Political Science Seminar: Z. Gülşah Çapan (Bilgi University)

Sabancı University
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

POLITICAL SCIENCE SEMINAR SERIES

EUROCENTRISM AND CONNECTED HISTORIES OF THE INTERNATIONAL

Zeynep Gülşah Çapan
(Bilgi University)

April 12, 2017, Wednesday

12:30  FASS 2023

Abstract: The presentation will focus on the problem of Eurocentrism within International Relations (IR) and how to overcome it. Eurocentrism has been problematized in IR for some time and the presentation will first cover a history of the way in which Eurocentrism has been understood in the discipline, and explain why despite receiving increasing attention the issue of Eurocentrism persists. The second part of the presentation will argue that Eurocentrism needs to be approached as a system of knowledge that bifurcates our notions of the ‘international’. That bifurcation results in writing IR from the ‘visible’ side and relegating everything else to ‘invisible’ side. The third part of the presentation will focus upon the concept of ‘connected histories’ as a way to write international relations from the ‘invisible’ side of the ‘abyssal line’. Strategies of writing ‘connected histories of the international’ will be demonstrated through a discussion of the Haitian Revolution and how it could be understood as an example that challenges the traditional assumptions of where sources of moral and political progress are located in the narratives of IR.