Social
Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture
Yasmin Ibrahim, Queen Mary, University of London
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504630.2017.1381836
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| By Philip Burne-Jones, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=353102 |
Abstract,
This paper examines the controversial figure of the ‘Jihadi Bride’
through her visual depictions in media discourses where she is associated with
danger, conflict and the evil Other. Such depictions often draw heavily on the
Orientalist gaze of the Middle East in conflict; its atavism, servitude of
womanhood and the incongruence of religion for secular modernity. These media
discourses equally draw on the imagination of the internet as a space for the
loss of innocence and for luring the vulnerable into inexplicable darkness.
This paper, by drawing on the concept of desire and its relationship to the
screen as well as the concept of ‘new media visuality’ where pervasive
consumption of imagery mediates reality and fantasy, as well as sexuality and
the forbidden, argues that the Jihadi Bride is a product of modernity and not
of doctrine. As a technological subject with an insatiable desire ignited
through the screen, the Jihadi Bride is a consequence of modernity and its
invocation of desire sustained through the screen. The Jihadi Bride is equally
part of a mediated visuality where viral circulation and instant gratification
reconfigure notions of proximity and intimacy, and straddles earthly desires
with the ethereal.
50 Free copies at link,
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/PkVpqYp4pw64Gx8K5pdZ/full
