Description
Feminism and political realism are conventionally regarded as antithetical, one a liberation project critical of the masculinist state; the other an instruction manual for sovereign order. In this paper I instead identify a neglected and fraught thread of feminist international thought – feminist realpolitik – which works to reconstitute the national interest in post-patriarchal terms. The encounter between feminism and ‘reason of state’ has today reached a new intensity in several conjoined domains: in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda; in the integration of ‘the gender perspective’ into security communities like NATO; in the increasing deployment of gender in military operations; and in the advent of ‘feminist foreign policy’. Though often framed as an ethical appeal for a less violent, more cooperative world, feminist arguments have also been mobilized to defend or reimagine the powers of the state. Recent claims for a feminist statecraft echo historical debates within the feminist movement about the character of sovereignty, the utility of force, and the relationship between freedom and power politics on the international stage.
