How Speculative Fiction Can Teach about Gender and Power in International Politics: A Pedagogical Overview

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Boaz
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
State University ◽  
The Core ◽  
Battlestar Galactica ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Separate System

Abstract Fictional universes can be treated as discrete units of analysis in which we see the operation of international relations theory. This article discusses insights gleaned from a course created at Sonoma State University called “Gender and Geopolitics in Science Fiction and Fantasy,” in which feminist theory and international relations approaches are integrated, and science fiction and fantasy texts serve as the mechanism through which to examine the key themes and questions. This article provides an overview of the pedagogy to highlight the usefulness of speculative fiction in teaching. Each of the fictional universes is treated as a separate system where gender and political dynamics manifest in ways that observers of international relations will recognize. The core texts are Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Jessica Jones, Star Trek, Misfits, and Watchmen. The major theories and approaches explored here have implications for gender studies and feminist theory, the concepts of metaphor and allegory, and game theory.

Johanna Sinisalo and the New Weird

2018 ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
Hanna-Riikka Roine ◽  
Hanna Samola
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
The Core ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Fiction Writer

This chapter analyzes the Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo’s 2013 novel Auringon ydin [The core of the sun] in the contexts of speculative fiction, dystopia, and fairy tale to provide an illustrative example of Sinisalo’s oeuvre. The novel combines various elements, genres, and text-types in a self-reflexive and parodic way, which both gives the novel a peculiar twist and offers an interesting viewpoint on the Finnish weird. The novel’s fabulous thought experiment combines the depiction of human domestication with real documents addressing eugenics and sterilization and the domestication of silver foxes. The chapter also discusses dystopian and fairy-tale elements in the novel and suggests that while Sinisalo draws from multiple sources in her writing, she can be considered a science-fiction writer due to her focus on the thought experiment.

A Case against the Constructivist–Critical Theory Synthesis

2019 ◽  
pp. 122-146
Author(s):  
J. Samuel Barkin ◽  
Laura Sjoberg
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The Core ◽  
Critical Theories

This chapter builds on the understandings of constructivist and critical International Relations theories laid out in the book so far to make an argument that constructivisms and critical theories are not the same thing, naturally aligned, or necessarily productive bedfellows. Furthermore, there are both analytical and political downsides to the constructivist/critical theory nexus, which are evident in work in international relations that pairs the two unreflectively. In fact, many of the intersections between constructivisms and critical theories in the current International Relations theory literature are contrived at the expense of some or even most of the core tenets of either theory. This chapter suggests that the “end of International Relations” and the lost, confused nature of International Relations theory (particularly progressive International Relations theory) can find their origins in the underspecification and overreached application of pairings between constructivisms and critical theorizing in International Relations. These implications make it necessary to critically evaluate figurations of constructivist and critical International Relations.

Introduction: ‘The UFOs Are Coming!’

2016 ◽  
pp. 7-16
Author(s):  
Jon Towlson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
New Age ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Third ◽  
Close Encounters ◽  
Alien Abduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Close Encounters is a UFO movie that arose from a resurgence of ufology in the 1970s, which coincided with the growth of New Age movements, mysticism, alien-abduction cults, and an increasing belief in conspiracy theories. The film speaks to Utopianism, the belief within international relations theory that war can be eliminated either by perfecting man or by perfecting government. Utopianism is, of course, a key concept in science fiction. The chapter then looks at Jack Kroll's review of Close Encounters, which demonstrates how so many of the political criticisms surrounding the film stem from the time of its initial reception, and how its cultural denotation as ‘transcendent’ science fiction was immediately recognised and accepted by some — but not all — critics. The chapter also details the synopsis of the film.

scholarly journals In the beginning: The International Relations enlightenment and the ends of International Relations theory

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 647-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Williams
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theoretical Orientations ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Core Issue ◽  
Post War ◽  
In The Beginning

The question of endings is simultaneously a question of beginnings: wondering if International Relations is at an end inevitably raises the puzzle of when and how ‘it’ began. This article argues that International Relations’ origins bear striking resemblance to a wider movement in post-war American political studies that Ira Katznelson calls the ‘political studies enlightenment.’ This story of the field’s beginnings and ends has become so misunderstood as to have almost disappeared from histories of the field and accounts of its theoretical orientations and alternatives. This historical forgetting represents one of the most debilitating errors of International Relations theory today, and overcoming it has significant implications for how we think about the past and future development of the field. In particular, it throws open not only our understanding of the place of realism in International Relations, but also our vision of liberalism. For the realism of the International Relations enlightenment did not seek to destroy liberalism as an intellectual and political project, but to save it. The core issue in the ‘invention of International Relations theory’ — its historical origins as well as its end or goal in a substantive or normative sense — was not the assertion of realism in opposition to liberalism: it was, in fact, the defence of a particular kind of liberalism.

Women as Objects and Commodities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Sajed
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Feminist Literature ◽  
The Core

The engagement between the discipline of international relations (IR) and feminist theory has led to an explosion of concerns about the inherent gendered dimension of a supposedly gender-blind field, and has given rise to a rich and complex array of analyses that attempt to capture the varied aspects of women’s invisibility, marginalization, and objectification within the discipline. The first feminist engagements within IR have pointed not only to the manner in which women are rendered invisible within the field, but also to IR’s inherent masculinity, which masks itself as a neutral and universally valid mode of investigation of world politics. Thus, the initial feminist incursions into IR’s discourse took the form of a conscious attempt both to bridge the gap between IR and feminist theory and to bring gender into IR, or, in other words, to make the field aware that “women are relevant to policy.” In the 1990s, feminist literature undertook incisive analyses of women’s objectification and commodification within the global economy. By the end of the 1990s and into the first decade of the 21st century, the focus turned to an accounting for the agency of diverse women as they are located within complex sociopolitical contexts. The core concern of this inquiry lay with the diversification of feminist methodologies, especially as it related to the experience of women in non-Western societies.

Chinese Thinking on the Future of International Relations: Realism as the Ti, Rationalism as the Yong?

2009 ◽  
Vol 197 ◽  
pp. 87-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Lynch
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
English School ◽  
The West ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Intellectual Elites

AbstractChina's evidently unstoppable “rise” energizes PRC political and intellectual elites to think seriously about the future of international relations. How will (and should) China's international roles change in the forthcoming decades? How should its leaders put the country's rapidly-increasing power to use? Foreign China specialists have tended to use an overly-streamlined “resisting” the West versus “co-operating” with it (or even simpler “optimistic” versus “pessimistic”) scale to address such questions, partly reflecting the divide between Realism and Neoliberalism in American international relations theory. By 2002, a near-consensus had developed (though never shared universally) that China had become an increasingly co-operative power since the mid-1990s and would continue to pursue the policy prescriptions of Neoliberal international relations theory. But using more nuanced “English school” analytical techniques – and examining the writings of Chinese elites themselves, aimed solely at Chinese audiences – this article discovers an unmistakably cynical Realism to be still at the core of Chinese thinking on the international future. Even elites who appear sincere in their promotion of co-operation firmly reject “solidarism” among the world's leading states and insist upon upholding the difference between China and all others. Many demand – and foresee – China using its future power to pursue world objectives that would depart in significant respects from those of the other leading states and non-state actors.

Speaking and hearing' Habermasian discourse ethics, feminism and IR

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Hutchings
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Critical Theorist

It is impossible not to encounter Habermas as an important interlocutor in the fields of critical theory, feminist theory and international relations theory across which I work. He is the outstanding critical theorist of his generation, in the tradition of critique which was carried through the Frankfurt School and traces itself back to Kant, Hegel and Marx. And for feminists and international relations theorists, he represents one of the directions in which feminist theory or post-positivist IR could develop, deepening its epistemological and sociological understanding without sacrificing the possibility of the rationally grounded critique of contemporary world politics. This article is the beginning of an attempt to trace through layers of difficulty encountered in using Habermas as a normative resource for a particular version of feminist international theory, which understands feminism to be a transnational, cosmopolitan (but not univocal) project, neither authorised nor legitimised by any foundational ground or teleological end. I will argue that although Habermas's notion of discourse ethics seems initially promising as a way forward for non-foundational feminist theory, in the end any ‘dialogue’ on Habermasian terms turns out to be one-sided and exclusive.

Qualities of a good essay: an assessment of the writings of Nigerian undergraduates

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
pp. 82-88
Author(s):  
Usoro Mark Okono
Keyword(s):  
Critical Case ◽  
State University ◽  
Descriptive Linguistics ◽  
Purposive Sampling ◽  
Writing Test ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Regular Practice

This research sought to discover the capabilities of Nigerian undergraduates in handling the salient characteristics of essay in English. Such qualities as clarity, economy, simplicity, unity and coherence were the variables in the assessment. The study was conducted within the framework of the theory of descriptive linguistics and its sub-discipline of stylistics. Four topics representing argumentative, descriptive, expository and narrative essays were given to students for each of them to voluntarily choose one and write on in a strictly supervised writing test. All the essays were marked on the above stated variables. Critical case sampling strand of the purposive sampling was used to select four outstanding essays each representing one of the four departments of the Akwa Ibom State University of Nigeria. Paragraph and sentence formed some of the units of analysis. It was found out that the four subjects whose essays were analyzed proved their mettle in producing readable and creative prose in the four genres with some room for improvement. It is suggested that the Use of English programme in Nigerian universities should be extended from one to two years in addition to regular practice in writing by students and feedback from lecturers.

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