Abstract
In this article I seek to decolonise the grounding of dialogue within the Europe-modern condition. I do so by working through two authors who are indispensable to the current canon of IR theory, Immanuel Kant and Michel Foucault, and one author who is largely missing from the canon, Édouard Glissant, the Martiniquean poet and literary critique. With regards to Kant and Foucault, I show how within both there exists at the same time a strong endorsement of the policing of ethical inquiry on the grounds of the European-modern and a weaker resistance to it. With regards to Glissant, I focus on his set of essays entitled Caribbean Discourse to show how he strongly endorses a relational pluralising of the grounds of ethical inquiry while at the same time retaining a weaker accommodation to the European-modern. In the course of these discussions I present each author’s assessment of an adequate ethical faculty in the form of a figure: in Kant, the enlightened philosopher; in Foucault, the creative work of art; and in Glissant, the maroon. In the final section I rehearse a dialogue amongst the three figures that opens up the grounds of ethical inquiry to decolonising impulses.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.