Gender and “Postmodern War”

Abstract

In this essay I argue that war is not “above” gender analyses. I question in particular whether the concept of “postmodern war” is adequate to explain the intersections of gender with ethnicity and nationality, which underlie the sexual violence against women in wartime. The poststructuralist concept of the “fluidity” of the category of gender needs to be modified by an analysis of how “non-fluid” configurations of gender are entrenched in material conditions of existence.