Terrorist transgressions: network on gendered representations of the terrorist
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Reading
Department Name: History of Art
Abstract
Through a series of workshops including a summary conference, 'Terrorist transgressions: network on gendered representations of the terrorist' will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to investigate how the terrorist has been represented in the visual arts, film, photography and the media. It is particularly concerned with the question of gender. The network aims to advance knowledge on the cultural representation of gender, agency and violence and to foster collaborations and scholarly exchanges on cultural representations of the terrorist.
In 1984, Frederic Jameson wrote that 'the image of the 'terrorist'... is one of the privileged forms in which an ahistorical society imagines radical social change', displacing older images of criminals, revolutionaries and even the veteran ('Periodizing the 60s.'). The terrorist has been constructed as the epitome of transgression against economic resources and moral, physical and political boundaries. Although terrorism has been the focus of intense academic activity in recent years, especially in the fields of politics and international relations, cultural representations of the terrorist have received less attention. Yet terrorism is dependent on spectacle and the topic is subject to forceful exposure in popular media. Dissident organisations produce images of the terrorist, for example as martyr, hero or avenger. Agencies, including national authorities, involved in combating terrorism, need to visualise the terrorist in order to give identity to the threat. The terrorist is mainly imagined as a male figure but women have been active in terrorist organisations since the late 19th century. Particularly since the 1980s, women have perpetrated suicidal terrorist attacks, including suicide bombing, where the body becomes a weapon. Such attacks have confounded constructions of femininity and masculinity, with profound implications for the gendering of violence and horror. The image of the terrorist, whether positive or negative, is always a gendered one. The primary aim of the Terrorist Transgressions network is to analyse the myths inscribed in these images and identify how agency is attributed to representation through invocations and inversions of gender stereotypes.
The network will organise a series of four events under the following themes: Avant-gardes, terrorists and gender; Suicide Bombers: the body as weapon; Terrorism, liberation and spectacles of hyper-masculinity; Violence, horror and gender. One workshop will be held in collaboration with the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. The network's participants have expertise in different cultures including Europe, Israel and North Africa, and bring various perspectives including feminist and post-colonial theory and memory cultures. Network members work on visual culture, art history, film and literature.
The network aims to contribute findings about the cultural representation of terrorism to the AHRC's priority area, 2008-2011, 'Global threats to security' as part of Research Councils UK's priority theme 'Global Uncertainties'.
In 1984, Frederic Jameson wrote that 'the image of the 'terrorist'... is one of the privileged forms in which an ahistorical society imagines radical social change', displacing older images of criminals, revolutionaries and even the veteran ('Periodizing the 60s.'). The terrorist has been constructed as the epitome of transgression against economic resources and moral, physical and political boundaries. Although terrorism has been the focus of intense academic activity in recent years, especially in the fields of politics and international relations, cultural representations of the terrorist have received less attention. Yet terrorism is dependent on spectacle and the topic is subject to forceful exposure in popular media. Dissident organisations produce images of the terrorist, for example as martyr, hero or avenger. Agencies, including national authorities, involved in combating terrorism, need to visualise the terrorist in order to give identity to the threat. The terrorist is mainly imagined as a male figure but women have been active in terrorist organisations since the late 19th century. Particularly since the 1980s, women have perpetrated suicidal terrorist attacks, including suicide bombing, where the body becomes a weapon. Such attacks have confounded constructions of femininity and masculinity, with profound implications for the gendering of violence and horror. The image of the terrorist, whether positive or negative, is always a gendered one. The primary aim of the Terrorist Transgressions network is to analyse the myths inscribed in these images and identify how agency is attributed to representation through invocations and inversions of gender stereotypes.
The network will organise a series of four events under the following themes: Avant-gardes, terrorists and gender; Suicide Bombers: the body as weapon; Terrorism, liberation and spectacles of hyper-masculinity; Violence, horror and gender. One workshop will be held in collaboration with the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. The network's participants have expertise in different cultures including Europe, Israel and North Africa, and bring various perspectives including feminist and post-colonial theory and memory cultures. Network members work on visual culture, art history, film and literature.
The network aims to contribute findings about the cultural representation of terrorism to the AHRC's priority area, 2008-2011, 'Global threats to security' as part of Research Councils UK's priority theme 'Global Uncertainties'.
Planned Impact
Who will benefit from the research
Non- academic institutions involved with issues of terrorism. They include government policy makers, the police, the military and security services in the UK and abroad; national and international counterterrorism organisations, museums and galleries.
How will they benefit from the research
By examining a number of historical instances and theoretical frameworks in the construction of the image of the terrorist the project will aim to provide the beneficiaries with an understanding of the shifting ideologies that inform such a production in order to help comprehend current debates on terrorism and its representations.
What will be done to ensure that they will benefit from this research
The project will aim to reach the above audiences by inviting and involving participants from a number of agencies that have been identified so far to contribute to the various stages of the project.
The network will collaborate with the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst (RMAS), and one meeting of the network is being hosted by RMAS, and will include papers from RMAS academics and personnel, alongside papers from network members. This is intended to create an interchange of ideas and frameworks between academic and non-academics constituencies. The planned screening of military films on terrorism during the workshop at RMAS will also provide a focus for the analysis of visual representations of terrorism and an exchange of views on different perspectives on visual imagery and its reception. The network will break new ground in raising the question of how academics in cultural studies and practitioners in visual culture and literature can contribute insights into public policy making. A second meeting of the network at Birkbeck will invite artists, curators and filmmakers, to participate in discussions focused on the ethics of representing the terrorist and violence and to analyse the reception of cultural practices, including exhibitions, which have examined the figure of the terrorist. This workshop will also include screenings and analysis of films/videos by independent filmmakers and artists. This workshop follows the workshop at RMAS and insights gained there will be brought to bear on discussions and exchanges on cultural practices.
The advisory group for the network includes a member of RMAS academic staff, Dr Aaron Edwards, from the department of Defence and International Affairs. It is intended that the advisory group will help shape the content and range of research questions addressed in network meetings.
From the outset a website will be established including summaries of work in progress by the network, abstracts of papers given and indications of further resources, including literature, which will be available to wider communities both academic and non-academic. The planned edited collection of essays will include contributions from agencies involved in counterterrorism and part of its contents will address the question of dialogues between academic debate and contemporary issues in counterterrorism, including questions of legal frameworks.
Non- academic institutions involved with issues of terrorism. They include government policy makers, the police, the military and security services in the UK and abroad; national and international counterterrorism organisations, museums and galleries.
How will they benefit from the research
By examining a number of historical instances and theoretical frameworks in the construction of the image of the terrorist the project will aim to provide the beneficiaries with an understanding of the shifting ideologies that inform such a production in order to help comprehend current debates on terrorism and its representations.
What will be done to ensure that they will benefit from this research
The project will aim to reach the above audiences by inviting and involving participants from a number of agencies that have been identified so far to contribute to the various stages of the project.
The network will collaborate with the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst (RMAS), and one meeting of the network is being hosted by RMAS, and will include papers from RMAS academics and personnel, alongside papers from network members. This is intended to create an interchange of ideas and frameworks between academic and non-academics constituencies. The planned screening of military films on terrorism during the workshop at RMAS will also provide a focus for the analysis of visual representations of terrorism and an exchange of views on different perspectives on visual imagery and its reception. The network will break new ground in raising the question of how academics in cultural studies and practitioners in visual culture and literature can contribute insights into public policy making. A second meeting of the network at Birkbeck will invite artists, curators and filmmakers, to participate in discussions focused on the ethics of representing the terrorist and violence and to analyse the reception of cultural practices, including exhibitions, which have examined the figure of the terrorist. This workshop will also include screenings and analysis of films/videos by independent filmmakers and artists. This workshop follows the workshop at RMAS and insights gained there will be brought to bear on discussions and exchanges on cultural practices.
The advisory group for the network includes a member of RMAS academic staff, Dr Aaron Edwards, from the department of Defence and International Affairs. It is intended that the advisory group will help shape the content and range of research questions addressed in network meetings.
From the outset a website will be established including summaries of work in progress by the network, abstracts of papers given and indications of further resources, including literature, which will be available to wider communities both academic and non-academic. The planned edited collection of essays will include contributions from agencies involved in counterterrorism and part of its contents will address the question of dialogues between academic debate and contemporary issues in counterterrorism, including questions of legal frameworks.
Publications
| Description | The network on 'Terrorist Trangressions: Gendered representations of the terrorist in contemporary culture' aimed to analyse how myths of the terrorist are circulated in visual culture, literature and mass media with particular emphasis on issues of gender in understanding the visual economies of such representations. The network convened four workshops titled 'Avant-gardes, terrorists and gender'; 'The Invisible enemy'; 'Cultural representations'; and 'Violence, horror and gender'. The final workshop included a call for papers; the second workshop was co-convened with Sandhurst Royal Military Academy. The Terrorist Transgressions network brought together scholars from the UK, Europe especially Germany and Switzerland, and the USA. The project established that there is a shift away from analyses of cultural representations of the Red Army Faction, which have dominated the literature since the 1980s. New work has emerged examining representations of the terrorist and gender, including investigations of material from the 1970s, recently made available in archives as well as a shift in term of military discourses around the figure of the enemy or terrorist insurgent in relation to visualizing the invisible enemy. Emerging work on colonial insurgencies contributed to a historical understanding of such debates. The third workshop on cultural representations examined two key exhibitions on representations of terrorism: 'Art in the Age of Terrorism' (Southampton 2005) and 'Regarding Terror. The RAF Exhibition' (Berlin 2005), alongside the work of artist Xenophon Kavvadias and filmmaker Anne Crilly ('Mother Ireland' 1988). The workshop established how censorship, including self-censorship, has operated in relation to cultural projects undertaking critical representations of the figure of the terrorist. This workshop also discussed questions about memory and reconciliation in relation to Northern Ireland and to Palestine. The last workshop included papers from core members of the network which raised questions about feminist debates in relationship to agency and violence, and the cultural representation of violent women. Five papers were also selected from submissions following a 'call for papers', which opened the project to new perspectives on women involved in Chechnyan, in the Italian New Red Brigades, as well as questions of masculinity and counterterrorism in Fox TV's 24. |
| Exploitation Route | Beneficiaries include government policy makers, the police, the military and security services in the UK and abroad, national and international counterterrorism organisations, museums and galleries. The project provided a framework for museums and curators working with images of the terrorist in terms of representations of gender and violence and their complications when inscribed on the figure of the terrorist. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Security and Diplomacy |
| URL | http://www.reading.ac.uk/art/research/ArtHistory/art-history-of-art-researchterrorism/art-history-of-art-researchterroristtransgressionshome.aspx |
| Description | The project's PI and CI continue to receive invitations to speak on cultural representations of the terrorist, including at an art gallery in 2012 alongside artists and curators. reference to the project was made in note on The Conversation, a news channel delivering information about academic research to a wide public. One member of the project network, who also contributed an essay to the edited book, continues to teach at Sandhurst RMA on terrorism and counter-terrorism |
| First Year Of Impact | 2012 |
| Sector | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Creative Economy |
| Impact Types | Cultural |
| Description | Terrorist transgressions: The Invisible enemy |
| Organisation | Sandhurst Royal Military Academy |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | This two day workshop engaged the contributors from University academics and members of Sandhurst Royal Military Academy (RMAS) involved in initial officer training in an exchange of views on questions of imaging insurgency and the terrorist within a military context. Charlotte Klonk (Humboldt), Stephen Morton (Southampton) and Nadya Ali (Postgraduate student Reading) provided papers on literary and visual representations of the terrorist; two colleagues from RMAS provided papers on military perspectives on imaging the enemy and the legal and ethical context for military field engagements. Members of RMAS and academic colleagues acted as respondents to each others? presentations. Charles Townsend (Keele) provided a keynote talk on definitions of the terrorist. A series of film screenings selected from military training videos led to a debate amongst workshop participants about the distinctive demands of officer training and questions about ?future-proofing? officers for the changing nature of contemporary conflict. A key finding of this workshop was that academics can considerably enhance the military understanding of how visual representations are read by different constituencies, in the context of gender. However, the question of how the military gaze works in visual representations has received little attention in academic work on visual culture and indicates an area for further investigation. We also established that questions of defining the terrorist or the insurgent are as problematic for military culture as they are within academic debate. |
| Start Year | 2010 |
| Description | Face to face. Visual Cultures and Radical Distrust in the Middle East |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Scientific meeting (conference/symposium etc.) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | keynote/invited speaker |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | The Face-to-Face workshop was organized in connection with the research project 'Radical Distrust' at the University of Kent and with an exhibition by Palestinian artist Leila Shama at the October Gallery, London. We were invited to contribute papers about the work of our 'Terrorist Transgressions' to a one-day workshop for artists and curators on how visual cultures construct violence and separatism in the Middle East. We spoke on our findings about the representation of masculinity and femininity in cultural images of the terrorist. The workshop discussed questions about the ethics of representation A number of artists expressed an interest in the project |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| Description | The Insurgent - Myth and Fiction: An Interdisciplinary Symposium |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Scientific meeting (conference/symposium etc.) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | workshop facilitator |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | This one-day symposium will debate the relationship between realities and myths of the contemporary figure of the insurgent. I have been invited to contribute findings from the 'Terrorist Transgressions' project and will speak on the representation of femininity in relation to militant activism and the implications for feminism. There were numerous requests for further papers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| Description | Workshop on Terrorist Transgressions and future work |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Scientific meeting (conference/symposium etc.) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | paper presentation |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A workshop was held at the Universität der Bundeswehr, Munich, to explore new directions in the network's research. Short papers were presented on the status of research including Sovereignty or emancipation Violence and gender Agency and insurgency/ Participants in the research network gave short papers on key research questions. From the workshop we focused our overall strategy and developed some proposals for funding applications. We also began to develop a blog for discussing our findings. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |