MRes BBK/PhD SOAS: A queer historical analysis of Anglo/Egyptian counter-terrorism and emergency law

该项目对英国和埃及之间的殖民关系进行了一次奇怪的女权主义审查，以此为背景，了解紧急状态和反恐法律如何以及针对哪些主体在当代实施日常暴力；进一步，法律正常化在隐藏此类暴力方面发挥的核心作用。我以英埃关系为中心，以便了解文明和道德的叙述如何继续规范身体和空间的特定方式；以及这种规定在种族、性别、宗教和阶级观念方面如何不同地表现出来。我的重点是法律的时间性和性如何作为生物政治和死亡政治的治理方法发挥作用，以及它们如何在当代反恐法律的殖民基础上发挥核心作用。这个项目的核心是这样一个论点，即西方哲学和当代对极端主义的政治理解不能离开道德而被思考。在整个20世纪80年代，围绕恐怖分子形象的道德恐慌与周围的同性恋者和同性恋者一样，都是医疗造假。这里的核心是种族主义和性别化的共同构成性质，因为它们结合在一起塑造了与法律文明进步相关的标志。道德可以被解读为当代的“血腥话语”，这些话语使穆斯林社区病态，因为它们总是“携带着不忠的种子”。关于恐怖主义和极端主义的叙述往往与生物本质论联系在一起。反恐立法通过在国际边境、公共场所、工作场所和网络空间实施的规定影响所有主体。然而，这项立法对那些被标记为“可疑”的人是暴力的：据我所知，这些人被认为是性别歧视和种族歧视的对象。将同性恋视为对规范的破坏，受反恐法律影响的受试者可以被理解为通过他们在性别、性取向和/或种族表达方面的异常表现来困扰国家的直白边界。暴力标志着明显的穆斯林、种族主义和奇怪性别的受试者的生活，他们不太能通过对可接受美学的异性恋/同性恋的理解。我认为，在全球反恐战争中运作的政治-法律框架所监管的社区的缓慢死亡或日常暴力，是被这种正常化过程和自由国家声称的反恐“软”做法所掩盖的。在将紧急状态立法纳入普通法的范围内时，法律和国家暴力被认为是“正常的”，因此是“合法的”、“合法的”和“必要的”。我的项目使用混合方法来追踪从20世纪初的埃及到今天的英国和埃及的合法暴力和道德框架。我查看了1914-1928年英国殖民时期的档案收藏品；英国伦敦和开罗的两张军事地图，其中一张不在这个时间框架内；今天的反恐立法和判例法；以及今天对在英国的埃及人的“绘图”采访。为了这个项目的目的，我将重点放在对上述对象的特殊待遇的“正常化”过程中，认为紧急措施对于被压迫者来说“不是例外，而是规则”。我的理解是，正常化既意味着将临时紧急措施正式纳入永久性反恐立法，也意味着构成殖民和法律档案的琐碎和世俗的言论。

This project carries out a queer feminist examination of the colonial relationship between Britain and Egypt as a context for understanding how, and for which subjects, emergency and counter-terrorism laws perpetrate everyday violence in the contemporary; and further, the central role that legal normalisation plays in hiding such violence. I centre the Anglo-Egyptian relationship in order the understand the particular ways in which narratives of civilisation and morality continue to regulate bodies and space; and how this regulation manifests differently in terms of perceptions of race, gender, religion and class. I focus on how legal temporality and sexuality function as biopolitical and necropolitical methods of governance and how they are central in the colonial underpinnings of contemporary counter-terrorism law.At the heart of this project lies the contention that Western philosophical and contemporary political understandings of extremism cannot be thought apart from morality. Present-day moral panics over the figure of the terrorist share medicalised framings with those around queer and gay men throughout 1980s. Central here is the co-constitutive nature of racialisation and sexualisation, as they combine to shape the markers associated with a civilised progression of law. Morality can be read into contemporary 'blood discourses' that pathologise Muslim communities as always already 'carrying the seed of disloyalty'. Narratives of terrorism and extremism are often pinned to biological essentialisms.Counter-terrorism legislation effects all subjects through the regulations that it puts in place at international borders, in public space, places of work, and in cyberspace. This legislation is violent, however, towards those it marks as 'suspect:' subjects who I understand to be cast as gendered and racialised. Holding queer as a disruption of the norm, subjects who are affected by counter-terrorism law can be understood as troubling the straight white borders of the nation through what are represented as abnormalities in their expressions of gender, sexuality and/or race. Violence marks the lives of visibly Muslim, racialised and queerly gendered subjects who are less able to 'pass' hetero/homonormative understandings of acceptable aesthetics. I contend that the slow death or everyday violence of communities regulated by politico-legal frameworks operating within the global war on terror is invisibilised by such processes of normalisation and liberal states' claims to 'soft' practices of countering terrorism. In bringing emergency legislation into the remit of common law, legal and state violence is rendered 'normal' and consequently, 'legitimate,' 'lawful,' and 'necessary.'My project uses a mixed methods approach in order to trace legal violence and framings of morality from early twentieth century Egypt to present-day Britain and Egypt. I look at British colonial archival collections from 1914-1928; two British military maps of London and Cairo, one of which falls outside of this timeframe; present-day counter-terrorism legislation and case law; and present-day 'mapping' interviews with Egyptians in Britain. For the purposes of this project, I focus on the processes of 'normalisation' of exceptional treatment for the aforementioned subjects, contending that emergency measures become 'not the exception, but the rule' for the oppressed. I understand normalisation to mean both the formalisation of temporary emergency measures into permanent counter-terrorism legislation and the small and mundane utterances that make up the colonial and legal archive.