Gender, Identity, Media, and Biopolitics: War Within the War in Palestine and Syria

This paper discusses the aspects of gender, identity, media and biopolitics in the longstanding conflicts of Palestine and Syria using a philosophical approach. It is grounded in the contributions of Foucault, Butler, Agamben, and Mbembe, and contends that the media influences the creation of meaning around political actors by constituting visibility as a biopolitical mechanism that conditions the popular understanding of political subjects. Specifically in conditions of militarization and occupation, gender is revealed to be performative and recontextualized strategically by performers who seek to resist hegemonic discourses. The article also discusses the grievability and the state of exception in an effort to see how the state here renders some lives as mournable whereas others are floated out of consideration. It discloses a symbolic war that exists in tandem with the armed conflict by developing three major themes, namely, media as a place of control, gender as a performative resistance, and politics of recognition. These findings reflect the philosophical and ethical implications of representation and identity in the face of systemic violence and provide policy considerations on media ethics, human rights discourse, and critical involvement in the study of conflicts. This book can be used in debates and arguments related to gender theory, philosophy of media and political ethics by using the lived realities and representational struggles of those who are marginalized in warzones.