ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author begins with a discussion of feminist analysis of vulnerability. She argues that, sometimes also in Feminist Security Studies, the empirical contexts of direct violence, war, and militarism easily (re)produce perceptions of embodied in/security that begin with the threats that bodies pose to other bodies. The author examines the body in more concrete terms and shows how embodied realities of human life have always been central in Feminist Security Studies, albeit usually in contexts of direct violence and hence in/securities external to the body. She discusses the concept of the lowest common denominator of embodiment, which emphasizes the body's need of care from other bodies and, while defying essentialism is applicable to all living bodies at all times. The author describes the accounts that emerge from the feminist ethics of care tradition, as well as Carol Cohn's interrogation of vulnerability in international security discourses.