Abstract The way in which History has been brought into the field of International Relations has developed along the axis of absenting/presenting. The main aim of this literature has been to make present what has been absented from the narrative of the making of the international. The absence has predominantly been approached as caused either by a lack of knowledge or absence of specific subjects and/or actors from the narrative. The article argues that making more present what was absented within History does not sufficiently engage with the problem of History in terms of how it functions as a set of discourses that regulates our understanding of the past. The article engages with the work of Edouard Glissant as a way to problematize History and how it spatio-temporally fixes the past. His concept of “prophetic visions of the past” is elaborated upon to explore ways to write about the past from elsewhere. The “elsewhere” is not a “place” from which more information can be collected nor a “time” that can be recovered but rather an exploration into lived experiences of the past. The discussion focuses on two of Glissant's novels, namely “The Overseer's Cabin” and ‘The Fourth Century as interventions into how to write the past from elsewhere. The article aims to underline the importance to further interrogate how the past is separated from the present and the future and constructed as being in a sequential order to explore the shadows of the presences in the narratives of the international.
Zeynep Gülşah Çapan (Tue,) studied this question.