ABSTRACT
Bananas, Beaches and Bases 2 was first published in 1989, towards the end of the Cold War and the beginning of feminism's engagement with International Relations (IR). The book has gained iconic status and, with subsequent works on related themes, 3 Enloe has achieved broad recognition as a key contributor to both feminism and IR scholarship. A critical appraisal of Bananas, Beaches and Bases therefore has to deal with its ambiguous position in and between the discipline of IR and the field of Gender or Women's Studies. Arguably any work that seeks to expose gaps in ‘traditional’ disciplines risks a very partial kind of success — appreciated somewhat selectively, as an intriguing curiosity perhaps, but rarely absorbed into the established ‘canon’. It is encouraging then that Bananas, Beaches and Bases has made it through to this collection of classics in IR. Like other outliers such as Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas 4 and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, 5 Bananas, Beaches and Bases intervenes in IR by means of a different form and field of representation. More than 20 years after publication it is still original and unruly enough not to be ignored, while Enloe herself remains a scholar who persistently uses a non-academic arsenal to challenge IR scholarship from within. What is striking from the start is the breadth of the book's register, its accessibility of tone and above all the wit with which Enloe sets out her argument and in so doing, the stealth by which she intercepts and plays upon our preconceptions and expectations — of IR, of feminism, and of the world around us. In such ways, Bananas, Beaches and Bases is not simply about showing an alternative view of international relations. Drawing from feminist theory and practice, Enloe's work requires its readers not only to see but to think in new ways: with the situatedness of their knowledge rather than the illusion of objectivity; with a reflexive sense of familiarity that throws what is unfamiliar, because hidden, into relief; or to think at the intersection of multiple, analytical categories such as gender, race and sexuality rather than taking a single, linear approach. As such, Bananas, Beaches and Bases is a kind of collage that cuts up the neatly delineated, ethnocentric fabric of IR and brings these monotone pieces together with fragments from political and cultural reality as it is lived and experienced, embodied or enacted by different people around the world. Assembled together in this way, Enloe is able to reveal new and surprising angles from which international relations might be understood and conceptualized.
