Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Mystery and secrecy have been deeply embedded in social practices throughout the history of humanity. Being intrinsic ingredients of the social fabric, they have served as collective instruments for deciphering and explaining the world of intelligence services, which embrace and acknowledge secrecy as the indispensable condition for the preservation of their very existence. Through projection and vicarious experiences, the universe of intelligence agents becomes comprehensible, accessible and compliantly insertable in the mundane living, while taking the shape of the spy as prototype and emblematic figure. Starting from the premise that the spy is a social and historical construct, reflecting attitudes and behaviors that are historically contextualized, the paper focuses on women spies, considered to be some of the most relevant examples of how intelligence practices are (mis)used and interpreted in the social process of creating meaning. By looking at various cultural productions dedicated to Mata Hari - the incontestable icon of women spy - the paper investigates the impact that the “gendered narratives” may have on the collective representations of intelligence. Rather than looking at the popular productions as means of understanding society’s collective representations, the paper interrogates the conditions in which the content of these popular culture productions are reflective of reality and how they contribute to the perpetuation of unrealistic models.