The Radical Future of Realism: Feminist Subversions of IR Theory

Zillah Eisenstein, to whom we owe some credit for the title of this piece, argues in The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism that the patriarchal roots of liberalism and the state inhibit the claims and goals of liberal feminism, which depends upon these constructs even as it seeks to critique them. She goes on to make the case, however, that precisely because of this contradiction, liberal feminism has a 'potentially' subversive quality,1 or radical future, as it seeks reforms and redress from the liberal state, which, ultimately, cannot abide women's actual equality with men.2 She concludes that