Critical theory's relation to the prevailing order needs to be explained with some care. For although it refuses to take the prevailing order as finds it, critical theory does not simply ignore it. It accepts that humans do not make history under conditions of their own choosing, as Marx observed in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte(1977e), and so a detailed examination of present conditions must necessarily be vertheless, the order which has been given' to us is by no undertake means natural, necessary or historically invariable. Critical international theory takes the global configuration of power relations as its object and asks how that configuration came about, what costs it brings with it and what alternative possibilities remain immanent in history. Critical theory is essentially a critique of the dogmatism it finds in traditional modes of theorizing. This critique reveals the unexamined assumptions that guide traditional modes of thought, and exposes the complicity of traditional modes of thought in prevailing political and social conditions. To break with dogmatic modes of thought is to denat uralize' the present, as Karin Fierke(1998: 13) puts it, to make us"look again, in a fresh way, at that which we assume about the world because it has become overly familiar Denaturalizing"lallegedly) objective realities opens the door to alternative forms of social and political life Implicitly therefore critical theory qua denaturalizing critique serves"as an instrument for the delegitimisation of established power and privilege(Neufeld 1995: 14). The knowledge critical international theory gener- ates is not neutral; it is politically and ethically charged by an interest in social and political transformation. It criticizes and debunks theories that legitimize the prevailing order and affirms progressive alternatives that promote emancipation