The scripting of private Jessica Lynch: Biopolitics, gender, and the feminization of the U.S. military

Alternatives

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 25-53

  Pin Fat, Véronique ^a   Stern, Maria ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG   (Sweden)

Author keywords

Gender; Identity; Politics; U.S. Military; War

Indexed keywords

EID: 18844399605     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437540503000102     Document Type: Article

References (133)

1. The epigraph above cites words that apparently were the first words Lynch spoke to her rescuers. The American Forces Information Service account reads: "As the rescue team entered Lynch's hospital room, they called her name. She had been scared and had a sheet up over her head because she did not know what was happening. . . . One team member repeated, 'Jessica Lynch, we are the United States soldiers and we're here to protect you and take you home,' . . . she looked up to him and said 'I'm an American soldier, too.'" Cited in Jim Garamone, "Lynch to Rescuers: 'I'm an American Soldier, Too,'" American Forces Information Service, April 5, 2003: www.defenselink.mil/news/ Apr2003/n04052003_200304051.
2. See also Rick Bragg, I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story (New York: Knopf, 2003).
3. Lynch herself says of the Pentagon: "They used me as a way to symbolise all this stuff. It's wrong." BBC, "Jessica Lynch Condemns Pentagon," BBC News, UK Edition, November 7, 2003: news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/ world/americas/3251731.stm. The the focus of this article is the latter theme.
4. See, in particular, the Web site dedicated to Jessica Lynch at jessicalynch.com/. See also Toby Manhire, "Private's Life Becomes Public Property," Guardian, April 8, 2003: www.guardian.co.uk/editor/story/0, 12900,931836,00;
5. and Lawrence Donegan, "How Private Jessica Became America's Icon," Observer, April 6, 2003: observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903, 930588,00.
6. An unofficial NBC movie, Saving Jessica Lynch, starring Laura Regan as Lynch, was aired in November 2003. See also Bragg, J Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, note 1, which was made available in U.S. bookstores on Veterans' Day, November 11, 2003.
7. Steve Ritea and Jill Rosen, "A Little Too Perfect," American Journalism Review 25, no. 6 (August/September 2003) for a critique of rescue as propaganda.
8. Oliver North, "On the Road to Baghdad," Human Events 59, no. 12 (April 7, 2003).
9. In ironic contrast, see Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, with Jeff Coplon, Because Each Life Is Precious (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). The author is the Iraqi lawyer credited with assisting Lynch's rescue.
10. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 6 (italics in original).
11. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life Ibid. 1998.
12. John Kampfner, "The Truth about Jessica," Guardian, May 15, 2003: www.guardian.co.uk/iraq/Story/0,27363,956255,00;
13. Barbara Starr, "Report: Fatigue, Errors Led to Fatal Convoy Ambush," CNN.com/world, July 10, 2003: www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/07/10/ sprj.irq.int.con-voy.attack/index;
14. Jim Garamone, "Lynch to Rescuers: 'I Am an American Soldier, Too,'" American Forces Information Service, April 5, 2003: www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2003/n04052003_200304051.
15. The BBC aired a "scathing documentary [reported by John Kampfner, May 18, 2003] accusing the U.S. government of exaggerating the heroics of her rescue and her mistreatment at the hands of the Iraqis, all to bolster public approval of the war." Patrick Rogers et al., "Jessica Lynch's Rescue: What Really Happened?" People 59, no. 23 (June 16, 2003): 87-89.
16. James Der Derian, "9/11: Before, After, and In Between," in Craig Calhoun et al., eds., Understanding September 11 (New York: New Press, 2002), p. 187.
17. For further explanation of what we mean by an (im)possible dynamic, see below.
18. A host of articles have debated Lynch's status as a hero and what type of hero she may be. For examples, see Michele Orecklin et al., "The Controversy over Jessica Lynch," Time, 161, no. 23 (June 9, 2003): 33;
19. and Frank Rich, "Pfc. Jessica Lynch Isn't Rambo Anymore," New York Times, November 9, 2003: www.nytimes.com/2003/ll/09/arts/09RICH
20. "The Rambo Who Wasn't," Sun-Herald, November 9, 2003: www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/09/1068243315124.
21. Ruben Navarrette Jr., "Lynch May Not Be Rambo, But She's Still a Hero," Seattle Times, November 14, 2003: seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/ opinion/2001790732_navarrettel4.
22. See also Véronique Pin-Fat, "(Im)possible Universalism: Reading Human Rights in World Politics," Review of International Studies 26, no. 4 (2000): 663-674.
23. Judith Butler, for example, cites the instance of transvestismdrag-as a disturbance of the "naturalized" performance of heterosexual gender identities. See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
24. See section below, "Biopolitics: Gender, Zones of Indistinction and Bare Life."
25. S. Hall and P. Du Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996), p. 11.
26. For an overview of the issues involved in "gender and the military," see, for example, Elisabetta Addiss et al., Women Soldiers, Images and Realities (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994);
27. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990);
28. idem, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
29. Jill Steans, Gender and International Relations (Piscataway, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998);
30. and Marysia Zalewski and Jane Parpart, eds., The "Man" Question in International Relations (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998).
31. Martin van Creveld, "The Great Illusion: Women in the Military," Millennium, 29, no. 2 (2000): 429-442.
32. For arguments for and against women in the military, see 'Jessica Lynch News: Analysis of Women in the Military," United Justice, January 26, 2004: www.unitedjustice.com/stories/jessica-lynch.
33. See, also Carol Cohn, "War, Wimps, and Women: Talking Gender and Thinking War," in M. Cooke and A. Woolacott, eds., Gendering War Talk (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993);
34. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987);
35. Enloe, Bananas, note 17
36. and idem, The Morning After, note 17;
37. Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics (London: Routledge, 1996);
38. V. Spike Peterson, "Transgressing Boundaries: Theories of Knowledge, Gender, and International Relations," Millennium 21, no. 2 (1992);
39. V. Spike Peterson and A. Sisson Runyan, Global Gender Issues (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993);
40. Betty Reardon, Sexism and the War System (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985);
41. Betty Reardon, Woman and Peace: Feminist Versions of Global Security (New York: SUNY Press, 1993);
42. Steans, note 17;
43. Christine Sylvester, Feminist International Relations in a Post Modern Era, Cambridge Studies in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);
44. Christine Sylvester, Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
45. J. A. Tickner, Gender in International Relations - Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993);
46. idem, Gendering World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001);
47. and Zalewski and Parpart, note 17.
48. For example: "While it is good to fight the enemy on the beaches and on the shores and to never, never surrender, a greater danger, a more subtle enemy is attacking the military from within, the watering down of standards to meet some fanciful ideological theory," Alan Barren, "Feminization of the Military," Endeavour Forum, March 1999: www.endeavourforum. org.au/march9902.
49. Van Creveld, note 18, p. 429.
50. Ibid., p. 437.
51. Ibid., p. 438.
52. Ibid., p. 442.
53. Cited in Christopher Hanson, "American Idol," Columbia Journalism Review 42, no. 2 (2003).
54. Van Creveld, note 18, p. 436.
55. For contrasting views, see for example Jean Elshtain, "'Shooting' at the Wrong Target: A Response to van Creveld," Millennium 29, no. 2 (2000): 443-449;
56. Cynthia Nantais and Martha F. Lee, "Women in the United States Military: Protectors or Protected? The Case of Prisoner of War Melissa Rathbun-Nealy," Journal of Gender Studies 8, no. 2 (1999): 181-191;
57. and Anita K. Blair, "In Search of the Noble Warrior," Women's Quarterly (Summer 1999): www.fmdarticles.com/cf_dls/m0IUK/34/105916176/pl/ article.
58. Robin Gerber, cited in Kate O'beirne, "An Army of Jessicas," National Review 55, no. 9 (2003): 40-43.
59. For further discussion of these contending views, see O'beirne, ibid.
60. One need only look at the media's and the Pentagon's portrayals of Lynch in overwhelmingly stereotypically "feminine" terms to discern a discursive strategy to affirm that Lynch was indeed a female, an ail-American girl, and not a lesbian, butch-masculine wannabe-male, thus enabling the familiar plot of virtuously female (yet "spunky and plucky") damsel in (staged) distress, where her safety was never really at stake because of the omnipotence of both U.S. values and U.S. military stealth (reinforced through the performance of her inevitable rescue). For references to her "spunk" and "pluck," see, for example, Rogers et al., "Saved from Danger," People 59, no. 15 (April 21, 2003): 54;
61. Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb, "She Was Fighting to the Death," Washington Post, April 3, 2003: www. washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A148 79-2003Apr 2? language = printe;
62. Ward Sanderson, "BBC, DOD Differ on Lynch Rescue News," Stars and Stripes, May 24, 2003: www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=&article= 15072&archive=true.
63. Van Creveld, note 18, and responses: Elshtain, note 28;
64. and Christopher Coker, "Humanising Warfare; or, Why van Creveld May Be Missing the 'Big' Picture," Millennium 29, no. 2 (2000): 449-460.
65. U.S. Army spokesmen neither confirmed nor denied the report written by a notorious right-wing military commentator that "more than half of the [U.S.] women deployed to Iraq are pregnant." See Les Kinsolving, "An Army of 1-and 1 in the Oven," WorldNetDaily.com, September 16, 2003: www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?Article_ID=34636.
66. Blair, note 28.
67. Indeed, this is a salient theme in relation to whether Lynch was raped when captured. For further discussion, see Nantais and Lee, note 28.
68. There is heated debate over the death of the U.S. Navy's Lieutenant Kara Hultgreen, who was one of the first women ever to be promoted to combat pilot on an aircraft carrier. In October 1999, Hultgreen died after her F-14 fighter crashed trying to land on the carrier's deck. It seems she may have been promoted above her level of skill.
69. Coker, note 31, p. 450.
70. Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the same points regarding morale, cohesion, and concentration are made regarding homosexuals in the military. See Belkin and Bateman, eds., Don't Ask Don't Tell: Debating the Gay Ban in the Military (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2003).
71. These assumptions reappear often in feminist scholarship that addresses the interconnections of gender and war. See notes 17 and 20.
72. For further implications of Agamben's work for world politics, see Jenny Edkins, Véronique Pin-Fat, and Michael Shapiro, eds., Sovereign Lives (New York: Routledge, 2004);
73. and Jenny Edkins and R. B. J. Walker, eds., "Zones of Indistinction: Territories, Bodies, Politics," Alternatives 25, no. 1, special issue (2000).
74. See notes 17 and 20.
75. Van Creveld, note 18, p. 439.
76. See notes 17 and 20.
77. Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives (London: Harper Collins, 1988)
78. and Enloe, Bananas, note 17.
79. See, for example, Hanson, note 26; and Chuck Raasch, "Lynch Wanted to Be a Kindergarten Teacher, Ended up POW," USA Today, May 8, 2003: www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/raasch/2003-05-08-0410-raasch_x.
80. In a future society, it is important to note, whose safeguarding is cast as the impetus behind the U.S. "War on Terror"; see The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: The White House, September 2002).
81. The Iraqi lawyer who "placed his family at risk" in order to help save "that poor girl" was "moved to action by the sight of a hulking black-clad captor slapping her across the face, with his palm and then with the back of his hand." Jerry Adler et al., "Jessica's Liberation," Newsweek 141, no. 15 (2000): 42-48.
82. According to the American Forces press service, the lawyer, "Mohammad," is a new hero who has said, "I believe that Americans will bring peace and security to the people of Iraq." Sgt. Joseph R. Chenellly, USMC, "Iraqi Family Risks All to Save American POW," American Forces Information Service, April 4, 2003: www.defenselink.mil/news/ Apr2003/n04042003_200304046.
83. Numerous articles in the media focus on the details of her homecoming. See, for example, People magazine's story entitled "The Long Road Home," where display type reads: "Swiftly recovering - and in love - former POW Jessica Lynch makes as emotional return to Palestine, W. Va." Jerome Richard et al., People 60, no. 5 (2003): 48-52.
84. Hanson, note 26.
85. Van Creveld, note 18, p. 436.
86. Jessica Lynch was given several awards: Bronze Star; Purple Heart; Prisoner of War Medal. Negative responses to her status as war hero(ine) argue that her inclusion in the exclusive category of medal winners diminishes and insults all "real" heroes. Her presence-indeed, the presence of women generally - in the 'Vitally masculine" space of the military threaten its effectiveness. Although Lynch did not require the caretaking facilities of a young mother, her status as "that poor girl" (future mother) did indeed demand caretaking and protection by the Special Ops. forces, thus underscoring the feminine as in need of protection (as private, reproductive, etc.) Furthermore, her "use as a symbol of women's fitness for the battlefield" offered entry into a critique of the feminization of the military on the whole. O'beirne, note 29, pp. 40-43.
87. As Enloe points out, "for the British, Canadian and American armed forces, which today have to recruit-and keep-large numbers of expensively trained male soldiers without the aid of compulsory male conscription, wives' dissatisfaction with military life can produce worrisome manpower shortages." Enloe, Bananas, note 17, p. 72.
88. Nantais and Lee, note 28, p. 182.
89. Van Creveld, note 18, p. 441.
90. U.S. official cited in Nantais and Lee, note 28, p. 183.
91. This is precisely the scripting of Jessica Lynch that we have emphasized.
92. Nantais and Lee, note 28, p. 186. The story of Lynch's captivity gained dramatic effect in part because of the possibility of sexual abuse (and because of relief that it did not take place, underscoring deliverance from that probable threat), which loomed large in many of the accounts of the "animal"-like and "brutal" treatment to which she was subjected at the hands of Iraqi soldiers. Sgt. Joseph R. Chenelly, USMC, "Iraqi Family Risks All to Save American POW," American Forces Information Service (April 4): www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2003/ n04042003_200304046.
93. Lynch and the Iraqi doctor who cared for her say that she was not raped. In his biography of Lynch, Rick Bragg says she was raped, attributing this information to her family. See Gary Younge, "Private Lynch's Media War Continues as Iraqi Doctors Deny Rape Claim," Guardian, November 12, 2003.
94. Agamben, note 6, p. 9.
95. Ibid., p. 1.
96. Ibid., p. 2.
97. Ibid., p. 6 (italics in original).
98. For example, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man/Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981; and Peterson, note 20.
99. Elshtain, note 62.
100. Ibid. See also Jenny Edkins and Véronique Pin-Fat, "Jean Bethke Elshtain: Traversing the Terrain Between," in The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making, eds. Iver B. Neumann and Ole Waever (London: Routledge, 1997).
101. Elshtain, note 62, p. 127.
102. The phrase "The personal is political" became a well-used slogan of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and the 1970s. It has been argued that it was coined by Carol Hanisch in a brief essay, "The Personal Is the Political," March 1969, available atwww.redstockings.org.
103. Elshtain, note 62, p. 104.
104. Jenny Edkins, "Sovereign Power, Zones of Indistinction, and the Camp," Alternatives 25, no. 1 (2000): 3-25, at 7.
105. Agamben, note 6, pp. 173-174.
106. This is not to say that there are no such things as war crimes. The laws of war clearly exist, but Agamben's point is that these count as a codification of the sovereign exception, or ban. The adherence to and enforcement of the laws of war significantly rely upon the "civility" of those who "temporarily act as sovereign." The prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay by the United States show just how violent and unjust this can be.
107. As Edkins points out, following Agamben and Carl Schmitt, "What defines the rule of law is the state of exception when law is suspended." Edkins, note 68, p. 6.
108. See, for example, the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice.
109. This can be deeply problematic in particular for women in the military. The perpetrators of sexual harassment and assault in the military are the "police" themselves. There is a high incidence of such harassment, and according to the 1995 U.S. Department of Defense Sexual Harassment Study, the "civility" of the military cannot be guaranteed for the 60 percent of women who experience an incidence of sexual harassment but do not complain for fear that discrimination within the military will either fail to address their concerns or will lead to the end of their military careers. Fifty-five percent of women in the military reported incidences (one or more) of sexual harassment to the study. Of the 40 percent of women who did complain officially, 15 percent reported that no action was taken, 23 percent said their complaint was not taken seriously, and 10 percent were encouraged to drop the complaint.
110. For the problems with this, see note 73.
111. Geoff Metcalf, "Flirting with Disaster," WorldNetDaily.com, September 13, 1999: www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID= 19560.
112. For a sustained argument regarding technologization, see Jenny Edkins, Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political Back In (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1999).
113. See also Jenny Edkins and Véronique Pin-Fat, "Life, Power, Resistance," in Jenny Edkins, Véronique Pin-Fat, and Michael J. Shapiro, eds., Sovereign Lives (New York: Routledge, 2004).
114. Agamben does not specifically argue that the military is a zone of indistinction. However, the implication of his arguments is that the military would count as a specific example.
115. Agamben, note 6, p. 8.
116. I b i d.
117. For Agamben, the Nazi concentration camps and death camps are the paradigmatic form of sovereign power in the West. Such camps are produced as a result of the "transformation of politics into the realm of bare life (that is into a camp)," and it is this that "legitimated and necessitated total domination." In short, the camps and totalitarianism are produced by and productive of sovereign power in its most aberrant manifestation. Agamben, note 6, p. 120.
118. Feminists have long argued that it is women who have traditionally been associated with and have occupied this realm outside politics.
119. Hence, this is one of the many reasons for the need to "rescue" her.
120. This is not to deny that great lengths are gone to to protect the lives of its fighters. The revolution in military affairs is significantly motivated by this. However, at the end of the day, fighters must be prepared to lay down their lives in the line of duty.
121. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso Press, 1991), p. 144.
122. H. Lindholm, ed., Ethnicity and Nationalism: Formation of Identity and Dynamics of Conflict in the 1990s (Göteborg, Sweden: Nordnes c/o Padrigu, 1994), p. 29:
123. c.f., Nira Yuval Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997).
124. C. McClintock, "Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism, and the Family," Feminist Review 45 (1993): 64. The usage of "Homeland Security" in the "War on Terror" is also significant.
125. Anderson, note 84, p. 7.
126. Andrew Parker et al., eds., Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 6.
127. Elshtain, note 20.
128. D. Kandiyoti, "Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation," Millennium, 20, no. 3 (1991): 435.
129. In many of the stories about Lynch, she is described by family members in terms of how she was as "daughter, sister, cousin," and so on. See, for example, Rogers et al., "Saved from Danger," note 30.
130. See Elshtain, note 20, part 2.
131. Agamben, note 6, p. 188.
132. Elshtain, note 28, p. 446.
133. Pfc. Lori Piestewa, the first U.S. female fatality of the war, died from wounds incurred in the same attack on the 507th Maintenance Company as that in which Lynch was injured. However, Piestewa's death was obscured by the near death of Lynch. In much of the media coverage reviewed, the death of Piestewa is rarely mentioned; when it is, her death is often depicted as a source of sadness to Lynch (Piestewa was Jessica's "best friend") and is not addressed separately. The weight given the success story of Lynch's rescue and return "home"juxtaposed with the media coverage of her colleague's death serves to support this point. See Barbara Starr, "Report: Fatigue, Errors Led to Fatal Convoy Ambush," CNN.com/world, July 10, 2003: us.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/07/09/sprj.irq.convoy.attack/.