Performance anxiety: women’s sexed bodies in Pakistan

The nexus of Islam, gender, race and violence has been keenly revisited in some post-9/11 scholarship. The concern over the racialized Muslim male body is justifiable in cases of rendition, torture and the kind of battlefields that mark the War on Terror. However, the sympathetic analysis of the tortured Muslim male body as a permanent and universally vulnerable imaginary has necessarily challenged the framing of sexual politics for Muslim contexts. This bid to shield the vulnerable Muslim male body from Islamophobia and imperialist violence forecloses the notion that Islamist patriarchy and politics can themselves be fundamentally violent in the post-9/11 moment and within the Muslim community. This obscures the range of routine, domestic and normative violent expressions observed by men in Muslim societies. This essay discusses two cases that illustrate the means and methods by which female bodies have been sexed by the narrative of the War on Terror in Pakistan. These cases highlight how the academic efforts that seek to rescue the racialized Muslim male body complicate the struggle of resisting (lay) female bodies.     

The specter of failure: rendering Afghan women as sites of precarity in empowerment regimes

This article analyzes how the category of “Afghan women” and discourses of precarity intersect within the women’s empowerment regime in Afghanistan. By examining an NGO that seeks to empower women through writing, I argue that staff members draw upon precarity as a go-to logic to describe the state of Afghan women writers’ successes under conditions of insecurity and limited communication. Specifically, it is writers’ desires to subvert their social orders and to carve out their own futures that staff members and writing coordinators frame as subject to potential destruction. While recent work has highlighted the importance of recognizing the precarious lifeworlds of vulnerable populations, this article points to the potential implications of a hyper-recognition of precarity – namely, the obscuring of the complexities of individual women’s past and present realities. Through analyzing the pedagogies of one empowerment NGO working with women in a post-9/11 Afghanistan, I show how the logic of precarity is concerned with the vulnerability of women’s desires and sentiments, rather than their material and political vulnerabilities. It is thus deeply inflected by a historically situated “common sense” about which potentialities and aspirations are inherent to Afghan women.     

Scrambled systems: the (im)mobilities of ‘storm Desmond’

This article examines a 3-day blackout, triggered by a ‘1-in-100-year’ rainfall event. Storms and floods account for almost three-quarters of weather-related disasters, and are typically accompanied by cascading infrastructure failures, which pattern and amplify their effects in highly significant ways. Such disruptions reveal aspects of everyday life that ordinarily remain obscure, including capacities for resilience embodied in people, cities and infrastructure. The article proposes that disruption events be understood in terms of ‘scrambles’, as they involve abrupt demobilisation and remobilisation of a range of people and materials. The article firstly examines the astonishing capacity for failure latent in ‘pervasively powered’ arrangements, as well as the many ways in which people and things were ‘scrambled’ in response. The article then proceeds to explore the ways in which vulnerabilities result in part from mobilisation in response to previous disruption events, before examining the ‘circuits’ that link far-flung places in mobile disaster geographies, global patterns of electricity dependence, the rise of data overload in the ‘cloud’ to carbon overload in the atmosphere. The article concludes by presenting further evidence in support of the thesis that disruptions and disasters are part of a ‘new normal’, and what this means for prevailing sociotechnical arrangements reliant on ‘sunk’ infrastructure.     

The politics of gender in the UN Security Council resolutions on women,peace and security

Women’s groups have worked diligently to place gender and women’s vulnerability on the transnational security agenda. This article departs from the idea that negotiating and codifying gender and women’s vulnerability in terms of security represent a challenge to mainstream security contexts. By contrasting the UN Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security with feminist theory, this article aims to analyze what is considered to be threatened when women’s vulnerability is negotiated. The article identifies two approaches to the gender/security nexus: gendering security, which involves introducing ideas regarding gender-sensitive policies and equal representation, and securitizing gender, which proceeds by locating rape and sexual violence in the context of war regulations. We demonstrate that, although these measures are encouraged with reference to women’s vulnerability, they serve to legitimize war and the male soldier and both approaches depoliticize gender relations.     

抗战时期中国形象的建构：基于国际友人视角

抗战时期,美国作家温台尔·威尔基在所撰写的《天下一家》一书中,通过自己在中国的现场体验和对中国政治、经济及民众抗战的切身感受,在美国人民面前呈现出新的中国形象。这种新形象的建立,为美国对华援助起到了极大的推动作用。     

略论中国远征军第一次入缅作战及其失败的原因——纪念中国远征军出国作战70周年

第二次世界大战期间,中国作为同盟国的一员不仅在本土牵制和消耗了绝大多数日军,而且还在英美盟国的邀请下,组织中国远征军开赴缅甸与英美盟国共同作战,为世界反法西斯战争的胜利做出了杰出的贡献。在第一次入缅作战中,中国远征军在仁安羌成功解救英军,同古保卫战中重创日军等战绩轰动了世界,让世人充分认识到了中国是世界反法西斯统一战线的一支重要力量。但是,由于同盟国在缅甸战场的合作过程中存在全球战略目标、中英战略矛盾、中英联军配合不力、分歧和矛盾及中国远征军将领失职等原因,致使中国远征军第一次入缅作战失败而告终。     

宋蒙战争与易代之际宋诗的诗史书写

宋蒙战争是一场关乎南宋最终命运走向的战争,宋末诗家心系时局,以诗为史,反映战事进展.局部战争时期,李曾伯、魏了翁等人在诗中表达对川蜀局势的关切.蒙古分三路正式进攻南宋后,王同祖在金陵幕中以诗专记战时应对之策与襄樊、江淮战事,补充了正史之外的细节.钓鱼城大捷后,刘克庄等人除以诗相庆外,还对战局的走向充满忧思.至襄樊战败,...     

论鸦片战争前后广东民众反侵略斗争的影响

鸦片战争前后广东民众反侵略斗争,沉重打击了外来侵略势力,冲击了地方官府的媚外政策,捍卫了自身权益,但也产生了一些负面影响。     

晚清"鸦片商战"观与近代经济民族主义的非理性

经济民族主义是晚清以来民族主义充分彰显的一个领域,"鸦片商战"则是近代经济民族主义观念的重要形式.鸦片战争以后,清廷无法有效地禁绝外来鸦片.民间人士为抵制外国鸦片入侵,纷纷主张弛禁土产鸦片,扩张罂粟种植面积.这种观念不但表现在一般士大夫身上,而且清廷重臣、地方官员也不乏其意,域外人士与国内士绅声气相求,世俗报刊与教会媒介均有相关言论刊布.作为一种非理性的经济民族主义观念,"鸦片商战"给晚清社会和国家造成的负面影响难以估量.