Wrestling power from the big, burly man in international relations

Abstract

This dissertation interrogates the dominant realist concept of power to (re)surface critical questions about the way power is contextualised within the study of international relations. It employs a poststructuralist feminist research ethic that destabilises epistemology and transcends binary structures. This dissertation argues that gender is embedded within the concept of power, in whichever form it manifests. This embodiment reinforces a sort of masculine/feminine dichotomy so that the feminine is immediately marginalised and ostracised. At its core, this dissertation aims to discuss the implications (and violence) of gendering power, and seeks to reposition the construct of power beyond its gendered productions, insofar as gender and sex are themselves unstable binary structures.