Strange Bedfellows: What Happens When We Ask the Other Question?

Abstract

If the previous chapters look at how gender, race, and heteronormative structures work in the abstract, this chapter looks at how these biases bleed downward, impacting individuals labelled as ‘terrorists.’ It begins by engaging with scholarship that examines terrorism for gender, race, heteronormativity, class, and more. It therefore establishes the biases that do exist within work on terrorism. The second part of the chapter builds on this work to critically intersectionally analyse the profiles of eight well-known ‘terrorist’ actors: Andreas Baader, Bernardino Dohrn, Leila Khaled, Jose Mujica, Dhanu, Anders Breivik, Nidal Hassan, and Aafia Siddiqui. Instead of relying on well-known discourses about these individuals, the chapter employs the method of ‘asking the other question.’ By doing so, it becomes more evident how the structures shape understandings of these individuals and their connection to violence.