Conceptus interruptus: Forestalling sureties about violence and feminism

Abstract

Forestalling sureties about what constitutes violence and feminism and the relationships between violence and feminism have been significant themes in the work of feminist International Relations theorist Marysia Zalewski. I follow how Zalewski, through her work and work with others including myself, interrupts well-trodden ‘trails’ of violence and feminism to open up thinking about both. I consider how her provocative work on violence and particularly feminist violence prefigures and advances cutting-edge critical thought on violence as represented in the ‘Histories of Violence’ project. What I call her ‘palimpsestic’ or multilayered and intertextual approach to violence reveals it as not only destructive, but also productive in terms of breaking with deadening conventions. I also consider her conceptualisation of feminist violence as both epistemic and militant over time in relation to some contemporary feminist insurgencies, the kinds of insurgencies that serve as her muses for breaking out of forms of ‘secured’ feminism and opening space for unbounded feminist thought. Consistent with her insistence that theory (and writing) should provide uncomfortable openings, not comforting foreclosures, I end not with a conclusion about her work, but rather echo her call to resist the kind of ‘knowing’ that suffocates critical thinking and (re)generative feminist thought.

A feminist opening of resilience: Elizabeth Grosz, Liberian Peace Huts and IR critiques

“…While examining these perspectives falls beyond the scope of the article (Prügl and Tickner 2018 ), we seek to suggest that in most contemporary feminisms on IR, and those studying peace and conflict, in order to enact progress in research and ordinary life, and thus place women’s life and thought at the centre, the critique of unequal gender relations and power hierarchies comes before the prospects of emancipation. ‘Fundamental to this potentially emancipatory imaginary, its possibility and practice, is the exacting critique of gender for which feminism is known’, write the editors of a recent forum on Marysia Zalewski’s feminist interventions (Kinsella and Shepherd 2020 : 3; Sisson Runyan 2020 ).…”

“…The assumption is that the critique of the knowledge that has sustained patriarchal systems opens up possibilities for societies to be equal. As Anne Sisson Runyan argues: ‘Such non-knowing forestalls sureties by creating uncomfortable openings, not comforting foreclosures, for endless recastings of feminist oppositional knowledge that keep it alive and (re)generative’ (Runyan 2020 : 336). In these readings, openings come after opposition and critique.…”