White feminism and the governance of violent extremism

Abstract

Initiatives to prevent and counter “violent extremism” (P/CVE) are often highly individualised and individualising, and function to reinforce negative racialised and gendered stereotypes. Recently, some feminist and other critical scholars have argued that sexist and misogynistic beliefs are inter-related with other drivers of “radicalisation” and “extremism”, which may lead to the securitisation of forms of sexist and misogynistic violence. There has not yet been, however, a systematic examination of the ways in which even some of these critical and feminist interventions are complicit in the reproduction of the logics of gender and race that structure the oppression and violence they take as their target. In this paper I argue that there is a powerful brand of governance feminism informing P/CVE global governance initiatives that has little consideration of the distributed effects of this move on the operation of racialised and gendered power. I position governance feminism as a sub-category of white feminism and show that it is specifically white feminism that is dominant in the institutions of liberal governance relevant to P/CVE. I draw on Black, decolonial, and intersectional feminist theory to show how the gendered subjects of P/CVE governance are often presented as race-neutral, in deeply problematic and limiting ways.