Dr Cai Wilkinson
Biography:
Cai Wilkinson (she/they) is an Associate Professor in International Relations at Deakin University. Cai's research focuses on societal security in the post-Soviet space, with a particular focus on LGBTQ human rights and "traditional values" in Kyrgyzstan and Russia, as well as on interrogating the role of genders and sexualities in international politics. Methodologically, Cai utilizes interpretive ethnographic approaches that foreground lived experiences and situated knowledge production. Her work has been published in journals including Security Dialogue, the Journal of Human Rights, Nationalities Papers, and Critical Studies on Security, and she has also contributed chapters to volumes on securitization theory, LGBT activism in Central Asia, fieldwork-based research methods and feminist IR. Cai is currently working on projects about the politics of LGBT rights and "traditional values", and queer knowledges.
Abstract:
With Queer IR now a recognisable sub-field within the wider discipline of International Relations, this paper examines the political utility of the term queer in Queer IR in order to take stock of Queer IR’s promises and problems. Following an overview of Queer IR’s emergence as a distinctive approach to IR since the early 2010s, the paper presents a trans epistemic critique of Queer IR focusing on three interrelated issues: first, how the centering of Queer Theory has both legitimised and limited Queer IR as a critical project within International Relations, reflecting the privileging of what Weston (1994) terms "straight" theory over "street" theory. Second, the ways in which Queer IR risks contributing to the subjugation of queer and trans people and their embodied experiences in its positioning of the incorporation of queer and trans theorising as beneficial for IR’s disciplinary concerns. And third, how Queer IR’s current failure to fully interrogate how it is inevitably shaped by wider political economies of knowledge calls into question queer’s often-claimed "radical potential" (Cohen 1997, 2019). The final part of the paper then turns to consider the future(s) of Queer IR and especially the potential of methodology to ensure that Queer IR remains able to resist, refuse and rethink the normativities and categorisations that it critiques.