Description
In a 2003 article, Judith Butler examines human experiences of corporeal vulnerability in light of the empathy and insight into the vulnerability of others that might be gained from such experiences. Drawing on her assertion of the need to attend to vulnerability as a resource ‘from which we must take our bearings and find our way’ (Butler, 2003, p. 19), this paper undertakes an analysis of vulnerability as it appears within UN reports and resolutions related to interventions for protection purposes. In doing so, it questions the ways in which these texts frame vulnerability as a characteristic belonging to feminised ‘others’, reproducing a gendered dichotomy between the assumed capability and expertise of international actors and the assumed helplessness of ‘vulnerable’ local civilians—frequently imagined within these texts as ‘women and children’. I argue that this displacement of vulnerability onto others, while serving a purpose in shoring up the masculinised authority of UN actors and the institution itself, risks reproducing gendered power imbalances and excluding forms of knowledge that might be gained from attention to gendered experiences of vulnerability. This in turn limits the potential for UN actors to intervene effectively in the midst of multiple vulnerabilities—both their own and those of others.
Butler, J. 2003. Violence, mourning, politics. Studies in Gender and Sexuality. 4(1), pp. 9–37.
