Dear Dr. Journal Editor,
Why? Because it’s not just “work” to me that happens to be on a particular topic because it is an interesting question. I believe all knowledge has a politics, acknowledged or not, and I acknowledge mine.
I do feminist work because I’m interested in deconstructing gender hierarchies in IR as a discipline and in global politics more generally. I think that such a move would benefit everyone in IR/global politics, not just women (a category I’m not particularly fond of).
I don’t want all IR the sort of work that I do, but I want (and need) it to be open to the sort of work that I do, because the world (both the real one and ours) is worse off when it isn’t, both normatively and in terms of our empirical/theoretical knowledge about the world.
In an unpublished paper a couple of years ago, I argued that the relationship between feminist IR and IR generally was an impossible one, where feminist work would always (and only) be included when it mimics IR, which robs it of its (intellectual) identity – a paradox to say the least.
I might believe that, but I’ve acted differently – attempting to mainstream feminist work at every opportunity, even when just publishing in “our” journals and talking to “our” audience would be both intellectually more interesting and substantially easier. And a lot of times that has been a great learning experience for both “sides” with an excellent result, (thanks, for example, to Security Studies), but, more often than not, like it was last week, it is an exercise where futility meets ridiculousness.
Why do I say ridiculousness? And, “so what”?
I wrote an article that makes a constitutive (not causal) argument about gender (not sex). It is interested in symbolism, in underlying justificatory logics, and in the ways that the unsaid plays into the particular problematique. It is heavily based on existing feminist literature in security studies, which it cites, but does not rehash for reasons of space (after all, when did you last read a 1000 word summary of Michael Doyle in the regime type literature?). It combines case explorations and multivariate regressions, though those regressions are used to show relationships rather than “measure” gender hierarchy and determine the directionality of its relationship with a “dependent variable” (the reviewers’ words, not mine).
As I implied in the first part of this letter, it was not taken on its own terms. It was not even taken on the terms usually used in evaluation of feminist work. I don’t know if the article would pass the bar on those terms, but I would sure like to.
A brief example: Reviewer 1 complains that (s)he doesn’t need the lesson on the difference between sex and gender (which I included, since I sent it to a mainstream journal and was talking about the latter, which is always conflated with the former). Then the Reviewer complains that the theory doesn’t take into account the heterogeneity among/between women, which it does, because that’s the whole point of laying out that feminist work is about gender, not about sex, and talks about women/femininity not women/sex organs. The article isn’t about “women” per se (but gendered representations and performances in war signification), and it doesn’t come anywhere near assuming either that all women have anything in common, or that femininity is something natural to (any) women. I feel fairly sure that people who do feminist IR (or even take it seriously) wouldn’t have read it that way. Its almost like some of the replies to the last letter I posted – people see the word “gender” (or, god forbid, “feminist”) and read all sorts of ridiculous things that the work doesn’t argue into it.
A second brief example: Both reviewers conclude with examples of what counts as “good work” in this field to them. First, that work isn’t in my field. I won’t “name names” in a blog post because I’m not looking to grind axes with particular people’s work, and they are people I respect personally and professionally – but they are people who “study gender” (by which they really mean sex …as dichotomous … what do men do? what do women do differently?) from a ‘non-feminist’ approach (by which I mean that they do not take account of the gender hierarchy as a fundamental condition of global social and political life). The particular work referred to in the reviews (and tacitly accepted by the journal editors as the standard by which my work should be judged) is just not good analysis from a(/my) feminist perspective, and not just for the normative reasons some may accuse me of being attached to (as if that were a bad thing). Instead, it misses links in a (you choose causal or constitutive) chain of analysis about how the world works, it makes (false/unjustifiable/oversimplified) sex essentialist assumptions, it doesn’t understand the empirical implications of sex/gender distinction (and confluence), it assumes the countability of uncountable things and the materiality of performative things, it doesn’t “hear” the substance to silence …. I could go on.
So what?
Losing these battles is unjustified, and getting old. As a commenter on the first part of this letter notes, it’s not your journal and your journal alone. Your journal could be one of many. It’s also not just journals, its hiring committees, book publishers, etc … not universally, but by and large. So on one hand, it is not your “fault.” But it is our collective fault, and yours more than mine (both because of the relative power differential between us and because I critique the orthodoxy you reify).
Be on notice: feminist IR won’t lose the war. We will open up this discipline to feminist work (and critical work more generally), hell or high water, and I will devote my career to that work, even if it takes the rest of my career. And not tokenism, but real, rigorous, complex, contingent, modest, engaged inclusion.
I will do so because feminism belongs in IR, and not only when it looks and acts like it fits in mainstream IR’s narrow world, but maintaining its own identity and transforming IR to make it broader and better. IR needs feminist work in order to make its worldview less partial, to increase the explanatory value of its theoretical propositions, and to clarify the meanings of its empirical observations. The “relationship” cannot continue forever on its current terms, where tokenism but general closedness is the practice. Instead, feminist IR should and can transform IR – maintaining “our” sense of identity, embracing “our” diversity, and flexing “our” strengths.
That part, though, is beside the point. When Ann Tickner wrote You Just Don’t Understand, she was asking IR to think about feminist work by the claims it makes and the positions it takes, not despite them, ignoring them, or trivializing them. I, for one, am embarrassed to be needing to repeat that request (over and over) thirteen years later. But that’s what I’m doing, now, to you, and to anyone else who might be listening.
Look for a series of “PS” posts to this letter (tentatively titled “Feminist IR 101”) explaining what you might want to know to give feminist work a fair review.
Best,
Laura
…who is exhausted by having to stick up for her (research’s) right to exist.
Only fitting that you would feel like you were replaying You Just Don't Understand. Lake's current calls for 'pluralism' essentially reprise Keohane.
maybe i'm missing something, but what's wrong with Keohane's and Lakes calls for pluralism?
A call for pluralism not backed up by a sound plan of action is a polite way of saying “stop complaining.”
More formally:
Step 1: isms are evil
Step 2: They should be replaced by general standards of good research
Step 3: My standards of good research work pretty well . . .
…
Step 4: profit
I don't know that David Lake's call for pluralism is yet published, but I have heard the talk, and I am certainly familiar with Keohane's call for pluralism.
Both strike me as having the same flaw …that they call for theoretical/ontological pluralism without the (necessary) recognition that said pluralism necessarily requires a level of methodological/epistemological pluralism that they close by definition. Both Keohane and what I have heard of Lake essentially say that theoretical parochialism is bad, and we should be open to alternative theoretical approaches to those that our research has the easiest affinity with, because our work is handicapped by narrowness. Fair enough. But both follow by saying that what unifies our research program(s), and sets their standard(s), is some sense of the research process, which both associate with a sense of science.
Some of the “isms” (in Lake's terms, particularly, in his terms, the “narrativist” ones), or “reflexivist” research streams (in Keohane's) include inherent in them a different understanding of not only what “the world” is but also a different understanding (or plural, different understandings) of how to know that “world.” Being open to different theoretical approaches, without understanding that (while they should be held to standards) they cannot be held to _the same_ standards as normal, positivist social science, and to hold them to those standards would cause the research to be _less good_ than it would otherwise be, is a false openness, and therefore a false pluralism.
Pluralism in a tokenist sense is problematic too, I think … “narrative” (rather than nomological) research programs should be included (so long as they meet particular standards) in Lake's terms; the same for “reflexivist” (rather than rationalist) research programs in Keohane's terms. But neither term (“narrative” or “reflexivist”) really captures all non-rationalist or non-nomological research, or the spirit of it (to the extent that it has a common standard).
Inclusion, I think, requires not just allowing the publication of or publicly espousing “different” research as welcome in the field (even if these were truly epistemologically pluralist calls), but also having some understanding of what that research means for the field generally or our research specifically. That's not accomplished by “accepting,” but not engaging, other research.
Is it better than Steve Walt's (1991) explicit call against inclusion, warning of the “danger” of “politicizing” security research? In some ways, sure – it is certainly well-intended. But I'm not sure that the sorts of calls for pluralism discussed above come from all that different an epistemological place, and they appear to be less insidious, but aren't, I don't think – not least because they get the moral high ground of claimed pluralism (and even sponsorship of 'alternative' research programs), without actually being particularly inclusive.
I think that might be what Cynthia Weber (1994) was trying to say, and maybe what Groundhog (below) is.
That's my .02, and certainly glad to discuss in more detail.
A couple of points on the post:
1) “it assumes…the materiality of performative things…”
Performances are partly material. Performances imply performers (humans), and humans are biological entities (among other things), hence partly material. Hence what they do is also partly material.
2) the reference at the end to “reifying orthodoxy” —
“Reify” and “reification” are, IMO, overused in discussions such as these (actually, they're overused, period), and the words are in danger of being drained of any meaning and coming simply to be substitutes for “bad”. Without meaning to be too preachy, I suggest everyone start by looking up the etymology of “reify” in a dictionary and then re-acquainting themselves with how the word is used by Marx and maybe by some other writers who understood how to use it. Until then, I respectfully suggest that “reify” be banned from these discussions, and it wouldn't at all be a tragedy if the word were to be banned from every IR journal article, conference paper, and book for the next two or three years.
Sorry, “guest” in that comment is me.
@Ben, I do like! At the same time, the pathology of built-in “bias” is not per se “fixable,” that is, there is no “unbiased” process, since there is no such thing as “unbias” or “objectivity,” right? So striving to change it on the terms implied there might not work out too well.
@LFC, touche – of course, in a blog post written in anger in about 15 minutes, word choices weren't made perfectly. Of course, there's a debate to be had about the meaning and function of the term “materiality,” but it was a debate that I was not meaning to get into by posting this post. My point was that performances of beautiful souldom (Elshtain's term for the gender trope of femininity in civilians in war), for example, cannot be individuated and counted and therefore mapped into a logit regression.
While I used the word “reify” in its common usage, you're right that I used it technically incorrectly, though I'm fairly sure the point got across. It actually substitutes, in common usage, for some combination of entrenchment and complicity, which is, of course, what I meant by it.
If I had to theoretically answer for the point I was trying to make, I'd perhaps phrase it differently, and reference it differently as well. The continued publication of a small subset of work in the field as proxy for and claiming to be the whole field on the part of elite journals and elite journal editors is a process of serial conditioning, which makes consumption the result of a process of semiotic suggestibility (a la Jean Baudrillard), where a sense of competition is provoked even though there is no 'real' competition because our theoretical world is so deeply entrenched in monotony that the imaginary of recourse does not exist, because the lack of recourse comes not to matter, because we cannot even recognize the narrowness. The system of consumption of that theoretical narrowness has as its product the field's perceived system of needs …which plays into conference selection, job market selection, and journal selection, and therefore produces a mirror of itself in operative abstraction while at the same time hiding its falseness, narrowness, and distance from 'reality' of the field.
Both because this is the sort of stuff that gets people labelled in a way that makes their work unacceptable to the field, and because I was trying to make the post short, I went with “reify the orthodoxy,” incorrectly. I hope this clarifies my intent.
(relevant from the article that will never be published)
There are many ways that those who “do” gender and IR/feminist IR/GIR try to negotiate this impossible relationship from the position of the less powerful party. In brief brainstorming, I’ve identified six. Sometimes, we try to work “on their terms” methodologically – i.e., adopting the methods of those who “do” IR without gender in order to tell them why gender is important to study. I call this method mimic. Other times, we try to work “on their terms” theoretically – i.e., adopting and re-working the theories of those who do “IR” without gender to show how gender can improve those theories’ explanatory value. I call this theory mimic. The third method that we sometimes use is to find/exploit something about gender so dramatic that “they” would actually want to hear it. I call this attention-seeking. These three strategies can be loosely classified as attempts to “look the part” of the scholarship which would be attractive to the mainstream. The fourth strategy is confrontational – this work is “in the face” of the mainstream, pointing out how wrong, ridiculous, and sexist their work is. I call this battle mode. A fifth method is writing as if the “mainstream” does not exist, and thus with no interest in making work readable to or convincing for them. I call this self-satisfaction. A sixth approach is writing as if feminist IR/gender and IR was on equal ground in terms of power and prestige with the mainstream in the discipline, even though we are not. I call this fantasy mode. These three strategies can be identified as various forms of denying or avoiding the power differential that exists between mainstream IR and feminist IR.
I have certainly used each of these six modes of relating to the mainstream in my work, as have many other feminist scholars. Each of these strategies of relating to the mainstream “works” in one way or another. Either mimic strategy makes it more likely that “mainstream” journals and/or conference programs accept feminist work. Attention-grabbing work often does merit the gaze of the mainstream, though “their” attention span is often short. Confrontation helps to take out the frustration that we as feminist scholars feel in attempts to relate to the “mainstream,” rallies the feminist ‘troops,’ and provides strong and powerful statements about the importance of feminist work. The strategy that I call self-satisfaction produces some of the most honest and important feminist work that we have. Living in “fantasy mode” and believing that ‘we’ have equal power with the mainstream often allows us to function in our day-to-day lives and careers, and helps us to create our own space for feminist work in IR.
Still, none of these strategies make the “impossible” relationship between feminist IR and mainstream IR “work” to transform the world of mainstream IR. These strategies each give ‘us’ a relationship to the mainstream, but not an acceptable relationship.
Your point did get across. I understood (roughly) what you meant by “reify the orthodoxy,” and perhaps it was a bit unfair of me to go off on the issue of word choice, but “reify” as commonly (mis)used has, for whatever reason, become sort of a pet peeve of mine. I think there are a range of occasions when it's probably fine to use “reify” even if it perhaps expands the strict dictionary meaning (e.g., “reifying X” to mean something like “treating X, which is in fact variable or changeable, as having unchanging features”), but then there are also a lot of occasions when the writer, imo, should opt for something else.
sorry, I keep forgetting to log in before posting
Of course objectivity exists. Otherwise, your regression models would evaporate in a puff of illogic, because arithmetic would be impossible. It's just not equally applicable to all questions. Getting rid of bias, in an evaluative practice like reviewing, which is inherently normative, is unobtainable, but it might be possible to reduce bias or reform it to reflect a more productive norm.
“Of course objectivity exists,” … is for another post. But arithmetic is not necessarily “objective,” nor is “logic,” it could be (in Nick Onuf's terms) a system of rules that creates a state of rule; (in mathematical constructivist terms) an internal logic externalized; (in Baudrillard's terms) a seductive fantasy that we accept as objectivity; etc.
This is interesting. Do you think a postcolonial conception of mimicry — like one found in Bhabha — would change how you conceptualize what feminist scholars do (and its implications) in the field of IR?
That's an interesting question – which could be taken @ two levels (not distinct but distinguishable), the “substance” of feminist IR research, and the “relationship” between feminist IR research and “field” or “mainstream” of IR.
On the first, actually, I think that performances of gender equality (thinking we know what they would look like) are a combination of irony and desire which hide/disguise continued subordinations that are buried beneath the surface level … a phenomenon that I think Caron Gentry and my work on women's violence touches on, and that theoretical analysis of both mimicry (a la Bhabha/Lacan) and simulacra (a la Baudrillard) would benefit (and further) that research, and the research being done on how gender hierarchy is manifested in (postmodern) global politics. But that's a much longer conversation, I think.
On the second, the thing Bhabha doesn't get as well as I'd hope is the question of relative power between the mimicker (sp.?) and the mimicked, which is ever-present in the ironic re-presentation (as well as ambivalence and hybridity) that he sees. So, above, I use his terminology deliberately and intentionally and meaning them to be imbued with the meaning he imbues them with, but knowing that they don't account for all of how feminist IR work that “mimics” mainstream work does it, and what they do – because mimicry comes from, and can't be understood without, a relative power deficit, but how it ruptures (or doesn't) that deficit is, to me, the interesting question (and likely why mimicry strategies are controversial in feminist IR).
I think I saw the process of mimicry in the postcolonial literature as being between poles of enabling and constraining. Bhabha works towards the former pole, while Fanon works towards the latter one, while Chattrjee works somewhere between these two positions. The interesting point is how these slightly different readings of mimicry can coexist, suggesting a metatheory for mimicry within the domain of postcolonial theory more generally, and allowing for fracturing and disjuncture within an analysis of a field of knowledge like feminist IR. You're right to critique Bhabha, in some ways his poststructural leaning jumps into some nearly empty structural space of something akin to an ideal liberalism. Perhaps Chatterjee or Fanon's notion of mimicry might better serve as a guide for theoretical framing, but it begs the question of how colonialism/anticolonialism/nationalism offers a similar and divergent socio-economic structure to IR feminist publication. What are the power relations implicated in this triad? How is it inappropriate to take this triad out of its original context and apply it to other analyses in different contexts? I think certain differences need to be enunciated in this analogy, which seems like an obvious statement. To presuppose this structure for both spaces to parse the analogy, though, might places us less in a poststructural feminist/poststructural postcolonial space and more into a Marxist set of commitments. Of course, maybe it will not. Poststructuralism may be the way. Who knows?
It's always about us and never about you. The arrogance is astonishing. I'm sure there are literatures out there that you don't particularly care for. Why is it so hard for you to believe that sensible people might find not find your work particularly compelling? I read the Security Studies issue cover-to-cover. I wish I had those hours of my life back.
Bringing it back to the concrete a little bit might help complicate the theoretical analysis a bit. Its an interesting liminal space feminist IR is in in the discipline of IR, I think – for example, the FTGS section in ISA is no longer a small section (it now puts on 50-60 panels every year), and, though the membership is graduate-student heavy, its fairly substantial as well. A 2007 issue of the British Journal of Politics and IR argues that G/IR (gender/IR) and/or feminist IR are no longer at the margins of British IR. Certainly its true that these approaches are more accepted outside the US than inside (and therefore that there are a a number of expat Americans in Europe/Australia doing this work). Its also true, I think, that many US departments have come to realize that there should be some tolerance for this work (and added a feminist article to their intro IR syllabi or something). Some of them even hire people who are feminists (while others hire people who study “gender” by which they mean sex and assume they have it covered). So its socioeconomic, sure, but its also not – and tokenism is harder to get at through socioeconomic analysis, right?
“We've got x on the faculty, (s)he's a feminist, we don't really know what (s)he does and don't care to find out, and we certainly won't refer students to take his/her work seriously, but we're happy we have that box checked”
or
“Too bad we had to deny x feminist tenure. (S)he has a publication record, but just hasn't penetrated the elite journals and publishers. Nevermind that those publishers don't give serious consideration to what (s)he does, we require everyone to do that, and we can't make an exception because of what (s)he does”
That's socioeconomic, but its also not, right? Both of those situations are what often inspires mimicry as I see it …
But its also important to note that mimicry is, I think, a minority strategy in feminist IR and one that is explicitly rejected by most of the community. That said, reading it through Bhabha made me think about the other side of mimicry in Bhabha – what he talks about as hybridity, where the colonizer performs/absorbs some of the colonized (e.g., Indian food in Britain or whatever). It might be interesting to think about the work that (often without taking note of gender hierarchy) analyzes sex as a variable and corners the market on “good” work on gender in the American mainstream in those terms.
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– Daniel
After adjusters get that package thing from a lawyer with records and documents, photos and other reports and etc. Just how long does it usually state in the letter to respond? Do adjusters really reply by or on the date? How do they respond by phone, mail, letter or fax?