War & Terror: Feminist Perspectives

edited by Karen Alexander and Mary Hawkesworth

University of Chicago Press, 2008
Paper: 978-0-226-01299-5
Library of Congress Classification UB416.W37 2008
Dewey Decimal Classification 355.0201

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Traditional academic investigations of war seldom link armed conflict to practices of racialization or gendering. War and Terror: Feminist Perspectives provides a deeper understanding of the raced-gendered logics, practices, and effects of war. Consisting of essays originally published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, this volume offers new insights into the complex dynamics of violent conflict and terror by investigating changing racial and gender formations within war zones and the collateral effects of war on race and gender dynamics in the context of two dozen armed struggles. Seldom-studied subjects such as the experiences of girl soldiers in Sierra Leone, female suicide bombers, and Pakistani mothers who recruit their sons for death missions are examined; women’s agency even under conditions of dire constraint is highlighted; and the complex interplay of gender, race, nation, culture, and religion is illuminated in this wide-ranging collection.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Karen Alexander is senior editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Mary E. Hawkesworth is professor and chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Rutgers University and editor in chief of Signs.

REVIEWS

"Overall, the anthology succeeds as a compilation of articles that effectively serves to change one's consciousness by reexamining war and terror through a gendered and racialized lens. These analyses provide a serious challenge to canonical works on warfare and statecraft that leave aspects of social location uninterrogated. War and Terror . . . is particularly strong in considering war and terror throughout the world rather than focusing only on one region or prioritizing the perspective of a certain group of feminists while objectifying others."

— A. Nath et al., Journal of International Women's Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

War as Mode of Production and Reproduction: Femninist Analytics
Mary Hawksworth

Part I. Participation in Violent Conflict

Negotiating (In)Security: Agency, Resistance, and Resourcefulness among Girls Formerly Associated with Sierra Leone's Revlutionary United Front
Myriam Denov and Christine Gervais

All the Men Are Fighting for Freedom, All the Women Are Mourning Their Men, but Some of Us Carried Guns: A Raced-Gendered Analysis of Fanon's Psychological Perspectives on War
Aaronette M. White

The Disfigured Body of the Female Guerilla: (De) Militarization, Sexual Violence, and Redomestication in Zöe Wicomb's David's Story
Meg Samuelson

Brides of Palestine / Angels of Death: Media, Gender, and Performance in the Case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers
Dorit Naaman

Political Violence and Body Language in Life Stories of Women ETA Activists
Carrie Hamilton

Part II. Feminist Interventions

(En)Gendering Checkpoints: Checkpoint Watch and the Repercussions of Intervention
Hagar Kotef and Merav Amir

Women's Advocacy in the Creation of the Internatinoal Criminal Court: changing the Landscapes of Justice and Power
Pam Specs

Nongovernmental Organization's Role in the Buildup and Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325
Felicity Hill, Mikele Aboitiz, and Sara Poehlman-Doumbouya

Notes toward a Gendered Understanding of Mixed-Population Movements and Security Sector Reform after Conflict
Vanessa A. Farr

Part III. Gendering Diasporas and Inventing Traditions

(Extra)Ordinary Violence: National Literatures, Diasporic Aesthetics, and the Politics of Gender in South Asian Partition Fiction
Rosemary Marangoly George

Negotiating Silences in the So-Called Low Intensity War: The Making of the Kurdish Diaspora in Istanbul
Cihan Ahmetbeyzade

Convergence of Civil War and the Religious Right: Reimagining Somali Women
Cawo Mohamed Abdi

Part IV. War and Terror: Raced-Gendered Logics and Effects

Militarism and Motherhood: The Women of the Lashkar-i-Tayyabia in Pakistan
Farhat Haq

Gender Integration in Israeli Officer Training: Degendering and Regendering the Military
Orna Sasson-Levy and Sarit Amram-Katz

Preemptive Fridge Magnets and Other Weapons of Masculinist Destruction: The Rhetoric and Reality of "Safeguarding Australia"
Bronwyn Winter

The Politics of Pain and the Uses of Torture
Liz Philipose

The War on Terrorism: Appropriation and Subversion by Moroccan Women
Zakia Salime

Index

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