Overview

A feminist interrogation of how terrorism is constructed as a violence that upsets the order of international politics. This book looks at how gender, race, and heteronormative expectations of public life shape Western understandings of terrorism as irrational, immoral and illegitimate. It looks at the profiles of eight well-known terrorist actors, looking for gendered, racial, and sexualised assumptions in how their stories are told. Additionally, it interrogates how the current counterterrorism focus upon radicalisation is another way of constructing terrorists outside of the Western ideal. Finally, the book argues that mainstream Terrorism Studies must contend with the growing misogynist and racialised violence against women.

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9781474491891

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"In this book, Gentry sheds some light on how and why terrorism is problematic in international politics. The disorder of terrorism challenges the dominant system and this violence needs to be seen as irrational, illegitimate and immoral. Gentry's reflection is therefore crucial to rethink Terrorism Studies and, above all, Critical Terrorism Studies [CTS] ...Her intersectional feminist analysis will thus help CTS not only to deconstruct hegemonic discourses of (counter-)terrorism but understand how and why certain violence is accepted - and even legitimated - while other kinds are not ... Gentry's reflection on the hegemonies constituting the international order is a timely and enriching contribution to CTS, one that needs to be put at the core of critical understandings of terrorism aimed at shedding light on the dimensions of power structuring political violence.--Alice Martini, Universidad Pontificia Comillas ""Critical Studies on Terrorism"" In this thoughtful meditation on power and knowledge, Caron Gentry shows us how constructions of terrorists and terrorism in Terrorism Studies and IR underpin dominant motifs of the international order and its states system. Knowledge practices not only reflect but reproduce international hierarchy and its characteristic forms of domination. She accomplishes this through a novel and revealing intersectional analysis of those constructed as terrorists. Gentry is one of the few scholars willing to confront just how deeply the academic discipline of IR is embedded in the power structures it purports to study.--Tarak Barkawi, London School of Economics Once again pushing at the boundaries of military, security and feminist security studies, Gentry's analysis exposes the 'wilful forgettings' of race, gender and sexuality that underpin the so-called 'War on Terror'. Exposing the ways in which violence is ordered in global politics, she demands an intersectional awakening from a collective aphasia in both scholarship and practice of global security politics that sustain a hierarchy of insecurities.--Katherine Brown, University of Birmingham A timely contribution that deepens our understanding of the racialised, gendered, and sexualised structure of (academic) debates on, and representations of, terrorism and violence. The book outlines how race, sexuality, and gender are implicated in security discourses and shows why security studies must take an intersectional, feminist, queer, and critical race analytic seriously. ... It serves as a provocation for scholars to do better and more intersectional work that attends to the racialised-sexualised-gendered foundations of international relations; both small and large caps. It is a lesson in how to do outstanding intersectional feminist work that should be emulated. Disordered Violence reiterates how it is no longer acceptable to say 'I am not asking the gender (or race, or sexuality) question' when these are baked into (the study of) international politics.--Dean Cooper-Cunningham, University of Copenhagen ""Security Dialogue"""

Author Information

Caron Gentry, Professor in the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews.

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