exploration into IR and the language of policy

 Marshall and Gani speak of universities and state that they “call for greater problematizing of the now ubiquitous expectation and pressure within departments and universities for academics to pursue and showcase the ‘impact value’ of their research.”  The key here is to understand that problematizing generally refers to a practice whereby a text or piece of research is deconstructed, decentered, discredited, or found to be inconsistent, or perhaps racist, and in the case of these scholars, Gani and Marshall, imperial and racialized knowledge. Gani and Marshall go on ti understand that something needs to “provide scrutiny on how we as scholars and practitioners decide which matters of world politics merit our attention—and, equally important, how imperial and racialized knowledge orders(,) condition and at times constrain the ways in which we are able to define what the problems of world politics are”  I want to remind you that these two individuals or scholars (Gani and Marshall are referred to as “they,” at times, heretofore) are in the business of “knowledge production,” like many Leftists do these days.  I do not aim to indicate that they are Leftsists, at this point (to me, yet); but we will see what they are, perhaps at the end of my survey of their work. They refer to the synthesizing of contributions made by scholars.  They recognize and understand that there are  “three prominent dynamics can be delineated in the academic–practitioner nexus: the role of academia as a supplier of knowledge for colonial policies; the influence of imperial practice and policy-makers in shaping IR (International Relations) and academic knowledge production; and contestation from academics and/or practitioners against racial hierarchies, and challenges to imperialist status quos.”  They explore all three summarily and remind me of Ibram X. Kendi with their exposition of imperialism and racism. These are valid points that they make about the use of knowledge to push agendas or to show ignorance of the creation of thought that language generates.  I will agree that imperialism and racialization are indeed phenomena that exist, and that they need to be refuted. My deal is that we understand what they are saying and generate our own knowledges based on that understanding. 

 

Gani and Marshall indicate that they have “exposed a long and deep history in which universities, as well as other sites of knowledge production and expertise that draw on academic insights, such as museums and think tanks, have (and had) a close entanglement with state practitioners, supplying the ideas and logic that in many instances were used to justify racist beliefs and colonial policies.”  I wholeheartedly agree that policy is produced under these circumstances, which paves the way for more work in this area including jd ripper’s book. They say that “ideas and patterns of racism, colonialism, and erasure go on to shape, and become operationalized through, policy” and seek to find the delineation “parameters of rational and acceptable debate”  and seek a “grassroots movements for the abolition of colonialism and racism in the West” This is all fine and well, and a good cause, but when it comes to destroying the United States as a “nation” ones better be sure they know what is coming when they do this because socialism and then communism can and probably would result and that would not be a pretty picture. So the erasure and amnesia of certain knowledges is a tightrope walk that should not be done with carelessness.  I may go on to explicate Gani and Marshall’s “second way in which academia has historically fed and continues to feed policy” in future posts.