Introducing Elshtain, Enloe and Tickner: looking at key feminist efforts before journeying on

Abstract

Throughout this article, Christine Sylvester makes a journey along the work of three of the founders of the feminist theory of International Relations, acknowledging them as a constant presence in her own trajectory through feminist theory: Jean Bethke Elshtain, Cyntia Enloe and Ann Tickner. Throughout the narration of the odysseys toward the feminism of each of them,  Sylvester recall the contexts in which feminist International Relations/feminism in International Relations emerged and took roots, introducing at the same time some of the most important works from the first feminist wave in International Relations. However, we don’t have here a vane glorification of the aforementioned scholars, but to the contrary, Sylvester shows their myopias and the challenges for other feminists scholars following them. And still, in spite of their omissions, we must recognize as heroic acts the ways through which Elshtain, Enloe and Tickner have introduced and presented different elements and challenges to the traditional understandings of the discipline, citing, siting and sighting, by means of unusual methodologies away from the scientific rationalism predominant at that moment, women, men and gender in the international relations.