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女权主义思想使我们明白,当我们身处于当代冲突和政治暴力的世界里的时候,我们依照性别分类，过着自己的生活。如果我们不能理解这一点,我们就无法理解如何认识自己和别人这一最基本原则。利用福柯的生化理论作为我的论点的基础的概念,我认为,这是国家对生活的管理,老实说，创造了关于性别的观念,不仅奠定了性的不平等的基础,而且我们也确定了认识彼此的方式。因此,女权主义理解解构了当前我们所认为的性别冲突,揭示了我们固有的构造方式。如果我们能理解男性和女性各自构造为生化功能的性取向,我们可以更好地了解国家试图驾驭我们想法的方式，并了解男性和女性对反恐战争表示支持的正确方式。我打算在三个部分展现我的论点。首先,我先大概展示福柯的生化思想，对与性别有关的概念提供一个简短的批判。
Feminist thought enables us to understand that when we function within the world of contemporary conflict and political violence, we do so as our gendered and sexualised selves. If we fail to understand this, we fail to understand one of the most basic tenets of how we identify ourselves and with others. Using Foucault's notion of bio-power as the basis of my argument, I argue that it is the nation-state's fascination with the management of life that has created essentialist ideas about gender which have formed the basis not only of sexual inequality, but also the ways in which we identify one another. A feminist understanding therefore, deconstructs the gendered way in which we view contemporary conflict to reveal the inherently constructed manner in which we view it. If we can understand masculinity and femininity and their respective sexualities to be constructed as a function of bio-power, we can better understand the ways in which the state has attempted to harness our perceptions of what are the “correct” masculinities and femininities in order to gain support for the war on terror.I intend to present my argument in three parts. To begin, I wish to outline Foucault's ideas about bio-power and offer a short critique of essentialist notions pertaining to gender.
I will then present an explanation as to how I believe essentialist ideas about gender have been born out of the modern nation state's need to govern life itself. Within this, I will discuss important ideas pertaining to the necessity of propagation of hegemonic masculinity within the international sphere and within the military. The second part of my argument will be a critique of essentialist concepts within themselves. Thirdly, I will demonstrate how the gendered identities that we have developed in the western world have led to a justification for the undertaking of liberal wars, on the basis that the masculinities and femininities that we possess in the west are superior to those in the country's that we “help”.
Before continuing any further however, I feel that a few clarifications are in order. When I speak of bio-power, I speak of Foucault's notion that populations are managed by states in their individual capacity as living, dying beings. Power over life has two main facets; firstly, to harness the human body as an effective machine and to discipline it as such and secondly, to harness the body's biological properties in order to ensure survival of the species[1]. Although Foucault never wrote explicitly about the feminism, his work very much lends itself to investigation within the discipline, as many of the key topics that he wrote about such as power and sexuality are of utmost interest to feminist scholars. Indeed, there has been much feminist scholarship in recent years pertaining to the work of Foucault. It seems fitting therefore to attempt to problematize the ways in which essentialist ideas about gender in our understanding of contemporary conflict and political violence can form part of his overarching ideas about the body, society and war.
Essentialism refers to a way of thinking that “claims to recongnize the unchanging essence of individual and social identity, and which then connects views and behaviour to identity[2]”. In terms of gender, essentialist thought sees gender roles as being fixed and unchanging and men and women as having an essential nature - generally in the context of war of men being strong, rational life-takers and women being weak, irrational life-givers. This is epitomized by Elshtain's “Beautiful Souls and Just Warriors[3]”. This essential difference is sometimes ascribed to the respective biological properties of men and women, often citing women's capacity as mothers inherently making them more inclined to nurture life rather than to take it. Essentialism has even been used by feminists in the past, with pacifist feminists appealing to the inherent nature of women in an attempt to mobilize them against conflict[4]. There are many problems with the essentialist way of thinking, not least of which is its reductionist approach that fails to take into account some of the most basic facts about the world in which we live in. There are many male pacifists and have been many violent females in contemporary conflicts. A number of studies have been conducted in recent years on female combatants in El Salvador, the LTTE and the Rwandan genocide, to name but a few[5] that have found women to be just as effective at killing as their male counterparts, even in some cases using the preconceptions of others about their femininity in order to pursue their combat objectives more effectively[6]. This tells us then, that gender roles are not fixed or immutable. In this essay, I argue that essentialist ideas about masculinity and femininity have actually been used by the modern nation state in order to make life as manageable as possible. Feminist thought then, gives us the ability to deconstruct these essentialist claims in order that we may become aware of this.
Bio-power represents the attempt to use the body in the most effective way possible for the running of the capitalist nation-state. It is my contention that men and women have been placed within particular ideas about masculinity and femininity when it comes to war because they provide the most efficient manner in which to run society and to propagate life. A society that was entirely at war would cease to exist. Several feminist scholars have noted this in their critique of Hobbes' state of nature[7]. At least some of the bodies that make up a particular society would be required for the roles that support warfare and as Cynthia Enloe notes, these roles have typically been fulfilled by women[8]. In terms of bio-power, it makes biological sense to make this the case as not only are women required to “bear the next generation”[9], women would also be unable to fulfil the role of a soldier whilst pregnant. Placing women in a constructed role as the caring creators of life optimizes their abilities as part of the machinery of the nation state as it harnesses their reproductive capabilities and binds them up with the nurturing capabilities necessary to perpetuate life and keep society functioning. Men on the other hand, have their bodily power optimised through their construction as the binary opposite of the feminine life-giver, as strong, rational life-takers. Binary oppositions are what make constructed identities function best[10] and therefore, the two sets of bodies function best when mirrored against one another. Essentialist conceptions of masculinity and femininity then, serve to reduce the respective bodies to performing in roles optimal to the functioning of the nation state. We can see then, that a feminist perspective gives us much insight into the way that the body is harnessed into a system of bio-power in warfare.
If the ways in which masculinity and femininity have been structured to serve a bio-political purpose, it is not surprising that the study and academic understanding of contemporary warfare is itself gender blind.[11] This has been a subject of enquiry for a number of feminist scholars, including Tickner and Elshtain. Academics have noted how from its very inception, theorizing of the behaviour of states in the international sphere has relied upon constructed notions of hyper-masculine militarization[12]. This is by no means a difficult point to illustrate within realist or liberal discourse, with realists basing their theory of state behaviour on the dependability of the violent male actor[13] and liberals placing absolute emphasis on the rational, essential nature of human beings. |
