Description
Feminist have long challenged gendered binaries that structure discourses on women’s political violence. Yet, legal settings, in which gendered narratives around violence and sovereignty are actively negotiated, have largely escaped feminist scholarly scrutiny. This paper addresses this gap by examining contemporary German terrorism proceedings as sites where the boundaries of femininity, (il)legitimate political violence and the German body politic are narrated. Drawing on theories of performativity, I scrutinize how female defendants and other trial participants co-construct both knowledge and meaning around female political violence. The analysis of courtroom ethnographic data from multiple terrorism trials all throughout Germany reveals that women associated with diverse groups – from Islamic State to the “Reichsbürger” movement – draw on different identity scripts in their defence. The perceived proximity to the German national body politic emerges as a central feature shaping the degree to which differently positioned defendants mobilise liberal-professional or traditional-maternal feminine identity scripts. However, hegemonic gender norms still establish consistent boundaries. These norms remain the parameters within which credible claims about female identities, motives and actions can be articulated. By centring the role of national identity and intersubjectivity in the construction of discourses of “terrorism”, this paper traces how female political violence is rendered (un)intelligible in German legal proceedings and beyond.
