Perm severs the aff presumption of the state as a genderless agent – the alt alone reveals the state as a site of gendered performativity

The analysis presented here challenges the discipline’s tendency to treat states as genderless persons by exploring the role of gender in the security performances of states. In doing so, it draws upon the concept of performativity – the idea that, in the words of Judith Butler, “identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expression’ that are said to be its results.” It argues that performances within the field of security, much like performances within the daily lives of people, carry no intrinsic meaning, but must be made sense of through “a system of symbolic meaning” that cannot be but gendered. Through such performances, identities become salient, and masculine and feminine subjects are created. While this process is less palpable for states than it is for humans, it is nonetheless observable in broad patterns. States can be observed reifying themselves through performances of security, particularly through those which establish them as stable and masculine protectors. Recent work on the politics of protection, particularly that done by Didier Bigo, suggests the constitutive effects that protection has upon both providers and recipients. It stops short, however, of recognizing that these effects may be enabled by the gendered meaning that different forms of protection carry. When such meanings are considered, it becomes evident that by “being” masculine protectors, states can position themselves favorably in relation to other international actors and gain legitimacy from their domestic audiences. This means that states are gendered, and are gendered in much the same way as people are: through repeated performances. When state identity is viewed in this light, the anthropomorphic assumption, as it is commonly used, appears woefully inadequate. To be clear, it is not being suggested that drawing parallels between human subjects and state subjects is bad in-and-of-itself. Indeed, useful parallels can be drawn, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the notion that “both states and persons are fuzzy sets.” The trouble lies in assuming that states, or people, are constituted outside processes of interaction, and that either can be made sense of without considering the relational identities they take on through the systems of symbolic meaning through which they operate. Anthropomorphic assumptions tend to treat the state as a genderless, unitary actor – often, one that is ontologically primitive to its interactions – while neglecting the ways that the “actor-ness” and “unity” of the state are an effect of iterated, gendered performances, particularly in the realm of security. By viewing security performances with an eye toward their constitutive effects, and by moving gender to the center of that analysis, one gains not only a richer understanding of how states reproduce themselves (i.e. where their person-like “identities” come from), but a clearer picture of the hierarchical relations that exist among states and between states and domestic populations. This chapter begins with a consideration of how the state has been conceived of a person throughout the discipline, arguing that such practices almost always import an inadequate understanding of how people are constituted. In both cases, conceptualizing states and conceptualizing humans – this is a result, largely, of substance-oriented, as opposed to process-oriented, approaches. It argues that by making processes, rather than substances, the core of research, scholars will be able to more fully explain how states reproduce themselves as actors in world politics, how they garner power for themselves (in relation to other international actors, particularly states), and how they gain legitimacy from their subjects. Following that, the chapter argues that a theory of performativity can fill this need, especially in the realm of Security Studies. Moreover, such a theory would facilitate the study of gender within these processes and shed light on the incentives states have to behave as masculine actors. The final section of the chapter offers, tentatively, a way for empirical research to bear on the theoretical sketches presented here. It submits that “the rational protector model” may be examined as a type of dominant masculinity for states, one which allows them to “do” security ways that cast them as unitary, masculine actors.