Up for Grabs: Writing Women in the Middle East

Abstract

The social upheavals which recently took place in a number of North African and Mid dle Eastern societies have shattered the myth of passive populations subjected to autocrat ic rule by leaders who draw their legitimacy from the support of Western geopolitical interests in a post-Cold War era focused on the management of global security and pre emptive wars. These events should be an opportunity for social scientists, especially those studying women, to pause and think through the theoretical and methodological approaches we use on societies with distinct histories, cultures and sexual mores. When the Iranian Revolution broke out in 1978, Foucault hailed it as an historic break through ushering in a new era.1 His contro versial stance, quickly abandoned, was dictated as much by his rejection of the Marxist conception of religion as by his read ing of the role of religion in Western (espe cially French) history. He did not address the role of women in the Iranian revolution, nor did he suspect that women might be its victims when it became institutionalized. Foucault's (well intentioned) mistake is a reminder that how we study a society before change erupts is as important as how we study it during or after change has occurred. Women have been at the forefront