Countering depoliticized representations of Syrian women: memories of dictatorship from pre-war Syria

Abstract

This article engages in a critical analysis of authoritarian rule in pre-war Syria by examining the accounts of sixty-eight Syrian refugee women who were displaced in different areas of Lebanon in 2014. While participants’ ideas are informed by their experiences of war and refugeehood, an exploration of their memories of the pre-war period reveals that economic welfare is a key determinant to the formation of their political opinions on dictatorship in ‘peace’ time. Drawing on feminist research that endeavours to reposition women in the domain of the political, the article argues that political agency must not be conceived only in terms of political activism but, rather, as a distinctive trait of politically inactive women who live under dictatorship. By using a broader conceptualization of the political that does not confine political subjectivity to the realm of formal and/or grassroots politics, the article seeks to recast political agency on Syrian refugee women whose understandings of the political is often silenced by disempowering orientalist representations.