Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T14:59:42.304Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

“The Most Naked Phase of Our Struggle”: Gendered Shaming and Masculinist Desiring‐Production in Turkey's War on Terror

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Abstract

The photographs that circulated on social media depicting (and shamelessly celebrating) the atrocious acts committed by the Turkish military forces in southeast Turkey are indicative of an aesthetic (re)construction of militarized masculinity that serves as a metonym for the nation‐state. As violence is aestheticized in a gendered fashion in these depictions, the Kurdish resistance movement is shamed as feminine. Gendered shaming, in this context, conjoins racialization and gendering as subjugating mechanisms of the state. Women's peace movements seek to disrupt this heteropatriarchal logic of the state by countering the tripartite alignment of masculinity‐power‐domination with politicized art. In refusing the shame attributed to femininity, the shame that the state desires the Kurdish body to signify, they transfigure shame into honor and resistance.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akkaya, Gulfer. 2015. Senin Bedenin Benim Canimdir. Siyasi Haber, August 24. http://siyasihaber3.org/senin-bedenin-benim-canimdirgulfer-akkaya (accessed May 24, 2016).Google Scholar
Althusser, Louis. 1971. Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In Lenin and philosophy and other essays. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1969. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In Illuminations, ed. Arendt, Hannah. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of war: When is life grievable? Brooklyn: Verso.Google Scholar
Cumhuriyet. 2016. Cizre'de bodrum kati ve cevresine operasyon: Onlarca olu. Cumhuriyet. January 7. http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/turkiye/477359/Cizre_de_bodrum_kati_ve_cevresine_operasyon__Onlarca_olu.html (accessed July 14, 2016).Google Scholar
Clover, Carol. 1992. Men, women, and chain saws: Gender in modern horror film. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Angela. 2016. Angela Davis speaks! University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon. May 11.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix. 2004. Anti‐Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Enloe, Cynthia. 2000. Maneuvers: The international politics of militarizing women's lives. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1990. The history of sexuality. Volume 1. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Global Security. N.d. M40 106mm Recoilless Rifle. Global Security. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/m40rclr.htm (accessed July 14, 2016).Google Scholar
Index Mundi. 2017. Turkey military service age and obligation. Index Mundi. http://www.indexmundi.com/turkey/military_service_age_and_obligation.html (accessed November 3, 2017).Google Scholar
Işık, Ruken. 2015. From memories to pictures: The war in Kurdistan. The Kurdish Question, August 22. http://kurdishquestion.com/oldsite/index.php/kurdistan/north-kurdistan/ekin-wan-from-memories-to-pictures/1081-ekin-wan-from-memories-to-pictures.htm (accessed May 24, 2016).Google Scholar
Izmir'de, VicdaniRet Haftasi'na polis mudahalesi: 9 aktivist gozaltina alindi. 2016. Vicdani Ret Dernegi, May 11. http://vicdaniret.org/izmirdevicdani-ret-haftasina-polis-mudahalesi-9-aktivist-gozaltinda/ (accessed July 14, 2016).Google Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1987. Emancipated but unliberated? Reflections on the Turkish case. Feminist Studies 13 (2): 317–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koğacıoğlu, Deniz. 2004. The tradition effect: Framing honor crimes in Turkey. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 15 (2): 118–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kimmel, Michael. 2011. Manhood in America: A cultural history. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lorde, Audre. 2007. The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. In Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Berkeley: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Mann, Bonnie. 2014. Sovereign masculinity: Gender lessons from the war on terror. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, David. 1994. Theatre of war: Combat, the military, and masculinities. In Theorizing masculinities, ed. Brod, Harry and Kaufman, Michael. London: Sage Publishers.Google Scholar
Mustang. 2015. Directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven. France: CG Cinéma.Google Scholar
Parla, Ayşe. 2001. The “honor” of the state: Virginity examinations in Turkey. Feminist Studies 27 (1): 6588.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peteet, Julie. 1994. Male gender and rituals of resistance in Palestinian “Intifada”: A cultural politics of violence. American Ethnologist 21 (1): 3149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanderson, Sertan. 2015. Domestic violence in Turkey reaches boiling point. DW, July 11. http://www.dw.com/en/domestic-violence-in-turkey-reaches-boiling-point/a-18576377 (accessed July 14, 2016).Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2003. Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stepien, Aneta. 2014. Understanding male shame. Masculinities: A Journal of Identity and Culture 1: 727.Google Scholar