Introduction: The International as an Object for Thought

Abstract

Whatever the concept of the International might refer to, it seems urgent to re-appropriate it, to interrogate and problematize it, in order to (possibly) re-orient and reconfigure the practices that have constituted the “international” as an abstract space distinct from the national space and supposedly governed by its own rules of functioning. For the most challenging phenomena of our contemporary era seem to establish transversally to the division between the “national” and the “international,” they demand a better diagnostic, which itself calls for more than just reproducing the International. Foucault’s concepts and methods might possibly help in this task even though Foucault himself never directly engaged with the International. In this chapter, the author presents the need for a critical and reflexive knowledge that would constitute the International as an object for thought, in addition to offering brief discussions of the genesis of the book, the problems it seeks to engage, and how the contributions to the volume offer to engage and (re)configure these problems.