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How post-structural feminism and its focus on the concept of gender provide an innovative challenge to the status quo within Security Studies
March 5, 2020

This essay aims first to place post-structural feminism –as an intellectual current- within the theoretical debates of security studies, challenging mainstream approaches by including gender as a challenging concept. Analysis done by post-structuralism scholars has shown that language is ontologically significant, that the intelligible world is a social construct, and that there is no objective or true meaning of something. Post-structural feminism introduces the concept of gender to prove that the language used in security studies is men-biased and, hence, the main concepts of the field are characterized and structured in a gendered way (masculinized or feminized). The process of deconstruction of the masculinity that dominates the discourses in the field of security studies, undertaken by post-structural feminism scholars, challenges the way we think about security issues, and gives us another perspective that creates a brand new narrative.

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