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The Terrorist and the Pedophile: Exploring the Emergence, Construction and Function of Criminal Figures in a Time of Structural Dissolution

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The Terrorist and the Pedophile: Exploring the Emergence, Construction and Function of Criminal Figures in a Time of Structural Dissolution The Terrorist and the Pedophile: Exploring the Emergence, Construction and Function of Criminal Figures in a Time of Structural Dissolution A Division III By: Alison Bowen Fall 2010 - Spring 2011 Committee Chair: Peter Gilford, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Psychology Committee Member: Vishnupad, Ph.D., Professor of South Asian Studies Hampshire College 2 I would like to thank my committee, Peter and Vishnupad, for your knowledge, guidance and friendship. I would also like to thank my family and friends, for your love and support. 3 Introduction 4 For the purpose this inquiry, I have chosen to discuss the criminal figures of the terrorist and the pedophile with respect to the putative societal threat their presences pose in current American society. Mainstream America – the government, the public and the media – presumes evil and dehumanizes these figures. In an attempt to offer an understanding alternative to that of the mainstream, I have decided to deconstruct the figures of the terrorist and the pedophile and characterize their positionalities within American society. By positionality I mean how these figures are situated in relation to other social structures such as institutions, ideology, practices, knowledge and history. In Chapter 1, I discuss the case of John Walker Lindh – the 20‐year‐old, White, American Muslim‐convert who the US military captured in Afghanistan while he was fighting with the Taliban shortly after 9/11– as a vehicle for a larger discussion on the figure of the terrorist with respect to the current United States War On Terror. I argue that the construction of the figure of the terrorist and the US War On Terror creates a site of moral positionality – and thus communal anchorage – for America as a whole. In Chapter 2, I employ the figure of the pedophile and discuss its genealogy and presence in the United States beginning at the turn of the 20th century. I demonstrate how, over the past century or so, there have been waves of mass panic over sex crime in the US and how these waves – and the most recent’s lack of recess – have coincided with the deterioration of traditional social structures due to periods of liberalism. In tandem, the discussions surrounding these two figures provide for the reader an interpretive understanding of criminality, morality and societal threat alternative to that of the American mainstream. 5 The criminal labels “terrorist” and “pedophile” are far‐reaching and applied – by the legal system, the media and the public – with fervent generosity. The USA PATRIOT ACT (2001) deems any activity relating to the destruction of an aircraft, arson of government property, the protection of computers, killing or attempted killing of US officials or employees, harboring terrorists and material support to terrorists – all of which threaten this notion of “national security” and are considered federal felonies – terrorist activity. Currently, many American politicians and media outlets are directly linking all “Muslims” to “Sharia Law,” jihadist movements – extremist practices of Islam – and, thus, terrorism (Elliot, 2011). The pedophile – the child predator, the child molester – is anyone who has committed a sexual offense against a minor. These offenses include everything from the violent rape of a 5‐year‐old to consensual sex between teenagers – deemed statutory rape – to the possession of child pornography – where the “minors” are sometimes simulated images. However, with the widespread use of the label “sex offender” to refer to any sexual offense along with sex offender legislation resulting from fears of child predation, American society tends to understand the sex offender and the pedophile synonymously. As a result, the public, the media and legislators view persons convicted of lesser offenses such as voyeurism and indecent exposure along side rape, child molestation and even child kidnapping‐sex‐murders. Despite the non‐specifying function of the terrorist and pedophile labels, American society understands those held subject to these labels along very simplified and totalizing terms: Terrorists are amoral and motivated by nothing more than hate. Pedophiles are monstrous, violent and twisted in and through the very cores of their beings. 6 Thus is characterized the figure of the terrorist and the figure of the pedophile in current American society. In the following two chapters, I will engage a more detailed discussion surrounding the construction of the terrorist and pedophile figures in the US. This discussion will include, but is not limited to, state and federal legislation, media portrayals, medico‐psychiatric discourse, racialization and public response. In deconstructing these criminal labels, I begin to deconstruct criminality itself. Criminality – what is determined criminal behavior, the categorization and labeling of criminal acts, forensic techniques, the criminal justice system, medico‐psychiatric understandings of criminality – and criminal culpability – the act of blaming and holding subjects accountable for criminal behavior – become complicated when one considers the socio‐historical emergence and function of their practice. Social theorist Michel Foucault seeks to understand social phenomena such as the criminal justice system, the modern day prison, the psychiatric institution and techniques of governance by tracing the historical evolution – conducting a genealogy – of the various social practices, systems, networks and channels of power leading up to the phenomenon in question. He finds that the ultimate purpose of social structures such as the medico‐psychiatric institution, the academic institution, the criminal justice system and the institution of the family is to maintain a normalized, manageable population. In other words, while these institutions present as having an interest in helping people by ameliorating suffering, as providing education for people in order to foster liberal values of autonomy and personal responsibility, as seeing that justice is carried forth and as promoting what is natural and 7 fundamentally ethical, these institutions are, in fact, mechanisms of power that work on an entire social body as technologies of normalization. Therefore, according to Foucault’s framework, criminality itself is a societal invention. Subjects are not fundamentally criminal or non‐criminal, moral or amoral, nor are these concepts determined by nature, by God – outside of society: A person – his behavior, his thoughts – is either consistent with societal norms or he deviates from those norms, and such deviation potentially falls under the category of criminality. However, acknowledging and demonstrating the constructedness of criminality –and, more specifically, the constructedness of criminal figures of the terrorist and the pedophile – does not fully satisfy my inquiry. What is at stake, here, is the over­emphasis of the terrorist and the pedophile in American society. Therefore, the issues I shall address in the following chapters will answer the following questions: How is it that the figures of the terrorist and the pedophile have come to occupy such a prominent space of threat and dehumanization? What is the underlying societal function of these figures in terms of this drastic positionality? Utilizing Foucault’s terminology, I ask: What are the “conditions of possibility” for – the set of socio‐historical, socio‐political structures and phenomena that allow for – the figures of the terrorist and the pedophile to emerge as such threatening presences in American society? I will argue that the figures of the terrorist and the pedophile function amidst a much larger societal trend involving the unraveling of traditional American social structures. The scope of this structural unraveling ranges from the deterioration of the traditional structure of the family – White, heterosexual, nuclear – to the 8 deterioration of traditional gender roles – women bound to the private sphere of the home for housekeeping and child rearing; men dominating the workplace and public sphere – to the complicating of a traditionally more homogenized value system – involving religion, sexuality, civil rights, cultural practices – to the replacement of a traditionally more isolationist approach to nation‐hood with globalization. This dissolution of traditional structures began in late 19th to turn of the 20th century America, a period during which the country experienced pivotal social changes due to the rise of capitalism and the resulting immigration, population growth, industrialization and urbanization. In his book, “Constructing the Self, Constructing America,” Phillip Cushman examines the historical evolution of the American conceptualization of the self and how it drastically shifted with the arrival of this capitalist structure (Cushman, 1995). His analysis is reminiscent of Foucault’s methodology in that he situates the American subject within a historical framework in order to characterize and interpret the subject’s current relationship with American society. Drawing from Cushman’s genealogy of the American self, I am able to characterize aspects of the dissolution of traditional structures out of which I believe the panic surrounding the figures of the terrorist and the pedophile to be emerging. Cushman depicts the American – in terms of his self‐conceptualization – as becoming increasingly disoriented in conjunction with the deterioration of traditional social structures and, thus, the deterioration of shared meaning, value and purpose (Cushman, 1995).
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