![]() ![]() The retrieval of inheritances as living multifaceted resources-or counter-archives-allows us to deepen and widen our conceptual, theoretical and empirical inquiries into race and racism in IR. Subjection requires the cutting of lines of inheritance and the consistent resetting of energies, ideas, memories and strategies to year zero. Power is inherited and disposed of inter-generationally. Institutionalization requires structures that exceed the energies, reach, lifetimes and memories of individuals. Power is efficacious when it is institutionalized. This interruption has all-at-once intellectual and political implications which might be apprehended by way of the idea of inheritance. The aim of bringing this diverse cohort of scholars together in collective reflection is to interrupt the well-meaning yet ultimately disabling rush to account for race and racism as if it has never been accounted for before in IR. What are the living histories-personal, familial, intellectual, political-of these senior scholars, and how might they inform the present debate? In many ways, this generation of scholars retrieved and relaunched the critique of race and racism in IR that, as a tradition, had largely moved out of IR or otherwise held in abeyance. ![]() Scholars are still alive and active in the field, most of whom undertook graduate school in the 1980s, and who were publishing on race and racism in IR in the 1990s and 2000s. Still, between then and the last decade, there exists a fair span of time. And the answer, we now know, is all the way to the field’s inception at (late 19th century) fin de siècle. ![]() Of course, one might ask how far back does this tradition of critical inquiry go. In fact, the 2010s were marked by an intensification of monographs, conferences, panels and workshops focusing on race and racism which, at least in part, tracked the rise of BLM as well as other movements such as Rhodes Must Fall, Idle No More etc. However, this academic controversy did not erupt out of thin air, but arrived as part of a deep and long-term swell in the critical study of race in IR. It is easy to forget now, but just prior to the eruption of BLM protests and uprisings the field had witnessed an academic controversy over race, when Wæver and Buzan ( 2020) responded emotively and at length to an article published by Howell and Richter-Montpetit ( 2020) asking if securitization theory was racist and answering in the affirmative. Subsequently, Foreign Affairs published a think-piece by historian Keisha Blain ( 2020) on the international dimensions of the US Black freedom struggle. The magazine followed this up with various interventions by other scholars of race and racism in the field (Shilliam 2020 Bhambra et al. Foreign Policy magazine solicited a number of interventions on race and racism in IR, starting with a wonderful state-of-play article by Zvobgo and Loken ( 2020), comprehensively covering research and teaching. IR magazines and journals similarly felt the need to respond. A number of other organizations related to the IR world by policy, research or teaching also took stock-take, publicly or privately. The International Studies Association (ISA 2020) released a rather lukewarm acknowledgment of generic “racism” rather than black lives, and spoke in the language of diversity and inclusion rather than structural injustices. For instance, the British International Studies Association (BISA 2020) provided a thoughtful statement in June, acknowledging that IR has “often deeply implicated in the kind of race work which upholds racist structures and relations”. Academia has not been insulated from the BLM phenomenon neither has the field of International Relations. According to Hakim Adi, an influential historian of Pan-Africanism, the scale and longevity of this, the latest iteration of the movement for black lives, was historically unprecedented (Mohdin and Swann 2020). The summer of 2020 was rocked by Black Lives Matter protests and uprisings, and not only in the US. ![]()
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