Description
“You made my day, madam. We need more people like you at our venue.” These were the words of a Kenyan private security guard checking my Uber upon my arrival at a conference venue in downtown Nairobi. From 2021 to 2022, I conducted ethnographic field research on gendered security transformations within the Global War on Terror in the case of Kenya. During this research, I encountered the field as a site of power, manifesting and revealing the dynamics in which identities are created, contested, and transformed (Makana 2018). This article will explore the bodily and affective qualities of counterterrorism as a global security regime through my bodily experience. My identity as a thirty-something year old, white, unmarried woman was negotiated depending on the actors I was interviewing, ranging from Kenyan state military to British private security actors. Particularly the question of access to interviewees and information and my assumed sexuality as a (white) woman offers insights about the governance tools of a global system of power. Hence, this piece will discuss my embodiment of identities and the (in)securities I have faced through this experience, providing insights into the racialised and gendered working of counterterrorism.
