Politicizing Ethics

Abstract Drawing on critical feminist and decolonial perspectives, this article takes research on Iraq as a framework to raise essential questions about politics and geopolitics of knowledge production and about what constitutes the global academy today. It analyzes the structural, infrastructural, and political dimensions that led to Iraq being researched and theorized outside of its borders, and it highlights the systemic inequalities existing between scholars based in the United States and scholars based in Iraq. The article also questions the production of knowledge and the development of research agendas stemming from institutions based in and tied to an imperial power that has destroyed the very possibility of the existence of a robust academic life in Iraq. It also proposes an alternative research imaginary that politicizes research ethics by putting justice and equality over an obsession for research.