A Postcolonial Critique of Comparative Political Theory

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

This chapter develops a postcolonial critique of comparative political theory by engaging with its theoretical and methodological reflections on its enterprise, including how it anticipates and refutes the postcolonial critique that this chapter offers. While efforts to deparochialize political theory are welcome, the means by which this laudable aim is pursued in comparative political theory undermines the end that is sought. If the idea that there is an activity or practice called “political theory” that has been cultivated for centuries, even millennia, in “the West” is an unhelpful and misleading fiction, to extend it to include the non-West is doubly so. It is to impose a modern, Western category on thinkers, texts, and modes of writing and reflecting that it does not fit and that distorts our understanding of such traditions.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationOxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory
EditorsLeigh Jenco, Murad Idris, Megan Thomas
PublisherOxford University Press
Chapter29
Pages621-637
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 11 Dec 2019

Publication series

NameOxford Handbooks Online

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