Gender and the Politics of Corporeal Weaponization

UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Governing Bodies: Gender and the Politics of Corporeal Weaponization Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3f36t38f Author Lyness, Claire Frances Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ GOVERNING BODIES: GENDER AND THE POLITICS OF CORPOREAL WEAPONIZATION A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in POLITICS with an emphasis in FEMINIST STUDIES by Claire Lyness September 2015 The Dissertation of Claire Lyness is approved: _________________________________ Professor Ronnie Lipschutz, Chair _________________________________ Professor Vanita Seth _________________________________ Professor Anjali Arondekar ________________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Claire Lyness 2015 Table of Contents 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………..1 a. “Unmanned”……………………………………………………….....1 b. Absent presences………………………………………………….....14 c. Governing bodies…………………………………………………....22 2. Chapter 1: Writing the Female Suicide Bomber: Suicide Bombing, Terrorism Studies and Governmentality…………………………………...32 a. Terrorism studies…………………………………………………....37 b. Towards a governmental analysis of terrorism studies…………....41 c. Governing female suicide bombers………………………………...58 d. Conclusion…………………………………………………………...65 3. Chapter 2: “Bad Stomachs” and Dirty Protest: The Armagh Prison Protest, 1980………………………………………………………………….67 a. Introduction…………………………………………………………67 b. Armagh as historical absence………………………………………79 c. Voices from the Grave………………………………………………89 d. Writing the no-wash protest………………………………………...99 e. Menstrual blood……………………………………………………112 f. Pauline McLaughlin……………………………………………….122 4. Chapter 3: Unhealthy Eating: Women Hunger Strikers and the Pathologization of Protest…………………………………………………129 a. “Sisters of Terror”………………………………………………….130 b. Two strange disciplines……………………………………………151 c. Pathological protest………………………………………………..166 d. Starvation as spectacle……………………………………………..177 e. Conclusion………………………………………………………….182 5. Epilogue: The inextricable………………………………………………...186 6. Bibliography………………………………………………………………..197 iii Abstract Governing Bodies: Gender and the Politics of Corporeal Weaponization by Claire Lyness This dissertation engages with women’s participation in three practices of political violence – suicide bombing, dirty protest and hunger striking. These practices all entail the weaponization of the body in distinct ways and are often placed beyond the scope of acceptable forms of violence. They are associated with “terrorist” subjects and are deployed against the state. I argue that the transgressive quality of these modes of corporeal weaponization is further amplified when the perpetrators are women. Following feminist scholarship on gender and political violence, I attend to the question of agency and consider how it is precisely the erasure of feminine bodies from the space of political violence which may conversely constitute a unique form of political agency. Female suicide bombers, for example, are often cast as particularly lethal weapons because of their capacity to use feminine embodiment (usually feigning pregnancy) as a disguise. In such representations, women’s bodies carry with them the significations of the private sphere – domesticity, nurture and care – and therefore are not read as violent actors. The association of femininity with the private sphere is what constitutes the deadly “undetectability” of the female suicide bomber. In the first chapter of this dissertation, I argue that the terrorism studies literature that engages with the figure of the suicide terrorist attempts to recapture suicide terrorism as a rational phenomenon with an identifiable strategic logic so that the suicide bomber may be effectively governed. At the same time, however, these literatures produce the female suicide bomber as a singularly risky subject who, because of her feminine embodiment, frequently exceeds attempts to govern her. In the second chapter I shift to a different comparative site – the period of conflict in Northern Ireland known as the “Troubles.” I argue that this formation can iv be read alongside the contemporary War on Terror, as many of the techniques and modes of counterterrorist governmentality recur across these two sites. I look at the dirty protest in Armagh prison undertaken by thirty Republican prisoners in 1980. I examine the conditions of historical absence that have constituted the women’s protest as marginal to the men’s protest at the Maze prison, which has since featured heavily in Republican commemorative tropes. I argue that attempts to understand the protest as reclaiming or “seizing control” of the women prisoners’ bodies from the disciplinary regime of the prison often unintentionally reiterate a vision of the subject that is guaranteed by a mind/body dualism. Here the body is read as a passive, inert materiality that is animated only by the lively, willful mind. The problem with such accounts is not only that this dualism has functioned to historically exclude certain groups – including feminized and racialized subjects – from political life, but that it cannot account for certain modes of agency in which the body exerts a force of its own kind. Finally I engage with the cases of Marian and Dolours Price, two IRA prisoners who went on hunger strike (and were force-fed) in HMP Brixton in 1974. The sisters’ were eventually released in 1980 and 1981 reportedly suffering from anorexia. Finding the co-signification of women hunger strikers with anorexia or eating disorders to be a common one, I consider the feminist literature on anorexia and argue that the case of the Price sisters’ disrupts the distinct boundary between pathology and protest. I argue that this has consequences for our understanding of political agency in hunger striking more generally and provokes further consideration of the agency of the body in such practices of resistance. v Acknowledgements The writing of this dissertation would not have been possible without the support of so many people. I want to begin by thanking my committee members, who have shown patience and generosity with me throughout this long process. I am grateful for the mentorship and guidance of Ronnie Lipschutz, who has frequently inspired me to pursue lines of thought previously unconsidered, often reflecting his own broad curiosity and knowledge-base. Vanita Seth’s humor and intelligence has buoyed me up at various points over the past six years, and her faith and interest in me during my time in Santa Cruz has been invaluable. Finally, I have to thank Anjali Arondekar, who has frequently pushed me, sometimes in painful ways, throughout the course of my graduate student career. Her exacting concerns and comments are written all over this dissertation and I would not be the scholar I am now without her intervention. I also want to thank Dean Mathiowetz, Carla Freccero and Cristina Masters for shaping my thinking at various moments of my graduate career, either in seminars or as readers of this project in the very early stages. I am grateful to Cindy Morris, Sarah Arantza Amador and Megan Thomas for all their invaluable help in administrative matters and for navigating with me the bureaucratic maze of being an international graduate student. I also have to thank the friends I’ve made here in Santa Cruz, without whom I literally would not have made it through graduate school. It still seems miraculous that I arrived in Santa Cruz six years ago not knowing a single person and experiencing such vi culture shock, but now it feels like home. I thank Sam Cook, Nishita Trisal, Omid Mohamadi, Steve Araujo, Randy Cota, Holly Johnson, Sarah Mak, Jan Kotowski and Aleixo Gonçalves for all the wonderful conversations, barbecues and glasses of wine we have shared. I have to give a special shout out to my running buddy Sandra Harvey. The memories of those morning runs on West Cliff are some of my favorites of Santa Cruz, and her care and support throughout this whole process has been a lifeline. I also want to express my gratitude to all the friends and family back in Belfast who have provided me with encouragement and at times much-needed distraction from academic life. I want to thank Beth Armstrong, Rebecca Mairs and Angela Rainey for all their love and loyalty. Especially my BFF Angela, with whom I stayed various times in London while doing archival research. I have to thank my partner, Michael Magee, for all the multiple ways he has supported me, cared for me and kept me calm, of which there are far too many to count. Finally, my parents Patricia and John Lyness, who have shown such faith in me and done everything they can to help me along this process. I am grateful in particular to my father John, whose own voracious curiosity and boundless enthusiasm for research has inspired this project in so many ways, it is to him that I dedicate this dissertation. vii Introduction “I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end. I know the feeling you experience when you see someone die. Horrifying barely covers it. And when you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that

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