White middle-class heterosexual cisgender women’s stories in International Relations: anonymity, whitewashing, and our cleaning labor

Abstract

This article demonstrates how white middle-class heterosexual cisgender women’s stories in International Relations (IR) tend to reproduce plots affording anonymity and whitewashing expertise. It shows how Laura Shepherd’s The Self, and Other Stories reproduced those plots. In response, it also tells stories about “I,” a low-class non-binary character of color inspired by existing (post)/(de)colonial trans/feminist/queer scholarship in IR, and analyzes how such character would read and reveal the silences of white middle-class heterosexual cisgender women’s narratives. Then, this article moves to an autonomous transfeminist remaking of the plots when kinship is needed to make a critique, and whiteness and expertise are not required.