Ironically, since 11 September 2001, world politics seems to have taken a turn towards certainty. This article is an intervention that demonstrates how the illusion of the sovereign state in an insecure and anarchic international system is sustained and how it might be challenged. It does so through a Derridean analysis of Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society. The article examines how International Relations (IR) thinking works; it teases out the implications of our reading of Bull's work and proposes that what we call generalising the international could lead to an alternative analysis of world politics, one that retains an openness to the future and to politics.