Caron E. Gentry

Twisted Maternalism: FROM PEACE TO VIOLENCE

Much of the recent work on Palestinian female suicide bombers (shahidas) explains their violence in domestic and maternal language. These descriptions read shockingly similar to the maternalist position. Maternalism typically equates womens participation in the political arena with peace and non-violence, and is criticized for essentializing womens role. The application of a ‘twisted’ maternalism to womens political violence also appears to be essentializing and objectifying. This body of work, then, analyzes the application of maternalism to the Palestinian shahidas. This characterization arguably subordinates womens choices to engage in political violence in a way that relies upon gendered assumptions about what it means to be a woman.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY AND TERRORISM STUDIES: THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP, MEMBERSHIP, IDEOLOGY AND GENDER

This article demonstrates the relationship between new social movement theory and terrorism studies. The revolutionary dimension of new social movements can be correlated to terrorist groups. This article also uses new social movement theory to develop a fuller understanding of the leadership, membership, personal ideology and gender within a new social movement; these then can be used to follow the development of a politically violent group. This article uses the example of the American movement and its by-product—the Weather Underground.

Anxiety and the creation of the scapegoated other

This article examines how anxiety saturates the neo-Orientalist-driven thesis of new terrorism, especially how both anxiety and new terrorism are related to the unknown. Of particular importance is the description of al Qaeda as an amorphous and thus unknowable threat by Western academics and the media, which reifies the discursive neo-Orientalist binary of the West versus Islam. Scholars of international relations are increasingly engaging with emotions and their impact on binary and hierarchical structures. Emotions operate relationally as they are the articulation of affect. The emotions discursively constitute identity and community structures, helping to inform ideas of self and other. The more specific study of anxiety reveals similarities, but anxiety also operates differently from other emotions as it is focused on future potentialities. Thus, terrorism and anxiety are co-constitutive in their conceptual dependency on futurity and uncertainty that sustain the neo-Orientalist binary.

Thinking about Women, Violence, and Agency

To woefully use a cliché: ‘We’ve come a long way baby.’ Twelve years ago what literature existed on women’s involvement in political and criminal violences denied or seriously limited agency, (relational) autonomy, and very often, any semblance of intelligence (Cooper 1979; Morgan 1989; Neuberger and Valentini 1996). Proscribed violences are tantalizing betrayals of norms and laws. The intrigue is only compounded when women are involved, either as genocidaires, self-martyrs, drug couriers or torturers. Even if those who study gender, whether it is femininities or masculinities, recognize, argue and hold that gender is a fluid and dynamic process, women’s involvement in proscribed violence, for one reason or another, is seen as a transgression of both criminal norms as well as gender norms. Thus, women’s proscribed violence creates resistance as it alternatively or in tandem seduces. The denial that women can participate in political violence, organized international crime or genocide used to lead to the reaction, ‘A woman did that?’ And to be frank, some of the greatest resistance came from the feminist community; it was feminists who declared, ‘A woman did not do that!’ Because we received these comments so consistently and constantly in our research and presentations for Mothers, Monsters, Whores (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007), we made it the title of the introductory chapter. Yet, this blunt questioning is no longer part of the routine. Women’s involvement in proscribed violence is becoming more ‘accepted’ – as in, ‘we’ can handle the questions and investigations of it without too much resistance and hand-wringing. Which means it is time for new, deeper, further-reaching queries and contestations. Continuing to push the boundaries of agency, feminism and how women and proscribed violence are encountered is precisely what this collection of ground-breaking articles does. Having no particular desire to rehash previously made arguments against the limited thinking that existed previously on women and proscribed violences, what I really want to emphasize is that the idea of agency is not simple. The work that I have done alone or with other authors has garnered

The discourse of desperation: the intersections of neo-Orientalism, gender and Islam in the Chechen struggle

Neo-Orientalism is a means of articulating a subordinating discourse regarding populations and societies associated with Islam. This article argues that the labelling of Chechens and Chechen society as ‘desperate’ is another way of upholding the neo-Orientalist frame. About 2876 articles on the Chechen conflict culled from the Lexis-Nexis database were coded for the language of ‘desperation’. A majority of these articles linked desperation to either ‘radical’ Islam or gender dynamics/womens participation in the conflict. Thus, this article argues that the Russian–Chechen conflict is framed by the media to uphold a neo-Orientalist gaze, in which the language of desperation plays a key role, in order to delegitimise any cause the Chechens may have for fighting.

Epistemological failures: everyday terrorism in the West

This article attempts to problematise the disparate levels of attention paid to similar violences globally, whereby violence against women in the developing world is seen as a security concern to the West, and yet violence against women in the West is minimised or ignored. It will do this, first, by demonstrating that everyday violences, better known as everyday terrorism, in the West are subjugated knowledges within Terrorism Studies. To demonstrate this, Half the Sky, Sex and World Peace and The Better Angels of Our Nature serve as exemplar texts that reflect Western exceptionalism and non-Western savagery, particularly within Muslim societies, and deflect from everyday terrorism within the West. This reifies the West as an exceptional saviour and the non-West as a problematic savage. This article looks to flip that reification on its head by recognising that everyday terrorism happens everywhere and is not bound to non-Western identities.

Feminist Christian Realism: VULNERABILITY, OBLIGATION AND POWER POLITICS

Abstract While Christianity and feminism may seem at odds with one another, both make normative claims about justice and addressing the needs of those on the margins of power. This article explores what feminism contributes to Christian realism. The current revival of Niebuhrian Christian realism highlights how much it still has to offer as a theoretical underpinning for policy and governance. However, Christian realism remains wedded to masculinist abstractions and power structures, such as the balance of power, that are ultimately harmful to those on the margins. Thus, this article uses feminism to argue for a greater acceptance of vulnerability and obligation in Christian realism.

It's Complicated: Looking Closely at Women in Violent Extremism

This article looks at how gendered assumptions about women’s motivation to join and recruitment into terrorist organizations lead to equally gendered counterterrorism policies. These assumptions fail to capture the complexity of how a person choses to become involved in terrorism and distort our ideas of the women who do join.

Introduction: gender and everyday/intimate terrorism

Since the inception of feminist work in International Relations (IR), feminist scholars have been urging IR scholars to pay attention to the margins of global politics (Brown 1988; Tickner 1992). T...

The Mysterious Case of Aafia Siddiqui: Gothic Intertextual Analysis of Neo-Orientalist Narratives

When Aafia Siddiqui ‘disappeared’ from her upper-middle class life in Boston in 2003 due to accusations that she was involved in al Qaeda, competing narratives from the US government, media, and her family emerged striving to convince the American public of her guilt or innocence. These narratives were rooted in a gendered form of neo-Orientalism that informed and structured the War on Terror. The narratives, of innocent Soccer Mom, nefarious Lady al Qaeda, and mentally fragile Grey lady, sought to explain how a well-educated woman could possibly be involved with a terrorist organisation. This article uses intertextual analysis to draw parallels between Gothic literature and the Siddiqui narratives. Gothic literature’s dependency upon gendered unease is particularly evident in the Siddiqui narratives, which then reveal the uncertainties within the War on Terror, particularly those related to American exceptionalism.