Papers by Marysia Zalewski
Political Studies, 2005
This article focuses on how ideas about gender function in academic analyses of the conflict in N... more This article focuses on how ideas about gender function in academic analyses of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Part of the reason for doing this is to explore the paradox afflicting contemporary feminism, namely that in the midst of apparent success feminism still seems largely irrelevant to matters of political significance. A second reason involves a demonstration of the political value of poststructural feminism. To achieve these aims, I first consider the use and political aims of poststructuralist analyses, partly through an analysis of the use of poetry in social scientific analyses. The main site used to demonstrate the functions of gender and the political possibilities of poststructural feminism is John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary's book Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images. The sub-title of this book refers to a Robert Graves' poem, ‘In Broken Images’, a poem the authors use to explain their desire to ‘break images’ when explaining the conflict in Nort...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Critical Studies on Security, 2015
Does feminism need to be secure? An odd question perhaps, but the relationship between feminism a... more Does feminism need to be secure? An odd question perhaps, but the relationship between feminism and security is complex. In the discipline of International Relations (IR), there is still something of a battle around the significance of studying gender or women, especially if feminism is involved. A secure place for the study of feminism in IR may well be important. In the realm of international or global politics, the more empirical realm so to speak, issues relating to women, gender and security appear to have been taken up wholesale, most notably in the realm of international security. Vulnerability to sexual violence on a global scale is seen to be particularly problematic as the Global Summit hosted by former British Foreign Secretary William Hague and UN special envoy Angelina Jolie in London, in June 2014, illustrated. Gendered security is very much on the international political agenda. But what of feminism itself, even in all its varied manifestations? Does feminism as a ‘subject’, a ‘set of theories, concepts and practices’ need to be secure; to have security? Do feminists need or want to be secure? I want to ponder briefly on what it means to ‘go gaga’ as this idea underpins this forum. A popular definition has it that to ‘go gaga’ is simultaneously to mean being ‘slightly mad, excessively enthusiastic, senile and being a bed-wetter’ (Oxford Dictionaries Online 2014). Not all good one might think. How can any of these mostly unattractive characteristics, madness for one, relate to feminism and security? It is tricky territory thinking about madness and feminism. I was reminded of the story that opens Jane Ussher’s book on Women and Madness (1991). She begins like this, ‘When I was an adolescent my mother was mad. Because it was the 1970s she was deemed to be afflicted by her “nerves”. Had it been 100 years ago, she would have probably been called hysterical ... Today, it might be “post-natal depression” ... Sometimes she cried. Sometimes she was angry ... and when the unhappiness reached a breaking point, the cracked cups and saucers specially set aside, were taken into the back yard and flung at the wall. We children loved it. Our mother was really potty’ (Ussher 1991, 3). There was something so sad, funny and ordinary about this story, which served as a compelling and perceptive introduction to a book examining this question about ‘women’s madness’. Misogyny or mental illness? I was also reminded of a fairly large feminist conference I attended some years ago. This was quite an impressive gathering which had gained some media attention. Particularly noted was that the proceedings were marked by ‘measured Critical Studies on Security, 2015 Vol. 3, No. 2, 226–229, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2015.1047161
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Feminist Journal of Politics
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Feminist Journal of Politics
As we write this Editorial, the Russian war in Ukraine has been raging for some weeks. People are... more As we write this Editorial, the Russian war in Ukraine has been raging for some weeks. People are dying, suffering with injuries and loss, and more than six million Ukrainians are now displaced. We struggle to make any sense of this, though swathes of politicians, journalists, and academics do not seem at much of a loss, all too frequently offering what are being called “Westsplaining” accounts, imagining an apocalyptic encounter between the powers of “freedom” and “authoritarian darkness” – perhaps treating this war like a game of Risk (Smoleński and Dutkiewicz 2022). As a journal committed to feminist, postcolonial, and queer critical analysis and critique, we cannot capitulate to the patriarchally forceful idea that “it’s not the time to focus on gender, race, sexuality, or queerness.” We have to question, for example, the emergent saturation of militarized masculinized energies, and the activation of tropes of masculinist protection calling men – and women – to arms. And we have to raise more questions:
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2021
An editorial is presented about the challenges that the world is facing in the face of Covid-19 P... more An editorial is presented about the challenges that the world is facing in the face of Covid-19 Pandemic which brought diseases, economic recession, and long-term uncertainty. It discusses marginalized groups and those marginalized within groups bearing more of the consequences of these upheavals and feminists raising awareness of the ways in which caste, gender, race, disability, sexuality, and colonial and neocolonial oppressions have been exacerbated.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
... following the trail of responsibilities is a sure way to notice the intimate entwining
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security, 2018
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Rethinking the Man Question, 2008
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Review of International Studies, 2020
Cristina Masters (CM): The articles in this forum speak to how influential and inspiring your wor... more Cristina Masters (CM): The articles in this forum speak to how influential and inspiring your work is for scholars in the discipline of International Relations (IR), not least feminist scholars. Particularly, I think, for encouraging us to (re)think and (re)work with deeply familiar ‘things’ in deeply unusual – yet troublingly fecund – ways. Blood, for example, comes up quite frequently in your writing on methodology, even though it appears, as you say, an ‘unlikely candidate for methodological use’. What is so promising about blood for making sense of global politics?
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Affairs, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Review of International Studies, 2009
In this article we critically consider the idea that feminism has performatively failed within th... more In this article we critically consider the idea that feminism has performatively failed within the discipline of International Relations. One aspect of this failure relates to the production of sexgender through feminism which we suggest is partly responsible for a weariness inflecting feminist scholarship, in particular as a critical theoretical resource. We reflect on this weariness in the context of the study and practice of international politics – arenas still reaping the potent benefits of the virile political energies reverberating since 9/11. To illustrate our arguments we re-count a familiar feminist fable of militarisation – a story which we use to exemplify how the production of feminist IR is ‘set’ up to ‘fail’. In so doing we clarify our depiction of feminism as seemingly haunted by its inherent paradoxes as well as explaining why it matters to discuss feminism within the locale of the academic study of international politics. We conclude with a consideration of the gra...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2008
Kimberly Hutchings: I am delighted to welcome our roundtable spea-kers. We have Professor Vivienn... more Kimberly Hutchings: I am delighted to welcome our roundtable spea-kers. We have Professor Vivienne Jabri from Kings College London, Professor Margot Light from the London School of Economics, Dr Marysia Zalewski from the University of Aberdeen, Professor Fred Halliday ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Men and Masculinities, 2013
This special issue brings together an interdisciplinary collection of voices to engage with ideas... more This special issue brings together an interdisciplinary collection of voices to engage with ideas about men, masculinities, and responsibility. Our aim in putting this issue together is to open up a trail of eclectic and imaginative questions to help illustrate how complex webs of masculinist subjectivities and performative practices interact across and inform various topic areas and lived experiences. Ideas about and practices of responsibility are, politically and culturally, persistently anchored in liberal and androcentric assumptions about individualism, free will, agency, subjectivity, and morality. As such, the masculinist veneer of this significant philosophical concept and personal/collective practice is worth considering in depth, at a variety of levels and in diverse ways. The articles here draw on a range of disciplines and perspectives, including anthropology, postcolonial studies, gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, critical race theory, visual and popular culture, political science, international relations, sociology, economics, and development studies. In
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Review of International Studies, 2021
A key curiosity animating this article concerns how sexual violence is theorised. The work of fem... more A key curiosity animating this article concerns how sexual violence is theorised. The work of feminist scholars has been crucial in unearthing ways in which women's traditionally demeaned bodies regularly materialised as ‘easy targets’ for such violence. The gift of the concept of gender has played a significant role in facilitating the production of this corpus of knowledge. Less noticed in the literature, in policy and legislation has been sexual violence against men – an egregious omission. Yet it seems that redeploying the concept of gender to make sense of sexual violence against men and elevate this violence into the realms of theoretical and legislative attention is not straightforward. Identifying feminist work as in part responsible for the rendering of sexual violence against men as too ‘unseen’ in theory provoked my attention, though it's not that I place feminist theory as ‘innocent’ or infallible – far from it. In this article I unpack some of the complexities a...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2020
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2020
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by Marysia Zalewski