International Studies Review (2019) 0, 1–24 ANALYTICAL ESSAY Failing Is Not an Option, It Is the Only Option: Critical Politics as a Time of Contradiction and Failure K ATHRYN M. F ISHER Le Cordon Bleu, UK AND C HRISTOPHER M C I NTOSH Bard College, USA Questions regarding the political significance of international relations (IR) and how scholarly practice relates to/constitutes a political practice appear newly resonant, but are longstanding concerns. This article utilizes the growing literature on temporality within international politics to ana- lyze the political potential of these intellectual interventions and generate new ways of framing scholarly practice. We observe two trends within the field. First, IR as a discipline remains largely—although not exclusively— imagined as an English-language discipline generated by scholars in the Global North. Each area’s political discourse is currently dominated by fears surrounding foundational political and institutional change due to the rise of racialized authoritarianism within these self-imagined demo- cratic societies. Despite these purportedly dramatic developments, there has not been a similarly dramatic shift in the scholarly relationship with politics. Scholars continue to successfully intervene in their collective presents, but scholarship itself remains oriented toward enduring claims that accumulate knowledge and resist the possibility of “failure.” This pa- per theorizes the temporality of critical intervention to better relate posi- tively to the bodies that co-constitute our political present. Ultimately, this paper concludes by arguing for a reconsideration of contradiction and failure as frames for thinking scholarly practice in time. Las preguntas con respecto al significado político de las relaciones internacionales (RI) y de qué manera la práctica académica constituye una práctica política o se relaciona con ella parecen adquirir relevancia recientemente, pero son cuestiones antiguas. Este artículo utiliza la literatura creciente sobre la temporalidad en la política internacional para analizar el potencial político de estas intervenciones intelectuales y generar nuevas formas de plantear la práctica académica. Observamos dos tendencias en el campo. Primero, se continúa imaginando a las RI principalmente, aunque no de manera exclusiva, como una disciplina en el idioma inglés que crearon los académicos en el hemisferio norte. Actualmente, el discurso político de cada área se ve dominado por los temores en torno a los cambios institucionales y políticos básicos debido al aumento del autoritarismo racializado en estas sociedades democráticas Fisher, Kathryn M., and Christopher McIntosh. (2021) Failing Is Not an Option, It Is the Only Option: Critical Politics as a Time of Contradiction and Failure. International Studies Review, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viab040 © The Author(s) (2021). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com