QUEER FEMINIST INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: UNEASY ALLIANCES, PRODUCTIVE TENSIONS

This article examines the ‘uneasy alliance’ between Feminist IR and Queer IR. The article focuses on three areas of tension and continuity between the fields: (1) sexuality, sexual deviance and gender variance; (2) the roles of liberalism in gendered, sexualized and racialized violence; and (3) binaries relating to sex, gender and sexuality. The article argues that it is around tensions between Queer and Feminist IR that a Queer Feminist IR can be productively articulated. In particular, a Queer Feminist IR should: centre women and femmes as well as sexuality and gender variance; disrupt of binaries and fixed identities without losing the political leverage that sometimes comes with them; and acknowledge entanglements with the institutions Feminist and Queer IR seek to transform while also resisting being neutralized by assimilation.

PDF

___

Agathangelou, Anna M. and L. H. M. Ling (2004), “The House of IR: From Family Power Politics to the Poisies of Worldism”, International Studies Review, 6 (4): 21–49.

Agathangelou, Anna M., M. Daniel Bassichis and Tamara L. Spira (2008), “Intimate investments: Homonormativity, global lockdown, and seductions of empire”, Radical History Review, 2008 (100): 120–143.

Amar, Paul (2013), The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).

Ayoub, Phillip M. (2016), When States Come Out: Europe’s Sexual Minorities and the Politics of Visibility (New York: Cambridge University Press).

Ayoub, Phillip M. and David Paternotte (Eds.) (2014), LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan).

Barthes, Roland (1974), S/Z: An Essay (27. print ed.) (New York: Hill and Wang).

Baylis, John and Steve Smith (Eds.) (2014), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (6th Edition) (New York: Oxford University Press).

Brown, Chris and Kirsten Ainley (2009), Understanding International Relations (4th Edition) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

Brown, Wendy (2008), Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Butler, Judith (1990), Gender Trouble (Oxon: Routledge).

Butler, Judith (1993), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”, (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge).

Clinton, Hillary (2011), “On Gay Rights Abroad: Secretary of State Delivers Historic LGBT Speech in Geneva,” Huffington Post, 12.06.2011, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/06/hillary-clinton-gay-rights-speech-geneva_n_1132392.html (25.05.2017).

Cohen, Cathy J. (1997), “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 3 (4): 437–465.

Cohn, Carol (1987), “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals”, Signs, 12 (4): 687–718.

Connell, Raewyn W. and James W. Messerschmidt (2005), “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept”, Gender & Society, 19 (6): 829–859.

Conrad, Ryan (Ed.) (2014), Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion (Oakland: AK Press).

Duggan, Lisa (2003), The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press).

Duncanson, Claire (2013), Forces For Good? Military Masculinities and Peacebuilding in Afghanistan and Iraq (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

Elshtain, Jean Bethke (1995), Women and War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Enloe, Cynthia (1990), Bananas, Beaches & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Enloe, Cynthia (2016), “The Role of Queer Studies in IR”, International Studies Quarterly Online, http://isanet.org/Publications/ISQ/Posts/ID/5278/The-Role-of-Queer-Studies-in-IR (25.05.2017).

Foucault, Michel (1978), The History of Sexuality (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books).

Hagen, Jamie J. (2016), “Queering Women, Peace and Security”, International Affairs, 92 (2): 313–332.

Jauhola, Marjaana (2010), “Building back better?—negotiating normative boundaries of gender mainstreaming and post-tsunami reconstruction in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Indonesia”, Review of International Studies, 36 (1): 29-50.

Leigh, Darcy (2014), Post-liberal Agency: Decolonizing Politics and Universities in the Canadian Arctic, PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh.

Leigh, Darcy and Cynthia Weber (forthcoming), “Gendered and Sexualized Figurations of Security”, Gentry, Caron, Laura Shepherd and Laura Sjoberg (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge).

Leigh, Darcy, Melanie Richter-Montpetit and Cynthia Weber (forthcoming), “Queer International Relations”, Worldwide Perspectives on Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals: History, Culture and Law (Praeger Press).

Lewis, Rachel (2010), “The Cultural Politics of Lesbian Asylum: Angelina Maccarone’s Unveiled (2005) and the Case of the Lesbian Asylum-Seeker”, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 12 (3-4): 424–443.

Marinucci, Mimi (2010), Feminism Is Queer: The Intimate Connection between Queer and Feminist Theory (London and New York: Zed Books).

McEvoy, Sandra (2015), “Queering Security Studies in Northern Ireland: Problem, Practice and Practitioner”, Picq, Manuela Lavinas and Markus Thiel (Eds.), Sexualities in World Politics: How LGBTQ Claims Shape International Relations (London: Routledge): 139–154.

Richter-Montpetit, Melanie (2007), “Empire, Desire and Violence: A Queer Transnational Feminist Reading of the Prisoner ‘Abuse’ in Abu Ghraib and the Question of ‘Gender Equality’”, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 9 (1): 38–59.

Richter-Montpetit, Melanie and Cynthia Weber (2017), “Queer International Relations”, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.265 (25.05.2017).

Peterson, V. Spike (1999), “Political Identities/Nationalism as Heterosexism”, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 1 (1): 34–65.

Peterson, V. Spike (2000), “Sexing Political Identities/Nationalism as Heterosexism”, Sita Ranchod-Nilson and Mary Ann Tetreault (Eds), Women, States, and Nationalism: At Home in the Nation? (New York: Routledge): 54–80.

Peterson, V. Spike (2013), “The Intended and Unintended Queering of States/Nations”, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 13 (1): 57–68.

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. (2015), “Transgender Creeks and the Three Figures of Power in Late Liberalism”, differences, 26 (1): 168–187.

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. (2016), Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (Durham: Duke University Press).

Puar, Jaspir K. (2007), Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham: Duke University Press).

Rahman, Momin (2014), “Queer Rights and the Triangulation of Western Exceptionalism”, Journal of Human Rights, 13 (3): 274–289.

Rao, Rahul (2012), “On “gay conditionality”, imperial power and queer liberation”, Kafila, https://kafila.online/2012/01/01/on-gay-conditionality-imperial-power-and-queer-liberation-rahul-rao/ (25.05.2017).

Rao, Rahul (2014), “Queer Questions”, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 16 (2): 199–217.

Simpson, Audra (2014), Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States (Durham: Duke University Press).

Sjoberg, Laura and Caron E. Gentry (2007), Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics (London: Zed Books).

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1990), The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (New York: Routledge).

Tickner, J. Ann (1992), Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, New directions in world politics (New York: Columbia University Press).

Tickner, J. Ann (2014), A Feminist Voyage through International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Walker, R.B.J. (1993), Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Weber, Cynthia (1999), Faking It: U.S. Hegemony in a “Post-phallic” Era (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

Weber, Cynthia (2016a), Queer International Relations: Sovereignty, Sexuality and the Will to Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press).

Weber, Cynthia (2016b), “Queer Intellectual Curiosity as International Relations Method: Developing Queer International Relations Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks”, International Studies Quarterly, 60 (1): 11-23.

Weber, Cynthia (2016c), “Queer and/or International Relations…or not?”, International Studies Quarterly Online, http://isanet.org/Publications/ISQ/Posts/ID/5284/Queer-andor-International-Relationsor-not (25.05.2017).

Wiegman, Robyn and Elizabeth A. Wilson (2015), “Introduction: Antinormativity’s Queer Conventions”, differences, 26 (1): 1–25.

Yuval-Davis, Nira (1997), Gender & Nation (London: Sage Publications).

Zalewski, Marysia (2013), Feminist International Relations: Exquisite Corpse (Abingdon: Routledge).