CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Lovell, Natalie Elizabeth |
|---|---|
| Title | Queering Security Studies: The Deviance and Perversion of The Islamic State |
| Summary | On the 29th June 2014, it was announced that a new caliphate had been established under the name of the Islamic State (IS). The emergence of IS, as it captured large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, proved both startling and alarming. Indeed, the IS’s use of brutal and violent tactics provoked cries from observers deploring the so-called caliphate as ‘evil’, ‘barbaric’ and ‘perverse’. Yet IS appears to be unrelenting, battling to retain and gain new territory in pursuit of its goal of establishing a global caliphate. The aim of this thesis is to ask what insights queer theory might provide for International Relations (IR) in general, and for Security Studies in particular. By using the case study of IS, this thesis utilizes a queer analytical framework to interrogate and exhumes the gendered, sexual(ized) and racial(ized) assumptions upon which international structures and processes are rendered intelligible, and thus made meaningful. Subscribing to a disruptive queer methodology, this thesis examines the concepts of ‘state’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘power’ as dominantly understood in IR to investigate the ways in which IS challenge, reaffirm and unsettle these notions. It draws upon primary and secondary data including: governmental, organizational and institutional reports; newspaper articles; as well as documents produced by IS institutions, such as the English-speaking propaganda magazines Dabiq and Rumiyyah, official policy statements, declarations and codes of conduct. It is suggested that mainstream IR’s primary focus on state power, states, sovereignty and (national) security both naturalizes and obscures racialized, gendered, sexualized and classed processes and global hierarchies, thereby reproducing and upholding the status quo of the modern-state system. In particular, it is argued that the queer plurality of IS exposes the fragility and constructed nature of states and sovereignty. By applying a Queer IR analysis to IS, this thesis re-examines and recasts key concepts and theories of international security in order to demonstrate the contradictions and instabilities inherent in conventional conceptions of (in)security and world politics. KEYWORDS: Queer IR, IS, Islamic State, Security, Sovereignty, State, Power |
| Supervisor | Meger, Sara |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/lovell_natalie.pdf |
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