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3 See Young, Robert J. C., Postcolonialism. An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001)Google Scholar , and White Mythologies. Writing History and the West, second edition (London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar ; Haddour, Azzedine, Colonial Myths. History and Narrative (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000)Google Scholar , and ‘Remembering Sartre’, an introduction to Jean-Paul Sartre, Colonialism and Neocolonialism, trans. Haddour, Azzedine, Brewer, Steve, and McWilliams, Terry (London and New York: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar ; Ahluwalia, Pal, ‘Out of Africa: Poststructuralism's Colonial Roots’, Postcolonial Studies, 8:2 (2005), pp. 137–154CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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5 See, for example, the skilful analysis on historicity in IR undertaken by Ashley, Richard in ‘Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War’, in Derian, James Der and Shapiro, Michael (eds) International/Intertextual Relations. Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 259–321Google Scholar .

6 I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for prompting me to make this clarification.

7 Chow, Rey, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 54Google Scholar .

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14 For an extended analysis of the poststructuralist/postmodern project in IR, see Sajed, Alina, ‘Late Modernity/Postmodernity’, in Denemark, Robert et al. (eds), The International Studies Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 4787–4805Google Scholar .

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18 Ibid., p. 51, emphasis added.

19 ‘The Post Always Rings Twice’.

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23 See, for example, Ashley, Richard's thought-provoking critique of poststructuralist IR's propensity towards self-estrangement in his ‘The Achievements of Poststructuralism’, in Smith, Steve, Booth, Ken, and Zalewski, Marysia (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 240–253Google Scholar .

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26 The fate of the Algerian Jewry is a peculiar one: after the French conquered Algeria in 1830, the French government granted French citizenship to the Jews in Algeria, in 1870, through the Crémieux decree. This constituted the first rift between the Algerian Jewish community and the Muslim population of Algeria. But the decree was revoked in 1943, by the Vichy government, which implied that a community who had managed to imagine itself as ‘French’ now no longer belonged anywhere.

27 Balibar, Étienne, ‘Algeria, France: One Nation or Two?’, in Copjec, Joan and Sorkin, Michael (eds), Giving Ground: the Politics of Propinquity (London: Verso, 1999), p. 162Google Scholar .

28 Derrida, , Monolingualism, p. 51Google Scholar .

29 Ibid., p. 52.

30 Cixous, , Reveries, p. 24Google Scholar .

31 Ibid., p. 25.

32 Ibid., p. 39.

33 Ibid., p. 64.

34 Cixous, ‘My Algeriance’, p. 153.

35 Ibid., p. 70.

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37 Cixous, ‘My Algeriance’, p. 153.

38 Chow, Rey, Woman and Chinese Modernity. The Politics of Reading Between West and East (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar .

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44 Said, quoted in Young, White Mythologies, p. 2Google Scholar .

45 Woodhull, , Transfigurations, pp. xvi–xviiiGoogle Scholar . For an extended critique of Lyotard's politics, see Woodhull, 's ‘Introduction’ to her Transfigurations of the MaghrebGoogle Scholar .

46 Cixous, , Reveries, p. 81Google Scholar .

47 Cixous, ‘My Algeriance’, pp. 153, 162.

48 For in-depth investigations of the linguistic complexities of the Maghreb, and of the recolonisation projects undertaken by post-independence Maghrebian states with regards to the ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity that constitutes the North African region, see Toumi, Alek, ‘Creolized North Africa: What Do They Really Speak in the Maghreb?’, in Hir, Marie-Pierre Le and Strand, Dana (eds), French Cultural Criticism: Criticism at the Crossroads (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), pp. 69–80Google Scholar ; and also his Maghreb divers (New York: Peter Lang, 2002).

49 Lyotard, ‘The Name of Algeria’, p. 170.

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51 Cixous makes mention of a sort of multilingualism going on in her family, on account of her parents coming from different backgrounds (‘My Algeriance’, p. 168). Yet, she identifies herself as as ‘a book of apocalypses written in a language I don't speak’ and ‘hav[ing] no author’ (Reveries, p. 71, emphasis added).

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53 See, for example, Jabri, Vivienne's ‘Solidarity and Spheres of Culture: The Cosmopolitan and the Postcolonial’, Review of International Studies, 33 (2007), pp. 715–728CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Bleiker, Roland's Aesthetics and World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar , Lisle, Debbie's The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Soguk, Nevzat's ‘Transversal Communication and the Euro-Kurds’, Review of International Studies, 34 (2008), pp. 173–192CrossRefGoogle Scholar , and Constantinou, Costas's States of Political Discourse: Words, Regimes, Seditions (London: Routledge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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55 I signal here an edited volume by Cheah, Pheng and Guerlac, Suzanne, Derrida and the Time of the Political (Duke University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar , which aims to dispel the commonly-held assumption of a disconnect between deconstruction and politics.

56 Chow, , ‘How (the) Inscrutable Chinese Led to Globalized Theory’, PMLA, 116:1 (2001), p. 70Google Scholar .

57 Ibid.

58 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, ‘Translator's Preface’, in Of Grammatology, Derrida, Jacques (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. lxxxiiGoogle Scholar .

59 See Derrida, 's ‘La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines’, in L'Écriture et la différence (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967)Google Scholar .

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64 Ibid., p. xvii. See, for example, George, Jim's Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar , and ‘Realist “Ethics”, International Relations, and Postmodernism: Thinking beyond the Egoism-Anarchy Thematic’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 24:2 (1995), pp. 195–223.

65 Ibid.

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67 Chow, , Writing Diaspora, pp. 10–11Google Scholar .

68 There are IR scholars who have made conscious efforts to combine both perspectives. In this regard, see, among others, Soguk, Nevzat, States and Strangers. Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999)Google Scholar ; Krishna, Sankaran, Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the Question of Nationhood (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999)Google Scholar ; Agathangelou, Anna and Ling, L. H. M., ‘The House of IR’; Ling, L. H. M., Postcolonial International Relations: Conquest and Desire Between Asia and the West (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)Google Scholar ; Shapiro, Michael, Methods and Nations. Cultural Governance and the Indigenous Subject (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar ; Beier, J. Marshall, International Relations in Uncommon Places: Indigeneity, Cosmology, and the Limits of International Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Nyers, Peter, Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency (London and New York: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar ; Bleiker, Roland, ‘Traversing Patagonia: New Writings on Postcolonial International Relations’, Political Theory, 36:2 (2008), pp. 313–320CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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70 I owe this expression to Appiah, Anthony, ‘Is the Post in Postmodernism the Post in Postcolonial?’, Critical Inquiry, 17 (1991), pp. 336–357CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

71 Krishna, Sankaran, ‘The Importance of Being Ironic: A Postcolonial View on Critical International Relations Theory’, Alternatives, 18:3 (1993), p. 416, n. 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

72 See Pal Ahluwalia, ‘Out of Africa’.

73 Ibid., p. 145.

74 Ashley, Richard, ‘The Poverty of Neorealism’, in Keohane, Robert O. (ed.) Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)Google Scholar ; Doty, Roxanne, Anti-Immigrantism in Western Democracies. Statecraft, Desire, and the Politics of Exclusion (London and New York: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar .

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78 See Hoffman, Stanley, ‘An American Social Science: International Relations’, Janus and Minerva: Essays in the Theory and Practice of International Relations (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987)Google Scholar ; and Smith, Steve, ‘The Self-Images of a Discipline: A Genealogy of International Relations Theory’, in Booth, Ken and Smith, Steve (eds) International Relations Theory Today (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. 1–37Google Scholar .

79 The expression ‘subjugated knowledges’ was used by Foucault, Michel in ‘Two Lectures’ in Gordon, Collin (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), pp. 78–108Google Scholar .

80 See Alina Sajed, ‘Late Modernity/Postmodernity’.

81 ‘Living on Borderlines’, p. 279, emphasis added.

82 Chow, Rey's expression in Writing Diaspora, p. 59Google Scholar .

83 My subtitle is inspired by Hall, Stuart's question posed in ‘When Was the “PostColonial”? Thinking at the Limit’, in Chambers, Iain and Curti, Lidia (eds), The PostColonial Question. Common Skies, Divided Horizons (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 242–260Google Scholar .

84 Anti-Immigrantism in Western Democracies. Statecraft, Desire, and the Politics of Exclusion (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 58Google Scholar .

85 Ibid., p. 60.

86 This tension receives an attentive treatment in Balibar, Étienne's ‘Rights of Man’ and ‘Rights of the Citizen’. The Modern Dialectic of Equality and Freedom’, Masses, Classes, Ideas. Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx (London and New York: Routledge, 1994) pp. 39–59Google Scholar .

87 Bhabha, Homi, ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 199–244Google Scholar .

88 Max Silverman quoted in Gafaiti, Hafid, ‘Nationalism, Colonialism, and Ethnic Discourse in the Construction of French Identity’, in Stovall, Tyler and Abbeele, Georges van den (eds), French Civilization and its Discontents. Nationalism, Colonialism, Race (New York: Lexington Books, 2003), p. 209Google Scholar .

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90 Edkins, Jenny, ‘Exposed Singularity’, Journal for Cultural Research, 9:4 (2005), pp. 359–386CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

91 Ibid., p. 362.

92 Ibid., p. 364.

93 Ibid., p. 382, emphasis in original.

94 Ibid., p. 384, emphasis added.

95 Chow, , Writing Diaspora, p. 59Google Scholar .

96 Haddour, , Colonial Myths, p. 159Google Scholar , emphasis added.

97 Hall, Stuart, ‘The Spectacle of the “Other”’, in Hall, Stuart (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage Publications and The Open University, 1997), p. 259Google Scholar .

98 Jenny Edkins does not situate her work within IR and does not consider herself an IR scholar (personal communication). However, I included her in this statement since her work does address certain issues critical for IR, and thus has significant implications for how we think critically about and interrogate the discipline.

99 Hall, ‘The Spectacle of the “Other”’.

100 Ashley, Richard, ‘The Achievements of PostStructuralism’, in Smith, Steve, Booth, Ken and Zalewski, Marysia (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 249Google Scholar .

101 Varadharajan, , Exotic Parodies, p. xviGoogle Scholar .

102 See fn. 75.

103 Chow, , Writing Diaspora, p. 69Google Scholar .

104 There are voices who claim that the poststructuralism associated with deconstruction can be better understood as an offshoot of postcolonial theory. In this regard, see Macey, David, Dictionary of Critical Theory (London: Penguin Reference, 2001), p. 309Google Scholar ; Ahluwalia, Pal, ‘Out of Africa’; Azzedine Haddour, ‘Remembering Sartre’ and ‘The Signifier of the Outside’, Colonial Myths, pp. 155–174Google Scholar .

105 These searing critiques appear in the works of postcolonial and/or Marxist theorists who have been cited earlier in fn. 13. See also, Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar .

106 Appiah, ‘Is the Post in Postmodernism the Post in Postcolonial?’, p. 348.

107 See Stora, Benjamin, La gangrène et l'oubli. La mémoire de la guerre d'Algérie (Paris: La Découverte/Poche, 2007)Google Scholar .

108 Chow, , Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 196Google Scholar .

109 Ibid.