ABSTRACT
IR has, since its inception, been a discipline of exclusions. Wealth and (a certain understanding of) power consistently defined who could speak and for whom they could speak. This means that the daily experiences of millions of people across the world were consistently subsumed under myriad ‘more relevant’ considerations that became the guiding points in a discipline made by and for privileged white men with a concern over sovereignty, national security and economic growth. With some exceptions, issues of race, class and gender became progressively part of the agenda, and as we moved into the 1990s, these voices became organised in recognisable alternative approaches to the mainstream. Having just discussed the merits and flaws of constructivism and poststructuralism (developed as part of those alternatives), what now follows is an overview of three approaches and schools of thought that give voice to the above-mentioned subaltern subjects of IR: critical theory, feminism and postcolonialism.
