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How is rape a weapon of war?: feminist international relations, modes of critical explanation and the study of wartime sexual violence

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 12:19 authored by Paul Kirby
Rape is a weapon of war. This now common claim reveals wartime sexual violence as a social act marked by gendered power. But this consensus also obscures important, and frequently unacknowledged, differences in ways of understanding and explaining it. This article opens these differences to analysis. It interprets feminist accounts of wartime sexual violence in terms of modes of critical explanation and differentiates three modes – of instrumentality, unreason and mythology – which implicitly structure different understandings of how rape might be a weapon of war. These modes shape political and ethical projects and so impact not only on questions of scholarly content but also on the ways in which we attempt to mitigate and abolish war rape. Exposing these disagreements opens up new possibilities for the analysis of war rape.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

European Journal of International Relations

ISSN

1354-0661

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

4

Volume

19

Page range

797-821

Department affiliated with

  • International Relations Publications

Notes

Online First Publication

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-09-05

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2012-09-05

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2012-09-03

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