The article revisits the problematic relationship between feminist theory and praxis through the writings of Marysia Zalewski, one of the foremost feminist theorists of IR. Zalewski has dealt with this relationship through her work on methodology. In three sections, the article explores: (a) her engagement with standpoint theory through her interventions in feminist IR debates with ‘the mainstream’; (b) her adoption of feminist postmodernism, embracing a deconstructive posture and in particular the notion of ‘hauntings’ as a methodological device; and (c) the development of a distinctive methodological attitude that seeks to involve, rather than explain or instruct. Crucially, for Zalewski, theory and praxis/politics cannot be separated methodologically: languages of mastery and an attitude of ‘doing something’ are of one cloth. The paper ends with a reflection about how L. H. M. Ling's method of ‘chatting’ could be enacted in engagements that cross the social fields of academia and policy.

Marysia Zalewski's Feminist International Relations: Exquisite Corpse on feminism and global politics directly addresses matters of style, that is, questions of language and representation that foreground the invisible yet so palpable aspect of how meanings circulate. This article puts Zalewski's work in conversation with Trinh Minh-ha's D-Passage: The Digital Way and Lynda Barry's What It Is that similarly push the limits of how we craft feminist arguments. These feminists show how styles of writing and thinking, and how ideas gain shape to circulate matter in academic sites of knowledge as much as in art and culture. Building on these works, I put forward the thesis: to theorise is to feel out boundaries and question the questions we encounter that perennially relegate women as taint and malaise. I further explore this thesis by highlighting the visual dimensions of writing and thinking, in particular, what drawing, and drawing lines that shape ideas do. I focus on caricatures from the currently evolving North Korean nuclear crisis to loosen up the ways we go about thinking about war and politics wherein thinking is recognised not so much as a craft to be perfected but a democratic form of being in the world.