Gender And The Political

The female terrorist circulates within contemporary Western culture as an object of fascination and heightened concern. Gender and the Political analyses cultural constructions of the female terrorist, arguing that she operates as a limit case of both feminine and feminist agency. Drawing on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this book demonstrates that the development of the discourse on terrorism evolves in parallel with, and in response to, radical feminism in the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Situated at the borderlines between sexuality, threat and abjection, Amanda Third argues that the figure of the female terrorist compels a reexamination of the project of radical politics and the limits of modernity. Review: A fascinating exploration of the historical twinning of terrorism and feminism in the U.S.

By redirecting our attention to these important discourses emerging in the 60's and 70s, this book provides a crucial corrective to counter post 9/11 anxieties that continually project the terrorist as somehow coming from elsewhere. - Jasbir K. Puar, Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, USA Amanda Third's Gender and the Political convincingly argues that the modern concepts of terrorism and feminism are historically and conceptually interwoven.

The book does this by reading terrorism studies against the grain while simultaneously positioning the concept of terrorism as a central trope of postmodern thought. These two discourses - the former increasingly foundational to, the latter highly critical of, the modern state and social order - are placed in fruitful conversation with one another, resulting in a deeply illuminating study of the contemporary political terrain in the United States. - Mehmet Dosemeci, Assistant Professor of History, Bucknell University, USA