Postcolonial - looking backwards Mobile populations 1880s -1901 anxieties over sexual contact with white women Rise

of eugenics: not fearful of emigration but fear of mixed race children and culturally 'alien' Australian minorities. Aboriginal women, sexually threatening white men, justification for removal of children.

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ESSAY QUESTION 4. How did George.W Bush's War on Terror rhetoric reflect colonial discourses of white men saving brown women from brown men? Agathangelou, A.M. & Ling, L.H.M. 2004, 'Power, Borders, Security, Wealth: Lessons of Violence and Desire from September 11', International Studies Quarterly, vol. 48, pp. 517-538. Ferguson, Michaele.L. & Marso, Lori Jo. 2007, W Stands For Women: how the George W. Bush presidency shaped a new politics of gender, Duke University Press, Durham & London. Nayak, M. 2006, 'Orientalism and 'saving' US State identity after 9/11', International Feminist Journal of Politics, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 42-61. Woollacott, Angela, 2006: Gender and Empire, Introduction pp 1-13; and Chapter 3: 'Masculinities, Imperial Adventuring and War', pp 59-80. Palgrave Macmillan, London. NOT IN LIBRARY - contact Heather for photocopies of Introduction and Chapter 3. Hall, Catherine: White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History, City Campus: 305.42 HALL Youngs, G. 2006, 'Feminist International Relations in the Age of the War on Terror', International Feminist Journal of Politics, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 318. Young, I.M. 2003, 'The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 1-25. PERHAPS TALK ABOUT HOW IT ALL GOES BACK TO MAINTAINING WAR Week 11 stuff. Laura Bush: saving Afghan women. Parallel to sati. Infanalisation of women while men dehumanised Can't simultaneously honour victims while perpetuating violence through

more conflict. NAYAK READING

FOR ESSAY Abu-Lughod DO MUSLIM WOMEN REALLY NEED SAVING. abc 784 de 785 f 786 g 787 h 788 i 788-789 jk 789 a. "instead of questions that might lead us to global connections, we are offered ones that seek to divide the world into separate spheres" - polarising, creating binaries b. Quoting Laura Bush: "The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women - justification post-intervention c "These words have haunting resonances for anyone who has tidied colonial historysati, child marriage" etc. Quotes Spivak, white men saving etc. - says parallels to British colonialism in South Asia. d. " Just as I argued above that we need to be suspicious when neat cultural icons are plastered over messier historical and political narratives, so we need to be wary when claim to be saving or liberating muslim women". e. "such veiling signifies belonging to a particular community and participating in a moral way of life" - also, people dress by socially shared standards. f. "veiling itself must not be confused with, or mistaken for, lack of agency." - "we need to work against the reductive interpretation of of veiling as the quintessential sign of women's unfreedom" - "the significant political-ethical problem the burqa raises is how to deal with cultural "others"." g. general hypocrisy about supporting women's liberation in middle east, for

example, but not caring about women in other areas, eg africa, bosnia etc. "we need to look closely at what we are supporting (and what we are not) and think carefully about why." politicising gender abuse in a way to favour and domination. h. "we need to confront two big issues First is the acceptance of the possibility of difference." ie our way of doing something may not be the only way. "we need to be vigilant about the rhetoric of saving people because of what it implies about our attitudes." h. feminism is not to be placed on the side of the west in every situation. oversimplification and places feminist non-westerners in a position to choose between being "with us or against us". Alternatives exist. i. "it is deeply problematic to construct the afghan woman as someone in need of saving. when you save someone you imply that you are saving her from something. You are also saving her to something What presumptions are are being made about the superiority of that to which you are saving her? Projects of saving other women depends on a reinforce a sense of superiority by Westerners, a form of arrogance that deserves to be challenged." j. essentially presents a potentially more productive solution in which we move away from salvation into solidarity, support and alliance. k. RAWA [revolutionary association of the women of afghanistan] consistently remind audiences to take a close look at the ways policies are being organised around oil interests, the arms industry, and the international drug trade."

NAYAK ORIENTALISM AND 'SAVING' US STATE IDENTITY AFTER 9/11 abc 43 d 44 e 45 f 46 g 46-47 h 47 i 48 j 49 k 50-51 l 51 m 53 n 54 o 56

a. "In order to save US state identity, President Bush and his advisors have promoted hypermasculinity and a values system based on a particular religious ethic." "hypermasculinity is the sensationalistic endorsement of elements of masculinity, such as rigid gender roles, vengeful and militarised reactions and obsessions with order, power and control." b. Orientalism, as Edward Said (1979) outlined, effectively makes ontological and epistemological distinctions between the Self and the Other. c. "The creation of US state identity needs to intertwine religion, ideology, and conflict so as to permanently etch into the American psyche a fear, loathing and paternalism regarding the 'Orient' abroad and within." d. "Said (1979: 300) articulated orientalism as the systematic attempt to create the

categories of the West and the Orient, pivoting on an absolute and sys- tematic difference between the West, which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior. From the point of view of the West, abstractions about the Orient . . . are always pre- ferable to direct evidence drawn from modern Oriental realities (Said 1979: 300)" - West simplifies Middle East to Islam in order to control it. e. "US state identity is precariously predicated upon the need for the Orient that must be produced with the same force, persistence, consistency, urgency and domestic consent as during colonialism if the saving of the Self is to succeed. The ongoing production of state identities requires the construction of the very differences (whether marked by religion, geography, ethnicity) that allegedly threaten their existence in order to ensure that the state must exist to defend people and boundaries (Campbell 1992)" f. "The second element of orientalism in US state identity involves coding particular acts and actors as Islamic fundamentalist. The US state reduces the diversities of Islamic fundamentalist and secular ideologies to a metonymic relationship between Religion and Ideology in order to define a variety of actors and acts as Islamic fundamentalist, the primary source of conflict and danger in the world." "There is ironically a desperate need for Islamic fundamentalism as the threat that ensures the USA can become the Self it was always meant to be." g. "The third element has to do with the nexus of power and knowledge. US state identity making requires a particular social production of knowledge. Knowing the Other is integral to protecting and securing what one knows to be true about the Self (i.e. the Self is good, normal, enlightened, progressive and right and the Other is backwards, barbaric, primitive and dangerous)." "Relatively speaking, Christian fundamentalism, as it underscores Bushs rhetoric and replacement of human rights terminology with references to Providence, human dignity and biblical scripture (Mertus 2003), needs little to no explanation or interrogation for mainstream America."

h "I argue that to fully understand both orientalism and its crucial role in US state identity making, one must extrapolate Saids argument to recognize how orientalism only works because of the violent remaking, disci- plining and construction of race and gender. Thus, I argue that the US state project could not work without gendered and racialized violence." - allows for domination and control. defines what genders, races, cultures etc are supposed to be and so can use violence/force to maintain this view. - systematic i "Infantilization is the representation of certain political actors/communities as vulnerable, helpless and backward children. As such, their lives depend on being saved from the vagaries and horrors of their cultures and religions by rational, enlightened, civilized and strong political actors. US policymakers documented reasons for late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century imper- ial expansion hinged on the need to save these emotional, irrational, irrespon- sible, unbusinesslike, unstable, childlike people (Rosenberg 1991: 31 5)." - same as colonial india, Australia. promotion of a militaristic solution to end gender vio- lence; and use of the progress of Other women in achieving or exercising rights, such as voting, to justify US strategic actions. Thus, infantilization is a form of racialized and gendered violence because it violently denies agency based on race and gender and strongly justifies mili- tary action. As the USA attempts to represent the voices of those who cannot speak, it ironically erases these voices, which in effect makes Other women dis- pensable. After all, if the West can represent, give voice to and talk about the experiences of Other women, what need is there for real women? j. After 9/11, the US government, the media and experts collaborated to signify the oppression of Arab/Muslim women as the categorical proof of Islamic terror, and women accordingly became a central point of the war on terror. Despite US involvement in the regimes of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, the USA suddenly turned the long-term persecution of women in Afghanistan and Iraq into a spectacle for public consumption and justification for military intervention. - PR spin to justify military action/cover up other actors. k demonization and dehumanization "One can recognize demonization and dehumanization by tracing competing discourses of disgust and apathy in the US attempts to save the Self. In particular, these violent practices classify people as collateral damage (not mattering at all), conditionally worthy (mattering only if they meet particular conditions such as expressing US patriotism), or dangerous (mattering in so far as they need to be identified in order to be targeted or eliminated)." "At the same time that infantilization con- structs Other women as objects to be saved, demonization and dehumanization ensure that their men and cultures are hated and despised. Depending on the type of state identity it wants to assert, the US state decides when to hate, save or ignore Other men and women. "the West must be able to retain positional superiority, in terms of deciding what happens in the Orient, thus the Other cannot be allowed to fully cross the line from them to us, explaining the underlying contempt for them." l "The limited horror expressed in the USA at the hypocrisy of the peaceful, secular, democratic USA inflicting sexualized vio- lence and atrocities on those coded as the enemy in Abu Ghraib and Guanta- namo Bay, shows the interrelationship of masculinity and patriotism enacted by both US male and female members of the military. Because the Arab/ Muslim male is so hateful and subhuman, the torture of potentially innocent people is acceptable in order to protect US strength and power."

m "It is important that Bush feels the need to assert repeatedly that Middle East- erners, Arabs and Muslims, just like everyone else, value inherently civilized values such as freedom and progress. The construction of US state identity post-9/11 requires that the Self is taken for granted but that the characteriz- ations of the Other must be deliberately laid out. This is not to encourage tolerance toward the Other, as Bush and others might argue, but rather to open a way to demonize the Others that dare to resist US guidance, protest US foreign policy and reveal the constructedness of the US Self." n Here, the rhetoric of the US acting as (Christian) savior of Americans and the world masks the real intention to demonize those who might oppose Bushs vision of dignity and compassion and to make dispensable those who exercise any rights that might conflict with assertions of the US Self. "with us or against us" creation of unrealistic binaries o. "Bush proceeded to make a plea to US citizens to show their patriotism and commitment through consumerism. The NSS doctrine intertwines democracy and the free market economy, neglecting the fact that neoliberalism strengthens flexible labor regimes made up of primarily female and minority workers and increases opportunities to smuggle humans and to sell bodies." reinforcement of own western values increases difference between east and west.