Making death visible: Chechen female suicide bombers in an era of globalization

Between 2000 and 2004 more than forty women from the Chechen Republic died either blowing themselves up or attempting to blow themselves up in acts of violence against the Russian state. From 2002 to 2004, women participated in every terrorist attack launched by Chechens. While Chechen men have engaged in suicide missions, it is only Chechen women who have donned the ominous 'suicide belt.' These women---labeled Black Widows in the Western press---seemingly appeared from nowhere; a band of female mercenaries emerging from a highly patriarchal culture in order to storm the West.;This dissertation investigates the historical, social and political circumstances that fostered Chechen women's engagement in suicide bombing from 2000 to 2004. Although approximately fifteen percent of suicide bombers worldwide have been female, academic research by and large focuses on male actors. When research does focus on women, it relies on stereotypical conceptions of men as more war-like and women as the weaker sex in order to label women who engage in political violence as deviant. Further, despite the intrinsic involvement of the body in acts of suicide bombing, studies of terrorism often highlight the Cartesian divide between reason and the body, characterizing violent actors either as irrational---crazy with despair---or rational---strategically defending their homeland. In life as lived, however, there is always a linkage among emotional, rational, and physical processes.;This project attempts to fill these gaps in academic scholarship by interrogating the ways in which historical relationships between individual women's bodies and the collective Chechen body may be related to women's engagement in political violence. Rather than following a 'top down' approach that adheres to one particular method or discipline, this project studies Chechen women's engagement in political violence from a trans-disciplinary perspective. The research methods on which the project relies include historiography of Russo-Chechen engagement, discourse analysis of news media and websites, and in-depth, qualitative interviews with journalists, human rights activists, and Chechen people. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that suicide bombings by Chechen women were a manifestation of longstanding linkages between female bodies and the development of the nation state.