The Gender Thing: Apparatuses and Intra-Agential Ethos
| Author | Elisabeth Prügl |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829820971685 |
| Subject Matter | Book Forum |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829820971685
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2020, Vol. 49(1) 140 –150
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0305829820971685
journals.sagepub.com/home/mil
1. Rahel Kunz, ‘Messy Feminist Knowledge Politics: A Double Reading of Post-Conflict
Gender Mainstreaming in Liberia’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 22, no. 1 (1
January 2020): 63–85.
The Gender Thing:
Apparatuses and Intra-
Agential Ethos
Elisabeth Prügl
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland
Abstract
In international governance circles it has become common to refer to gender interventions as
“the gender thing.” The article takes this formulation as an opportunity to interrogate what a new
materialist approach, such as that formulated in Laura Zanotti’s Ontological Entanglements, Agency,
and Ethics in International Relations, could mean for international feminist theory and praxis. It first
discusses the different ways in which gender emerges as an `apparatus’, juxtaposing Foucauldian
formulations of gender as a biopolitical tool to Barad’s conceptualization of an apparatus as a
measuring instrument and her understanding of gender as an apparatus of bodily production.
Second, the article explores Zanotti’s development of the notion of intra-agential ethos and brings
it into conversation with reflections on ethics and praxis in feminist IR. It critiques the erasure
of languages of power from Barad’s theory and the failure to attend to difference in Zanotti’s
notion of an intra-agential ethos. It concludes with an interpretation of what could be meant
by references to “the gender thing” in international governance circles and develops connecting
points between Zanotti’s intra-agential ethos and international feminist praxis.
Keywords
quantum international relations, critical theory, international ethics
‘The international community came to bring this gender thing about’. This quote from a
Liberian gender expert introduces a recent article by Rahel Kunz,1 in which she shows that,
Corresponding author:
Elisabeth Prügl, Gender Center, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, P.O. Box
136, 1121 Geneva 21, Switzerland.
Email: elisabeth.pruegl@graduateinstitute.ch
971685MIL0010.1177/0305829820971685Millennium: Journal of International StudiesPrügl
research-article2020
Book forum
To continue reading
Request your trial