Mata Hari vs the State: Inside the Androcentric Intelligence

Abstract

An abused wife, a beaten mother, the most wanted courtesan of her time and then a woman on death row.
Mata Hari, born as Margaretha Geertruida Zella, lived a life that unfolded like a succession of identities, each so different from the other, meticulously framed and ultimately destroyed by politics and narratives by people in power.

This presentation examines how the presence of an erotic dancer became the battleground where gender, surveillance and nationalist anxiety converged. Drawing from intelligence files, wartime journalism and literature about her, the gunshot on Mata Hari pans out as an engineered downfall through androcentric state mechanisms that interpreted her practice of autonomy and liberty as a threat. Her erotic self-fashioning, transnational movements and refusal to succumb to patriarchal moral conventions made her susceptible and an ideal vessel for wartime paranoia.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.66496/LCAP.9788168710122.2026.170-188