Description
Keywords:
Islamic State, Feminist IR, Gender Based Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Visual Methodologies
Abstract:
More than 80% of Islamic State (IS) foreign fighters travelling from ‘the West’ were men (ICCT 2016) and roughly 90% of gendered subjects referred to in IS magazines are represented as male (Roose 2018). However, gendered analysis of IS has focused on the recruitment of women and the representation of female IS members by the group and Western media. The more limited literature on the role of masculinity for IS has focused primarily on the relationship between masculinity and acts of extreme violence (Impara, 2018; Crone, 2020; Vale, 2022). There is space for examinations of IS’s construction of masculine identities which analyse other discursive practices used to construct masculine identities and the relationality of these identities. This paper will analyse the frequent representations of ‘knighthood’ in the propaganda produced by IS and on the multimodal nature of these. It will explore how IS uses these representations and their intertextual relationship with texts and images produced in the Islamist milieu and the Islamic historical tradition. It contributes to literature on gender and IS, broader Feminist literature within Critical Terrorism Studies, and work at the intersection of Communication Studies and Terrorism Studies regarding how terrorist organisations construct messages aimed at specific audiences.
