Empire Becomes Intimate: Muslim Visibility, Affective Labor, and the Personal as Political after 9/11

• In Event: Body Politics, State Power, and Resistance

Abstract

This autoethnography examines how state power regulates bodies through everyday atmosphere rather than explicit rule. Between 2012 and 2014, I worked in two restaurants my parents operated on U.S. military bases. Although the labor was ordinary, the setting was not. The base condensed national security into routine life through gates, uniforms, surveillance, and discretionary authority, producing a political environment in which Muslim visibility felt risky even when no one issued a formal prohibition.
Drawing on the feminist insight that “the personal is political” as a diagnostic method, I treat mundane strategies—wearing a wig instead of hijab, using an alias at work, and monitoring my voice and demeanor—not as private preferences but as evidence of governance operating through embodied self-regulation. Three vignettes anchor the analysis. First, the wig reveals anticipatory compliance: discipline enacted in advance through self-monitoring, tension, and the felt pressure to remain unremarkable. Second, the alias shows coerced legibility: the translation of the self into familiar terms to keep transactions smooth and to minimize the risk of becoming “a type” rather than a person. Third, my mother’s delayed hijab practice demonstrates institutional time: her ability to wear hijab was postponed while the restaurants remained on the bases and became immediately feasible once the businesses closed, underscoring that religious practice depends on conditions of possibility, not simply conviction.
Grounded in postcolonial feminist theory, the paper argues that the War on Terror is lived not only through policy and policing but through domestic routines that discipline bodies and distribute freedom unevenly. Muslim visibility becomes a site where empire becomes intimate—felt in the body, carried in interaction, and negotiated through family labor—and is managed through adjustments made to secure safety, trust, and belonging.

Author

• Asena Karipek, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign