Description
Book SynopsisThis book offers an accessible and timely analysis of the âWar on Terrorâ, based on an innovative approach to a broad range of theoretical and empirical research. It uses âgendered orientalismâ 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 âWar on Terrorâ specifically, are discursively constructed through representations that are gendered and racialized, and often orientalist. Looking at the ways in which âofficialâ US âWar on Terrorâ discourse enabled military intervention into Afghanistan and Iraq, the book takes a postcolonial feminist approach to broaden the scope of critical analyses of the âWar on Terrorâ 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 âWar on Terrorâ 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.
Table of Contents1. 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
