Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Not without my sister(s) : imagining a moral America in "Kandahar".
AU - Weber, Cynthia
PY - 2005
Y1 - 2005
N2 - Less than two months after 11 September 2001, and a few weeks after the beginning of the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush made an urgent plea to see Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar. Not only did the President want to see Kandahar; he encouraged US citizens to view it as well. This article offers two readings of Kandahar - the first suggestive of what its filmmaker Makhmalbaf saw in Afghanistan and the second suggestive of what Bush saw (or hoped to see) in Makhmalbaf's Afghanistan. In particular, this article focuses on how the Bush administration - against the intentions of Kandahar's director and star - propelled occidental subjects to 'lift the veil' on Afghanistan and on Afghan women by viewing Kandahar as if it positioned the feminine as a needy and willing object of US rescue. It was in part by laying this particular claim to the separated sisters of Kandahar that the Bush administration constructed a humanitarian US 'we' as among the foundations of its 'moral grammar of war' in the war on terror.
AB - Less than two months after 11 September 2001, and a few weeks after the beginning of the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush made an urgent plea to see Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar. Not only did the President want to see Kandahar; he encouraged US citizens to view it as well. This article offers two readings of Kandahar - the first suggestive of what its filmmaker Makhmalbaf saw in Afghanistan and the second suggestive of what Bush saw (or hoped to see) in Makhmalbaf's Afghanistan. In particular, this article focuses on how the Bush administration - against the intentions of Kandahar's director and star - propelled occidental subjects to 'lift the veil' on Afghanistan and on Afghan women by viewing Kandahar as if it positioned the feminine as a needy and willing object of US rescue. It was in part by laying this particular claim to the separated sisters of Kandahar that the Bush administration constructed a humanitarian US 'we' as among the foundations of its 'moral grammar of war' in the war on terror.
KW - Afghanistan
KW - feminism
KW - Kandahar
KW - morality
KW - war on terror
U2 - 10.1080/14616740500161094
DO - 10.1080/14616740500161094
M3 - Journal article
VL - 7
SP - 358
EP - 376
JO - International Feminist Journal of Politics
JF - International Feminist Journal of Politics
SN - 1468-4470
IS - 3
ER -