Sufferings of a Many-worldly Planet: Decolonizing Harm for Post-Westphalian International Relations

Abstract

International Relations (IR) must face the mirror again due to the realization of a new age termed the Anthropocene. The reflected image is a Westphalian discipline plagued by the billiard balls of states clashing in anarchy. A discipline that is not ready to imagine a many-worldly force consisting of humans and non-humans alike. This article is a step towards gearing IR with ideas essential for survival in the Anthropocene. At the centre of this article is the problem of harm and suffering in IR that the climate crisis has exacerbated. A dilemma has arisen with the Anthropocene. We have three conceptions of humans theorized by Dipesh Chakrabarty: the universalist-Enlightenment human who is the same everywhere; the postcolonial-subaltern human who is divided by caste, class, gender and so on; and the human of the Anthropocene who acts as a planetary geological force, changing its climate and becoming intertwined in its natural history. The registers of the Anthropocene and the post-colonial human clash as the former calls for a joint effort by the human species, whereas the latter sees humans as divided by colonialism and capitalism. Chakrabarty insists on treating all three registers disjunctively. However, this article argues that collective action is necessary; therefore, the contradictions between the registers have to be reconciled. The question stands thus: How can the contradictions be reconciled for the three registers of humans to act together in the wake of the climate crisis? The answer, this article hypothesizes, demands a radically different way of looking at IR and modernity. Instead of reconciliation, there is a need to recognize ‘shared experiences’. The suffering and harm caused by the climate crisis are shared (unequally). However, IR restricts itself to the realist notion of harm. This article decolonizes harm in IR by building on and going beyond Andrew Linklater’s ‘shared frailties and harm principle’. For this purpose, a de-Westphalian lens is applied to IR through the works of L. M. G. Ling and Sudipta Kaviraj. Kaviraj’s outline of revisionist modernity is used to make a case for multiple modernities, that is, to demonstrate that modernity can take many forms. Many modernities give legitimacy to many worlds (human and non-human alike), their epistemologies, cultures and practices. This broad outline that marks a shift from a vertical to a horizontal approach is used to argue for indigenous modernities wherein Enlightenment concepts can be ‘co-produced’ with indigenous values within a broad context of shared frailties and loss. This would be possible by engaging with ‘epistemologies from the South’ in conjunction with concepts identified with the Global North. Such a many-worldly view of the world, this article argues, will pool together different knowledges, giving us a diverse, inclusive and united path to bear the Anthropocene.