The Gender Logics of Resistance to the ‘War on Terror’: constructing sex–gender difference through the erasure of patriarchy in the Middle East
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 33; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01436597.2012.728318
ISSN1360-2241
Autores Tópico(s)Middle East Politics and Society
ResumoAbstract Abstract This article asks, ‘How are femininities constructed in resisting the “war on terror” and with what implications for women's agency and the conceptualisation of gender?’ It examines the under-studied gender logics of non-violent resistance to the ‘war on terror’ by focusing on a series of conferences held in Cairo, between 2002 and 2008, uniting opposition to imperialism, Zionism, neoliberalism and dictatorship. Whereas much feminist scholarship conceptualises sex–gender difference within patriarchy as the major source of women's subordination, women speakers at the Cairo conferences erased patriarchy as a source of subordination and valorised sex–gender difference as a source of agency in resisting the ‘war on terror’. Femininities were constructed against the dominant narratives and practices of the war on terror through the representation of national/religious or class differences. These ‘resistance femininities’ represent strategically essentialised identities that function to bridge differences and mobilise women against the ‘war on terror’. View correction statement:Erratum Notes I thank the British Academy for funding this research as part of a small grant to study ‘Women and the Arab–Israeli Conflict’. I am very grateful to Victoria Basham, Bice Maiguashca, Warwick Critical Security Studies Reading Group and participants in the 10th Mediterranean Research Meeting on Social Movements in the Middle East and North Africa, Lancaster University's Centre for Gender and Women's Studies seminar series, the soas Department of Politics seminar series, the 2010 wocmes panel, ‘Reconceptualising Gender in the Middle East’ and the 2012 isa panel, ‘Reconceptualising Security: Gender, Race and Sexuality after 9/11’ for useful feedback and discussion. 1 Z Eisenstein, Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy, London: Zed, 2007; K Hunt & K Rygiel (eds), (En)Gendering the War on Terror: War Stories and Camouflaged Politics, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007; RL Riley, C Talpade Mohanty & MB Pratt (eds), Feminism and War: Confronting US Imperialism, London: Zed, 2008; AM Agathangelou & LHM Ling, ‘Power, borders, security, wealth: lessons of violence and desire from September 11’, International Studies Quarterly, 48, 2004, pp 517–538; G Bhattacharyya, Dangerous Brown Men: Exploiting Sex, Violence and Feminism in the War on Terror, London: Zed, 2008; M Khalid, ‘Gender, orientalism and representation of the “other” in the war on terror’, Global Change, Peace & Security, 23(1), 2011, pp 15–29; LJ Shepherd, ‘Veiled references’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 8(1), 2006, pp 1–23; and L Abu-Lughod, ‘Do Muslim women really need saving?’, American Anthropologist, 104(3), 2002, pp 783–790. 2 G Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in C Nelson & L Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, London: Macmillan, 1988, p 92. 3 Agathangelou & Ling, ‘Power, borders, security, wealth’; and MS Kimmel, ‘Globalization and its mal(e)contents: the gendered moral and political economy of terrorism’, International Sociology, 18(3), 2003, pp 603–620. 4 C Cockburn, From Where We Stand: War, Women's Activism and Feminist Analysis, London: Zed Books, 2007; RL Riley, C Talpade Mohanty & MB Pratt, Feminism and War; and Z Eisenstein, Against Empire: Feminisms, Racism and the West, New York: Zed, 2004. 5 See C Enloe, The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004; Cockburn, From Where We Stand; Cockburn, ‘Gender relations as causal in militarization and war’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 12(2), 2010, pp 139–157; and L Sjoberg & S Via (eds), Gender, War and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives, Santa Barbara: abc-clio, 2010, among others. 6 J Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006, pp 81–82. 7 This is the discipline within which I work, in which, historically, the topic of resistance has received little attention since the subject of resistance is, generally, a non-state actor. Studies of resistance have been undertaken by those adopting neo-Gramscian, feminist and other critical theoretical approaches within the discipline. 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For example, see S Sami, ‘Stamp of authority’, Al-Ahram Online, 11–17 May, at http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/794/eg5.htm, accessed 31 August 2012. 21 Shanti was invited to speak at the conference but was prevented from travelling by the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. 22 L Rustum Shehadeh, The Idea of Women in Fundamentalist Islam, Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2003, p 19. 23 O Abdellatif, In the Shadow of the Brothers: The Women of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Beirut: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2008; and O Abdellatif & M Ottaway, Women in Islamist Movements: Toward an Islamist Model of Women's Activism, Beirut: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007. 24 MF Hatem, ‘Egyptian discourses on gender and political liberalization: do secularist and Islamist views really differ?’, Middle East Journal, 48(4), 1994, pp 661–676. 25 See K Hunt, ‘The strategic co-optation of women's rights’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 4(1), 2002, pp 116–121; DL Cloud, ‘“To veil the threat of terror”: Afghan women and the “clash of civilisations” in the imagery of the US war on terrorism’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 90(3), 2004, pp 285–306; and NS Al-Ali & N Pratt, What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009, among others. 26 Z Salime, ‘Securing the market, pacifying civil society, empowering women: the Middle East Partnership Initiative’, Sociological Forum, 25(4), 2010, p 741. 27 Ibid, p 740. 28 N Pratt, ‘Girl power? Examining Condoleezza Rice’, unpublished paper presented at the ‘Women and US Foreign Policy’ conference, University of London, 21 May 2010. 29 J Puar, ‘Feminists and queers in the service of empire’, in RL Riley, C Talpade Mohanty & MB Pratt, Feminism and War, p 53. 30 NS Al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women's Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000; and U Nayaran, Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Thirld World Feminism, New York: Routledge, 1997. 31 Salime, ‘Securing the market, pacifying civil society, empowering women’. 32 See R El-Mahdi & P Marfleet (eds), Egypt: The Moment of Change, London: Zed, 2009. 33 A Alexander & F Koubaissy, ‘Women were braver than a hundred men’, Socialist Review, January 2008. 34 Beinin, ‘Workers’ struggles under “socialism” and neoliberalism', p 81. 35 Salime, ‘Securing the market, pacifying civil society, empowering women’. 36 Alexander & Koubaissy, ‘Women were braver than a hundred men’. 37 R Leila, ‘Dawn raid’, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 25–31 October 2007, at http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/868/eg7.htm, accessed 31 August 2012. 38 Cited in Browers, Political Ideology in the Arab World, p 126.
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