Do We Understand Each Other Yet? Troubling Feminist Encounters with(in) International Relations

Abstract

This article suggests that although a distinction between ‘International Relations’ and ‘Gender and International Relations’ may be untenable, there is a continued need for feminist analysis of international politics. Yet to imagine gendered scholarship on international politics as more than IR's ‘other’ remains a challenge—though resisted as the articles in this issue demonstrate. This resistance is reassuring, especially given that ambitions to imagine (G)IR as ‘one’ have been unsettled by a growing schism between feminist scholarship and gender analyses, particularly in ‘neo-feminist’ work that has gained prominence of late within IR. This article explores feminist encounters with(in) IR, firstly by considering the ways in which the ‘doing’ of feminism is simultaneously the ‘undoing’ of IR, and secondly by considering the growing trend to alleviate gendered analyses of their feminist commitments.