Feminist fatigue(s): reflections on feminismand familiar fables of militarisation

In this article we critically consider the idea that feminism has performativelyfailed within the discipline of International Relations. One aspect of this failure relates tothe production of sexgender through feminism which we suggest is partly responsible for aweariness inflecting feminist scholarship, in particular as a critical theoretical resource. Wereflect on this weariness in the context of the study and practice of international politics –arenas still reaping the potent benefits of the virile political energies reverberating since 9/11.To illustrate our arguments we re-count a familiar feminist fable of militarisation – a storywhich we use to exemplify how the production of feminist IR is ‘set’ up to ‘fail’. In so doingwe clarify our depiction of feminism as seemingly haunted by its inherent paradoxes as wellas explaining why it matters to discuss feminism within the locale of the academic study ofinternational politics. We conclude with a consideration of the grammar of temporality thatdelimits representations of feminism and move to recast feminist failure as aporetic andconcomitantly implicated in the process of intervening politically