"Bananas, Beaches, Bases"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines Enloe's writing in which she presents a feminist view of international politics. She argues that its landscape, typically thought of as a masculine sphere of life, in reality is less exclusively male. To support that view, she defines the international as personal and goes beyond the traditional formulation of masculinized international politics. It shows how Enloe argues that men in foreign relations depend on the artificial construction of femininity and masculinity as well as on the artificial division between domestic and public realms.

From the Paper:

"Consequently, to "make sense of international politics," one needs to look beyond the male dominated sphere of officials who make foreign policy. Assuming that "the personal is international" only enlarges "the audience," according to Enloe, but it does not change "what is going on the stage." She argues for a new, radical view "of what it takes for governments to ally with each other, compete with each other and wage war against each other." To fully understand this feminist view of international politics, one needs to read backward "the personal is international" as "the international is personal" (196). That in turn reveals that governments depend upon certain kinds of allegedly private relationships in order to conduct their foreign affairs. Governments need more than secrecy and intelligence agencies; they need wives who are willing to provide their diplomatic husbands with unpaid services so those men can develop trusting relationships with other diplomatic husbands. They need not only military hardware, but a steady supply of women's sexual services to convince their soldiers that they are manly. To operate in the international arena, governments seek other governments' recognition of their sovereignty; but they also depend on ideas about masculinized dignity and feminized sacrifice to sustain that sense of autonomous nationhood (196-197)."

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