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Obscene Undersides: Women and Evil between the Taliban and the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Mary Anne Franks
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Abstract

This paper proposes to supplement an American self-identity predicated on a model of absolute difference from the Taliban (good versus evil, etc.) by exploring affinities between their respective ideologies. The place of “woman,” within and through the preponderance of sexual exploitation/violence common to both, is the starting point of this analysis. This article reads the two conflicting powers in a Lacanian/Žižekian dyad of the “Law” and its “obscene superego underside.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 18 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Feminist Philosophy and the Problem of Evil , Winter 2003 , pp. 135 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by Hypatia, Inc.

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