I have taught IR theory for several years (to put it mildly). While the UBC course calendar description for Political Science 367 (our main upper division theory offering) makes it sound like a straightforward survey course this is possibly a relic of the past, much like dominant approaches to the subject matter. It is no longer feasible or intellectually honest to discuss IR theory as if there were a single, shared definition of theory, or wide consensus on anything that most “healthy” fields could take for granted. I say field, because I refuse to call IR a discipline. Rather it has become a deeply contested site, with at least 8 identifiable theories according to my current course text. But this is misleading, even strange, since at least some of these approaches deny longstanding definitions of theory, and even the theorizability of the subject matter and… oh yeah… the very existence of that subject matter in any conventional sense. Long preoccupied with building, keeping, and losing consensus IR has proven so adept at keeping the dream of a widely shared vocation (as “the discipline of IR”) alive it has actually managed to metabolize approaches that would see it gone. Consider, for example, that some IR textbooks refer to a “postmodern school” despite strong evidence that most members of this perspective deny the existence, utility, and value of foundational enterprises. I’m reminded of the phenomenon of “alternative” music and how it eventually became sort of mainstream, or Herbert Marcuse’s observation that somebody could scream “death to all capitalists” on a street corner one day, only to find the slogan emblazoned and sold on a T-shirt the next. Simply put, there’s something a bit strange about IR theory, and ignoring this reality, or discussing the subject as if it constitutes a cohesive and coherent set of approaches–however much we might wish that were so–cannot do justice to the current state of the field… or is it is fields??