Conclusion: Critique and the Politics of Affirmation in International Relations

Alt, Suvi

doi:10.1080/13600826.2018.1555698

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

(5 reference statements)

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“…First, it carries a certain essentialisation of women and reproduces a sex binary that is constituted by the same political system that it is supposed to challenge (for a critique, see Butler 1990 ). Second, sometimes affirmation can be used to legitimise the status quo and is unable to resist the here and now of the oppressive and discriminatory relations suffered by women and other underprivileged subjects (Alt 2019 ).…”

Section: Affirmative Feminism At Critique’s Endmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second limitation is that affirmation rather than critique is less apt to contest and resist the limitations of hegemonic peacebuilding (at least in the short term). This problem has been flagged up by scholars who believe that affirmation preserves the status quo and is unable to revert the problems of domination and inequality that affect women and other groups (Alt 2019 ). We understand these critiques, as well as those that claim that a feminist political activism based on difference may coalesce around a dominant, binary view of gender that is exclusionary and limiting.…”

Section: Conclusion: Limits and Possibilities Of Affirmative Feminism...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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A feminist opening of resilience: Elizabeth Grosz, Liberian Peace Huts and IR critiques

Almagro¹,

Bargués–Pedreny

2022

J Int Relat Dev

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While the United Nations (UN) and other international organisations have celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, critical scholars claim that the agenda has rarely been able to foster resilience. They show how programmes have only slowly and partially achieved gender balancing and parity in war-affected countries. The limitation we identify in the debate between policy and critique is that resilience has often been reduced to an egalitarian project—where mechanical policies and schemes are deployed to ameliorate the conditions of women, enhance their participation in decision-making and pursue the equality between women and men—to advance in sustaining peace. In this article we complement the existing critiques by engaging with the feminist writings of Elizabeth Grosz, as well as with indigenous feminist practices in Liberia. We nurture a feminism that affirms the agency and inventiveness of women to begin to reimagine resilience as difference: a resilience that thrives outside governance structures and the confines of neoliberal policymaking. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41268-022-00264-0.

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Section: Affirmative Feminism At Critique’s Endmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conclusion: Limits and Possibilities Of Affirmative Feminism...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A feminist opening of resilience: Elizabeth Grosz, Liberian Peace Huts and IR critiques

Almagro¹,

Bargués–Pedreny

2022

J Int Relat Dev

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“…In contemporary approaches seeking to articulate the new sensitivities of the Anthropocene it is possible to read more than merely a criticial rejection of modernity. For an increasing number of affirmative theorists (see Alt 2018;Bargues-Pedreny 2018) this rejection transvalues the ambiguities of abstraction (see also McCormack 2012). Unlike earlier critiques of modernity (Bennett 2011), the affirmative political framings of the Anthropocene do not seek to return the human to the world, to 'reenchant' the world after modernity's passing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the ambiguities of abstraction in the Anthropocene

Chandler

2019

Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory

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The ambiguities of abstraction were at the heart of critical approaches to the problems of modernity. Abstraction, so fundamental to the modernist episteme, was seen to have alienated humanity from itself and from its entangled relations with its environment, constituting a fundamental rift between the subject and the world. This article analyses how the critique of the modernist episteme has increasingly shifted under the auspices of the Anthropocene. Rather than seeking to overcome the ambiguities of abstraction and return the human to the world, approaches that seek to affirm the Anthropocene have emphasised that modernist thought did not take abstraction far enough. Rather than abstraction being problematic for contemporary thought, abstraction is seen to be a facet of the world in its lively, partial and contingent interaction. This article is organised in three sections. The first section introduces the problematic of abstraction in the Anthropocene, highlighting that critical theory approaches tend to see the Anthropocene within a discourse of modernist critique. The second section draws out the importance of understanding the distinct mode of contemporary affirmation, which rather than seeking to return man to the world, emphasises the impossibility of finding meaning in the world. It is this inverting of critical understandings that enables abstraction to be seen positively rather than problematically. The final section expands on this point to consider how contemporary theoretical approaches articulate the transvaluation of abstraction as the guide to contemporary modes of life.

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Hope after ‘the end of the world’: rethinking critique in the Anthropocene

Bargués–Pedreny

Chandler

Schindler³

et al. 2023

Contemp Polit Theory

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Many contemporary thinkers of the Anthropocene, who attempt to articulate a non-modern and relational ontology, all too readily dismiss critical theory inherited from the Frankfurt School for being anthropocentric, failing to acknowledge certain basic similarities. Instead, this article argues that the scaffolding of Anthropocene thinking—the recognition of the origins of the contemporary condition of ‘loss of world’ and the hope of ‘living on in the ruins’—share much with earlier critical theorists’ recognition that the Holocaust necessitated a fundamental break with the past. In reading these two sets of literatures together, we suggest we can get a better grasp of the stakes involved in the contemporary crisis of critique, and in the speculative framings enabling alternative futures to come into being.

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Conclusion: Critique and the Politics of Affirmation in International Relations

Cited by 5 publications

References 5 publications

A feminist opening of resilience: Elizabeth Grosz, Liberian Peace Huts and IR critiques

A feminist opening of resilience: Elizabeth Grosz, Liberian Peace Huts and IR critiques

Rethinking the ambiguities of abstraction in the Anthropocene

Hope after ‘the end of the world’: rethinking critique in the Anthropocene

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