© Columbia University Press
The Colonial Signs of International Relations
April, 2012
Cloth, 160 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-70122-8
$24.50
"The Colonial Signs of International Relations is a beautiful, insistent, and searing work of art. Combining almost painfully lyrical prose with irreverent, incisive critique, Himadeep Muppidi exposes the unreflective colonizing impulses, intellectual denials, and ethical lapses that founded the theories and practices of international relations. As he grasps for, and wonders at, the absence of humanity in world politics, he charges us all, and by imploring us to do better while suggesting that we cannot, Muppidi turns the challenge on the reader. Haunted by the vivid images of our failures painted here, we cannot refuse. This is precisely why this book should be widely read." — Janice Bially Mattern, National University of Singapore
"Carefully crafted and beautifully written, this accessible and bracing exercise provides students, scholars, practitioners, and the public with a sophisticated and nuanced explanation and illumination of an international relations that informs the very material and ideological conditions of our everyday lives. This smart, engaging, and challenging work holds up a mirror most of us will be unable to turn away from—no matter how much we may wish." — Eric Selbin, Southwestern University
"Himadeep Muppidi brilliantly and sensitively excavates the complex political sites in which the ideational and material aspects of bodies intersect. His is a refreshingly personal inquiry that invites the reader into a complex and engaging series of conversations about why we need to shift our ideational frameworks from the postcolonial to the anti-colonial. Muppidi challenges the reader to rethink how humanitarian discourses embody suffering as a tactic of silencing, effacement, and recolonization." — Rosemary E. Shinko, Bucknell University
"Himadeep Muppidi’s indictment of international relations as complicit with contemporary colonialism, with imperial violence, is powerful. But it is more than that. Muppidi lets none of us off the hook, including contemporary postcolonial theorists of IR. There is no innocent position, and we are all made to feel our complicity. Each essay explodes our taken-for-granted categories and ethical and emotional responses, bringing the reader to tears and laughter. Chapters insinuate themselves into our very soul, refusing to let go. This book will be used widely, and it deserves to be." — David Blaney, Macalester College