1st Edition
Gender, Orientalism, and the �War on Terror' Representation, Discourse, and Intervention in Global Politics
This book offers an accessible and timely analysis of the ‘War on Terror’, based on an innovative approach to a broad range of theoretical and empirical research. It uses ‘gendered orientalism’ as a lens through which to read the relationship between the George W. Bush administration, gendered and racialized military intervention, and global politics.
Khalid argues that legitimacy, power, and authority in global politics, and the ‘War on Terror’ specifically, are discursively constructed through representations that are gendered and racialized, and often orientalist. Looking at the ways in which ‘official’ US ‘War on Terror’ discourse enabled military intervention into Afghanistan and Iraq, the book takes a postcolonial feminist approach to broaden the scope of critical analyses of the ‘War on Terror’ and reflect on the gendered and racial underpinnings of key relations of power within contemporary global politics.
This book is a unique, innovative and significant analysis of the operation of race, orientalism, and gender in global politics, and the ‘War on Terror’ specifically. It will be of great interest to scholars and graduates interested in gender politics, development, humanitarian intervention, international (global) relations, Middle East politics, security, and US foreign policy.
1. Introduction
Identities in the ‘War on Terror’
Discourse: language, identity, power, and representation
Analytic strategy
Outline of the book
2. Gender, Orientalism, and Global Politics
Orientalism and gender as discourseRe-reading Said
‘American orientalism’
Orientalism, race, and gender
Conclusion
3. Gender, Race, ‘Self’, and ‘Other’ in Histories of International Intervention
Imperialism, liberalism and the US
Liberal internationalism and the pre-1945 international system
The ‘underdeveloped’ south in early liberal internationalism
Intervention, development, and the threat of the ‘Other’
Democratisation, humanitarianism, and the responsibility to protect
4. Constructing the US ‘Self’ in ‘War on Terror’ Discourse
‘Self’, nation, race, and gender
Masculinity and the US ‘Self’
Reading femininity(ies) in the US ‘Self’
Conclusion
5. Gendered Orientalist Narratives: Afghanistan
‘Saving’ Afghanistan
Constructions of the ‘Other’
Developing the narrative: Operation Enduring Freedom
Conclusion
6. Gendered Orientalist Narratives: Iraq
Consolidating gendered orientalist discourse
‘Liberating’ Iraq
The sexuality of the ‘Other’
Conclusion
7. Conclusions
Biography
Maryam Khalid is a Lecturer and the Director of the Bachelor of International Studies program at Macquarie University, Australia. Her research is focused on global politics, security, and popular culture, exploring gender, sexuality, and race as processes, practices, and analytical lenses in and across international relations and global governance discourses.
