‘Speech acts’ do not shape reality.

As a result, there is a growing realization that, without tangible alternativity, critical theory risks losing its normative impetus and its ethical and emancipatory commitment, potentially becoming a post-epistemological vocation without politics. Critical knowledge without a dose of alternativity may examine the causes and consequences of subject matters but could fall short of reaching out to the wider policy community and the affected subjects where power relations reside, thus missing the opportunity to transform the structural, discursive, and performative practices that reproduce violence, inequality, and injustice on human and nonhuman ecology. To bridge this epistemological gap, the analysis in the second part of this article examined how alternativity features in peace and conflict studies, a disciplinary field known for adding normative, empirical, and practical substance to critical IR debates. The analysis offered a conceptual scoping of three modes of critique and alternativity in peace and conflict studies. The three modes of critique showed that a conjunction between criticality and alternativity is possible and that it is necessary to renew the practical and emancipatory potential of critical theory in IR. The three modes of alternativity in peace and conflict studies expose a spectrum of different critiques, ranging from those perspectives that disengage completely from conceptual and empirical alternatives, to more pragmatic and prescriptive approaches.

Critique-without-alternative represents one strand, which tends to avoid offering normative and practical alternatives to their critical reflections aimed at maintaining the conservative and radical impetus of critical theory and dissociating from problem-solving and policy-relevant methods of inquiry. This mode of critique is committed to revealing the weaknesses of peacebuilding interventions but refuses to offer any emancipatory and practical alternative on how to build sustainable peace after violent conflict. If the end goal of critical perspectives is achieving emancipation, then critique should not only be directed toward problematizing dominant discourses, practices, and policies but also needs to envisage political and practical alternatives rooted in ideational and material elements. In turn, the lack of an explicit emancipatory agenda limits their social and political impact and unintentionally validates the existing order. In response to this challenge, a new mode of critique has emerged, namely, critique-as-alternative, which exemplifies the optimal approach. Proponents of critique-as-alternative have remained committee to critical analysis, but most importantly, they have taken up the challenge of offering emancipatory knowledge that has practical relevance for vulnerable societies in global politics. Their main flaw, however, has been their inability to elaborate sufficiently their practical and emancipatory alternatives—a flaw that has opened up space for epistemic contestation and policy co-optation. Finally, the third mode of critique—critique-with-alternative—which is embedded in a positivist, problem-solving, and policy-driven logic of inquiry, offers alternatives that seek either to verify existing knowledge and the existing interventionary order or to reject other critical alternatives.

Looking at different modes of critique through the lens of alternativity in IR's subdiscipline of peace and conflict studies has provided interesting insights on the promise and limits of critical IR in shaping global politics. The analysis found that existing modes of critique have failed to develop elaborative emancipatory alternatives at both the conceptual and the practical levels. To infuse critique-with-alternative with emancipatory elements, expand the epistemological scope of critique-without-alternative, and operationalize further the practical solutions offered by this mode of critique, substantial changes are needed. This article has suggested exploring postparadigmatic approaches of inquiry in order to avoid existing epistemological entrapments and limitations, reclaiming the practical relevance of critical theory through pragmatic, reflexive, and situated alternatives—across the conceptual, normative, and empirical spectrums—and promoting decolonized, bottom-up methods of knowledge production. The existing modes of critique require pursuing more nonconflictual and postparadigmatic epistemologies, embracing situated knowledge and reclaiming and expanding its practical relevance, breaking away from geo-epistemological hierarchies, and opening up to post-Western IR. To conclude, promoting alternativity has the potential to rejuvenate critical scholarship embedded in the ethos of impactful engagement with the world without being co-opted by the policy world. The next challenge for scholars should not be whether alternativity and criticality are congruent but how emancipatory alternatives can renew the social and political purpose of critical theory and make an impact in the real world.