Krista Hunt - (En)gendering the War on Terror: War Stories and Camouflaged Politics (Gender in a Global/Local World)

(EN)GENDERING THE WAR ON TERROR

Gender in a Global/Local World

Series Editors: Jane Parpart, Pauline Gardiner Barber
and Marianne H. Marchand

Gender in a Global/Local World critically explores the uneven and often contradictory ways in which global processes and local identities come together. Much has been and is being written about globalization and responses to it but rarely from a critical, historical, gendered perspective. Yet, these processes are profoundly gendered albeit in different ways in particular contexts and times. The changes in social, cultural, economic and political institutions and practices alter the conditions under which women and men make and remake their lives. New spaces have been created economic, political, social and previously silent voices are being heard. North-South dichotomies are being undermined as increasing numbers of people and communities are exposed to international processes through migration, travel, and communication, even as marginalization and poverty intensify for many in all parts of the world. The series features monographs and collections which explore the tensions in a global/local world, and includes contributions from all disciplines in recognition that no single approach can capture these complex processes.

Catherine Nolin
ISBN 0 7546 3805 7

Edited by Evangelia Tastsoglou and Alexandra Dobrowolsky
ISBN 0 7546 4379 4

R. Charli Carpenter
ISBN 0 7546 4745 5

Edited by Tine Davids and Francien van Driel
ISBN 0 7546 3923 1

War Stories and Camouflaged Politics

KRISTA HUNT
University of Toronto, Canada

KIM RYGIEL
York University, Canada

First published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Copyright 2008 Krista Hunt and Kim Rygiel.

Krista Hunt and Kim Rygiel have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

(En)gendering the war on terror : war stories and
camouflaged politics. - (Gender in a global/local world)

1. War on Terrorism, 2001-- Women 2. War on Terrorism, 2001
- Social aspects 3. Womens rights 4. Muslim women - Social
conditions 5. Feminist theory
I. Hunt, Krista II. Rygiel, Kim
303.6'25'082

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hunt, Krista, 1974-

(En)gendering the war on terror : war stories and camouflaged politics / by Krista
Hunt and Kim Rygiel.

p. cm. -- (Gender in a global/local world)

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7546-4481-2

1. War on Terrorism, 2001---Women. 2. Women and war. I. Title: Engendering the war
on terror. II. Rygiel, Kim. III. Title. IV. Series.

HV6432.H855 2006
973.931--dc22

2005026511

ISBN 978-0-754-67323-1 (pbk)

Cynthia Enloe

This splendid book that you are about to read is going to press as Britons from the ethnically diverse cities of London, Leeds and Birmingham are trying to understand the dynamics of alienated anger, police use of guns, and the consequences of their government tying itself to the US governments war in Iraq. The latter junior partner position has been called riding pillion on the American governments metaphorical motorcycle. It is a slightly less feminized image than the iconic cartoon pose of Margaret Thatcher in the arms of Ronald Reagan during the 1980s unequal British-US cold war alliance. In fact, in the waves of reporting, commentary, and informal speculation following the July 7, 2005 London transport bombings, there has been surprisingly little overt gendering of the stories of the men so far tentatively identified as suspected of taking part either in the initial four bus and subway bombings or, in four failed London transport bombings that took place two weeks later. This is the good news. It is also the worrisome news.

The good news is that media reporting in the summer of 2005 starkly contrasts with the way so many media editors, journalists, government officials, and ordinary citizens constructed their post-tragedy narratives of the 2001 World Trade Center attack. Neither the local or international media, nor US and British government officials, have been inclined to wring extra sympathy or outrage out of the public by manipulating images of innocent women killed, distraught mothers and wives grieving, or by celebrating the manly heroism of brave fire fighters and police officers. Nor, in contrast to the construction of causal narratives developed to explain other celebrated crimes in contemporary Britain, have journalists, editors, and public officials appeared to point blaming fingers at bad mothering as lying at the root of the problem. All of the British men (each British man apparently Muslim-identified, though several only quite recently so) thus far suspected (none yet put on trial) and named in the press have mothers and several have wives. Those women thus far have attracted relatively little public attention. They are not being shoved onto center stage in the quickly evolving, still-fragmented narrative of the July 2005 London bombings and failed bombings. This could change, of course.

There is bad news, though, to go along with this seemingly good news in the wake of the 2005 London bombings. The bad news is that, as yet (at this writing, we are still in the early stages of the post-London bombings narrative creation), there has been a stunning lack of curiosity about masculinities. This glaring absence was a notable feature of the explanatory narratives constructed after the World Trade Center attacks and after the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Men are just naturally those who wield violence, whether that violence is organized by the state or by nonor anti-state actors. The naturally in any narrative serves to make what it is attached to unremarkable, uninteresting and not worthy of a storytellers further imagining. Naturally is a powerful and dangerous notion. It informs a lot of political narrative building when men are the actors. Unpacking what other storytellers portray as natural is one of the chief goals of feminist observers such as this books creators, Krista Hunt and Kim Rygiel. Is it possible to shoehorn a curiosity about the politics of masculinities into the 9/11 narrative? Into the Madrid train bombings narrative? Into the London transport bombings? Whose masculinities will become the objects of memorable storytelling? If masculinities become a prominent thread in these narratives (and of the larger story that is told to tie these three narratives together), what will be the political consequences for popular understandings of myriad forms of state and non-state violence? Of mens relationships to men? To women?