Introduction: Faking It in 21st Century IR/Global Politics
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | Laura Sjoberg |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829816660507 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Forum: Faking It in 21st Century IR/Global Politics |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2016, Vol. 45(1) 80 –84
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829816660507
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1. Cynthia Weber, Faking It: US Hegemony in a ‘Post-Phallic’ Era (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1999).
Introduction: Faking It in 21st
Century IR/Global Politics
Laura Sjoberg
University of Florida, USA
This is a forum that is a retrospective on, prospective about, and reflection on the con-
tinued contributions of Cynthia Weber’s (1999) Faking It: US Hegemony in a ‘Post-
Phallic’ Era.1 A number of timely events, inside the discipline of IR and in global
politics, inspired renewed conversation about Faking It. In global politics, US-Cuba
rapprochement reminded a number of scholars of the powerful account of US-Cuban
relations found in Faking It, while international debates about gay rights and sexuality
have brought discussions like Weber’s about sexuality among states from the margins
to the mainstream in the policy world. Although scholars have been interested in think-
ing about the tragectory of queer thinking in IR since the publication of Faking It,
Queer IR (with Faking It as its founding work) is experiencing something of a rebirth/
resurgence in disciplinary IR. That, paired with the selection of Weber as the 2016 ISA
Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Eminent Scholar and the release in 2016 of her
Queer International Relations: Sovereignty, Sexuality and the Will to Knowledge, have
generated a significant amount of discussion about the utility and continued relevance
of Faking It – a book which was critically acclaimed but perhaps published before its
(disciplinary) time.
Faking It is a book about gender and sexuality in global politics. It is also a book
about foreign policy and state identity. More than either, though, it is a book that makes
a powerful case that the two are intertwined. Weber characterises US foreign policy as
constituted around the symbolism of the US’ search for dominance in the international
Corresponding author:
Laura Sjoberg, University of Florida, Political Science, 234 Anderson Hall, PO Box 117325, Gainesville,
FL 32611-7325, USA.
Email: sjoberg@ufl.edu
660507MIL0010.1177/0305829816660507Millennium: Journal of International StudiesSjoberg
research-article2016
Forum: Faking It in 21st Century IR/Global Politics
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