tipo de subjetividad diferente a los de la modernidad occidental. Lo hace, eso sí, reflexionando sobre la contradicción que implica utilizar el propio concepto de sujeto, moderno por definición, cuando se analizan sociedades con una manera diferente de ser y de conocer.

This article in three parts offers the beginnings of a postcolonial critique of mainstream International Relations (IR). The first part argues that IR, where it has been interested in history at all, has misdescribed the origins and character of the contemporary international order, and that an accurate understanding of the 'expansion of the international system' requires attention to its colonial origins. The second part suggests that IR is deeply Eurocentric, not only in its historical account of the emergence of the modern international order, but also in its account(s) of the nature and functioning of this order. The human sciences are heirs to a tradition of knowledge which defines knowledge as a relation between a cognising, representing subject and an object, such that knowledge is always 'of' something out there, which exists independently of its apprehension. The third part of the article suggests that knowledges serve to constitute that which they purport to merely cognise or represent, and that IR theory serves to naturalise that which is historically produced.