Towards a post-imperial and Global IR?: Revisiting Khatami’s Dialogue among Civilisations

Authors

• Shabnam Holliday, School of Society and Culture
• Edward Wastnidge, The Open University

ORCID

• Shabnam Holliday: 0000-0002-7400-6697

Abstract

This article argues that Dialogue among Civilisations can be put forward as a crucial contribution to debates addressing IR’s Eurocentrism. It highlights the blurring of West/non-West, domestic/international, and imperial/post-imperial bifurcations. This is evident in three ways. First, Dialogue among Civilisations needs to be appreciated in Iran’s wider historical context and its multifaceted intellectual heritages. This demonstrates that the idea of the West as distinctly different from the East is problematic because of engagement between Iran and the so-called West. Second, Khatami’s intellectual endeavours are based on a simultaneous engagement with Western political thought, Islamic philosophy, and the idea of Ancient Iran. Finally, the notion itself reflects an internal dialogue whereby Western civilisation along with Islam and Iran’s pre-Islamic heritages are considered integral to Iranian political culture. Furthermore, it is an aspiration for how post-colonial Muslim societies can engage with colonial power while maintaining a post-colonial authenticity. Our contention is that an in-depth understanding of Iran alongside a revisiting of Khatami’s Dialogue among Civilisations can act as a means of bringing the perspective of the ‘other’ into debates on the international and our epistemological and ontological understanding of the West.

DOI Link

10.1017/s0260210523000621

Publication Date

2023-11-10

Publication Title

Review of International Studies

ISSN

0260-2105

Acceptance Date

2020-10-02

Deposit Date

2023-11-14

Embargo Period

2023-11-16

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the generous support of the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) in the production of this article. This submission was first presented by the authors as a working paper at BIPS’s ‘Iran and the International’ workshop, held at the University of Plymouth, UK, 15–16 September 2021.

Keywords

Iran, Dialogue among Civilizations, Global IR, Civilisation

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

First Page

1

Last Page

20

Recommended Citation

Holliday, S., & Wastnidge, E. (2023) 'Towards a post-imperial and Global IR?: Revisiting Khatami’s Dialogue among Civilisations', Review of International Studies, , pp. 1-20. Available at: 10.1017/s0260210523000621