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The ‘brutal fecundity of violence’: Feminist methodologies of International Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2020

Helen M. Kinsella Open the ORCID record for Helen M. Kinsella [Opens in a new window]  and
Laura J. Shepherd Open the ORCID record for Laura J. Shepherd [Opens in a new window]
Helen M. Kinsella
Affiliation:
Political Science and Law, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, US
Laura J. Shepherd*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: laura.shepherd@sydney.edu.au
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Abstract

This article highlights Marysia Zalewski's scholarship as reflective and generative of the multifarious sources and contributions of feminist IR and its ‘scavenger methodologies’, which seek to centre subjects, processes, and practices historically excluded, ignored, and minimised. The productive depth of her scholarship is evident in the uniqueness of each article in this collection, all of which distinctly document the uses to which Zalewski's writings can be uniquely put. Each of the articles performs a ‘turning operation’ of sorts on the elementals of feminist IR (gender/women/power/difference) and brings further elaborations of masculinities, sexualities, silences as well as screams, that shift and change what is taken to be feminist research/method – at each point disordering our sensibilities and our assumptions as to what we do when we do feminist work.

Keywords

FeministMethodologyZalewskiGenderPower
Type
Forum Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 299 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2020

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References

1 See, in particular, and in addition to prolific collaborative work: Zalewski, Marysia, ‘The debauching of feminist theory/the penetration of the postmodern’, Politics, 11:1 (1991), pp. 30–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zalewski, Marysia, ‘Well, what is the feminist perspective on Bosnia?’, International Affairs, 71:2 (1995), pp. 339–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zalewski, Marysia, ‘“All these theories yet the bodies keep piling up: Theory, theorists, theorising’, in Smith, Steve, Booth, Ken, and Zalewski, Marysia (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 340–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zalewski, Marysia, ‘Where is woman in International Relations? “To return as a woman and be heard”’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 27:4 (1998), pp. 847–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zalewski, Marysia, Feminism After Postmodernism: Theorising Through Practice (London: Routledge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zalewski, Marysia, ‘“Women's troubles” again in IR’, International Studies Review, 5:2 (2003), pp. 291–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zalewski, Marysia, ‘Do we understand each other yet? Troubling feminist encounters with(in) International Relations’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9:2 (2007), pp. 302–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zalewski, Marysia, ‘“I don't even know what gender is”: A discussion of the connections between gender, gender mainstreaming and feminist theory’, Review of International Studies, 36:1 (2010), pp. 3–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zalewski, Marysia, Feminist International Relations: Exquisite Corpse (London: Routledge, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Zalewski, Marysia, Feminist International Relations: Exquisite Corpse (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 Carver, Terrell, Gender is not a Synonym for Women (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996), p. 18Google Scholar; Helen M. Kinsella, ‘For a careful reading: The conservatism of gender constructivism’, in Carver, Terrell (ed.), ‘Forum on Gender and International Relations’, International Studies Review, 5:2 (2003), pp. 287–302 (pp. 294–7)Google Scholar; see more recently, Richter-Montpetit, Melanie, ‘Beyond the erotics of Orientalism: Lawfare, torture and the racial-sexual grammars of legitimate suffering’, Security Dialogue, 45:1 (2014), pp. 43–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weber, Cynthia ‘Why is there no Queer International Theory?’, European Journal of International Relations, 21:1 (2014), pp. 27–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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16 Peterson, V. Spike, ‘Political identities/nationalism as heterosexism’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 1:1 (1999), pp. 34–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 This comparison belongs to Cynthia Enloe. See Cynthia Enloe, ‘Margins, silences and bottom rungs: How to overcome the underestimation of power in the study of International Relations’, in Smith, Booth, and Zalewski (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, pp. 186–22; Zalewski, Feminist International Relations, p. 127.

18 Zalewski, ‘All these theories’, p. 352, emphasis in original.

19 Halberstam, J., Female Masculinity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 13Google Scholar.