Wartime’s “Undeniable Linkages”: Feminist Studies of Everyday Militarisms across Time and Space

Abstract

Feminist scholars and social movements have long been important voices against war and empire. Yet the era of global “endless wars” stretches behind and before us, challenging both our longstanding intellectual theories of violence and our political strategies for combating entrenched imperialism. This essay reviews three monographs in the emergent field of “everyday militarisms,” a new direction forward for understanding and criticizing global war in the past, present, and future. Threading connections between feminist science studies, cultural studies, and women of color and transnational feminisms, these texts ask us to more closely consider how elements of war show up in ordinary formations. I highlight how these books and the field of everyday militarisms more broadly makes us question what is understood as feminist work in both theory and method, through their shared and novel feminist theories of temporality. Together they open new understandings of ongoing systemic and state violence in the world today and different political paths forward in the face of seemingly intractable conflict.