Double visions in feminist theories of international relations : feminist and feminine subjectivity
Date
1998
Authors
MacAlpine, Allison Wynne
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Abstract
Feminist theories of International Relations are attempting to deal with one of the central preoccupations of feminist theory as a whole: how to work on behalf of women by naming a category of "woman" and its political struggles, and simultaneously decentring that category to avoid universalising women's experiences and necessarily excluding many women from representation. This thesis argues that the most effective way of dealing with this problem is demonstrated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who suggests that feminists challenge specific instances of sexism by representing particular women as a category, but also challenge phallocentric representation by foregrounding the impossibility of those representations of "woman" as knowledge. It then seeks to evaluate the work of six feminist International Relations theorists in light of Spivak's explorations. It concludes that all six remain captive of the politics of representation that they seek, in part, to challenge.