The palindrome as a disruptive force : an analysis of feminist literature in international relations (IR) rooted in the work of Cynthia Enloe
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Feminists have long been championing the idea that 'the personal is political' and that politics occur even in the areas of life which seem to be most apolitical.Popularized in the field of International Relations (IR) by Cynthia Enloe in her 1989 book Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, this palindrome has come to be used by feminist scholars throughout IR and feminist security studies (FSS).Enloe also introduced the idea that 'the personal is international', which is the second palindromic phrase that is explored in this essay.Able to be read both left-to-right and in an inverted manner, the palindrome is disruptive and creates an instability in language and thought, much as feminists aim to do.This essay examines six single-authored monographs which use palindromes in their analysis as a means to unsettle normative political concepts by highlighting connections between the everyday lived experiences of women and the political world, of which women are often portrayed as being outsiders.This thesis will argue that Cynthia Enloe's introduction of the palindromic phrase "the personal is international" in her 1989 book Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics brings to light the role that individual authors can play in setting the course of academic research in a discipline.The reason I chose to pursue this goal for my research is because I saw the surface level value in reconsidering what I had learned about IR and security up until this point and wanted to dive deeper into the implications of looking at security through the perspective of feminist theory.In a similar vein, I found the break from the strict definitions of political science and IR terms upheld by traditional academia to be refreshing.Additionally, this is shown to not only be possible, but required when one looks at issues through a critical lens.I would first like to extend the greatest amount of appreciation to my supervisor, Dr. Marc Doucet for the extensive amount of guidance and patience which he granted me.It was through his security studies course that I was introduced to the field of Feminist Security Studies (FSS), and it was him who introduced me to the works of Cynthia Enloe, Laura Sjoberg and so many others who I discuss in this essay.This work also would not have been possible without my little support system of people who sat with me for hours, bouncing ideas around, writing together and correcting the terrible spelling and grammar throughout my drafts.Thank you, Quinn, Pyper, Naza and Devin for keeping me motivated through this process.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.034 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".