Encountering metis in the Security Council

The “origin” story of Resolution 1325 is probably amongst the most well-known narratives of successful feminist intervention in international politics.1  Becoming equally familiar is the narrative that the Security Council’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) policy discourse has not lived up to the resolution’s transformative promise.2  The language of these critiques varies, but it is not uncommon to hear the accusation that those who are meant to be “working on the inside” for the feminist project have abandoned the struggle or, as is often averred, have “been co-opted.”3  This paper does not set out to dispute these claims and I mostly agree with their overall assessment of the “state of play” of WPS policy.4 However, I argue that interventions to secure particular feminist (or other) meanings in an institution such as the Security Council will “almost inevitably involve the most microscopic struggles around individual and institutional practices.”5  That is, if we want to understand courses of action in or by the Security Council, for example the acceptance or refusal of certain language in its policy texts, we must account for the prevailing possibilities of language in that space.6