Gender Politics and Security Discourse

Personal-Political Imaginations and Feminism in 'Post-conflict' Serbia

Laura McLeod

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138795662
• eBook ISBN: 9781317635611
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book investigates competing modes of thought about gender security and aims to understand the policy implications of personal-political imaginations.

The work draws upon extensive research conducted by the author in Serbia to develop a comprehensive picture of how feminist and women's organising relates to the broader national and international contexts surrounding gender security. Through an innovative analytical framework of personal-political imaginations, the book explores the role that memories, perceptions and hopes about conflict and post-conflict have upon the logics of gender security. It investigates how contrasting and competing modes of thought about 'gender security' are made, paying attention to how the dynamics of gender politics in Serbia shape the security discourse and narratives of activists. The volume explores in detail how feminist and women's organisations have responded to UNSCR 1325 by analysing two policy debates and campaigns that seek to 'achieve' its goals and gender security in Serbia: (1) feminist antimilitarism and (2) connecting domestic violence to the abuse of small arms and light weapons. Ultimately, the book argues that the configuration of gender security discourse is intimately linked to personal-political imaginations of conflict and post-conflict.

This book will be of much interest to students of gender politics, conflict studies, critical security studies, European politics and IR in general.

1 Boban's story

Tracing the politics of gender security

DOI: 10.4324/9781315758251-2

The other day, I went into the pet shop for cat food, and the saleswomen [examined] a list in a catalogue, and she says: 'You can see this, it's good, there is some food recently bought by Legija's daughter!'. After that, I wondered what sort of society recommends something which [is used by] Legija's daughter? This is one example of how I live in a deeply criminalised society.

(WiB 2009: 232)¹

If someone attacks a gay man [for being gay], and I go to the police to report that, a police officer will say 'well he shouldn't wear tight jeans'. I want the police officer to write down my statement, to call the witnesses and process it, and not comment on whether the guy shakes his ass or not. It is not the police officer's business. We have to change the system of values and to redefine who exists for whom in this society. ²

How might we understand these anecdotes as revealing of the politics of gender security discourse? Both anecdotes are told by Boban Stojanović, a feminist activist in Belgrade. The first discusses the relatively everyday event of buying cat food, and the second illustrates the institutional problems that may be faced by homosexuals in Serbia. On the face of it, they do not talk about gender security. However, they form a critical part of the sense-making practice which crafts gender security discourse. In both stories — which Boban gives in response to queries about what gender security is about — Boban insists that it is important to redefine social and political values in Serbia. Mapped out onto a broader intertextual web, Boban's anecdotes can be understood as a critique of the post-conflict context in Serbia that is a source of insecurity to him. Thus, these experiences inform Boban s conceptualisation of gender security, which can be contrasted to the perspectives about gender security held by other activists. I rely on a number of poststructural analytical strategies to interpret Boban's stories. Critically, I have not understood Boban's anecdotes on their own but, rather, have drawn upon an intertextual web of knowledge to make sense of how meanings of gender security have been produced. This chapter explores how we can read discourses of gender security in the stories of activists to enable us to make connections between discourses of gender security and perceptions about conflict and post-conflict.

This chapter is not about Boban per se. Rather, this chapter aims to provide the articulated context to my judgements about 'how best to go about finding out about the world' (Shepherd 2008a: 16). I use Boban's stories throughout this chapter as a means of explaining how I have interpreted discourses of gender security through personal-political imaginations. In sum, Boban's stories allow us to trace the politics of gender security. The first part of this chapter explores the notion of personal-political imaginations, which is the primary analytical vehicle that I use to understand various perceptions of post-conflict. In the second part of this chapter, I discuss the research process which formed a text enabling analysis of personal-political imaginations. For this book, I drew upon a broad range of knowledge primarily gathered during eight months of field research in Serbia and Kosovo. Translating these encounters and experiences into knowledge requires a clearly specified set of analytical strategies (Jacob) 2006: 153). In the final part of this chapter, I pay particular attention to poststructural notions of narrative and temporality. These analytical strategies acknowledge that discourses of gender security are constituted and produced through a range of subjectivities and limitations, appreciating discourses as systems of meaning-production (Shepherd 2008a: 20). Throughout this chapter, I return to Boban's anecdotes to expose the strategies used to analyse and make sense of the post-conflict personal-political imaginations of activists, and the connections to their gender security discourse.

Gender troubles and the personal-political imagination

Both anecdotes offered by Boban, which I used to open this chapter, tell personal stories: buying cat food, reporting an event to the police. But if you read both anecdotes again, notice how Boban links both of these personal experiences to broader social and political processes in Serbia. He draws attention to how he lives in a deeply criminalised society, and to the necessity of changing social values. Intentionally or unintentionally, he draws upon the popular feminist insight that the personal is political, and explicitly transforms his personal experiences into political statements. The feminist realisation that 'the personal is political' is frequently attributed to Carol Hanisch's 1970 essay of the same title (Hanisch 2006). ³ In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were concerns that second-wave feminist consciousness-raising sessions were personal therapy rather than political. Hanisch wrote the paper in response to these concerns, saying that 'these analytical sessions are a form of political action' as 'one of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems' (Hanisch 2006: 4). That is, as Hanisch points out, consciousness-raising sessions were hugely political and drew attention to the political character of all these (apparently) private worries, fears and hopes.

These points extend beyond the consciousness-raising sessions of US feminism in the late 1960s and early 1970s: the personal is political because power relations determine aspects of our lives that we imagine to be private (Enloe 2000: 195). As Cynthia Enloe suggests, this means that the notion that 'the personal is political' is at once 'one of the simplest and most disturbing feminist insights' (2000: 195); 'disturbing' because patriarchal political decisions affect our personal lives. Noticing that the personal is political also enables us to make sense of international politics. As Enloe notes, 'the personal is international' and the 'international is personal' (2000: 196). Thus, the manifestation of international politics affects our personal, daily lives, and likewise, our day-to-day activities affect the processes and practice of international politics. The insight that 'the personal is political' is useful for reminding us of the ways in which our daily lives and political power are connected.

The notion that 'the personal is political' is a useful starting point for thinking about representation and subjectivity. To make more explicit the role of representation and subjectivity within the insight that the 'personal is political' I talk about personal-political imaginations. I use personal-political imaginations as a way of giving the classic feminist insight that the 'personal is political' an element of contingency. The notion allows us to make sense of how we can understand the representation of our daily lives as something that is deeply personal and political, and to expose antagonisms in our personal-political stories. That is, personal-political imaginations indicate that we are making meanings and making sense of our world via a series of representations. I do not use imaginations to evoke a vivid make-believe world where we pretend to camp under a bed sheet draped over two chairs, or where we lie in the grass and look for animal shapes in the clouds. Rather, I use the word 'imagination' to indicate that we are making meaning. Critically, personal memories, experiences, hopes and dreams merge with — and shape — political life, struggles, ambitions and history: forming an imagination. Imaginations conjure up a text about our world, guide images of our world, shape senses of our world, invoke conceptualisations of our world. In other words, the notion of personal-political imaginations highlights that we make meanings about our world via a series of personal and political stories.

Talking in terms of personal-political imaginations is useful because it highlights how the personal-political stories that we tell are representations. We understand daily lives and the everyday through stories that we tell ourselves and others around us. As such, we can understand our everyday lives as representations involving stories, where 'these stories, all stories, are personal and deeply political' (Shepherd 2012: 12). We therefore represent particular personal-political stories about our daily lives. Representations can be conceptualised in two ways: as an instance and as a practice (Shepherd 2008a: 24). The first — representation as an instance of discursive practice — refers to ways that texts produce a specific and particular representation of a situation (Shepherd 2008a: 24). This approach recognises that 'any "reality" is mediated by a mode of representation' and that 'representations are not descriptions of a world of facticity, but are ways of making facticity' (Shapiro 1989: 13-14). In other words, any presumed reality is represented and depends upon a range of constructed knowledges which (re)produce discourses. The second conceptualisation of representation — as practice — recognises contingency in the very act and practice of representation. This highlights that representations are not simply descriptive practices but, rather, practices which are normative, allowing inclusion and exclusion. Representations are therefore contingent as 'the real, or the what of our knowing, is inseparable from how it resides in our modes of representation' (Shapiro 1988: 8). In sum, what we present as "real knowledge" is represented.

The notion of personal-political imaginations is also useful because it gives a sense of subjectivity to the relationship between the personal and political. The slogan 'the personal is political' was popularised during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and can be said to assume a female subject whose life is affected by patriarchal power relations. Understanding the role of representations in our personal-political imaginations highlights the role of subjectivity in our representations of the self. Subjectivity is a poststructural concept used to 'refer to the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of self and her ways of understanding her relation to the world' (Weedon 1997: 32). That is, different experiences shape ways of constituting the meaning of our experiences. As such, experience has no inherent essential meaning, but 'may be given meaning in language through a range of discursive systems of meaning which are often contradictory and constitute conflicting versions of social reality' (Weedon 1997: 33). Our experiences, no matter how real they seem, arise out of how we conceptualise our context and the meaning which we give to these experiences. In this respect, talking of personal-political imaginations allows us to understand representations of the self, and how this is both personal and political.

Let's briefly return to Boban's stories. Thinking of these anecdotes as indicative of his personal-political imaginations, we can identify how practices of representation and the subjectivities at stake have limited and made possible his position about gender security. For instance, his wonder at 'what sort of society recommends something which [is used by] Legija's daughter?' highlights his subjective position about Serbia's relationship to the war crimes of the 1990s. Legija is the nickname of the Serbian criminal, Milorad Ulemek, who was a commander in the notorious Serbian paramilitary group Arkan's Tigers fighting in Bosnia and Croatia during the 1990s. He was also behind the assassination of the centre-left Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić in March 2003. Boban's critique of the recommendation reminds us of his political position: his critique is indicative of his opposition to a denial culture within Serbian society and politics. A personal story — of buying cat food — is represented in such a way that we are able to read the political subjectivities inherent in these anecdotes. When we can identify these instances of representation within a personal-political imagination — mapped onto a broader intertextual web, as we shall see in the remainder of this chapter — we are able to identify articulations of gender security.

Gender troubles

I believe that the notion of personal-political imaginations is a perspective that is profoundly poststructural and feminist. This subscribes to a feminist approach to International Relations (IR), which 'materialises as something very much like a "fault-line", constantly threatening to generate fissures and fractures to upset the status quo by rendering apparent the illusion of secure foundations' (Zalewski 2007: 302-3). Feminism is a diverse theoretical approach (see Hansen 2010 for an overview of typologies). A minimal definition of feminism can be said to include a concern with gender inequality, although debate remains about how we understand gender and what that inequality may be and how inequality occurs or might be resolved. Poststructural feminism is often thought to be a contradiction because of its refusal of a singular feminine subject and espousal of a politics of undecidability: a position that throws into doubt the possibility of a feminist project (Benhabib 1992: 203-42). While the feminist heart 'does not want to vaporize the experiences of people who cannot afford to distance themselves from their assigned homes, or who ... draw inspiration for transformed identity and practice from gender identity and solidarity', the postmodern heart does not want to 'revel in gender homes because they may not really exist as meaningful foundations for the future' (Sylvester 1994: 215). I do not aim to reconcile these apparently mutually distinct ontological beliefs but, rather, to 'negotiate this paradox through giving "gender" flesh while maintaining analytic distance between [gender] as heuristic devices, and the lived, material reality in and through which they echo and are refracted' (Jones, cited in Sylvester 1994: 215). Negotiating the apparent paradox between poststructuralism and feminism requires reflexivity, a concern with issues about power and authority, and an exploration of both language and gender.

Poststructural feminist approaches understand gender as an inherently unstable and unfixed notion which functions as fixed. All feminist approaches have an ontological concern with gender, and how gender shapes the 'social relations in which individuals are embedded in, and constituted by', specifically 'historically unequal political, economic, and social structures' (Tickner 2006b: 24—5). While it is possible to have a non-feminist gender theory (see Carpenter 2002: 153-65, and the subsequent discussion edited by Carver 2003a: 287-302), central to the feminist project is an in-depth, rigorous and nuanced comprehension of "gender" that recognises the intersections between gender and power.

Furthermore, how we conceptualise gender matters because it affects the policy prescriptions we issue. Jennifer Heeg develops a useful explanation to highlight how our understanding of gender affects ontological and epistemological ambitions by paying attention to the variations between gender as-difference and as-power (2010). Gender-as-difference maintains 'the binary between sex and gender, men and women, and femininity and masculinity' (Heeg 2010). In contrast, gender-as-power 'reveals the power relations within and between societies, and is able to describe the historical roots and eventual outcomes of the public—private divide', challenging the binaries present in the gender-as-difference perspective (Heeg 2010). Heeg (2010) draws upon the example of wartime rape to demonstrate the different impacts that these ontologies have upon research:

This ontology [gender-as-difference] would be appropriate if, for example, we were examining the number of instances in which rape was used during wartime. However, it would not uncover the deep-seated power relations that make rape into a viable (if brutal) battlefield strategy: its demoralizing effects, its devastation on society beyond the actual act ... when examining wartime rape [from the perspective of gender-as-power], we would look into the meaning of motherhood, of community, of human relations to see how the act of rape in wartime is a power play that transcends the individuals involved, and affects the victimized society more broadly.

How gender is thought about affects the ontological and epistemological ambition of various feminist approaches to international politics, shaping what we identify as problems and how we resolve them. In other words, how we talk about 'gender' matters because it affects how we tackle gender problems.

The approach to gender in this study is a gender-as-power perspective. As I have stated, I adapt a feminist poststructural perspective which understands gender as an inherently unstable and unfixed notion that functions as fixed. This perception follows Judith Butler, who unpacks how 'gender operates as an interior essence that might be disclosed, an expectation that ends up producing the very phenomenon that it ant...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Interactions between gender politics and security discourse
• 1 Boban’s story: Tracing the politics of gender security
• 2 Gender security: A discourse that matters
• 3 Picking the petals: Profiling gender politics
• 4 Reconceptualising security?
• Interval
• 5 A room of one’s own: Feminism, peace and security
• 6 Pulling the trigger: Gender, domestic violence and security
• 7 Conclusions
• Appendix: Table of Women, Peace and Security Resolutions, October 2000–October 2013
• References