Drawing Fear of Difference: Race, Gender, and National Identity in Ms. Marvel Comics
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Author | Dean Cooper-Cunningham |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829819889133 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829819889133
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2020, Vol. 48(2) 165 –197
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829819889133
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Drawing Fear of Difference:
Race, Gender, and National
Identity in Ms. Marvel Comics
Dean Cooper-Cunningham
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
Feminist scholars have provided important analyses of the gendered and racialised discourses
used to justify the Global War on Terror. They show how post-9/11 policies were made possible
through particular binary constructions of race, gender, and national identity in official discourse.
Turning to popular culture, this article uses a Queer feminist poststructuralist approach to look at
the ways that Ms. Marvel comics destabilise and contest those racialised and gendered discourses.
Specifically, it explores how Ms. Marvel provides a reading of race, gender, and national identity in
post-9/11 USA that challenges gendered-racialised stereotypes. Providing a Queer reading of Ms.
Marvel that undermines the coherence of Self/Other binaries, the article concludes that to write,
draw, and circulate comics and the politics they depict is a way of intervening in international
relations that imbues comics with the power to engage in dialogue with and (re)shape systems of
racialised-gendered domination and counter discriminatory legislation.
Keywords
popular culture, identity, queer feminist poststructuralism
Dibujando miedo a la diferencia: raza, género e identidad
nacional en Ms. Marvel Comics
Resumen
Las académicas feministas han aportado importantes análisis sobre los discursos generizados y
racializados que se utilizan para justificar la Guerra Global contra el Terrorismo. Demuestran
cómo las políticas posteriores al 11 de septiembre de 2001 fueron posibles gracias a determinadas
construcciones binarias de raza, género e identidad nacional presentes en el discurso oficial. Este
artículo, que pone la mirada sobre la cultura de masas, utiliza un enfoque postestructuralista,
Corresponding author:
Dean Cooper-Cunningham, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade
5, Copenhagen, 1353, Denmark.
Email: dean.cunningham@ifs.ku.dk
889133MIL0010.1177/0305829819889133Millennium: Journal of International StudiesCooper-Cunningham
research-article2019
Original Article
166 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 48(2)
1. Including, inter alia: Miriam Cooke, ‘Saving Brown Women’, Signs 28, no. 1 (2002):
468–70; Laura Shepherd, ‘Veiled References: Constructions of Gender in the Bush
Administration Discourse on the Attacks on Afghanistan Post-9/11’, International Feminist
feminista y queer para analizar las distintas formas en que los cómics de Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan)
desestabilizan y cuestionan esos discursos racializados y generizados. Concretamente, explora
cómo Ms. Marvel ofrece una interpretación de raza, género e identidad nacional posterior al 11 de
septiembre 2001 que cuestiona los estereotipos racializados y generizados. El artículo, partiendo
de una lectura queer de Ms. Marvel, que socava la coherencia de las relaciones binarias «yo» /
«el otro», concluye que escribir, dibujar y difundir cómics junto con la política que representan
constituyen una forma de intervenir en las relaciones internacionales que confiere a los cómics el
poder de entablar un diálogo con los sistemas de dominación racializados y generizados, de (re)
estructurarlos y de oponerse a la legislación discriminatoria.
Palabras clave
cultura de masas, identidad, postestructuralismo feminista queer
La peur de la différence: race, sexe et identité nationale
dans Ms. Marvel Comics
Résumé
Les théories féministes ont fourni d’importantes analyses sur la question de genre et de race dans
le discours utilisé pour justifier la lutte mondiale contre le terrorisme. Elles ont démontré dans
quelle mesure certaines politiques qui ont suivi les attaques du 11 septembre ont été facilitées
par des constructions binaires de la race, du genre et de l’identité nationale dans le discours
officiel. En se penchant sur la culture populaire, cet article s’inscrit dans une approche féministe
queer poststructuraliste pour étudier comment la bande dessinée Ms. Marvel bouscule ce type de
discours et le remet en question. Plus spécifiquement, il explore la façon dont Ms. Marvel propose
une acception de la race, du genre et de l’identité nationale aux Etats-Unis après les attentats du
11 septembre qui défie les stéréotypes genrés et ethno-religieux. Proposant une nouvelle lecture
de Ms. Marvel à la lumière de la théorie queer, qui s’applique à miner la cohérence des binaires
soi/autre, cet article conclut que le fait d’écrire, de dessiner et de faire circuler des comic books,
ainsi que les choix politiques qu’ils contiennent, sont un moyen d’intervenir dans les relations
internationales et qu’ils se voient ainsi conférer le pouvoir d’engager un dialogue et de (re)formuler
les systèmes de domination binaire, contribuant ainsi à lutter contre une législation discriminatoire.
Mots clés
culture populaire, identité, féminisme, théorie queer, poststructuralisme
Feminist International Relations (IR) scholars have provided important analyses of the
gendered discourses used to justify the US-led Global War on Terror. These works, espe-
cially those grounded in postcolonial feminisms and feminist security studies, address the
Bush Administration’s securitization of Islam, the mission to ‘save’ brown women, and the
accompanying constructions of Muslim women, femininity, masculinity, Americanness,
and racialised Others1. They do important and necessary work to show, identify, and
Cooper-Cunningham 167
Journal of Politics 8, no. 1 (2006): 19–41; Meghana Nayak, ‘Orientalism and ‘Saving’ US
State Identity after 9/11’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 8, no. 1 (2006): 42–
61; Cynthia Weber, ‘Not without My Sister(s): Imagining a Moral America in Kandahar’,
International Feminist Journal of Politics 7, no. 3 (2005): 371; Melanie Richter-Montpetit,
‘Empire, Desire and Violence: A Queer Transnational Feminist Reading of the Prisoner
“Abuse” in Abu Ghraib and the Question of “Gender Equality”’, International Feminist
Journal of Politics 9, no. 1 (2007): 38–59.
2. I follow a poststructuralist understanding of identity as discursive, political, relationally
constituted, and social. When referring to identity, I mean collectively articulated construc-
tions and codes, not individual level ‘identity’. On this, subjectivity refers to the possibilities
of identification that are constituted discursively. See Lene Hansen, Security as Practice:
Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (New York: Routledge, 2006), 6.
3. Ibid.
4. E.g. Nayak, ‘Orientalism’; Shepherd, ‘Veiled References’; Meghana Nayak and Christopher
Malone, ‘American Orientalism and American Exceptionalism: A Critical Rethinking of
US Hegemony’, International Studies Review 11, no. 2 (2009): 253–76; Richter-Montpetit,
‘Empire, Desire and Violence’.
5. E.g. Aja Romano, ‘What Ms Marvel’s Rare 6th Printing Means for Diversity in Comics’, The
Daily Dot, 19 July 2014. Available at: https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/ms-marvel-kamala-khan-
gets-sixth-printing. Last accessed 20 February 2019; Emine Saner, ‘Ms Marvel: Send for the
destabilise the gendered and racialised nature of the official discourses constituting the
Global War on Terror. A central concern in feminist IR has been critiquing the dichotomies
on which these types of discourses are founded (e.g. ‘oppressed Muslim woman’ versus
‘liberated Western woman’) as well as finding ways in which they are destabilised. A focus
on how these dichotomies are destabilised and contested is important because it both
reveals the power relations sanctioned by Self/Other binaries that structure international
politics and enables ways of thinking about identity and subjectivity2 in plural and non-
binary ways. This provides space for an analysis of the complex intersections and ambigui-
ties of race, gender, and national identity as well as their associated power structures.
Using Lene Hansen’s intertextual model of discourse analysis, which suggests an ana-
lytical focus on popular culture, this article examines how dichotomies are troubled and
contested through comic books.3 Rather than studying official discourses about the Global
War on Terror alone, which postcolonial and feminist security studies scholars have already
meticulously done,4 this article looks at the types of contestation comics offer; how con-
structions of race, gender, and national identity in official and wider policy discourses are
disturbed and contested in and by popular culture. This speaks to questions about the poli-
tics of identity, subjectivity, representation, and the visual. Particularly, how identities are
represented and power structures (re)produced and undermined through the visual.
The article explores how new Ms. Marvel comics featuring Kamala Khan as their
protagonist (since 2013) provide a reading of race, gender, and national identity in post-
9/11 USA that destabilises binary categorisations and provides space for a more complex
logic of identity. This complexity allows individuals’ multiple intersecting identities –
and their competing interests – to be recognised and people to occupy subject positions
that are both/and not either/or. Ms. Marvel comics have been hailed by critics for their
ability to challenge gendered-racialised assumptions and constructions of Muslims.5 I
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