- Name:
- Alice Finden
- Email address:
- 616573@soas.ac.uk
- Thesis title:
- Everyday state violence: a queer historical analysis of Anglo/Egyptian counter-terrorism and emergency law
- Year of Study:
- 2
Internal Supervisors
PhD Research
My project examines the colonial relationship between Britain and Egypt as a means through which to understand how counter-terrorism laws perpetrate everyday violence in the contemporary moment. The project therefore analyses the central role of the law in normalising everyday violence. I centre the Anglo-Egyptian relationship in order the understand the particular ways in which colonial narratives of civilisation and morality are embedded within contemporary understandings of extremism.
Through an exposure of the colonial underpinnings of contemporary counter-terrorism law and countering extremism practices, I contend that a particular legal temporality allows for gendered and racialised methods of governance. Time is central in the regulation of subjects through emergency and counter-terrorism laws. This can be seen in particular through the increasing development of the ‘pre-criminal’ space, fragments of which I trace through the archives.
My work centres around less visible forms of violence such as the structural, the epistemic and the affective, contending that they can expose layers of knowledge that are eclipsed from normative readings of law as linked to the Global War on Terror. I also ask questions about methodology and methods, using ‘mapping interviews’ alongside archival research to bridge the timeframes of my project.