Description
In 2015, the ‘phenomenon’ of women traveling to join ISIS seemed to have taken over the news. Various attempts to engage with the roles these women have played has focused on a shallow interpretation of agency, and depictions thereof. Much of the existing literature on women involved in terrorism not only focuses on the personal, but it treats the women themselves as the challenge for the existing parameters and policies set by the state, whilst simultaneously avoiding how these policies are inherently gendered. This paper seeks to meaningfully theorise agency beyond this binary and towards considering what this agency enables. How are our feminist ideas of agency situated within secular and (neo)colonial constructions of what it means to exercise agency? Using the case study of the UK government and media narratives of the women who joined IS, and building on postcolonial and decolonial feminist theorisations, this paper aims to uncover the racialised and gendered nature of these understandings of agency and how they are entangled with assumptions on race, gender, and religion. This emancipatory reconceptualization of agency is a step towards more meaningful collective feminist solidarity.
