Critical international politics at an impasse: reflexivist, reformist, reactionary, and restitutive post-critique

Abstract

The question of what it means to be a ‘critical’ scholar is heatedly contested, both within academia and without. This ‘state of the field’ article reviews and explores recent debates on this issue within international politics. In particular, it focuses on claims that critical approaches to knowledge are, in their received forms, inadequate and must, therefore, be supplemented, restrained, or otherwise transformed. Four such ‘post-critical’ schools of thought are distinguished: reflexivist, reformist, reactionary, and restitutive. A range of works from fields such as security studies, narrative politics, decolonisation, and political theory are explicated, interrelated, and contextualised. Overall, this review makes the case that, while a concept such as ‘being critical’ cannot and should not be strictly bounded, this category has expanded to the point of seeming almost all-encompassing. The meaning of the category itself is thus brought into question, raising not only narrowly academic questions but also broadly political ones.