According to Cynthia Weber, “By failing to fully take on board the insights of their queer study colleagues of the possibility and impossibility of producing and deploying sexualized subjectivities, most IR scholars regularly undertheorize how the will to knowledge about sexualities is part of what makes international games of power possible” (p. 2). While this is one of the core arguments of Weber’s groundbreaking book, the author, one of the foremost queer theorists, more broadly connects queer theoretical principles with international relations concepts—most importantly statecraft—to highlight how these two fields are entangled in their conception and usage of sexuality, gender, and sovereignty issues. Yet the book does not purport to be a treatise on the insights that queer theory may bring to the development of IR as a discipline. Rather, it questions apparent orders in IR through an examination of the portrayal of either the “deviant” or “normalized homosexual” in relation to modern, sovereign authorities (the “modern man”).

In this sense, Queer International Relations is not an easy read: The reader is challenged to integrate critical and postmodern readings of IR into a queer perspective on how “specific figurations of ‘homosexuality’ and of the ‘homosexual’ enable and contest specific modes of organization and regulation of national, regional, and international politics” (p. 21). Thus, the reader is required to absorb a number of different literatures and to be open toward recombining them. This makes it a demanding but also a rewarding read.

Given the many domestic and international culture wars over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, LGBT politics and queer theory have received increased attention in IR in the past few years. While significant differences between LGBT and queer studies exist, both aim at a broader epistemological pluralism in the discipline. Queer theory posits that fundamentally, questions of sexual and gender expression and identity need to be approached with nuance and caution, as their performative and ideological content is often neglected and manipulated. Queer theory is wary of essentialist notions of actors or concepts and attempts to undermine binary conceptions of private and political life, be it male/female or, in this case, the normal/perverse homosexual. Hence, queer theory helps in de- and reconstructing established IR concepts by uncovering unhelpful generalizations, norms, and binaries while embracing the fluid, performative, and ambiguous aspects of politics. This locates queer theories much closer to critical IR theories than to positivist ones, which arguably constrains the appeal of queer scholarly output in mainstream IR.

In the first part of the book, Weber highlights “queer intellectual curiosity,” that is, the critical rethinking of institutional arrangements, understandings, and representations. She develops a theoretical framework that combines Michel Foucault’s critical studies of sexuality (in order to show the construction of sexual ab/normality), Talcott Parson’s structural modernization theory (to link sexualities to modernity), Donna Haraway’s feminist concept of figurations (as performative representations), and Richard Ashley’s “statecraft as mancraft” (to show how IR hierarchies are being crafted), together with Roland Barthes’s semiotic proposition acknowledging that the world functions not only through “either/or” binaries, but also through the expansionary meanings supplied by an “and/or” logic. Such plurality of meaning matters, Weber posits “because this plural logoi can be understood as simultaneously normal and/or perverse as it is enacted through sexes, genders, and sexualities as well as through various registers of authority” (p. 39).

On the basis of this complex framework, the author deducts representative figurations in IR that are taken for granted in their singular, ahistorical uniformity, and embodied in, for instance, the figuration of the unwanted migrant on the move or the out-of-place terrorist—both of which are constructed as spatially and temporally dislocated perversions in modern Western societies. She then turns to the “normal homosexual” in IR, created and read as the normalized “gay rights holder” and “gay patriot” as exemplified by Hillary Clinton’s 2011 speech at the United Nations declaring that gay rights are human rights. She contrasts this crafted picture with the winning performance of the world’s most famous drag queen, Conchita Wurst, at the Eurovision Song Contest. Weber exposes how Clinton produced an international binary of progressive versus intolerant states, a problematic assumption as the identification of pro-LGBT rights policies as essentially modern glosses over the contradictory historical record of Western societies in the process of oppressing others. On the other hand, the internationally known bearded drag queen challenged, through her winning appearance, generally accepted notions of what is considered normal or perverse across Europe, and in the course destabilized racial, sexual, gendered, and geopolitical notions of what it means to be a European. Taken together, both cases are emblematic of how IR orders are far from natural, but are intentionally created, normalized, challenged, and reconfigured.

Weber’s objective is no less than to destabilize generally assumed IR concepts such as sovereignty in order to provide a corrective lens through which IR can be reconceptualized. In her intervention, I find the aforementioned two cases illustrating the dichotomous establishment of the “normal” and/or “perverse homosexual” more convincing than her theoretical deduction of the migrant and terrorist representations. The thought process regarding the latter rests substantially on Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” (1996) and Margaret Mead’s “And Keep Your Powder Dry” (1942), although both have been contested as undifferentiated pieces of scholarship for some time now.

Given how important those tropes have become, the treatment of those two images could have merited more attention. In her case studies of Clinton’s gay rights speech and Wurst’s gender-bending performance, however, Weber traces the performative construction of the normal and/or the perverse homosexual with a nuanced understanding of the normative and geopolitical implications of such figurations. For instance, Weber, unlike other queer theorists, does not directly reject the Obama administration’s call for global gay rights but rather questions it. The Clinton/Wurst case studies are emblematic of larger processes of international norm contestation over sexuality and gender, and thus are relevant beyond their spatial and temporal contexts. Even if one may think that, methodologically, a diplomatic speech does not compare sufficiently well with an artistic performance, the author convincingly links the latter to larger geopolitical controversies about what a drag queen as symbol of Europe/an integration should represent in the various European countries. Such notions range from “the end of Europe” to the “new age of the tolerance of diversity” (p. 153), without recognizing a plurality of available meanings.

In her conclusion, Weber critiques the sole focus on either/or binaric generalizations in relation to how sexuality and gender interact with questions of sovereignty, stating that “by neglecting to take queer logics of statecraft as mancraft into account, opportunities are lost to better understand how a variety of political games of power function in relation to the ‘homosexual’” (p. 197). The author then puts up a double challenge for queer theorists not only to recognize how such simplified representations obscure more generally IR theory and practice but also to acknowledge the reifying effect of an equally binaric logic of power versus resistance. While these astute observations are helpful in pointing a disciplinary way forward, I would have liked to read more on what the latter caution entails for queer IR scholars in particular.

To sum it up, the book is a queer tour de force challenging the reader to rethink many generally accepted IR concepts and theories. Positivist scholars positing scientific objectivity or empiricism may not be persuaded by Weber’s arguments, but luckily, enough non-/postpositivist readers will find this book intellectually stimulating and thought provoking.