Cinema Journal

The academic literature on postfeminism, pathology, and quality television observes the traditional commitment of quality television to stigmatizing the single professional woman, and at first glance, Homeland (HBO, 2011–) adheres to this convention.¹ This essay, however, explores the symbolic position of the single working woman in Homeland within larger discourses on national security, surveillance, and the relationship of the individual with the state. Drawing on work in feminist geography that analyzes women’s symbolic operation in the war on terror, I argue that the mental and bodily health of Carrie Mathison become battlegrounds for the series’ over-arching questions about state surveillance and citizenship. Gender in Homeland is less concerned with the personal being political than it is with personhood and “geopoliticality,” that is, the relationships between personal privacy and domestic security, and between a US-branded feminism and American imperialism. Carrie’s mind and body territorialize geopolitical struggles that elude representability because of their very lack of national, spatial, and material boundaries. The post-9/11, “post”–Iraq War climate is characterized by a crisis of national representability: drone wars violate the integrity of national borders; war is declared on individuals rather than nations; perceived threats from the “outside” (terrorist attacks like 9/11) merge with those that come from within (the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, the escalation of mass shootings in the United States), including violence that defies physicality and territory, like cyberterrorism. Carrie’s mind and body humanize and literalize the war on terror, [End Page 145] where traditional notions of territory and warfare are in crisis. Through institutions and decisions that govern her mind and body, the series manages and workshops larger national discourses on security. Carrie embodies the intersections of geopolitical struggles, gender, and American discourses around national identity, thereby redirecting scholarly attention toward television geographies of gender and feminism.

Carrie is a talented CIA operative with bipolar disorder. Her pathology is, however, a double-edged sword. At times, it undercuts her legitimacy when she must convince the agency of an imminent terrorist attack, and yet it also inspires her professional breakthroughs. Carrie’s sanity is scrutinized in season 1 when the series’ portrayal of her manic episode discredits her theory that the decorated US war hero, Brody, is secretly a terrorist. Only in that season’s finale is it revealed that Carrie was, in fact, right and that her disorder did not dull her logic but enabled the case’s breakthrough. In season 3, Carrie uses her bipolar disorder as a smoke screen in courting a high-priority Iranian informant; her boss, Saul, pretends to fire and institutionalize her as a security risk, and Carrie then acts as bait, appearing to be a disgruntled and possibly treasonous ex-operative. The true intention of this play comes to light only episodes later, at a stage when it appears that the CIA has institutionalized Carrie against her will.² At this point in the series, Carrie’s mental illness, as the repeated focus of agency surveillance and censure, becomes repurposed as an effective gambit in reconnaissance missions.

Because Carrie’s mental and physical health are under constant scrutiny, they are implicated in her struggles to assert power and authority in her workplace and her sex life. She offers Saul sex in return for his turning a blind eye to her illicit surveillance of the Brody household.³ When Saul shuts down her operation after rejecting her, Carrie continues her surveillance of Brody by pursuing him sexually. Carrie also has multiple sexual encounters with strangers in the series.⁴ Homeland repeatedly frames Carrie’s promiscuity as pathological because her one-night stands narratively coincide with periods of psychological distress. Her method of pursuing men (she frequents bars wearing a fake engagement ring to ward off those interested in a relationship) and her failure to remember exactly who she slept with are also colored as deviant. Consistent with hackneyed associations among women, espionage, and trading sex for national secrets (à la Mata Hari), Carrie uses her body as currency for asserting control both at work and in her sex life. The symbolic value of Carrie’s...