Terrorist Transgressions Gender and the Visual Culture of the Terrorist

Free Download Sue Malvern, "Terrorist Transgressions: Gender and the Visual Culture of the Terrorist "
English | ISBN: 1780767013 | 2013 | 272 pages | PDF | 10 MB
Terrorism has a variety of contexts, histories and forms which have all been the focus of intense scrutiny in recent years, whilst cultural representations of the terrorist have received much less attention, which is odd when we consider that terrorism by its very nature is spectacle. Dissident organisations create images of terrorists as martyrs, heroes or avengers and international counter terrorist agencies visualise them to provide the threat with a recognisable persona. Osama bin Laden for example was variously portrayed as effeminate and sexually depraved and pictures of his dead body were banned from publication by the United States government. Terrorist Transgressions examines images of the terrorist and discusses in what way they challenge societal norms, particularly those surrounding gender. Despite the traditional alliance between terrorism and masculinity, women have been active in terrorist organisations and through tactics such as suicide bombing have used their very bodies as weapons. Such attacks have subverted cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity and have had profound repercussions for both the gendering of violence and the terrorist profile.