Decolonial international relations (IR) scholarship has proliferated, yet the colonial nature of knowledge production has persisted. This paradox raises two fundamental questions: how do we understand decolonial theory and what should be expected of it? Epistemological decolonization has taken off in the last three decades (Sen 2023, Lugones 2016, Mignolo 2007, Quijano 2000), though its roots date back over fifty years in non-Western social sciences circles (Ake 1979, wa Thiong’o 1986). Since then, contemporary works have compellingly contended why IR requires decolonial approaches in research (Sharma 2021, Blaney and Tickner 2017, Acharya 2014, Krishna 2012), in the classroom (Sharma 2024, Boer Cueva, Catterson, and Shepard 2023), its role beyond discourse, (Kapoor 2023, Sondarjee and Andrews 2023), importance of differentiating between decentring the Western gaze and decolonializing (Sondarjee 2023, Orbie et al. 2023), and influence of the Eurocentric approach on expectations of knowledge production (Behera 2021). This article departs from these conversations by challenging the fundamental expectations of decolonial theory itself. It argues that today’s decolonization movement in IR requires more material action, not extensive intellectual elaboration. It invites scholars to wrestle with the idea that the discipline does not need another decolonial theory. It does, however, urgently require reparative action in its knowledge production processes and focus on the material dimension.  

International Relations was established as an academic discipline in 1919 following World War I. At the time, political leaders began deploying the idea of “national self‑determination” and enshrining a new world of equal, sovereign states. However, instead of creating an equal international order, international politicking continued to produce similar asymmetrical power structures to the previous era. In parallel, international relations (IR) as an academic subject was established with the same logic, consequently extending the colonial-imperial realm through ”assumptions, concepts, and language… infused with imperial and colonial reasoning” (Saurin 2006, 24; Sen 2023). As a result, decolonial IR understands IR as “…purpose-built to forefront the perspectives of the metropole, while also marginalising the experiences and knowledge of the ‘darker … races’” (Ibid 340, Clapton 2023). This tension has animated recent IR scholarship, particularly (non) Western and (de)colonial, specifically as to whether IR studies world politics or general politics through a Western lens.  

In reaction to the intellectual exclusion, the sub-field of non-Western IR has proliferated and established several principles that critique and offer alternatives to Western (traditional) IR’s epistemological  and ontological foundations: (Viramontes 2022, Hobson 2012, Bilgin 2010). For example, since the Enlightenment, Western philosophy has prized the notion of truth and objectivity (Kurki and Wight 2014). This affinity has permeated into IR and its scientific explorations, shaping the discipline’s positivistic expectations for theory testing, validating findings, and deeming what questions are worthy of inquiry.

Decolonial scholars contend that remaining objective throughout the research process is unattainable; researchers themselves cannot wholly divorce themselves from their own context, epistemological positionality, confirmation bias, or internal points of reference. Black Feminist, Chicana, and non-Global Minority intellectuals articulated early on (Collins 1990, Moraga and Anzaldúa 1983, Dussel 1977) that researchers speak and write from a “particular location in the power structure” (Sharma 2021, Grosfoguel 2011, Castro-Gómez 2005). If researchers cannot be objective, then the traditional IR claim that Western scholarship produces universal knowledge becomes suspect.  

To organize through the researcher’s subjectivity,........

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