The Problem of Difference: Using Dynamic Praxis to Reimagine International Relations

Extract

Marcos S. Scauso. Intersectional Decoloniality: Reimagining International Relations and the Problem of Difference. New York: Routledge, 2020. 256 pp., $128 hardback (ISBN: 978-0367369552).

In Intersectional Decoloniality: Reimagining International Relations and the Problem of Difference, Marcos S. Scauso analyzes four distinct discourses that deal with the problem of difference: colonial, anticolonial, poststructuralist, and intersectional decoloniality. He places these disparate—and often directly opposed—discourses in conversation with one another to answer his primary theoretical question: how is it possible to respect differences, while also resisting the differences that cause oppression or perpetrate violence? Scauso grounds that question in the research on “othering” (Said 1978; Todorov 1982) and, in the end, supplies an answer that some may find answer empirically dissatisfying: the problem of difference cannot be solved. Instead, he suggests a way to stay within the dilemma by using the work of Rivera Cusicanqui and the discourses of Indianismo—to construct the field of international relations (IR) as a permanently questioned and dynamic locus of interpretation, discussion, and praxis.