On February 15, the Institute for European Studies was pleased to host Professor Fisher-Onar, Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Arts in International Studies at the University of San Francisco for a lecture that was attended by 40 people.
Fisher-Onar presented her recent publication entitled "From Trans-Atlantic Order to Afro-Eur-Asian Worlds? Reimagining International Relations as Interlocking Regional Worlds." She discussed the need for a reformist vision of the field of International Relations in light of the observation that we are moving from a liberal, transatlantic world order to an emerging multipolarity. Because of the normative erasure of "non-Western" agencies, the inability to read multipolarity from a multiregional perspective persists. She therefore proposed the idea of "interlocking regional worlds'" as a way to understand emerging regional imaginaries and how they relate to one another.
Fisher-Onar then provided a historical context for her analysis, highlighting the colonial logic inherited by the IR field, born of the Westphalian system of the 17th century. She emphasized the importance of recognizing erased agencies and exploring the many constructs of connectivity through time in "Afro-Eurasia," highlighting the 2020 return of great power politics. Fisher-Onar argued that instead of decolonizing, rising power agencies are trying to establish themselves as the most powerful actors in this "us versus them" framework. She proposed a shift in the unit of analysis from Westphalian states to a plurality of states that occupy regional worlds. Fisher-Onar also argued for a relational and learning thrust to analysis, where the role of the theorist is to be an itinerant translator between regional worlds, rather than the sole authority of knowledge. She asserted that this relational framework can help to better understand and explain the problems that beset us collectively and the processes of transformation that we witness. The exercises of itinerant translation across the interlocking regional worlds of Afro-Eurasia reveal that the globe is a pluriversal space where multiple realities can and have always coexisted. Fisher-Onar's presentation offered a new perspective on international relations and the need to recognize erased agencies and understand emerging regional imaginaries. Her proposal of " interlocking regional worlds" and a relational and learning thrust to analysis is a new approach that could help us to better understand the issues that concern us collectively and the transformative processes we are witnessing.