Death in the Shape of a Young Girl ：Women's Political Violence in the Red Army Faction ( Gender and Political Violence )

Publication subTitle ：Women's Political Violence in the Red Army Faction

Publication series ：Gender and Political Violence

Author： Melzer Patricia  

Publisher： NYU Press‎

Publication year： 2015

E-ISBN: 9781479820221

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9781479864072

Subject： D815.5 international security issues, international terrorism, counter - narcotics activities in the

Keyword： 欧洲史,国际问题

Language： ENG

Access to resources Favorite

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

Description

In the early 1970s, a number of West German left-wing activists took up arms, believing that revolution would lead to social change. In the years to come, the bombings, shootings, kidnappings and bank robberies of the Red Army Faction (RAF) and Movement 2nd June dominated newspaper headlines and polarized legislative debates. Half of the terrorists declaring war on the West German state were women who understood their violent political actions to be part of their liberation from restrictive gender norms. As women participating in a brand of systematic violence usually associated with masculinity, they presented a cultural paradox, and their political decisions were viewed as gender transgressions by the state, the public, and even the burgeoning women's movement, which considered violence as patriarchal and unfeminist.    Death in the Shape of a Young Girl questions this separation of political violence from feminist politics and offers a new understanding of left-wing female terrorists' actions as feminist practices that challenged existing gender ideologies. Patricia Melzer draws on archival sources, unpublished letters, and interviews with former activists to paint a fresh and interdisciplinary picture of West Germany's most notorious political group, from feminist responses to sexist media coverage of female terrorists to the gendered nature of their infamous hunger strikes while in prison. Placing the controversial actions of the Red Army Faction int

Chapter

Cover

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: “An Excess of Women’s Emancipation”: Gender, Political Violence, and Feminist Politics

1 The Other Half of the Sky: Revolutionary Violence, the RAF, and the Autonomous Women’s Movement

2 “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”: The “Betrayal” of Motherhood among the Women of the RAF and Movement 2nd June

3 “Terrorist Girls” and “Wild Furies”: Feminist Responses to Media Representations of Women Terrorists during the “German Autumn” of 1977

4 The Gendered Politics of Starving: (State) Power and the Body as Locus of Political Subjectivities in the RAF Hunger Strikes

5 “We Women Are the Better Half of Humanity Anyway”: Revolutionary Politics, Feminism, and Memory in the Writings of Female Terrorists

Conclusion: “Can Political Violence Be Feminist?”

Notes

References

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

T

V

W

Z

About the Author

The users who browse this book also browse