thoughts of a post-colonial feminist

thoughts & images on feminism, (neo)colonialism, postmodernism, the middle east, cupcakes, marxism, and cats by Sara Salem

[postcolonialfeminist]

Self-doubt

There are things I know I should do and behaviours I know I should have, and both of these add to me knowing the type of person I should be. Somehow if we existed as individuals with no close ties to other people, it would be easy to navigate this gulf between what we are and what we should be. But because we have many close ties—especially with close friends or in relationships—the should-be becomes overwhelming, and determining. They almost take on a life of their own. I am insecure; I should be secure and confident. I am dependent; I should be independent. I am confused about what I want; I should be stronger and more determined. I know what I want but maybe it’s too much to ask; I should be more confident to go after what I want. When we get stuck in the “should be” phase, everything gets more complicated.

It’s easy to understand where this voice comes from; the voice that is saying “you’re this, but you should be that.” Often it comes because we’ve been exposed to relationships that are destructive when we were younger. These are hard to recover from, and in the case of it being your parents, you pick up so many of these tendencies that any relationships, romantic or otherwise, you form later on are bound to include these tendencies. The trick is that you know this, and yet you repeat these things. Insecurities and self-doubt lead to over-analysis, and to some extent, the other person may understand if they’ve had similar experiences growing up. When they haven’t, things may get difficult, because they just won’t get it. And them not getting it feeds into the cycle of insecurity and self-doubt: “they think I’m crazy, over-emotional, over-sensitive.” Why would anyone want to put up with that?

So you tell yourself to cut it out, to stop, to be nice and happy and not be sensitive. And yet...that’s the same voice. The same voice yet again telling how what you should be and should do. It’s always there. 

And where do we draw the line? The line between actually being upset at something legitimately, and when it’s just an over-reaction triggered by something from your post? The self doubt is so intense that we think none of our reactions are legitimate. That they are all an over-reaction. That we should deal with them, silently, and not raise them as legitimate issues we may have with someone. 

I suppose my question is: why are some people like this while others aren’t? Is it gendered? Is it about how we grow up? Is it about our parents? How do we get out of it? Is it as bad as we think it is? Should we just learn to live with it instead of fight it?

I’m not sure why I wrote this at all. I guess at some level I realized there is a thin line between being self-reflexive and being full of self-doubt. Once you cross that line, life gets exhausting.

[postcolonialfeminist]

Women, feminism and the validity of feelings

I’ve been thinking about feelings lately and the ways in which the validity of certain feelings and the invalidity of others act as forms of self-censorship of self-punishment. It wasn’t until I came across Sara Ahmed’s work on phenomenology and feminism that I was finally able to articulate some of the feelings I had towards being a feminist and the ways in which that is seen and the ways in which I am seen because of identifying with feminism. Sara Ahmed’s notion of always being a killjoy has been particularly useful because for me it sums up the crux of the matter: feminists are seen as killjoys, and for that reason it is something that is frowned upon, dismissed, made fun of, or even attacked violently.

It should come across as no surprise that calling oneself a feminist is not exactly something that makes one popular or wins over lots of people. The word feminist itself has become so associated with negative imagery that even within certain “critical” circles it’s become difficult to identify as a feminist. This is even more pronounced somewhere like Egypt where the term feminist comes with imperialist connotations, which, fair enough, do exist. But my concern is more with people who dismiss the term because it is “too radical” or “too hateful.” Feminists hate men, live in women-only enclaves, and are always angry. The problem is when we try to counter this argument by saying that “not all feminists” do those things or are like that, because that of course is a trap in and of itself. Plenty of feminists do take very radical approaches to men, and most are probably angry (as am I). But not subscribing to radical feminism (I’m not a big fan either, for different reasons) is still not enough of a reason to denounce feminism as a whole.

What is even more astounding about the feminist-as-killjoy “accusation” is that it is feminists who have to defend themselves by showing that they’re *not* angry, sensitive, PMSing, and so on. The burden of proof (proving our civility and happiness and proving that we won’t be killjoys) lies with feminists and women, so that we can show that while we may have specific views on gender, no need to worry since we’ll be careful not to bother you with them. So here the focus is not on patriarchy or the many reasons why women may be angry. Instead attention is deflected away from that and put on the women themselves.

I’m sure we’ve all had these moments (everyday) where someone says something sexist or does something sexist, and you point it out. Sometimes you even point it out as a joke so you don’t kill the mood *too much.* But still…the mood gets killed, people roll their eyes, everyone is like “oh that again” and somehow the whole conversation has become about the person pointing out the problem rather than the problem itself.

This is what I find fascinating…how disrupting hegemonic performances is such a threat that any disruption must be pathologized and attacked. Any attempt to disrupt an act of patriarchal masculinity or patriarchal femininity is met with so much resistance that over time the only effect is to wear down the person doing the disrupting. And this brings me back to my initial point – that this all ends with self-censorship. Not at the shallow level of censoring oneself consciously: “Oh, don’t say that cause he’ll respond with this.” It operates at a much deeper level by creating questions in ourselves about our own positionalities and our own beliefs. Above all, it creates questions about the validity of the feelings we are having. The question of over-reaction, of sentimentality, of anger, of PMS – these have all become all-too-common discussions I’ve had with feminist friends.

And yet these questions bring us straight back to square one – patriarchy functions precisely by assigning emotionality to women and rationality to men. Whether women are too angry, too happy, too flirty, or too dramatic, there is always a state of feeling – women are always feeling something, and feeling too much of it. It seems to me that the damage this has done to feminism is quite notable, in the sense that this has been transplanted onto feminists as well, who happen to be mostly women: feminists also feel too much, and react too often, to situations that are in fact quite rational and do not need to be reacted to in an overly-emotional manner.

And yet all of this creates, within women, a constant state of agitation. On the one hand, you notice hegemonic masculinity everywhere, and you see the ways in which patriarchy is performed, even among men who may identify with feminism. And this by itself is disconcerting, and often painful. On the other hand, the price of disrupting patriarchy is so high that you constantly have to ask yourself questions about the validity of what you are feeling. And yet, you felt something. But…did you really need to feel that way? Isn’t it just another case of you over-reacting? Maybe it’s that time of the month? Maybe you just need to see patriarchy everywhere since you’re a feminist and that’s what feminists do? Maybe it wasn’t intentional? But. I still felt a certain way.

Agitation.

Women are always told to doubt their feelings and question the validity of what they are feeling. I will never forget a conversation I had about a month ago, with a woman who I had just met. I was telling her about a guy situation, and that I felt angry, but that I couldn’t do anything because I didn’t think I had the right to be angry about what had happened. All she said was: “Ok. But you areangry. So what if you should or shouldn’t be?” And I actually stopped and thought…what a revolutionary way of looking at feelings!

This is not to say we shouldn’t be self-reflexive about how we feel and what we feel. As human beings (as in…men and women) we all over-react at times, are sensitive about certain issues, and get emotional when we’re hungry. But to my knowledge, only one sex is socialized to always question how they feel. And all this does, in the end, is make the distance between what we feel and what we *should* feel huge, and this doesn’t seem like anything but a form of self-punishment.

[hadeiadel-blog]

The most beautiful smile is the one for someone who isn’t there, who just popped on your mind.

Ahlam Mosteghanemi (via )

[postcolonialfeminist]

“I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence." - Adrienne Rich

Reading Adrienne Rich's poetry is like being sucked into another world...she is so powerful because every line touches something you've felt, been through, wanted to experience...what did she mean 'love with all her intelligence'? When I read it I thought...love after having learned countless lessons from loving in the past, mistakes made, bad and good experiences, all of those accumulate and that is how you know that you have grown...when you look back on them and realize: that was where I went wrong, and that is where I won't go wrong next time...where even making new mistakes is a sign of growth and intelligence. And so I thought: she doesn't mean a distinction between emotions and intelligence but more like an accumulation of emotional experience and it seems to me that reflecting on that is growth, as difficult as it is.

[postcolonialfeminist]

A new piece I wrote on Fanon :)

Click title for link!

[postcolonialfeminist]

In response to a question on how people in North America and Europe could help Brazilians fighting against land evictions, the response was: Bring down your neoliberal governments. Then help us get rid of foreign debt. And then fight - build mass struggles. Don't delude yourself that because you have a higher living standard you can build a better world. It's impossible for you to maintain your current patterns of consumption without exploiting us.

- Pedro Stedile

[postcolonialfeminist]

We should step outside of the tendency to reduce the thought of African intellectuals to the thinkers they study. For example, Jean-Paul Sartre was able to comment on black intellectuals such as Aimé Césaire, Fanon, and Léopold Sédar Senghor without becoming 'Césairian,' 'Fanonian,' or 'Senghorian'; Simon de Beauvoir could comment on the work of Richard Wright without becoming 'Wrightian'; Max Weber could comment on the work of W. E. B. Du Bois without becoming 'Du Boisian.' Why then is there a different story when black authors comment on their (white) European counterparts? Standard scholarship has explored whether Du Bois is Herderian, Hegelian, Marxian, or Weberian; whether Senghor is Heideggerian; and whether Fanon is every one of the Europeans on whom he has commented - Adlerian, Bergsonian, Freudian, Hegelian, Husserlian, Lacanian, Marxian, Merleau-Pontian, and Sartrean, to name several.

Gorden Lewis

[postcolonialfeminist]

The class character of the Egyptian Feminist Movement

"In May 1923, Huda Sha'arawi and Saiza Nabarawi removed their face veils at the Cairo railway station upon returning from a meeting in Rome. This highly self-conscious gesture has become reified as the emblem of Egyptian feminism. However, the identities of those who undertook and embraced it delineate the class and cultural orientation and contingent character of the movement. Most of the eleven members of the Egyptian Feminist Union were from wealthy, landed families living in Cairo; it was primarily the Francophone wives and daughters of the elite who first became interested in becoming citizens with rights, although others later joined them.

Huda Sha'arawi was the daughter of the one of the wealthiest landowners in Egypt and a major investor in Bank Misr and independently wealthy. Saiza Nabarawi had been raised in Paris."

- Joel Beinin

It seems to me that these elite beginnings clearly shaped the Egyptian feminist movement from the start and indeed continue to reproduce a specific framework for achieving "women's rights" in Egypt today.

[postcolonialfeminist]

Racialized in Europe

I am back in Europe for a month and this time around it struck me how the intersections of race, gender and class are becoming more and more clear in the European context(s) as the economic crisis deepens in some places and fades away in others. Being back in the Netherlands and seeing the major changes happening within my own institution as well as other Dutch universities vis-à-vis the continuing neoliberalization of education, where critical knowledge is being pushed out through early retirement schemes or more intense competition for funding, and where formerly critical departments are slowly being transformed into places where ‘responsible’ and ‘useful’ knowledge is produced. After spending one year in the US, it seems clear that the US model is something that not only spread to the UK but is now also becoming somewhat dominant in some European contexts, where the connection between knowledge and commodification is explicit. This is not to say that in these critical departments knowledge was ‘free’ or not tied to capital, but rather that in some European contexts knowledge production in these critical centers was tied to the social democratic project that is now being dismantled.

Going to Frankfurt for a few days made some of these changes even more clear. Frankfurt, the home of Critical Theory, is now also undergoing major changes in terms of critical academics being pushed out of the academy. Here, as in Holland, the gendered and racialized effects of this are clear. Whereas for a period gender and racial ‘minorities’ were permitted into these centers of knowledge production, it seems that they are now being pushed out. This is different, it seems to me, from the US context, where gender and racial ‘minorities’ are quickly co-opted, either by placing them in isolated departments such as Gender Studies or Area Studies (Middle East Studies is a clear example here) and then using the existence of these departments as proof of an academic institution being critical; or when gendered and racialized academics themselves become intellectually co-opted and therefore simply reproduce dominant narratives.

Another fascinating experience in Germany was hearing about the rise of Pegida and how once again these fascist and racist movements are designated as exceptional or a minority, even though the racist discourse they mobilize is extremely widespread in Europe. Similar moves are made in Holland when the PVV and Wilders are constructed by Dutch liberals or leftists as a tiny minority of “crazy people” who have nothing to do with “normal Dutch people.” Dutchness here of course refers to tolerance, liberalism and non-racism. And yet…the ways in which certain events are covered; the ways in which ‘migrant populations’ are referred to or spoken of; and the ways in which everyday racism functions demonstrates that in fact what distinguishes Pegida or the PVV from the mainstream public is perhaps its extremity and its fascism but certainly not its core belief that there is a subject—a European—that needs to be preserved. And there is no doubt that this subject is racialized. Indeed the ridiculous discussions and performances surrounding Charlie Hebdo should make this clear, and should also make clear the complex intersections between race, gender, class, nation and imperialism in European contexts today. It is the mechanisms by which a European self is produced and reproduced that are interesting and that rely on very old distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ even while those critiquing this racist view are accused of binary thinking. And yet…the “failure of multiculturalism” or the “limits of European tolerance” vis-à-vis the endlessly inassimilable migrant point to nothing except the desperate need on the part of many forces within Europe tomaintain binaries even as they slowly slip away.

At a conference on ‘diversity’ and ‘intersectionality’ in Frankfurt the discussions revolved around these issues and around the ways in which diversity is being mobilized to completely depoliticize discrimination in Europe and to make it seem as though institutions are attempting to ‘be inclusive’ even while they become increasingly exclusive. Again this strikes me as something imported from the US context, where the narrative of a “melting pot” or this idea that diversity is good (read: profitable) is so strong, and where programs such as affirmative action are imagined to be radical interventions that are enough to fix the problem of representation. This is not to say that affirmative action is not needed, but that it is certainly not enough. And it will not be enough in the European context either.

Perhaps the only consolation here is that after spending on year in the US, it is clear that the gains made by European leftists that led to the institutionalization of social welfare policies can never be underestimated. America’s capitalism is explicit, brutal, suffocating. Europe’s capitalism—for now—is hidden behind walls of welfare and social democratic values and must navigate through leftist and labour movements that are still relatively strong. Although, that said, from the perspective of the Global South, this difference between US and European capitalism makes no difference; Europe’s social welfare policies benefit Europeans on the backs of non-Europeans, and even non-white Europeans must fight to be seen as deserving of welfare. In any case, the dismantling of the welfare state is well under way and we will probably not have one to speak of generations from now in places like the Netherlands.

This trip, and all my others to Europe, make me think about intersectionality from the perspective of a master category, because it seems to me that in the European context – especially among “migrants (a term used for anyone not white, even if they have been there for generations) – race is the underlying cause of multiple forms of exclusion. Not to say that class, gender and so on are not part of this or do not affect this, but in the Global North race continues to exert a tremendous influence on the ways in which the subaltern in these places are treated. Perhaps this also explains why so much of the intersectionality canon – created by activists and scholars mostly in Europe and America – focuses on race and on race in particular contexts, without looking at the globalized nature of racism or capitalism. As Spivak has mentioned, intersectionality is problematic because it often ignores the global division of labour. Again it shows that even when critical theories are developed, they can be Eurocentric and reproduce concerns found in specific locations while erasing others. Definitely more to think about here.

[postcolonialfeminist]

Today marks the assassination of Patrice Lumumba

“In the middle of 1960, the Congo, until then a Belgian colony, celebrated its independence. Speech followed speech, and the audience was melting from heat and boredom. Belgium, a strict teacher, warned of the dangers of freedom. The Congo, grateful pupil, promised to behave.

Then Patrice Lumumba’s speech exploded and ruined the party. He spoke out against the ‘empire of silence,’ and through him the silenced found a voice. He paid homage to the fathers of independence, the murdered, the imprisoned, the tortured, and the exiled, who throughout so any years had fought to ‘bring an end to the humiliating slavery imposed on us by force.’

His words, received in icy silence by the Europeans present, were interrupted eight times by ovations from the Africans in the audience.

That speech sealed his fate.

Lumumba, recently released from prison, had won the first free elections in Congo’s history, and headed up its first government. But the Belgian press called him a ‘delirious and illiterate thief.’ In Belgian intelligence cables, Lumumba was dubbed Satan. The director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, sent instructions to his agents:

“The removal of Lumumba must be an urgent objective.”

Dwight Eisenhower, president of the United States, told British Foreign Secretary Lord Alec Douglas-Home:

“I wish Lumumba would fall into a river full of crocodiles.”

Lord Douglas-Home took a week to reply:

“Now is the time to get rid of Lumumba.”

At the beginning of 1961, a firing squad of 8 soldiers and 9 policemen commanded by Belgian officers shot him along with his two closest collaborators.

Fearing a popular uprising, the Belgian government and its Congolese tools, Mobuto Sese Seko and Moise Tshombe, covered up the crime.

Two weeks later, the new president of the United States, John Kennedy, announced:

“We will not allow Lumumba to return to the government.”

And Lumumba, who by then had already been killed and dissolved in a barrel of sulphuric acid, did not return to the government.”

***

“The assassination of Lumumba was an act of colonial reconquest.

The Congo’s mineral wealth, copper, cobalt, diamonds, gold, uranium, oil, gave the orders from the depths of the earth.

The sentence was carried out with the complicity of the United Nations. Lumumba had good reason to mistrust the officers of troops that claimed to be international, and he denounced ‘the racism and paternalism of people whose only vision of Africa is lion hunting, slave markets, and colonial conquest. Naturally they would understand the Belgians. They have the same history, the same lust for our wealth.’

Mobuto, the free world hero who trapped Lumumba and had him crushed, held power for more than thirty years. The international financial institutions recognised his merits and showered him with generosity. By the time he died, his personal fortune was nearly equal to the foreign debt of the country to which he had devoted his energies.

But Lumumba had announced:

‘History will one day have its say. It will not be the history taught in the United Nations, Washington, Paris, or Brussels. Africa will write its own history.’

The tree where Lumumba was executed still stands in the woods of Mwadingusha. Riddled with bullets. Like him.”

- Eduardo Galeano, ‘Mirrors’

[postcolonialfeminist]

"I am Charlie and I guard the Master's House"

"With the commitment of 1 million euros to keep Charlie Hebdo up and running, down comes the already loose and slipping facade that the French republic is built on the principle of “égalité”, except in the most formal sense. Here is the state explicitly and publicly sponsoring a vision of free speech that sees no structural oppression, that sees no power, that sees no abuses of that power, that sees no silenced and marginalised minorities, no victims of imperialist wars, such as those waged by France in Algeria, Afghanistan, Mali and Iraq.

How neat for the French state to be able to spin the Charlie Hebdo killings into a fairytale in which it plays the role of the knight on horseback riding onto the scene to rescue western civilisation from barbarity. An unprecedented number of world leaders and state representatives joined the French in proclaiming western liberal values on a solidarity marchthrough Paris last Sunday, including those from countries in which press freedom is elusive. How convenient this atrocity has been for the state. Its prize for ingratiating itself with “Je suis Charlie” is the legitimation and expansion of its power, and for Hollande himself, a steep hike in his popularity. Lost in the cacophony of “Je suis Charlies” at Sunday’s demonstration is any sense of what is truly at stake here: not our purported freedoms, but an understanding of how the hypocrisies of the liberal state keep us trapped in a system which perpetuates violent structures of oppression."

Excellent article: http://criticallegalthinking.com/2015/01/13/charlie-guard-masters-house/

[postcolonialfeminist]

On thought

"The space in the mind is so small. In this little space all our activities seem to take place: the daily living and the hidden struggles with contradictory desires and motives. In this little space the mind seeks freedom, and so it is always a prisoner of itself. Meditation is the ending of this little space. To us, action is bringing about order in this little space of the mind. But there is another action which is not putting order in this little space. Meditation is action which comes when the mind has lost its little space. This vast space which the mind, the I, cannot reach, is silence. The mind can never be silent within itself; it is silent only within the vast space which thought cannot touch. Out of this silence there is action which is not of thought. Meditation is this silence.

It is not an intellectual affair, but when the heart enters into the mind, the mind has quite a different quality: it is really, then, limitless, not only in its capacity to think, to act efficiently, but also in its sense of living in a vast space where you are part of everything. Meditation is the movement of love. It isn't the love of the one or of the many. It is like water that anyone can drink out of any jar, whether golden or earthenware: it is inexhaustible. And a peculiar thing takes place which no drug or self-hypnosis can bring about: it is as though the mind enters into itself, beginning at the surface and penetrating ever more deeply, until depth and height have lost their meaning and every form of measurement ceases. In this state there is complete peace not contentment which has come about through gratification but a peace that has order, beauty and intensity."

- Krishnamurti 

[stay-human]

Battle of Algiers, 1966

[postcolonialfeminist]

Debt repayment has become an important mechanism for transferring wealth from the people of the South to financiers of the North. According to the United Nations, developing countries have paid $1.662 trillion in debt servicing between 1980 and 1992. This is three times the original amount owed in 1980. Yet in spite of this, the total Third World debt still stands at over $2 trillion. It is not commonly known that the Third World has repaid almost a trillion dollars of principle over and above $771 billion in interest. The external debt of the Third World has become an eternal debt and stands as the largest immediate obstacle to growth and sustainable development.

- Campaign Against Neoliberalism, South Africa 

[postcolonialfeminist]

My favourite books of 2014

Looking back at 2014 it definitely feels like I can clearly trace some of the key changes in the way I see the world and in my intellectual journey. The more I think about these changes, the more I realize that I am very much indebted to the thought-provoking literature that I have been lucky enough to come across this year. In this post, I want to share some of my favourite books from this year. Whether they have challenged me, infuriated me, made me feel at home, or comforted me, there is little doubt that books remain an important part of my life.

From when I was little, I loved reading simply because a book has the magical ability to take you somewhere else, to show you worlds you have never seen before, and may never see again. So many times I have wondered where I know something from, only to realize it came from a book I read when I was younger. The older I got, the more I began to realize the politics of writing: the ways in which an author’s position and experiences not only impact the text here and there, but create the text itself. I began to think about reading differently, as a process that I too was a part of, as a reader. This added a whole new dimension of reading, where it became essential that I begin to think more carefully about what I was taking in, and challenge it rather than simply accept it. This past year I have read many challenging books, that have left me angry, frustrated, or upset. And yet, even these books have tremendous value, because they shed light on ways of seeing the world that are very much real. I have a tendency to think that other people will see things the way I do (as those close to me never tire of pointing out, haha) but this could not be further from the truth. Books offer such a useful way of catching a glimpse of these other worldviews, not in order to sing kumbaya and have a peaceful dialogue, but simply in order to expand my own understanding of how things work. This year I have also read books that have left me feeling happy and content, that have made me feel at home even while I was far away from home.

And finally, I have read books about subjects and experiences that have been extremely painful and heavy. I never know how to approach books like these. Take, for example, Assata Shakur’s autobiography, which I finished two weeks ago. It feels wrong and problematic to say that I learned from her pain. I think approaching it this way again commodifies Black pain as something to be consumed by others, as something to teach other people. I found myself trying to relate to it in other ways: trying to constantly draw parallels between her experiences and the way the United States continues to function in the same ways today. Reading her autobiography as events unfolded in Ferguson allowed me to make those parallels easily. I of course did learn from her experiences as well. The way she spoke about race, about international politics, about feminism. And above all, the way she spoke with absolute honesty: no pretensions, no ego, no insecurities. She laid herself bare and there was no way, as a reader, to respond to that except with vulnerability and the feeling of attachment to her as a person. This is just one example of the process I have gone through with so many books. There is no doubt, also, and in the spirit of honesty, that books create an escape that I have needed this year…a way to stop thinking, stop analyzing, stop over-feeling certain emotions, and just read. And I always knew, right away, what my favourite books were from their ability to do this. So here are my 30 favourite books:

Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano

Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico by Jake Kosek

The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses by Oyeronke Oyewumi

Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt by Farha Ghannam

An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy

Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East by Adam Hanieh

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria E. Anzaldúa

The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760-2010 by John M. Hobson

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Feminist Edges of the Qur’an by Aysha A. Hidayatullah

The Political Economy of the Egyptian Revolution: Mubarak, Economic Reforms and Failed Hegemony by Roberto Roccu

Scrambling for Africa: AIDS, Expertise, and the Rise of American Global Health Science by Johanna Tayloe Crane

Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination by Ann Laura Stoler

The Promise of Happiness by Sara Ahmed

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Marx And The End Of Orientalism by Bryan S. Turner

salt. by Nayyirah Waheed

Nejma by Nayyirah Waheed

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty

Home by Toni Morrison

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Tar Baby by Toni Morrison

A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story by Elaine Brown

Algeria Cuts: Women and Representation, 1830 to the Present by Ranjana Khanna

Dangerous Liaisons: The Marriages and Divorces of Marxism and Feminism by Cinzia Arruzza

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington

An Autobiography by Angela Y. Davis

European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe by Fatima El-Tayeb

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur

[postcolonialfeminist]

"Middle Eastern women"

A few months ago I was in a library, searching for a book. I found myself in the “gender section” and as I went further down, distracted by endless lines of fascinating titles, I eventually found myself in the section on gender and the Middle East. Book after book and yet they all had strikingly similar titles: Middle Eastern women; women in the Middle East; Arab women; Muslim women; Third World women; African women; the Middle Eastern women today. And so on for what seemed like ages. So many things are striking here, including the fact that it would be difficult to find books like this on women in so-called developed countries (Swedish women? Women in the UK? Women in the West?) is perhaps the obvious one, where certain women are individuals and others stand in for a collective. Another striking fact is that, despite the turn within feminist studies to move away from “women” to “gender,” there still seems to be an overwhelming focus on “women” in the field of Middle Eastern studies. The culturalist understanding of women in these contexts is so strong that it seems to have ignored the push from feminist studies to move away from very simplistic understandings of “women” and (if you’re lucky) “men” to gender and, eventually, gender relations and structures (depending on your ontological starting point).

Stepping outside of the library, I began to think about the field more broadly, only to find that even my thought process was trapped within the category of “Middle Eastern women.” Indeed the only work I can think of that has strongly challenged this view has been anthropological work – ethnographies – such as Live and Die like a Man by Farha Ghannam, Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety or Lila abu Lughod’s very early work. Criticisms of this work aside – most notably the problems with anthropological work and the ways in which this further reifies and objectifies the people under observation – these works provide us with the most complex understandings of gender relations in Middle Eastern contexts available within academic writing. Reading them, you are faced with a very complex sketch of how gender is constituted and how gender constitutes a wide array of subjects in the contemporary Middle East. This forces you, as a reader, to move away from simplistic understandings of what it means to be a woman in a Middle Eastern country, and think of other questions instead.

This is in sharp contrast to the works I saw in the library – which seem to me to still dominate. Works that are so predictable that they are painfully boring: women and politics; women and the economy; women and culture; women and family. Pick your social category and just add women. And this has morphed into a new form recently, whereby discussions of democratization in the Middle East always include a section on women. These formulations basically use the “women question” to prove or disprove the democratic (read: liberal) credentials of the society in question. Never mind the fact that the ways in which women’s rights are measured are problematic and Eurocentric, or that women are simply being used as pawns in a bigger intellectual charade. At the end of the day, it is assumed that the “women question” can be answered by integrating women into the economy, into the political arena, into society. But while that may integrate individual women into broader structures, what does that do about patriarchy and the specific set of gender relations it produces? Usually – nothing. And that is exactly the problem with focusing on “women” instead of gender. But to push this even further – is it enough to focus on gender?

It is not a question of denying the presence of patriarchy in the Middle East, nor the destructive gender dynamics it produces. But by focusing on patriarchy as though it is something only affecting women, we not only take attention away from men, masculinity and gender relations, but we also take attention from the ways in which patriarchy, as a social structure, is part and parcel of other social structures, from capitalism to racism. And precisely because of these issues, I am finding it increasingly difficult to write about “Egyptian women” or “Middle Eastern women.” Indeed, it is even difficult to write about “gender in Egypt.” Because once this becomes an essentialized sphere of knowledge, it is difficult to come to a complex understanding of how gender and patriarchy reproduce, and how we can undo them.

Three years ago when I started my PhD, I struggled with this very question. I wanted to “do gender” and understand “gender and the 2011 Egyptian revolution.” It felt like I was analyzing part of a story. I chose to do something different – focus on the revolution as a political economic event that needs to be contextualized and historicized. Instead of taking gender or women as my subject, I have taken the event itself as a subject and have been using feminist tools to analyze it. It has been difficult and trying, and yet I think this is definitely one way forward for the field of gender and the Middle East. Instead of being its own field (and having a section in a library) it could have its own modes of analysis that could then be applied to all other fields. Of course this is not new. Indeed I have been fascinated with the ways in which some feminist scientists have taken feminist methodologies and applied them in science, which has led to groundbreaking research. Doing this within the field of Middle Eastern studies could be just as promising, and one way to move away from the obsession with women as a solitary and simplistic category of analysis, and indeed, one way of furthering the feminist cause as well. It could also move us past the focus on gender as part of a field called gender studies, and instead spread feminist methodologies throughout disciplines. I’m still trying to think through this idea of feminist methodologies rather than feminism as a field or discipline on its own (which makes it easy to isolate it). This would mean feminists working in all disciplines on all topics, rather than feminists working on the question of gender in the Middle East only. This would be one way of spreading the incredibly useful tools we have gained from feminists doing gender analysis and making them truly inter-disciplinary.

[postcolonialfeminist]

Spivak on International Feminism and "Third World women"

"I should not patronize or romanticize these women (two women she saw washing by a river in Bengal), nor yet entertain a nostalgia for being as they are. The academic feminist must learn to learn from them, to speak to them, to suspect that their access to the political and sexual scene is not merely to be corrected by our superior theory and enlightened compassion. What of the fact that my distance from these two was, however, class-determined and determining?

How, then, can one learn from and speak to the millions of illiterate rural and urban Indian women who live "in the pores of" capitalism, inaccessible to the capitalist dynamics that allow us our shared channels of communication, the definition of common enemies? The pioneering books that bring First World feminists news from the Third World are written by privileged informants and can only be deciphered by a trained readership. 

This is not the tired nationalist claim that only a native can know the scene. The point I am trying to make is that, in order to learn enough about Third World women and to develop a different readership, the immense heterogeneity of the field must be appreciated, and the First World feminist must learn to stop feeling privileged as a woman."

- "French Feminism in an International Frame"