94 DOI: 10.4324/9781003036432-10 CHAPTER 8 Art and Aesthetics Roland Bleiker and Emma Hutchison The realm of art and of aesthetics may seem a world away from that of global politics. The study of aesthetics is the study of taste and beauty and how together they awaken in us a certain affective sensibility. Global politics, by contrast, is dominated by hard power and military might. Or is it really so? In the past three decades, there have been conscious efforts to challenge these assumptions and approach the study of global politics with an aesthetic sensibility. How can insights derived from art help us rethink the realities of global politics? And what do such engage- ments tell us about the gendered dimensions of the international and its various political manifestations? The purpose of this chapter is to explore these links among art, aesthetics and gender. We ask, in particular: what difference does it make to think about global politics from a feminist approach that pays atten- tion to questions of aesthetics? We begin the chapter by defining art and aesthetics and outlining how they relate to a feminist approach to global politics. We then illustrate the issues at stake by focusing on one particular art form in one specific political realm – photographic representations of humanitarian crises – and examine their deeply gendered nature. Whether they relate to war, famines or natural disasters, images of suffering often replicate gender and racial stereotypes. Almost all disaster media cover- age prominently features images of women and children in deep distress. They tend to be situated in the Global South and are depicted as passive and dependent, as if they have no agency and are only waiting for men to rescue them. We then discuss the broader implications of these gendered and aes- thetic patterns by drawing on some pioneering feminist scholars, such as Jean Bethke Elshtain and Cynthia Enloe. Their contributions show how such gender stereotypes feed into and perpetuate deeply entrenched gen- dered narratives of global politics. In a final step, we show how women – and men – have challenged these problematic narratives through various