A Research Agenda on Feminist Texts and the Gendered Constitution of International Politics in Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829811412432 |
| Author | Lene Hansen |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
MILLENNIU
M
Journal of International Studies
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
40(1) 109–128
© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829811412432
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Corresponding author:
Lene Hansen, University of Copenhagen
Email: lha@ifs.ku.dk
Forum Article
A Research Agenda on
Feminist Texts and the
Gendered Constitution of
International Politics in
Rebecca West’s Black Lamb
and Grey Falcon
Lene Hansen
University of Copenhagen
Abstract
This article starts from two interventions made at the 2008 Millennium Roundtable Discussion
on Gender and International Relations: Vivienne Jabri’s suggestion that feminist IR might benefit
from a closer engagement with the constitution of ‘the international’ and ‘the political’ in feminist
texts and Christine Sylvester’s call for incorporating ‘difficult feminisms’ that challenge dominant
understandings of which political and analytical perspective should be adopted. In response,
this article lays out a more concrete research agenda focused on feminist texts that takes an
empirically open view of what ‘feminism’ is and which incorporates factual genres and disciplines
beyond political science and philosophy. To provide an example of a reading of ‘the international’
and ‘the political’ in a (difficult) feminist text, I turn to Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey
Falcon, a non-fiction genre-hybrid tome of almost 1200 pages published in 1941. Known to an IR
audience mainly through its alleged impact on the Bosnian War, I draw upon works in literary
theory and women’s studies to bring out West’s gendered vision of international politics, giving
particular attention to her constitution of the relationship between national, international and
women’s security. The analysis is divided into four parts which examine the gendering and
embodying of empires, the politics of art and aesthetics, sacrifice and submission, and the feminist
politics of writing.
Keywords
empire, feminism, Rebecca West, resistance, sacrifice
110 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 40(1)
Introduction
Looking back upon the first 40 years of Millennium: Journal of International Studies,
one of the journal’s many virtues has been its role in bringing gender into International
Relations (IR). Although the path-breaking 1988 Millennium Annual Conference and the
subsequent special issue have been commemorated by events and other special issues in
1998 and 2008, they are also appropriate to salute in a general stocktaking of the jour-
nal’s first four decades. Gender should not, as IR feminists consistently point out, be
confined to ‘the week’ or ‘lecture’ on gender, but should be an integrated part of the way
IR is taught and studied.1 So should it, we might add, be an integrated part of its celebra-
tions. As academics, we celebrate through writing, yet as a contributor to a forum whose
‘special’ theme is ‘anniversary’, one faces the same conundrums as a guest at a wedding
without a registry: should one go for something ‘safe’, akin to what the receiver already
owns and therefore does not really need or notice, or should one make a bolder, but
potentially disappointing choice that will be rejected and possibly returned?
My attempt to chart these waters is to start from something familiar – and Millennium-
esque – namely the Roundtable Discussion at the 2008 Annual Conference, and from
there move us onto less well-known terrain. Of the many themes that were raised at that
Roundtable, I want to focus on Vivienne Jabri’s observation that debates within feminist
theory over how to theorise politics, the international and gender have not been mirrored
in similar conversations within feminist IR. In response, Jabri calls for a reinvigorated
political theory conversation on the distinctiveness of the ‘international’ and ‘the politi-
cal’ across multiple feminist positions.2 She also suggests that older feminist writings set
at critical historical junctures, such as the turn of the 20th century, might help us better
engage with ‘classical’ issues on the contemporary agenda, like that of ‘how women
relate to war’.3 Jabri’s diagnosis of where feminist IR might expand its research agenda
is supported when we look at what some of the main feminist IR and international politi-
cal theory journals have published. Articles in International Feminist Journal of Politics
are generally set up as providing an empirical contribution; of the first six volumes of
Journal of International Political Theory only one article has a feminist text at its centre;
and, returning to Millennium itself, there have been no articles where feminist theorists
featured in the title, two articles on a female political theorist (Arendt) and one feminist
reading of a male theorist, namely Ann Tickner on Morgenthau.4 The one article which
1. Zalewski on Marysia Zalewski, Ann Tickner, Christine Sylvester, Margot Light, Vivienne Jabri,
Kimberly Hutchings and Fred Halliday, ‘Roundtable Discussion: Reflections on the Past, Prospects for
the Future in Gender and International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 37, no. 1
(2008): 153–79; Christina Rowley and Laura Shepherd, ‘The Week on Gender: Feminists Teaching IR’,
unpublished paper presented at ‘The Space between Us’ workshop at the University of Bristol, 2006,
reference in Zalewski et al., ‘Roundtable Discussion’.
2. Jabri on ‘Roundtable Discussion’, 165–8.
3. Ibid., 174.
4. Kimberly Hutchings, ‘Good Fathers and Rebellious Daughters: Reading Women in Benhabib’s
International Political Theory’, Journal of International Political Theory 5, no. 2 (2009): 113–24; Paul
Saurette, ‘“I Mistrust all Systematizers and Avoid Them”: Nietzsche, Arendt and the Crisis of the Will
to Order in International Relations Theory’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 25, no. 1
(1996): 1–28; Patrick Hayden, ‘Superfluous Humanity: An Arendtian Perspective on the Political Evil of
Global Poverty’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35, no. 2 (2007): 279–300; J. Ann Tickner,
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