Attempts to police feminist inquiry sanitize allegedly "objective" IR Science at the expense of epistemological improvement

(Marysia, "Women's Troubles" Again in IR in Gender and International Relations International Studies Review Vol 5 No 2)

We know feminism is really feminisms. Its boundaries, such as they exist, are supple and pliant; its remit unbounded. Yet, two conjoined practices endure within IR: one involves the restriction of feminism’s possibilities; the other relates to its necessary abandonment. Put another way, despite the widespread acknowledgment of feminism’s unbridled diversity, the aspiration to confine it within distinct and ‘‘proper’’ parameters appears irresistible, evoking the ensuing logical affirmation that feminism is ultimately futile. Despite the lively controversy within feminism regarding its relationship to and with ‘‘woman,’’ as Helen Kinsella notes in this forum, it is this category that draws the disciplinary attention of those who crave feminism’s containment. Feminism becomes, simply, about women. As Charli Carpenter (2002:159) comments, ‘‘feminist approachesFeven though rich, diverse, and a much needed critiqueFare substantively narrow as their emphasis is women.’’ Similar references to ‘‘the’’ feminist project (Carpenter, this forum), or feminism’s ‘‘focus on women’’ (Carver, this forum), or that ‘‘feminism is an on-going political project about gender oppression’’ (Carver, this forum) reinforce the vision of feminism’s limitations. A similar point might be made in relation to the research intentions and possibilities of feminist scholarship. Here, the issue of gender as a tool or an explanatory framework (Carver, this forum) is salient, as is the apparently unrelenting adherence to the idea that there is a meaningful distinction between normative and explanatory theory in IR. The swath of postfoundational theorizing (feminist and not) over the past few decades has thoroughly discredited this spurious distinction. As such, the value awarded to supposedly ‘‘purely explanatory work’’ in IR versus the ‘‘merely normative’’ work of feminism (Carpenter, this forum) is untenable. Relatedly, the notion that feminism is political and IR is not is unsustainable and, therefore, cannot act as a basis on which to bestow favor on one (that is, IR) at the expense of the other (that is, feminism). Despite this discussion, the appeal of representing feminism as diminutive persists. With spurious boundaries in place, feminism is criticized for its illusory narrow remit. What might we learn from the persistent anxieties provoked by feminism’s interventions into IR that are indicated by the maneuvers to diminish it? Terrell Carver is surely correct in stating that gender is ‘‘marked’’ on women. Indeed, with some confidence, we can say that feminism’s use of gender has an intimate relationship with women and woman. Yet, how does the ensuing remarkable idea emerge that gender and feminism’s association with women implies frailty and limited intellectual mobility? A frequently suggested remedy for these alleged weaknesses has been the move to ‘‘gender studies’’ or the reliance on the concept of gender, as opposed to focusing on women or feminism. There is insufficient space in this short essay to discuss the ineffectual character of the move from ‘‘women’’ to ‘‘gender,’’ most notably its failure to escape the dilemma of identity politics. Nor is there room to expose the illusion of the idea that gender implies a critical expansion over the category of woman (Wiegman 2002). However, it is pertinent to consider further the twin ideas that theorizing women is narrow and that studying gender in IR might be fruitfully served by casting it adrift from its feminist theoretical moorings. (291-2)