August 2005

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Patriarchy Breeds Terrorism

The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism by Robin Morgan, Washington Square Press, 1989, Reissued: 2001. pb $15.00.
Reviewed by Ann Murphy, a professor of English at Assumption College who also works with the Martín-Baró Fund for Mental Health and Human Rights.

Poster by the ACLU, www.reformthe patriotact.org

This is a strange, thought-provoking, and insightful book. If you are interested in the roots not simply of terrorism but of the seemingly insatiable human capacity for violence and the ravages of global militarism, you will find its passionate honesty and idiosyncratic perspective compelling. I was fascinated by Morgan's analysis -- locating the roots of terrorism in the toxic version of masculinity inculcated by patriarchy -- though I was also startled by the degree to which Morgan, a prominent feminist theorist and poet, sees patriarchy as the central issue explaining the ills of the world. However, she makes a strong and convincing case for deep structural connections between misogyny, violence, and militarism.

One of the glib clichés that circulated after September 11 was that the attacks had "changed the world." As if no other country had ever been attacked -- never mind attacked by the US government. The Demon Lover, however, was written in 1989, and the benefits of this seeming datedness are disconcerting. Probably "the world" didn't change, but reading this book made me realize once again how profoundly our country has changed, how often we substitute "terrorism" for Islam, using the term as we once used "communism," to denote the Manichean evil Other that justifies our own greed and violence. By contrast, Morgan is indeed analyzing terrorism -- not Islamist fundamentalism or al Qaeda. Her discussion thus includes the IRA as well as Al Fatah, the Baader-Meinhof Group of Germany as well as the Shining Path of Peru. And the patterns she finds connecting these groups are illuminating.

By now we have learned that the terrorist is usually "male, young, of 'good' family, educated and cultured and skilled... uprooted and experientially mobile... enflamed by the situation, and possessed by the suffering of the people, ...ready to follow a road of self-abnegation. He breaks all other human ties. He is aware of the risks, but his obsession to save or avenge his cause, together with his having contracted a love of his tragic fate, seal his doom. He takes up the gun" (67).

In a discussion by turns scholarly and analytical, engaged and passionate, political, poetic, and deeply personal, Morgan challenges us to see the implications behind this profile, examining the religious, philosophical, aesthetic, and cultural forces that reinforce a particular and pernicious vision of masculinity. In the process, she also challenges theorists who rightly condemn the violence of these stateless individuals but ominously ignore the violence of powerful, armed states. And in all cases, Morgan insists that we remember the plight of women across the world who are usually the victims of violence.

In a particularly insightful chapter, Morgan explores the claustrophobic vision of masculine heroism. "'The hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless he crucifies himself today,'" Joseph Campbell writes, and Morgan provides a brilliant reassessment of his description of the hero's journey, interwoven with the profile of a terrorist. The result is a disconcerting composite of a glorified male hero that fits the revolutionary Che Guevera, the terrorist Andreas Baader, and the engineers of an "ejaculatory politics" based on "soft targets," "surgical strikes," "war games," and "defensive offense" (139). At the heart of this revised profile is the tension Campbell identifies but never questions: that all violent revolutions are inevitably vicious circles, Oedipal exchanges of power. "If the son's violence appears when the father's power is in jeopardy, then what conclusion might we draw from the fact that both of them, throughout history, have been using violence as if it were their only course?" (84).

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, those who pointed out connections between Islamist anger and American (or British or French) imperialist policies in developing countries were often disparaged as "blame America first" liberals -- or despised as outright traitors. Morgan, however, earns, through stringent analysis, the right to draw important connections between the violence of "the state that is" and the violence of terrorist individuals and organizations -- "the state that would be."

The latter chapters of the book, while often interesting, are less consistently effective. In one, she describes her own experience in radical politics during the 1960s to illustrate the dangerous fascination of morally righteous violence; in another, she offers a heart-wrenching description of the courage and resilience in women she met in Palestinian refugee camps. Too often, however, these chapters lose the thread of her analysis and become repetitious or didactic.

In the afterward to the 2001 edition, Morgan, a long-time New Yorker, includes three thoughtful emails she wrote to friends and colleagues immediately after September 11. I wish this new edition had been more substantially revised, cutting much of the second half and expanding those emails into a fuller discussion and analysis of the roots of terrorism in light of the attacks and the United States response to them. Despite these misgivings, however, I found this book thoughtful and well worth reading.

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