Queer/Trans K’s

State Key- Queer IR

Mobilization of Queer theory in IR requires engagement with the political

Weber 16 (Cynthia, Professor of International Relations at Sussex University, co-Director of the media company Pato Productions, films that critically engage with identity, citizenship, and human rights practices, Graduate Program in International Affairs and the Observatory for Latin America at the New School University, published several internationally recognized books on topics ranging from US foreign policy and international relations to theory and film, including Simulating Sovereignty, Cambridge University Press, “Queer International Relations”, Oxford University Press, January 25, 2016, https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TiHuCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=queer+%22international+relations%22+intersectionality&ots=a6qioU01He&sig=aCoU53h1_cMvGkS1yN2S8wqsuVQ#v=onepage&q=queer&f=false)

This means that, analytically, my own usage of queer has a specific content, even if that content's function is to keep open spaces for critical queer thinking and practice. For me, that analytical content does not extend to all things nonnormative (as it does for some queer theorists). Rather, it extends specifically to how queer is deployed in relation to normative and/ or perverse understandings of sex, of gender, and of sexuality in ways that make two refusals. The first refusal is to reduce 'queer' to only that which is antinormative (Wiegman and Wilson 2015; also see Weber 1999). As I use it, queer is, for example, a never-quite-achieved or coherent concept, subjectivity, field of political practice, or sexualized ordering of the inti- mate, the national, and/or the international that combines normativities and perversions in ways that confuse and confound what is said to be normative and/or antinormative by eschewing or embracing while at the same time and place eschewing and embracing normativities and perversions (as the case of the 'Eurovisioned drag queen' Neuwirth/Wurst illus- trates in detail in chapter 6). The second refusal is to disconnect queer from any consideration of sexes, genders, and sexualities and from those bodies that refuse/fail to signify monolithically in these terms, because this move enables a foreclosure on these types of analyses. This is why I am most comfortable with Eve Sedgwick's understanding Of queer as 'the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of any one's gender, of anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically' (1993, 8). For in this definition of queer, sexes, genders, and sexualities and their complex attachments matter. Insisting upon linking queer to sexes, genders, and sexualities rather than to a broader understanding Of queer as encompassing all things Sovereignty, Sexuality. and the Will to Knowledge nonnormative allows me to do two further things. The first is to distinguish queer from a more generalized (especially Foucauldian) type of poststructuralism. The second is to insist that how queer and things associated with queer are mobilized must themselves be the subject of political (and feminist) analysis. Both of these points are illustrated in a story about an IR theorist's evocation of the term queer. That story begins with this declaration: 'My work IS queer'. This is what a white, heterosexual, cismale, poststructuralist IR professor declared at a public lecture about his Foucauldian-informed project. His lecture included no analysis of the function of nonmonolithic expres- sions of sexes, genders, or sexualities. Quite the contrary, not once did he even mention any of these terms. Instead, as he laid out his project, it had nothing to do with sexes, genders, or sexualities, even though there were multiple opportunities to analyze their normative and/or perverse func- tions in the context of his project. Sitting in the audience that day next to another self-identified queer person and queer studies scholar, I remember how we both squirmed with discomfort. I remember our conversation afterward, in which we both discussed how profoundly disturbed we were by this professor's declaration. For what we both felt was that this specific enactment of queer was not queer in any sense we understood it. It felt to us like an appropriation of the term queer and of the thinking space that comes with it by this 'mythi- cally normative' professor (Lorde 1984, 116)29 in order to augment his own individual power and to further his appeal to his audience of admirers. It made me admire him less. For his mobilization of queer—which, had it been mobilized differently, could have created a range Of possibilities for scholarship and practice with respect to nonmonolithic sexes, genders, and sexualities—closed down any consideration of sexes, genders, and sexualities in the very name of queer. This story illustrates why I disagree with Sedgwick's suggestion that 'what it takes—all it takes—to make the description "queer" a true one is the impulsion to use it in the first person' (Sedgwick 1993, 9). TO me, this particular claim by Sedgwick expresses a naiveté about power relations. QUEER INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS For not everyone uses queer in the first person in the same way, to empower the same 'truth'. This is why the mobilization of the term queer matters. And this is why I insist on linking queer to analyses of nonmonolithic expressions of sexes, genders, and sexualities. My move with respect to queer is akin Cynthia Enloe's move with respect to feminism. As Enloe puts it, I think you can't claim to describe your analysis as feminist if you have no interest in women's ideas and experiences and lives, and if you have no interest in the workings of both masculinities and femininities. You have to have curiosity about the workings of both to be feminist. You also have to be interested in the way that power works in gender and in women's lives. You have to add an explicit exploration of power if you're not just going to do gender analysis, but (a more useful) feminist analysis. (Enloe 2013)30 Let me borrow Enloe@ terms to explain how I use the term queer. I cannot claim to be doing queer work if I have no genuine interest in those who refuse/fail to signify monolithically in terms of sexes, genders, and sexualities. I cannot claim to be doing queer work if I neglect to analyze how power circulates in and through sexes, genders, and sexualities to attempt to normalize and/or pervert them. I cannot claim to be doing queer work if my evocation of the term queer closes down possibilities for critical thinking and practice in relation to nonmonolithic sexes, genders, and sexualities. I cannot claim to be doing queer work if I do not analyze how any evocation of the term queer is itself always made through a particular expression of power on behalf of some kind of intimate, national, and/or international politics. If I or other IR scholars were to call our work queer without doing these things, this could be just as harmful to some presumed field called 'queer IR' as would declarations that dismiss queer IR research altogether. For this kind of enthusiastic embrace of queer and queer IR squeezes the con- tent of nonmonolithic sexes, genders, and sexualities right out of considerations of queer and queer IR. And that has the effect of closing down Sovereignty, Sexuality, and the Will to Knowledge innumerable spaces of critical thinking and practice, whether that is our intention or not. Queer and queer IR, then, are not equivalent to poststructuralism or poststructuralist IR. While they have similar origins and overlap- ping political concerns, there can be and often are important differences between them, both in terms of their content and in terms of their political deployments and effects. This is not to say that a white, heterosexual, cismale (or cisfemale), poststructuralist (or other) IR scholar cannot be a queer IR scholar or cannot be an advocate on behalf of queer IR scholars and scholarship. Many are (see Nayak 2014). Rather, it means that those deploying the term queer ought to ask themselves: On whose behalf am I deploying this term, and what are the practical political effects of my deployment? Also, how, in particular, does my deployment of queer affect those who refuse/fail to signify monolithically in relation to sexes, genders, and sexualities? One final point. There is nothing inherently feminist about queer or queer IR. Queer and queer IR's relevance for the discipline of IR and even its existence in the discipline of IR have been challenged by some feminist scholars and some feminist IR scholars.31 Additionally, queer and queer IR can be and have been mobilized for nonfeminist purposes. Like many queer theorists and IR theorists, my political commitment is to a queer IR that is also a feminist IR, or is at least compatible with a feminist IR. What follows here is offered in that spirit.