Given our everyday of global crises, anxious observers ask how thinking, writing and especially feeling might/could/should be other than what today’s disciplinary IR offers. By shifting our attention, this extraordinary book exposes what disciplining practices in academia make ‘small’ (invisible, unemotional, insignificant), connects the everyday of what is made small to the violent continuities of global politics, and offers a daring, disruptive and richly rewarding exploration of what is vastly at stake in (not) thinking IR otherwise. This uniquely collaborative project concludes by inviting us to imagine other futures and identifying strategies for doing so.
— V. Spike Peterson, University of Arizona
Gloriously messy and maddeningly relevant, this book is a wonderful companion for all of us current, soon-to-be, or once-upon-a-time feminist academics who are trying to figure out why and how we study international relations/global politics, and what happens to us when we do. If you do not find something that resonates so deeply that you wonder if this collective has been bugging your calls or tracking your devices, then you might need to ask yourself if you have been engaging in the harm and gatekeeping they describe.
— Meghana V. Nayak, Pace University
This book is a gift, an avalanche of deep feminist critique that exposes IR’s violent performativity: the larping of the Important Scholar at the conference panel and other sites of power in academia. It is a kick-ass exercise of complaint, an (anti-)methods book on writing and collaboration. You will want to devour it in one go.
— Susanna Hast, writer & associate professor
Ripping, Cutting, Stitching is an extraordinary book – a burst of imagination and critical insight that breathes imagined and dreamed ‘other futures’ into life with incredible sharpness, care, creativity, and humour.
— Erzsébet Strausz, Central European University, Austria
Ripping, cutting, stitching takes what we know (or think we know) about the creation of feminist knowledge and makes it more personal, transparent, complicated, painful and joyous. It is brutally representative of real-life academia... Reading this book feels like being in conversation with its unruly authors, who recommend generosity and kindness in the practice of knowledge creation (pp. 189 and 203). The book is not idealistic, but it is distinctly hopeful. The UFC asks readers to add their thoughts, to reflect on the stories shared and to answer questions. How can we live beautifully in academia? This book can certainly help shape how we move towards this goal. Among other contributions to knowledge destruction, the book stands out with its metaphorical use of ‘ripping, cutting and stitching’ and with how it pushes readers to be deeply critical of the structures maintained by coloniality. The emphasis on the reconstruction of knowledge sets a new scene, one that is not liberatory but ‘slightly more possible, slightly less terrible’ (p. 190). I see myself, my peers, my mentors and my community in this book. Through this kinship, our anger is reshaped, composted and renewed.
— International Affairs