{"id":160,"date":"2019-05-13T12:59:41","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T11:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/whit\/?p=160"},"modified":"2019-05-13T12:59:42","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T11:59:42","slug":"family-the-state-and-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/whit\/2019\/05\/13\/family-the-state-and-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Family, the State and War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Professor Kimberly Hutchings <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conventional accounts of the history of international\nthought date recognition of the significance of private\/ public distinctions\nfor understanding international politics from the latter quarter of the\ntwentieth century, for example, in books such as Jean Elshtain\u2019s Women and War<\/em> (1987) or Sara Ruddick\u2019s Maternal Thinking: towards a politics of\npeace<\/em> (1989). In this respect international thought is, as so often,\nfigured as rather behind the curve, catching up with the work of feminists in\nother disciplines. When we think of the preoccupations of IR in the early to\nmid-twentieth century, we think of Waltz\u2019s famous \u2018images\u2019, in which human\n(read male) nature, states and the international system are constituted as key\nsources of explanation and normative judgment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For women international thinkers, however, it has\nnever been so easy to overlook the importance of the organization of intimate\nrelations and how these matter for big picture questions about the state and\nwar and vice versa. Contra Waltz, the individual (man) does not exist in\nglorious isolation as bad, good or malleable, but is always in relation to others,\nincluding, of course, women. This does not mean, however, that women\ninternational thinkers from the early to mid-twentieth century interpret the\nsignificance of intimate relations in the same way. Some of them, such as Jane\nAddams (1860-1935), clearly prefigure the arguments of Ruddick. Others, however,\nsuch as Eslanda Robeson (1895-1965) and Emma Goldman (1869-1940) have a\ndifferent story to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In her entertaining piece \u201cIf Men Were Seeking the\nFranchise\u2019, Addams adopts the standpoint of women in charge of families and\nhouseholds to poke fun at men\u2019s standard arguments against women\u2019s suffrage. Addams\u2019s\nargument creates a parallel world in which women have had the vote and men have\nbeen denied it, and contrasts that world with the aggression and waste\ncharacteristic of politics as usual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, could not the\nwomen say: \u201cOur most valid objection to extending the franchise to you is that\nyou are so fond of fighting – you always have been since you were little boys.\nYou\u2019d very likely forget that the real object of the State is to nurture and\nprotect life, and out of sheer vainglory you would be voting away huge sums of\nmoney for battleships, not one of which could last more than a few years, and\nyet each would cost ten million dollars; more money than all the buildings of\nHarvard University represent, although it is the richest educational\ninstitution in America\u201d.  (Addams 1913)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underneath the fun is a serious argument that the male\n\u2018public\u2019 world needs to learn from the caring and prudential virtues and values\nembedded in the female \u2018private\u2019 one. These virtues and values, when translated\ninto the public sphere give rise, amongst other things, to pacific foreign\npolicy, regulation of dangerous industries, investment in education, and reform\nof the penal system. Addams\u2019s argument works because the family is defined as\ninhabiting a separate sphere, one in which the logic of state and war does not,\nor ought not to, enter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As with Addams, Robeson frequently points to the ways\nin which family and household management provide lessons for state and international\npolitics. In Robeson\u2019s case, however, rather than being based on a public\/\nprivate distinction, her position relies on the denial of that distinction and\nthe assertion of a strong continuity between the quality of familial, national\nand international relations. In response to a question from Pearl Buck about\nhow Americans have come to lose \u2018our sense of human relationships\u2019, Robeson\nanswers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe we never had it. We\nbegan in this country with slavery, remember. It\u2019s impossible to develop human\nrelationships, or to keep them if we had them, under slavery. Slavery itself is\na violation of human relationships, and sets up false standards. (Buck and Robeson,\n1950, p.33)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robeson is clear-eyed about the ways in which raced\nand gendered international political and economic relations produce and are\nproduced by not only the bourgeois mother but also the utter destruction of any\nrealm of privacy or intimacy for enslaved, exploited and dispossessed women.\nRather than a space for nurturing caring relationships, the private sphere in\ncapitalist conditions is the breeding ground of racism and sexism. Thus\nalthough on the surface Robeson may sound as if she is following Addams\u2019s lead,\nshe is in fact doing something radically different. For her what is needed is\nnot the exporting of a particular set of values from a distinct private sphere\nto a public one, but the building of all human relationships on the basis of\ndemocracy and equality. In this context the family is a crucial site of world\npolitics because it is the context in which people are inducted into human\nrelations, well or badly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a common error to\nconsider international affairs as remote, in a rarefied intellectual field.\nActually international affairs are merely an extension of domestic affairs,\nwhich in turn are merely an extension of family affairs and relations with\nneighbours. (Robeson, 1958, p. 35)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Addams and Robeson both see the family, and within\nthis women and mothers, as potentially playing a significant role in\ntransforming state and world order. Goldman, in contrast, sees the family only\nas a key site of oppression, and is deeply suspicious of the \u2018myth\u2019 of women\u2019s\nmoral superiority, or the idea that they carry distinct values into the public\nsphere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The insatiable monster, war, robs woman of all that is dear and precious to\nher. It exacts her brothers, lovers, sons, and in return gives her a life of\nloneliness and despair. Yet the greatest supporter and worshiper of war is\nwoman. She it is who instills the love of conquest and power into her children;\nshe it is who whispers the glories of war into the ears of her little ones, and\nwho rocks her baby to sleep with the tunes of trumpets and the noise of guns. (Goldman,\n1911 Chapter 9)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Goldman the family is not a bulwark against state\nand war, but a key component of state power. A central aspect of this is the\ncontrol of women\u2019s sexuality and reproduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The defenders of\nauthority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest it rob them of their\nprey. Who would fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would make the\npoliceman, the jailor, if woman were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of\nchildren? (Goldman, 1911, Chapter 11)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The family is a site for the reproduction of capitalism\nand war not only because it literally reproduces the population, but because it\nproduces men and woman as puritans and patriots, disabling their capacity to\nthink and act as individuals. Family relations oppress women, but women are\nalso complicit in their oppression, particularly middle class women such as\nAddams, who embrace the task of regulating other people\u2019s lives. Goldman\ndismisses the campaign for women\u2019s suffrage as a struggle for \u2018the \u201cprivilege\u201d\nof becoming a judge, a jailor or an executioner\u2019. If one is to revolutionise\nthe world then woman must embrace her own freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through\nherself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex\ncommodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing\nto bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God,\nthe State, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler,\nbut deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of\nlife in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public\nopinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman\nfree, will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real\nlove, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life-giving; a creator\nof free men and women. (Goldman, 1911, Ch 9)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever one\u2019s views\nas to Addams\u2019s, Robeson\u2019s and Goldman\u2019s arguments, they were all drawing\nattention to the importance of the relation between intimate and international\nrelations well before Enloe reminded us that the \u2018personal is international\u2019\n(Enloe 1989). Does this matter for those of us working on these issues today?\nArguably, it does matter in two ways. First, the way we tell the story of\nfeminist IR tends to perpetuate a teleological narrative through stages from\n\u2018add women and stir\u2019 to more sophisticated decolonial or queer feminist\nperspectives. This is a narrative that just does not stand up once we look at\nthe actual history of women\u2019s international thought in 1913, never mind in the\n1980s (see Hemmings 2011). Second, in their substantive claims, all of these\nthinkers underline the ways in which the exclusion of \u2018family\u2019 or the \u2018private\u2019\nfrom the examination of \u2018state\u2019 and \u2018war\u2019 disables our capacity to understand\nor change the world around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jane Addams (1913)\n\u201cIf Men Were Seeking the Franchise\u201d, Ladies\nHome Journal<\/em> (June). Available at: http:\/\/nationalhumanitiescenter.org\/pds\/gilded\/power\/text12\/addams.pdf<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pearl S. Buck and\nEslanda Goode Robeson (1950) American\nArgument<\/em> (London: Methuen & Co.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean Bethke Elshtain\n(1987) Women and War<\/em> (Chicago:\nChicago University Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cynthia Enloe (1989) Bananas, Beaches and Bases: making feminist\nsense of international politics<\/em> (Berkeley: University of California Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emma Goldman Anarchism and Other Essays<\/em>, 1911. Available\nat: https:\/\/theanarchistlibrary.org\/library\/emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eslanda Goode Robeson\n(1958) \u201cWomen in the United Nations\u201d, New\nWorld Review<\/em>, Vol. 26 (March): p.33-35.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clare Hemmings (2011)\nWhy Stories Matter: the political grammar\nof feminist theory<\/em> (Durham: Duke University Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Ruddick (1989) Maternal Thinking: toward a politics of\npeace<\/em> (Boston: Beacon Press)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Professor Kimberly Hutchings Conventional accounts of the history of international thought date recognition of the significance of private\/ public distinctions for understanding international politics from the latter quarter of the twentieth century, for example, in books such as Jean…<\/span><\/p>\n

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