Masculinities and Terror: Take Home Exam, Essay Example

Examine how militarized masculinities not only terrorize but are also victims of being terrorized.

From the perspective of various strains of feminist, queer and gender theory, the phenomenon of militarized masculinity may be summarized in terms of two basic aspects. Firstly, the notion of the militarized masculinity entails a re-enforcement of the inseparability of the gendered subjectivity of the male from the subjectivity of the soldier. In the terms of Levy and Katz this suggests “the hegemonic status of combat masculinity” (132), insofar as combat is intimately tied to some notion of male gendered subjectivity. That is to say, the combat situation or paradigm in its essential violence is somehow correlative to what is construed as the male gendered subjectivity or role; furthermore, such a hegemony exists as hegemony because it is perpetuated by a dominant social discourse that continually perpetuates the link between the male and the military in terms of a shared violence. Secondly, there is a sense in which this hegemonic status of combat masculinity therefore mimics a social practice or discourse, which must be adhered to. This phenomenon, as part of the dominant discourse, only allows for a pure heteronormativity, since it delineates either inclusion or exclusion vis-à-vis this gendered subjectivity of militarized masculinity. That is, it upholds its heteronormativity through a concomitant exclusion of the Other in regards to this normativity, such as homosexuals and women. When considering the question of the relation of terror to militarized masculinities, both in terms of how it produces terror and how such masculinities may also be the victims of terror, these two aspects provide us with a rudimentary answer to this query: Terror may be defined as either the hegemonic masculine figure and the violence it projects against the Other or in terms of the very terror such heteronormativity engenders by forcing and perpetuating particular gender subjectivities like militarized masculinity, such that subjects are forced to conform to this ideology. There is thus a close link therefore between terror, masculinity, and the military, whereby various instances of terror may be considered the product of the precise gendered subjectivities and gender performance that militarized masculinities evoke.

In order to better develop this notion, following Massad, it can be suggested that the phenomenon of the military itself is ultimately an instance of gendered discourse. This thesis emerges when the affinity between nationalism and gendered subjectivity and nationalism and the military are revealed: “In the European political arena, nationalism is expressed through gendered narratives.” (Massad, 468) However, it is important to clarify that what Massad means here with the term “European”: Massad, in his discussion of the particular paradigm of Palestinian nationalism, also includes apparently non-European nationalism within this framework of gendered narratives, as “like other nationalisms (Palestinian nationalism) is influenced in its philosophy by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought.” (468) Massad’s underlying point is that insofar as nationalism essentially finds a correlate in the existence of the military, it follows that the military is also the result of a gendered narrative. Hence, nationalism can be linked to a notion of military and ultimately to the control of sexuality, insofar as “the metaphor of the nation as a mother- or fatherland, the practice of defending and administering it with homosocial institutions like the military…were all constitutive of nationalist discourse.” (Massad, 468) The precise gendered narratives at stake within Massad’s account are lucid, since he clearly invokes notions of mother and fatherland, which are gendered subjectivities. For Massad this is indicative of his crucial thesis, that “masculinity is nationalized.” (p. 469) The crux of Massad’s argument can thus be phrased as follows: any conception of masculinity in this narrative is inseparable from a narrative of nationalism; and insofar as an outgrowth of nationalism or a particular effect of nationalism is the military, it follows that there is a militarization of male sexualities, which means that male sexuality is only conceived in terms of the military.

With this thesis it becomes possible to further develop the initial point of the hegemonic capability of male masculinities as conceived by Levy and Katz in relation to the practice of terror. Militarized masculinities simply function as the dominant discourse’s conception of the role of the male par excellence: this dominant discourse, or gendered narrative, claims that to be male is to be this military subjectivity. In this synopsis, the practice of terror emerges in two interrelated forms. Firstly, there is a terror practiced by the militarized masculinity against the Other, that is, one who is a priori excluded from the male-military gender performance inspired by this narrative (for example, as Massad notes, such a militarized masculinity creates a patriarchy-hierarchy of “nation first, women after” (469)) Secondly, militarized masculinities themselves can be said to become the victim of the terror, insofar as the gendered narrative constructs a concept of preconceived notions of male gender performance that are realized by the dominant discourse and thereby forces a conformity to this heteronormativity at the expense of individual subjectivities that are not a priori excluded from the hegemonic position within this discourse.

In relation to these forms of terror, Matthews, working with the thought of feminist and queer theorists such as Enole and Whitworth, summarizes the phenomenon of militarized masculinity as follows: “militaries rely on a certain kind of ‘ideology of manliness’ in order to function well, an ideology premised on violence and aggression, individual conformity to military discipline, aggressive heterosexism, misogyny and racism.” (45) Accordingly, the military discourse relies on a precise formulation of gender performance: the performance of what is conceived as heterosexual male gender roles underlies the image of the soldier, such that the practice of violence itself merely becomes an extension of the realm of ideology in regards to the promotion of terror. In this case, it can be said that the military masculinity is defined by a precise account of heteronormativity that stresses violence upon other bodies that are deemed Other. The perpetuation of such a heteronormativity is itself a practice of terror.

Yet it becomes clear that such a practice of terror can also make victims of militarized masculinities, as this gendered narrative is a form of hegemony over what constitutes the male subjectivity. This gendered narrative does not only exclude the a priori Other, but also performs terror against “those aspects of masculinity that threaten to undo the careful cultivation of aggression as it serves the purpose of state-sanctioned murder.” (Montpetit, 46) Insofar as “male” gendered subjectivity is something unstable, heterogeneous, and in no way essentialized, the discourse of militarized masculinity practices a type of terror precisely in terms of its defining of heteronormativity and male gender performance only in terms of violence. This is a form of terror to the extent that the discourse of militarized masculinity perpetuates the radical reduction of the “male” to the normativities of violence associated with nationalism and the militarily. In other words, the militarized masculinity forces the subject into a particular gender performance, such that the very act of definition of this particular subjectivity itself becomes a form of terror.

The scandal of the Abu Ghraib photos, with their clear evocation of images of violence and sexuality within the military context, can be used as a crystalline demonstration of precisely both these forms of terror that exist in association with militarized masculinities, as the perpetrators and the victims of the photos demonstrate this bifurcated, yet ultimately interrelated, gender narrative. The Abu Ghraib photos qualify as a “spectacle” (Mirzoeff, 26) precisely because they serve as a manifestation of the dominant discourses of sexuality and gender. Hence, as Mirzoeff notes, the Abu Ghraib photos are a portrayal of “what the military understood to be deviant scenarios” (26), such that the Abu Ghraib photos represent a “construction of straight imperial sexuality by negative differentiation.” (26) This entails that the form of terror performed by the masculinized military entails the forcing of others into certain gendered subjectivity roles by an attempt to directly control the body itself and moreover directly control sexuality; these specific roles portray the victims as those, who lie outside of the heteronormativity of the military, while the military simultaneously declares its own heterosexual masculinity with this same act. The terror of militarized masculinities in the case of Abu Ghraib is that of a manifestation of the dominant sexual discourse and the forcing of others to enact the roles of what this discourse considers deviant, so as to humiliate them on the most intimate level of sexuality and the body, while also asserting their fidelity to the norm.

At the same time, it can be seen that the militarized masculinities themselves becomes victims of terror precisely because they are confined to enacting this same specific roles of this gender performance. In short, the perpetrators of the photo seek to assert their conformity to the dominant discourse, to their belonging to the heteronormativity of this gendered narrative. In slightly different theoretical terms, they seek approval from “the Big Other” that has defined these gender roles. As Myers defines the concept of “Big Other”, a notion prominent in Lacan and Žižek, “when we submit to the Big Other we sacrifice direct access to our bodies.” (270) Furthermore, for Žižek the Big Other is exactly the “name for the social Substance, for all that on account of which the subject never fully dominates the effects of his acts.” (250) In other words, the Big Other is that, which promotes such actions as the Abu Ghraib photos, since the posing of the Other by the soldiers seeks to repeat the dominant social discourse (the Big Other) that associates military with masculinity and creates various gendered subjectivities. Yet the militarized masculinities are themselves terrorized in this process, and thus may themselves be construed as victims of this process because they are merely re-enforcing these same gender roles, and thus are sacrificing their own autonomous subjectivity in order to fulfill the heteronormative ideology: the performance of Abu Ghraib is simultaneously a terror performed against the self, as a desire to please the “Big Other” and thus comply to the gendered subjectivities reduces subjectivity itself to merely an extension of the Big Other or dominant discourse.

Militarized masculinity thus discloses the discreet link between gender and violence. Gender roles are defined by the ability to fulfill expectations of gender performance and thus create violence, as in conformity to this role one commits violence and terror against the Other. At the same time, however, the complexity of the phenomenon of militarized masculinity from the perspective of feminist, gender and queer theory is demonstrated in the notion that such masculinities themselves are also the victims of terror. This is because these masculinities associated with violence are the consequences of a dominant discourse that demonstrates its hegemony by determining even the most intimate subjectivities of sexuality through the forcing of certain forms of gender performance and thus the perpetuation of the terror of heteronormativity.

Works Cited

Sasson-Levy, Orna and Amram-Katz, Sarit. “Gender Integration in Israeli Officer Training: Degendering and Regendering the Military. Journal of Women in

Culture and Society. Vol. 33, No. 11, 2007. pp. 105-132. Massad, Joseph. “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism.”

Middle East Journal. Vol. 49, No. 3, 1995. pp. 467-483.

Matthews, Sara. “Tracing the Human: Memory and the Visual Frame in The Hero Book.” Public. No. 42, Fall 2010. pp. 47-56.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. “Invisible Empire: Visual Culture, Embodied Spectacle, and Abu Ghraib.” Radical History Review. Issue 95, Spring 2006. pp. 21-44.

Montpetit, Melanie-Richter. “Empire, Desire and Violence: A Queer Transnational Feminist Reading of the Prisoner ‘Abuse’ in Abu Ghraib and the Question of ‘Gender Equality.’ International Feminist Journal of Politics. Vol. 9, No. 1. pp. 38-59.

Myers, Tony. Slavoj Žižek. London: Routledge, 2003. Žižek, Slavoj. “Da Capo senze Feine.” Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. London: Verso, 2000. pp. 213-278.