Feminist fatigue(s): reflections on feminism and familiar fables of militarisation

Abstract

In this article we critically consider the idea that feminism has performatively failed within the discipline of International Relations. One aspect of this failure relates to the production of sexgender through feminism which we suggest is partly responsible for a weariness inflecting feminist scholarship, in particular as a critical theoretical resource. We reflect on this weariness in the context of the study and practice of international politics – arenas still reaping the potent benefits of the virile political energies reverberating since 9/11. To illustrate our arguments we re-count a familiar feminist fable of militarisation – a story which we use to exemplify how the production of feminist IR is ‘set’ up to ‘fail’. In so doing we clarify our depiction of feminism as seemingly haunted by its inherent paradoxes as well as explaining why it matters to discuss feminism within the locale of the academic study of international politics. We conclude with a consideration of the grammar of temporality that delimits representations of feminism and move to recast feminist failure as aporetic and concomitantly implicated in the process of intervening politically.

Curious erasures: the sexual in wartime sexual violence

“…In order to query this popular adage, which, we argue, is central to dominant accounts of wartime rape, we engaged in an extensive reading of policy and academic literature on conflict-related sexual violence, both situated within IR and in other fields, as well as feminist literature on sexual violence more generally, searching for references to and evocations of the sexual. The authors cited serve as examples of a larger discursive formation or generalized "feminist fable" (Stern and Zalewski 2009). Notably, as our methodology builds on readings of central texts, we problematically reproduce the familiar silencing of male victims of sexual violence, as well as the prevailing assumption that sexual violence is heterosexual violence.…”

“…Importantly, re-formulations of the familiar adage noted above are abundant. Central to these explanations is the firm move from sex to gender (Stern and Zalewski 2009) where gender (understood as socially constructed understandings of masculinity and femininity) has seemingly replaced sex (seen as a given rooted in biology) as a framework for understanding the motivations for, the use of, and the effects of the "weapon" of wartime sexual violence. Notably, both sex and gender in these storylines emerge as already known.…”

“…Such associations are reproduced through a wealth of excellent, yet also problematic feminist research into the particular nature (read: marked by a celebration of violent achievement -including sexual/violent achievement) of militarized masculinities (cf. Stern and Zalewski 2009). These masculinities contrast with pictures of peacetime civilian masculinities, which transform and become militarized, especially during war.…”

Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC)

“…We briefly address the idealized forms of masculinities (as represented in the interviews) that the soldiers drew upon in their attempts to explain—and even normalize—sexual violence 9 . Their experiences and performances of masculinities were both multiple and incoherent, perpetually evoking a sense of failure at ever arriving at being “masculine” (Parpart and Zalewski 2008; Stern and Zalewski 2009; Witworth 2004). As we will see, the soldiers explicitly linked their rationale for rape with their inabilities (or “failures”) to inhabit certain idealized notions of heterosexual manhood.…”

“…5 5 See Stern and Nystrand (2006) and Stern and Zalewski (2009) for an account of this storyline. See also Wood (2006) for a discussion of the variation of instances of sexual violence in distinct war contexts. …”