Is there a way beyond positivism? Critical approaches and the epistemological debate in international relations

This paper surveys the epistemological debate in International Relations and reassesses criticisms of positivism. Critical approaches have often failed to specify the problem of positivism. It thus remains unclear whether there is a path beyond it. This article focuses on the poststructuralist contribution to this debate, which comes closer to correctly identifying why positivism reifies international relations. Indeed, poststructuralists have correctly identified how the role of difference in the construction of meaning illustrates why our theories are always independant from the world they supposedly describe, although not arbitrary. The article moves away from deconstruction and argues that recognizing the centrality of difference can instead offer a field on which to conceptualize a new form of analytical and critical rigour.