Books
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Managhan T, Unknowing the "War on Terror": The Pleasures of Risk, Routledge (2020)
ISBN: 9781138485648
Abstract Engaging with the unconscious, the excess, the uncanny and the spectacular dimensions of the ‘war on terror’ – as made evident, for example, in the 2012 London Olympic Games and the 2013 manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers – leads this book to probe the so-called ‘order of things’ that has made this war intelligible in both mainstream and critical approaches to Security Studies and International Relations. Specifically, this book brings to light and theorizes the obscene pleasures of the ‘war on terror’ and its supplementary precautionary risk logic. Coming to grips with this (i.e., the pleasures of risk), ultimately via an engagement with critical psychoanalytic theory, leads this book to argue that we may be other than we think we are within critical International Relations traditions. Furthermore, albeit without discounting the madness, if not desolation, of the present (extending from the ‘war on terror’ to the politics of Brexit and Donald Trump), it suggests there may be some relief in that yet.
Website
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Managhan T, Gender, agency and war: the maternalized body in U.S. foreign policy, Routledge (2012)
ISBN: 9780415781954
Abstract This book traces practices of militarization and resistance that have emerged under the sign of motherhood in US Foreign Policy. Gender, Agency and War examines this discourse against the background of three key moments of American foreign policy formation: the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, the Gulf War of the early 1990s, and the recent invasion of Iraq. For each of these moments the author explores the emergence of a historically specific and emblematic maternalized mode of female embodiment (ranging from the ‘hysterical' antinuclear protester to the figure of ‘Supermom'), in order to shed light onto the various practices which define and enable expressions of American sovereignty. In so doing, the text argues that the emergence of particular raced, gendered, and maternalized bodies ought not to be read as merely tangential to affairs of state, but as instantiations of global politics. This work urges an approach that rereads the body as an ‘event' - with significant implications for the ways in which international politics and gender are currently understood. This book will be of much interest to students of gender politics, critical security studies, US foreign policy and IR in general.
Journal articles
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Managhan T, 'We all dreamed it: the politics of knowing and un-knowing the “war on terror”'
Critical Studies on Terrorism 10 (1) (2016) pp.22-43
ISSN: 1753-9153 eISSN: 1753-9161
Abstract This article begins via an exploration of Jean Baudrillard's provocative claim that we dreamed of the ‘events of 9/11’ prior to their occurrence. Baudrillard's particular quote is introduced to raise questions about the politics of knowing and un-knowing in International Relations, with specific reference to risk and the “war on terror”. Building on postcolonial scholarship, this article points to the limits of contemporary approaches to risk and offers an alternative methodological approach – one it argues better identifies the power relations that structure the daily forms of knowing and un-knowing that give meaning to and invigorate articulations of risk.Website
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Managhan T, 'Kettling and 'the distribution of the sensible': investigating the liminality of the protesting body in a post-political age'
Krisis : Journal for Contemporary Philosophy - (3) (2012) pp.52-67
ISSN: 0168-275X
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Managhan T, 'The article investigates the conditions of emergence of Cindy Sheehan (mother of soldier killed in Iraq) as a spokesperson of the American antiwar movement and its so-called 'spark.' It interrogates the emotional pull of the current 'support the troops' rhetoric and the usurpation of this and other patriotic signs and symbols by various antiwar groups as both a constraint on the realm of legitimate dissent and an enabling condition of intelligible subject formation ' with particular attention given to the figure of the grieving mom. This article argues that the sympathetic, albeit tenuous, identification with this figure emerged through a simultaneous psychic identification with and disavowal of loss ' with implications for the possibility and impossibility of dissent in the aftermath of 9/11'
16 (2) (2011) pp.438-466
Abstract The article investigates the conditions of emergence of Cindy Sheehan (mother of soldier killed in Iraq) as a spokesperson of the American antiwar movement and its so-called"spark." It interrogates the emotional pull of the current"support the troops" rhetoric and the usurpation of this and other patriotic signs and symbols by various antiwar groups as both a constraint on the realm of legitimate dissent and an enabling condition of intelligible subject formation - with particular attention given to the figure of the grieving mom. This article argues that the sympathetic, albeit tenuous, identification with this figure emerged through a simultaneous psychic identification with and disavowal of loss - with implications for the possibility and impossibility of dissent in the aftermath of 9/11.Website
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Managhan T, 'Highways, heroes and secular martyrs: the symbolics of power and sacrifice'
Review of International Studies 38 (1) (2011) pp.97-118
ISSN: 0260-2105
Abstract This article examines the subtle and not so subtle shifts in Canadian political culture that have taken place in, through and alongside the so-called"return" of the Canadian warrior. It begins from the contention that while the racialised dimensions of the post 9/11 Canadian security state have been well analysed elsewhere, the gendered dimensions have not been fully explored. This article explores the re-emergence of a sacrificial imaginary in Canadian culture through an examination of seemingly irreconcilable accounts that have emerged of the Canadian security state - one that reads"Canada" through the story of the torture and repatriation of Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, and one that tells the story of"Canada at War" through the warrior's return. It examines both in terms of the tensions and instabilities they reveal in the Western liberal imaginary and in terms of the ways in which they collectively operate to redefine the aesthetic borders of the Canadian political community. The article argues that the sacralisation of violence which has refound this political community has been enabled by a remasculinised aesthetic that delimits the"progressive liberalism" which animated the Canada of Old - ostensibly in order to protect it.Website
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Managhan T, 'Grieving dead soldiers, disavowing loss: Cindy Sheehan and the im/possibility of the American antiwar movement'
Geopolitics 16 (2) (2011) pp.438-466
ISSN: 1465-0045
Abstract The article investigates the conditions of emergence of Cindy Sheehan (mother of soldier killed in Iraq) as a spokesperson of the American antiwar movement and its so-called ‘spark.' It interrogates the emotional pull of the current ‘support the troops' rhetoric and the usurpation of this and other patriotic signs and symbols by various antiwar groups as both a constraint on the realm of legitimate dissent and an enabling condition of intelligible subject formation - with particular attention given to the figure of the grieving mom. This article argues that the sympathetic, albeit tenuous, identification with this figure emerged through a simultaneous psychic identification with and disavowal of loss - with implications for the possibility and impossibility of dissent in the aftermath of 9/11.Website
Book Manuscripts:
Forthcoming: Unknowing the 'War on Terror': The Pleasures of Risk (London: Routledge, 2020).
Gender, Agency, War: The Maternalized Body in U.S. Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2012).
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles:
"We All Dreamed It: The Politics of Knowing and Un-knowing the ‘War on Terror,’" Critical Studies on Terrorism 10.1 (2017), 22-43.
"Kettling and the ‘Distribution of the Sensible’: Investigating the Liminality of the Protesting Body in a Post-Political Age," Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, 3 (2012), 52-67, electronic document available at: http://www.krisis.eu/index_en.php.
"Highways, Heroes and Secular Martyrs: The Symbolics of Power and Sacrifice," Review of International Studies 38.1 (2012), 97-118.
"Grieving Dead Soldiers, Disavowing Loss: Cindy Sheehan and the Im/possibility of the American Antiwar Movement," Geopolitics 16.2 (2011), 438-66.
"Shifting the Gaze from Hysterical Mothers to Deadly Dads: Spectacle and the Antinuclear Movement," Review of International Studies 33.4 (2007), 637-54.