Small Subversions

Abstract

Abstract So far, the story that Fixing Gender has laid out has focused on the ways in which peacekeeper training renders gender a knowable object through epistemic lenses that privilege martial and colonial logics. At the same time, this is a complex story, and one that is punctuated throughout with an attentiveness to moments of instability for the hegemonic discourses of martial institutions. Against this backdrop, Chapter 5 shifts modes of analysis to pay more systematic attention to such destabilizing moments in gender training. This chapter offers examples of training that engages in feminist pedagogical practice, demonstrating how some trainers wield subversive strategies to recover (some) of the radical potential of gender knowledge. These practices do not amount to feminist transformation; they do not necessarily provide an alternative future for martial institutions. Rather, these are ‘small subversions’: moments of delinking, disruption, and instability against hegemonic discourses.