Fashioning the Gentlemanly State

Abstract

Undergirded by the notion of the manly state, feminist works on military masculinities have tended to focus on prerogative practices of soldiering. Yet the significance of the military uniform can only be grasped if read against a performative concept of the gentlemanly state, emphasizing that the abstraction from violence is constitutive to military masculinities. Thus the powerful function of soldierly costume can be understood as one of demarcating boundaries of gentlemanly statehood: dressed in military attire, the soldier is authorized to use ‘civilized force’. Based on this conceptual argument, I trace the uniform's imperial reconfigurations, before describing the manifold historical strands of meaning that have been woven into its contemporary fabric in Thailand. Exploring the gentlemanly connotations attached to the soldiers' costume by girls in Thailand's southern provinces, I moreover argue that its favourable contours have to be read in light of military counterinsurgency practices that have intensified the vestimentary encoding of gendered, religious and ethnic difference. In this context, the military uniform has been attached to Thai notions of gentlemanly modernity, encompassing gentlemanly manners, light skin as well as fashionable progress. In conclusion I argue for broadening the feminist research agenda towards practices of gentlemanly soldiering that work to codify and re-define its violent Other.