Kamran Matin

Redeeming the universal: postcolonialism and the inner life of Eurocentrism

This article investigates the limits of postcolonial International Relations’ anti-Eurocentrism through an interrogation of its ambivalent relation with the category of ‘the universal.’ It argues that a decisive defeat of Eurocentrism, within and beyond International Relations, requires the formulation of a non-ethnocentric international social theory which postcolonial approaches, à la poststructuralism, reject on the grounds that it involves the idea of the universal equated with socio-cultural homogeneity. Yet, postcolonial approaches also theorize colonial modernity through deploying forms of methodological internationalism that broach the universal. Through a critical engagement with the wider field of postcolonial theory, and an anatomy of the notion of the universal in Hegel and Trotsky, this article argues that homogeneity is not an intrinsic quality of the concept of the universal, but a result of its specifically internalist mode of construction. Supplanting Eurocentrism therefore requires an explicit theoretical incorporation of the universal. But one which is fundamentally rethought away from being an immanent self-transcendence of the particular, and re-comprehended as a radical amenability to, and constitutiveness of, alterity. This is, the article argues, a defining feature of Trotsky’s idea of uneven and combined development.

Democracy without Capitalism: Retheorizing Iran's Constitutional Revolution

The Constitutional Revolution marks the birth of Iranian modernity. Its political and historical significance can hardly be overstated. It limited the power of Iran’s autocratic monarchy through the establishment of a National Consultative Assembly (majlis) and the introduction of a charter of Fundamental Law (qanun-i asasi), formally abolished quasifiefs (tuyul), precipitated the rise of modern political organization by giving rise to secret and open clubs (anjomans) and accelerated the growth of print media central to the formation of public opinion. Moreover, in its simultaneous opposition to the monarchy’s arbitrary rule and foreign domination, the constitutional movement fashioned a new political discourse centering on the idea of the nation (millat) heralding the birth of nationalism in Iran. Many of these modern achievements were far from perfect and in any case short lived.