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Threatening Bodies Resisting Containment: Enemy Combatants, War Protestors and Same-Sex Couples

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Article

Abstract

The U.S.-launched "War on Terror" has been a major driving force in political discourses during the last few years, including presidential discourse. Since September 11, 2001, presidential rhetoric has systematically entangled international efforts, such as "the War on Terror" and the War in Iraq, with domestic issues, such as same-sex marriages and civil unions. In so doing, international and domestic threats have been effectively merged into one, and in the process, specific bodies have been constructed as "terrorist" agents in need of strict containment (for example, enemy combatant bodies, war protestor bodies, and the bodies of same-sex couples). This paper makes a case for understanding the effects of containment within the borders of the United States (the first superpower). We relate U.S. governmental rhetoric to the treatment and isolation of those rendered "un-American" (that is, those perceived as "terrorist" agents within the U.S.). Using the examples of José Padilla (a U.S. citizen designated as an "enemy combatant"), war protestors, and same-sex couples (treated as a "threat to civilization"), we argue that the year 2005 emerged as a significant year for the public (the second superpower) with the threat posed by the public itself emerging as in need of strict containment. It is our contention that the geographical area encompassed by the U.S. offered the battleground for an ideological struggle between the two superpowers, and the year 2005 marked the beginning of a public fighting on multiple fronts to escape the containment to which it had been subjected since September 11, 2005.

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