On movies, matrices and scope: some remarks on PTJ's keynote

This note takes issue with two aspects of PTJ’s keynote speech. The first one concerns the internal validity of his analysis. It argues that the matrix (which produces the four forms of knowledge) uses ambiguous and conceptually contestable boundaries and that implicitly (and paradoxically) seems to rely on an essentially positivist understanding of epistemic knowledge. The second claim raises the issue of the external scope of PTJ’s argument. If human beings have produced for millenniums (international) political knowledge through any sort of work, and if PTJ convincingly gives these works a solid intellectual legitimacy, the repercussions of this endeavour on how IR is (ought to be) taught and researched are vague and/or seem to be limited (or conservative). On a whole, PTJ’s note has conveniently set up the stage for further (hopefully enriching) debates within and across different disciplines interested to study the cross-boundary encounters with difference.