Beyond Either/Or: A Feminist Analysis of September 11th

Abstract

‘Feminist geopolitics’ offers a critical framework for analyzing the events and aftermath of September 11th. This grid of intelligibility seeks to provide a more accountable, embodied understanding of intersections of power and space at multiple scales. It challenges the logic of either/or reasoning, and related responses to September 11th. The escalation of violence, such that terror begets more terror, is not the only possible response to the murder and destruction in New York City and Washington, yet the dominant geopolitical discourse leads us to believe it is. Critical and feminist geopolitics are crucial if we are to go beyond the binaries and establish a third space of 'neither/nor'. Finally, to generate a more accountable and embodied political vision, feminist geopolitics is employed in relation to body counts at two distinct geographical and geopolitical sites.