Status Updates From Deadly and Slick: Sexual Mo...

If we view Patel and Begum together, not as equivalents but as key players in the fracturing and recomposing of sexual modernity, we can see the work race continues to do in justifying violence, Begum is the source of such disturbed fascination precisely because she articulates an uncomfortable truth: that the violence of Islamic State cannot be severed from the violence of 'ordinary' nation-states:

this view suggests that Begum, unable to manage the conflict between Western sexual freedoms and the more conservative values of her parents, has opted instead for the apparently nihilistic certainties of the caliphate. These interpretations belong to the same intellectual universe; they view political choices as psychologically determined, a view that derives from the individuations of sexual modernity.

the notion of an identity crisis — an apparently benign trope — is used to justify and extend Britain's extensive counterterrorism architecture. This architecture is embedded into everydaylife in Britain and exported around the globe.