We Must Bring Them to Heel: Super Predators, Terrorists, and the Insecurity of Hegemonic Masculinity

• In Event: 1556 - Knowledge Production and Politics

Abstract

In this paper, I develop a theory about the role of gendered and racialized cultural logics in hegemony maintenance projects. In particular, I work through literature on the construction of “super predators” in mid-1990s criminal justice discourse in the United States and “terrorists” after 9/11 to illustrate three interrelated contributions. First, I build upon Alexander’s concept of societalization – when a social problem breaks free from one intra-institutional sphere of management and becomes a matter of vigorous public discourse – to attend specifically to the gendered and racialized cultural logics hegemonic agents draw upon to achieve maximum resonance in audiences of their narrations of legitimate and illegitimate violence. Second, building on Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity and work in Feminist International Relations on its role as an institutional logic within the state and international system, I argue that when a social problem undergoes societalization, the hegemonic masculinity of the state converts into a distinctly anxious mode that triggers an active hegemony maintenance project to legitimate reassertions of supremacy over the threat. Finally, I suggest that knowing hegemonic actors use gendered and racialized cultural logics to win hearts and minds allows individuals to note their presence thereby diluting their persuasive power within vigorous public debates.

Author

• Marisa Tramontano, City University of New York-The Graduate Center