This article contributes to feminist IR theory, and peace and conflict studies, by developing the relational and iterative qualities of patriarchy via a feminist dialectical account of women’s resistance in (post)conflict societies. The article employs feminist dialectics to conceptualise patriarchy as structural, dynamic and constituted by numerous social processes, which explains how and why patriarchal orders reform through the envelopment and co-option of women’s lives, actions and activism. Drawing on this structural theorisation of patriarchy, I examine the experience of female ex-combatants from Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) (popularly referred to as las Farianas) in the Urabá region of Antioquia, Colombia to understand how they operationalise, manoeuvre and transgress traditional heteronormative gendered expectations in their resistance. I argue that las Farianas’ resistance shapes, and is shaped by, the immediate gender regime of the post-conflict period, and displays the reformations in patriarchal order taking place as part of Colombia’s post-conflict transition. As such, post-conflict settings should not be understood in terms of regression towards old patriarchal orders, but rather, as sites of ongoing reconfiguration in which patriarchy is reformed through its dialectical intertwinement with the everyday politics of social processes – including, but not limited to, resistance. The article thus offers a novel intervention into feminist IR theory, and peace and conflict studies by understanding the causes and consequences of shifts in the gender regimes in (post)conflict societies; expanding feminist dialectics through integrating various social processes; and developing the relational and iterative qualities of patriarchy.
