ABSTRACT
Looking at four years’ worth of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting-minutes on the conflict involving Russia and Ukraine, Juliet Fall and Carinne Domingos explore how narratives of political space are tied to gendered social hierarchies and the notion of entitlement. Analysing statements by Russian and Ukrainian diplomats in Security Council debates, they show how spatial differentiation is built on discourses of masculinist protection from violations and insinuations of brotherhood. Along the lines of this volume’s aim to consolidate interdisciplinary dialogue, the two geographers apply both feminist IR theory as well as psychological literature on the nexus of rhetorical devices and the normalization of (abusive) power relations. They show how Security Council debates about territorial entitlement bring to bear a much more personalized language. Diplomats insinuate links between territorial (spatial) bodily (masculine) entitlement that makes for a “contest between masculinities and entitlement in global politics”. Citing an array of metaphors and other recurring rhetorical devices — including frequent references to diplomats’ own biographies — the authors demonstrate how gendered spatial imaginaries are performed through the person of the diplomat sitting at the Council’s table.
