Resisting the denial of coevalness in international relations: Provincializing, perspectivism, border thinking

Abstract

The notions of “international system” and “international society” must respond to the challenge of the encounter with the “rest of the world”. “Colonial encounters” offer ways of exposing what we call, following Johannes Fabian, the “denial of coevalness” of alternative worlds and theories. We do so by turning to three different articulations of and responses to the colonial encounter.