SOAS Research Online

Abstract

In this chapter, we introduce postcolonialism as a recent and increasingly influential set of positions and perspectives within the wider discipline of International Relations, and sketch its implications for security studies. We begin with postcolonialism’s genealogies, tracing its emergence in a set of transnational debates about the mutually constitutive relations between knowledge and imperialism. The chapter then lays out the standard account of world history as organized around Westphalian sovereignty which informs security studies and shows how postcolonialism puts it in question, forcing us to reconceive of the international as the context within which security is defined, practised, and studied. Third, we put postcolonialism to work and discuss what it might mean to decolonize security studies. In a short conclusion, we return to the question of the tense and contested relations between security studies and postcolonialism itself.