Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab World - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783602821 ISBN 13: 9781783602827

Verlag: Zed Books, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

How political turmoil and dissent are re-shaping gender roles in the Arab world.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lena Meari is Assistant Professor at Birzeit University, Palestine, and Acting Director of their Institute of Women Studies. Previously she was a postdoctoral research at the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University, U.S. She specializes in the geopolitics of knowledge production, decolonized methodologies, colonial structures and colonial relations, and completed her PhD at the University of California, Davis, U.S. She has published in various peer-reviewed journals and edited books.

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Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance

Lessons from the Arab World

By Maha El Said, Lena Meari, Nicola Pratt

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2015 Zed Books
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78360-282-7

Contents

Acknowledgements, ix, 
INTRODUCTION Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance in the Arab World Maha El Said, Lena Meari and Nicola Pratt, 1, 
PART I The Malleability of Gender and Sexuality in Revolutions and Resistance, 
1 Reconstructing Gender in Post-Revolution Egypt Shereen Abouelnaga, 35, 
2 Resignifying 'Sexual' Colonial Power Techniques: The Experiences of Palestinian Women Political Prisoners Lena Meari, 59, 
3 A Strategic Use of Culture: Egyptian Women's Subversion and Resignification of Gender Norms Hala G. Sami, 86, 
PART II The Body and Resistance, 
4 She Resists: Body Politics between Radical and Subaltern Maha El Said, 109, 
5 Framing the Female Body: Beyond Morality and Pathology? Abeer Al-Najjar and Anoud Abusalim, 135, 
6 Women's Bodies in Post-Revolution Libya: Control and Resistance Sahar Mediha Alnaas and Nicola Pratt, 155, 
PART III Gender and the Construction of the Secular/Islamic Binary, 
7 Islamic Feminism and the Equivocation of Political Engagement: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair' Omaima Abou-Bakr, 181, 
8 Islamic and Secular Women's Activism and Discourses in Post-Uprising Tunisia Aitemad Muhanna, 205, 
CONCLUSION Towards New Epistemologies and Ontologies of Gender and Socio-Political Transformation in the Arab World Maha El Said, Lena Meari and Nicola Pratt, 232, 
About the Contributors, 241, 
Index, 244, 

CHAPTER 1

Reconstructing Gender in Post-Revolution Egypt

Shereen Abouelnaga

Introduction

The prefix 'post' might suggest that the revolution is over, in the sense of either having been crushed or having fulfilled its aims. I use 'post' in neither sense because I fully adopt the slogan 'the revolution continues'. The prefix means what happened after the famous 'Eighteen Days'. Egyptians also generally use the word 'revolution' to refer to the same period (25 January–11 February 2011). The title of this chapter is highly misleading in another sense. It suggests that 'reconstructing gender' has been a corollary of the revolution. Perhaps the revolution has been one of the epistemic incentives but not the only one. It seems that the huge numbers of women who took to the streets during those Eighteen Days in 2011 led the media, analysts, writers and observers to conclude that such a conspicuous presence meant that gender was being revolutionized. It is impossible not to notice the plethora of studies, articles and conferences that took the Egyptian and Tunisian Revolutions to be markers of the liberation of women. Surely, this is an oversimplification that does not take into consideration the mish-mash of socio-cultural complexities along with power relations. To conflate the public sphere with the streets and to assume that women were previously physically incarcerated is quite a mistaken hypothesis that keeps generating more simplistic views about the dynamics and polemics of the context. It was a revolution against the corruption and barbarity of a regime — with a special focus on the physical torture that had become systematically perpetrated by the security services — in which almost every citizen was willing to play a role regardless of gender, religion or class. Gender roles and women's rights were not listed on the agenda of protesters, in spite of a few feeble unheard voices; and, in retrospect, that was the mistake.

This chapter argues that the initial formulation, or rather unfolding, of new constructs of gender appeared as a result of the incessant violations of women's rights, where the body stood as the main protagonist. That is to say, gender became a priority when the utopia of the Eighteen Days turned into a dystopia.

Back to the 1990s

In order to understand and explore the malleability of gender in the current period, it is necessary to go back to the 1990s. This decade derives its importance from the plethora of activities related to women's rights. For example, in 1994 the UN held the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. The conference received considerable media attention due to disputes over the question of reproductive rights. Muslim and Christian authorities were equally staunch critics. That was followed by the 1995 Beijing Conference, which was a catalyst for the formation of several task forces in Egypt to promote women's rights. At the same time, there was a remarkable surge in activism with the establishment of many NGOs that were actively engaged in defending women's rights. Put differently, it is essential to understand, or rather to remember, how the Mubarak regime perceived gender and how it kept it as a decorative not a functional tool. Literally speaking, all international conventions were signed and even ratified only to pose a stance of modernity (Mernissi 2002). Whilst the state sought to keep a certain 'image' intact regarding women's rights, it feared that women's rights and other civil society organizations could mobilize against the regime and, hence, attempted to suppress their efforts. This authoritarian attitude gained even more power and momentum as the state presented its own version of 'women's rights' as covered by and consistent with the teachings of Islam. This attitude continued until 2011 without the slightest change. What changed indeed was the vision of the ruled.

Not surprisingly, violations of women and their rights have been just a continuation of the techniques of the ex-regime, where the female body, the most sensitive issue in Islam, was the major player in identity politics. Prior to the 2011 Revolution, state feminism monopolized the official enunciation of the demands of women through a form of co-option that failed to engage with the plurality of women's voices. In an interview, Hoda Elsadda, Egyptian feminist activist and academic, explains that:

Under Mubarak's rule, and as he sought to present himself as the sole guardian of the commitment of Egypt to modern values in the battle against the rising power of Islamists in the Arab region, the role of the ex-First Lady as the foremost champion of women's rights was fore-grounded and celebrated. What actually happened was that the work and struggles of women's rights activists was appropriated and manipulated by state representatives. (Elsadda 2013a)

The distorted relation between women and the 'governmental' discourse meant that women had to find alternatives to a suffocating agenda. The challenge was to avoid any confrontation with the state discourse that turned out to be catering to an international image. As for women activists, they had to abide by the law of non-governmental organizations. According to Law 32 issued in 1964 and the modifications to it that took place in 1999 and 2002, no organization was allowed to engage with politics. NGOs were forced either to do charity work or to replace the state in providing the most fundamental basic services, including the issuing of voter IDs for women as a priority, for example. When the issue of violence against women was raised by the New Woman Research Centre in 1995, the regime's denial of its existence was really shameful. Meanwhile, the masses of women had to manoeuvre the economic and cultural difficulties of daily life without clashing with the government.

Propagated heavily was the image of women as markers of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Zed Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783602821
• ISBN 13: 9781783602827
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Herausgeber: Said Professor Maha El, Meari Lena, Pratt Doctor Nicola
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland