A Postcolonial Critique of State Sovereignty in : the contradictory legacy of a ‘West-centric’ discipline

This paper presents a postcolonial critique of state sovereignty as it is understood in ir. It is argued that the colonial relation between Orient and Occident has informed the development and practice of sovereignty. The Orient has been on the losing end of this relationship, as its experiences, trajectories and sociocultural and political life have been reduced to a set of homogeneous deficiencies. The result has been to consign it to a zone of ‘Otherness’, wherein sovereignty has become synonymous with inferiority and difference vis-à-vis the Occident. In demonstrating that ir has been dominated by a Western intellectual tradition that privileges the concept of sovereignty, I will critically question the epistemological privileging of the West, and in particular of Europe, as a source of knowledge regarding state sovereignty and interrogate how the East–West dichotomies—eg civilised–uncivilised, modern–traditional, democratic–undemocratic—that underpin ir studies make the practice of sovereignty a ‘conditional’ virtue for non-Western states, in both theory and practice.