Forget(ting) feminism? Investigating relationality in international relations

Abstract

What kind of theoretical or methodological changes are needed to more effectively theorize global politics? This question is one increasingly posed, one reason being the ever burgeoning weight of violence on our global political landscapes. To investigate this, the central concept examined at the workshop from which this special section emanates was relationality. Motivated by feminist scholarship, my initial question was, ‘Why did we not focus the whole workshop around feminist theory?’ This question is posed alongside the clear knowledge that the workshop was not ‘about’ feminism and thus it might not seem rational to choose such a focus. Yet given the concept and practice of relationality was so deeply embedded in feminist work, I wondered how feminism could have been forgotten. In this article, I explore the idea of ‘forgetting feminism’ through a further question, namely, ‘Is sexism (still) at work in international relations [IR]?’ This involves a perusal of the work of sexual politics and sexism, IR’s putative ‘failure to love’ and a personal, relational detour into the life, work and career of Lily Ling—corporeally suddenly absent but remaining a vital part of the work in which we are all engaged.     

Gender Ghosts in McGarry and O'Leary and Representations of the Conflict in Northern Ireland

This article focuses on how ideas about gender function in academic analyses of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Part of the reason for doing this is to explore the paradox afflicting contemporary feminism, namely that in the midst of apparent success feminism still seems largely irrelevant to matters of political significance. A second reason involves a demonstration of the political value of poststructural feminism. To achieve these aims, I first consider the use and political aims of poststructuralist analyses, partly through an analysis of the use of poetry in social scientific analyses. The main site used to demonstrate the functions of gender and the political possibilities of poststructural feminism is John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary's book Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images . The sub-title of this book refers to a Robert Graves' poem, 'In Broken Images', a poem the authors use to explain their desire to 'break images' when explaining the conflict in Northern Ireland. I next reflect on and illustrate how ideas about gender function by focusing primarily on Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images . The final section re-considers the paradox of contemporary feminism, suggesting that feminism's own methodologies contribute towards its persistent marginalisation.