View article

Since the late 1980s, international relation (IR) scholarship has been experiencing an interdisciplinary opening and expansion, entailing both the incorporation of non-traditional/post-positivist approaches, and expanding the subject matter of the discipline. IR scholars have found inspirations in particular in French or more broadly contemporary continental philosophy. IR, therefore, is no stranger to the importance and effects of language and discourse, practice and social construction, the workings of emotions and affect, and/or the need to rethink the discipline’s Eurocentric and racist origins. It is therefore surprising that up until recently Lacanian psychoanalysis has remained largely marginalized, perhaps even suppressed, in the various theorizations of IR, that is, both with respect to knowledge production in our discipline and in the analysis of global politics. Why that was the case up until recently we can only …