CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Azhini, Marzieh |
|---|---|
| Title | I Want Maimed Females For U.S. Army: The U.S. Media Representations Of Maimed Afghan Women During The U.S.-Led War In Afghanistan |
| Summary | This research examines discourses which shape the main core of the U.S. mainstream media representations of Afghan maimed women during the time of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan to reveal the political implications of the representations with regards to the U.S. invasion in Afghanistan. Here, the term “maimed women” refers to those Afghan women who are mutilated by their male relatives during this period of time. By employing close reading as a key methodological tool, I analyze discourses in media representations of a maimed Afghan woman, Aisha (Aesha) Mohammadzai, and compare her representations with the representations of other Afghan maimed women, to examine how the entanglement of humanitarian, colonial and ableist discourses shape the main core of my interpretation of representations, and argue that this entanglement promotes the U.S. humanitarian achievements with the aim of disguising the political/economic interests of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. To develop this, I employ, first, contemporary humanitarian critiques which reveal that the discourse of rescuing and protecting human’s life shape the logic of contemporary humanitarianism; second, feminist postcolonial scholarships which argue that rescuing and civilizing non-western women by western men is embedded in colonial discourses; and third, critical disability studies which discuss that ableist discourses are shaped based on equating disability with insufficiency and primitiveness which have to be constantly corrected, improved, and normalized. Although the existing postcolonial feminist critiques argue deeply and insightfully ideologies and practices embedded in the contemporary humanitarianism with regards to colonial discourses, few studies discuss the role of ableist discourses as one of the pillars which shape the logic of victimizing and objectifying indigenous women in the contemporary humanitarianism. The aim of this research is demonstrating that Aesha (and other maimed Afghan women) is objectified and victimized at the intersection of humanitarian, colonial and ableist discourses by the U.S. mainstream media representations. |
| Supervisor | Yoon, Hyaesin |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/azhini_marzieh.pdf |
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