The moral aporia of race in international relations
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117819842275 |
| Author | Cecelia Lynch |
| Subject Matter | Part Two: Norms and Process |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117819842275
International Relations
2019, Vol. 33(2) 267 –285
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117819842275
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The moral aporia of race in
international relations
Cecelia Lynch
University of California, Irvine
Abstract
Drawing on recent scholarship on race, post-colonialism, and ethics in the field of international
relations, I return to the ‘first debate’ in the field regarding realism versus liberalism to highlight
how racialized international political practices a century ago shaped theoretical assumptions,
deferrals, and absences in ways that continued to resonate throughout the century. In reviewing
several prominent periods of the past 100 years, I argue that (a) a powerful, ongoing moral aporia
regarding race has marked the practice of international politics and the study of international
relations over the century, despite important challenges and (b) it is critically important for the
field as a whole to confront both the aporia and these challenges to understand its own moral
precarity and to dent ongoing racialized injustices.
Keywords
aporia, colonialism, international politics, international relations, morality, race, racism
Introduction: the aporia of (hidden) conviction1
My simple task in this contribution is to address and analyze morality in international
relations (IR) over the past 100 years. I say ‘simple’, because the review process has
poked a number of conceptual bears that each comprise layers and layers of assumptions
about theories of international relations and practices of international politics (IP).
Thoroughly investigating processes of socialization and resocialization in the field or
discipline, and also providing openings to potentially new ontologies cannot be tackled
in a single article, especially one that, according to the editors’ instructions, should make
‘big statements about critical themes’.
Thus, I begin with a return, to what Yosef Lapid famously labeled the ‘first debate’2
of 100 years ago, to ground my argument that the practice of IP has not fully grasped its
own moral aporia regarding race, racialized conquest, and inequality, nor have the theo-
ries that arose in close companionship to this practice. I employ ‘international politics’ or
Corresponding author:
Cecelia Lynch, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, 92697, CA, USA.
Email: clynch@uci.edu
842275IRE0010.1177/0047117819842275International RelationsLynch
research-article2019
Article
268 International Relations 33(2)
IP to refer to practice, including policy, and ‘international relations’ or IR to refer to
scholarship in the field. Regarding both, my focus is on IP and IR as practiced by actors
and scholars in major powers of the global north, or west, not because they represent the
sum total of either theory or practice, but because they have generally defined both for
readers in numerous IR journals, including this one. I understand international political
practice and international relations scholarship to be tightly interconnected, with scholar-
ship mostly reacting to but also occasionally shaping practice. Moreover, over time theo-
rists and practitioners have sometimes overlapped or changed places in government, the
private sector, foundations, and non-profits. As a result, moral issues that implicate prac-
tice cannot exclude scholarship, and vice versa.
This ‘first debate’, regarding realism versus idealism/utopianism, brought differing
views about morality in IP and IR to the forefront. This debate continues to shape theory
and practice in the present, even though it oversimplified numerous and complex issues.3
It also took place during a peak period of European and North American colonialism,
that is, the point at which colonialism in much of the world was consolidated while anti-
colonial movements and independence struggles were gaining steam. Most self-described
realists favored maintaining their respective imperial statuses, although liberals inscribed
racialized hierarchies by establishing ‘mandates’ through the League of Nations for non-
white peoples. Although this period was also one of full-fledged anti-imperialist senti-
ment, self-described ‘progressives’ in the great powers still frequently divided along
racialized lines, and even early feminist thinkers demonstrated an equivocal stance vis-
à-vis race.4 As the century continued, theorizing about the Cold War and the virtues of
capitalism versus communism became predominant. Far from resolving questions of
race, however, this focus relied on developmentalist assumptions that drew on previous
racialized categories without resolving their contradictions, arguably overshadowing
theorizing about the implications of massive decolonization around the world from the
1940s into the 1970s and beyond. Hence, the excavation of racialized assumptions in
theory and practice was deferred. During the post-Cold War period, much of the attention
to conflict and poverty re-racialized inequality by promoting a form of liberal humani-
tarianism that critics charge with enacting a ‘white saviour complex’.5 In the post-
9/11/2001 era, racialization has become partially refocused to bring Orientalist
stereotypes (once again) center-stage as a politics of fear, epitomized by the Islamophobia
engendered by the war on terror.
The idea of morality encompasses an articulation of ‘right’ (vs. wrong) action, and a
conceptualization of the kind of agent who engages in it. As Kimberly Hutchings points
out, concepts of ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’ are often used interchangeably, and form part of
‘the broad category of the “normative,” encompassing not only the rights and wrongs of
interactions between individuals and collectives but also the structures that enable and
constrain action’.6 The concept of aporia indicates a contradiction that is irresolvable. A
moral aporia regarding race begs the question of whether, and if so why and how, ideas
about morality in IP and IR contain racialized contradictions that become impossible to
resolve, at least in the contexts of extant frameworks.7 I do not assert that questions of
race and racialization present the only moral aporia in IP and IR, and certainly an inter-
sectional analysis of race/gender/class, and so on, is necessary to excavate fully IR and
IP’s moral contradictions.8 But I do assert that racialized constructions and imaginaries
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