Reflexividad, emancipación y universalismo: cartografías de la teoría de las Relaciones Internacionales

Abstract

Since his post-positivist turn of the Eighties of the 20st Century, both the theory and discipline of International Relations has become more plural and diverse, and its cartography can be drawn from three axes or lines of tension: the first one, in the epistemological realm, has radical rationalism and reflectivism as extreme poles, with social constructivism, as moderate rationalism, and neo-Gramscian critical theory in the middle ground; the second axis, of praxeological-normative nature, is organized around the possibility and desirability of change; the third one address the definition of universality versus diversity, and the possibility or negation of a post-Western universalism. All of them also entail divergences between foundationalism and anti-foundationalism, both in the epistemological and normative realm.