Description
This paper uses a post-colonial and feminist analysis of improvised weapons production by anti-colonial movements to unsettle dominant depictions of such actors as terrorists and raise questions about the possibility of solidarity. Scholars are by now familiar with the way that anti-colonial violence, usually glossed as terrorism, is depicted as barbaric, irrational, and perfidious (“queered”, in Jasbir Puar’s formulation). However, as well as being criticised for these “excessive” and hyper-masculine displays of violent agency, the agency of anti-colonial movements is also routinely downplayed and derided, often through feminisation. Such actors are commonly criticised as cowards for hiding behind civilian “human shields” (usually, it is emphasised, women and children). In addition, movements are depicted as dependent proxies, even dupes, of malign foreign states and/or rival sub-imperial powers, such as Iran, China, or Russia. Starting from an analysis of Israeli portrayals of Hamas weapons factories as exemplifying “terrorist” malevolence, this paper shows how craft weapons manufacture exceeds and subverts such framings. It develops this analysis by situating improvised weapons production in a longer anti-colonial history stretching back to the Algerian FLN and the Viet Cong and then by comparing Hamas’ endeavours with the adaptation of commercially available drones by the Ukrainian military. Viewed in this light, rather than revealing perfidy and dependence, improvised weapons production becomes a kind of “arms trade from below”, a display of ingenuity and an assertion of independence. It also raises questions about what anti-colonial solidarity should mean in such conditions, particularly when critiques of the arms industry and armed struggle have so often been made by feminists.
This paper is submitted for consideration for the joint CPD/CST panel on Anticolonial Solidarities and Resistance
