This article aims to pursue an assessment of the arguments, promises and potentialities of poststructuralism as a genuine departure from the Idealist-Realist binary which rules IR theory. In so doing, the article seeks to encounter the case for poststructuralism through the linguistic and philosophical precepts poststructuralism builds on. The `moral' and `mimetic' themes involving the poststructuralist debate in recent IR theory are subsequently registered as two sites of encounter. Through a discussion of these two interwoven themes, the article argues that concern for alterity is an imperative dictated by the poststructuralist celebration of mimesis, while indicating the paradoxically anti-mimetic prejudice frequently risked in poststructuralist scholarship.
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