Introduction: Faking It in 21^st Century IR/Global Politics

What’s different in 2016? Why revive Faking It now? Certainly, queer theorising has not become the disciplinary norm. Nor has it been integrated into/as the mainstream. But Faking It specifically, and Queer IR generally, never needed to be at the centre of disciplinary IR. All they needed was a group of scholars able to engage with Weber’s arguments critically and substantively. In 1999, there was no such IR community to embrace Faking It. Today, in contrast, Faking It is read by an ever-growing critical mass of aspiring critical IR scholars who situate it within a Queer IR literature that argues that sex, gender, and sexuality are key to the constitution of the international arena. Considered in relation to this contemporary Queer IR literature, Faking It’s argument that sexual self-perception influences patterns of interstate interaction remains unique today. This suggests that Faking It can and should be read with IR current literatures –not only about feminist/queer IR questions but also about identity and foreign policy concerns more widely.