ABSTRACT
Donkeyskin stories focus on a heroine’s ‘choice’ between responses to a ‘problem’. Focusing on ‘the choice’, rather than ‘the problem’ facing the heroine or the rules constraining her options, reinforces the ‘rules’ governing female conduct as natural and invisible. In IR, assumptions stemming from repeated attempts to construct IR as a ‘social science’ reinforce disciplinary boundaries that regulate how it is ‘permissible’ to study and define IR. These stories often appear in textbooks’ first chapters, frequently referencing a ‘problem’ IR strives to solve. The introduction of a ‘problem’ and subsequent ‘choice’ of theories to respond to that ‘problem’ generates a narrative structure that is a rich avenue for exploring the reiteration of stories about what is ‘permissible’. The degree to which these stories treat assumptions resembling those identified by Smith (2004) affects the rest of the textbook by defining what it is ‘permissible’ for IR to study. Donkeyskin stories reflect back onto IR how stories resembling this problem/choice structure reiterate assumptions about ‘social science’ in ways that treat these assumptions as ‘natural’. Donkeyskin stories are uniquely placed to unpack problem/choice structures in textbooks. ‘The choice’ in Donkeyskin obscures assumptions about ‘the permissible’ underlying ‘the problem’ and constraining ‘the choice’. The problem/ choice structure is enriched through a network of symbolism rooted in religious and social customs of seventeenth-century Europe that brings these assumptions to bear. I focus on a few reiterations of this widespread story that share symbolic references. The context of these stories is necessary to understanding how similar narratives unfold in the textbooks I explore. Much of this symbolism is introduced via subtle scene-setting. Scene-setting is important for understanding how textbooks with a similar problem/choice structure introduce assumptions without explaining them. These assumptions are relied upon in the rest of the story without explicit references, reinforcing them as ‘natural’. After a symbolic exegesis of Donkeyskin stories’ scene-setting and problem/ choice structure, I introduce three textbooks that resemble each other in terms of their scene-setting and problem/choice structure. While the textbooks’ introductions are similar, nuances in the stories profoundly affect the extent to which IR is defined as a ‘social science’ and the degree to which challenges to this story are brought to bear in the textbook. A number of assumptions about IR become
visible in this reading, demonstrating the extent to which these textbooks treat narratives about what is ‘permissible’ in IR as uncontested. Stories giving a ‘smooth’ account of how IR is defined and how theories and approaches have ‘evolved’ in the discipline stand in marked contrast to the contested and messy contours of the stories in the wider canon.
