Abstractions in International Relations

On the Mystification of Trans, Queer, and Subaltern Life in Critical Knowledge Production

Bibliographic Data

ID7770973
AuthorsAlexander Stoffel (0000-0001-8165-8258, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author), Ida Roland Birkvad (0000-0002-0310-4572, London School of Economics and Political Science)
Year2023
Volume29
Issue4
Pages852-876
Publication date2023-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of International Relations (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1354-0661 • E-ISSN: 1460-3713
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/13540661231176907
OpenAlexW4381280849
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited53

This paper identifies a common process of mystification within academic knowledge production today: the treatment of subordinated groups as mere metaphors or rhetorical figures for academic theorizing. We witness it when academics ask what trans might teach us about transnationality, when we are invited to reflect on what might be queer about modern warfare, or when nation-states are described as subaltern. Trans, queer, and subaltern populations are routinely fetishized within scholarship on the “traditional” International Relations concerns of statecraft, migration, security, and so on. This tendency serves a mystifying function by disabling scholars from examining the social relations that shape and organize their lives and histories. This paper proceeds in three parts. First, to understand the origins and logics of this self-mystifying process, this paper returns, via Stuart Hall, to Karl Marx’s methodological writings on abstraction. It contributes to the formalization of his methodology for contemporary IR scholarship by drawing a distinction between the fetishization of abstraction and the concretization of abstraction. Second, the paper explores how abstracted subject positions have been fetishized within three fields of international studies: trans studies, queer theory, and subaltern studies. Third, after elaborating a critique of this mystifying move, the paper outlines alternative approaches that instead seek to concretize the abstractions queer, trans, and subaltern by attending to their specific historical and social determinations. These strategies of demystification, we argue, carry forward a founding commitment of critical theory that is all too often abandoned within scholarly knowledge production today

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Literature · Political science · Politics · Praxis · Queer · Queer theory · Rhetorical question · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Subaltern · Textuality · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law

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