Women’s rights campaigns in Lebanon:‎ A Bakhtinian-Foucauldian approach to voice and visibility

Abstract

ABSTRACT Lebanon’s reservations in ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1997 left women at the mercy of the country’s personal status codes derived from its 18 religious sects and its lenient, if not absent, laws on marital rape and domestic violence. It was only in August 2017 that article 522, which allows a rapist to escape punishment in case he marries his victim, was repealed by parliament. Rape, nonetheless, is still stigmatized and victims are often blamed and shamed. Using Bakhtin’s heteroglossia and Foucault’s moral principles of refusal, curiosity and innovation, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of women’s advocacy campaigns to argue that these campaigns formulate heteroglossic discourses that consolidate the social field of women through their silence and visibility. Identifying heteroglossic disturbances as fundamental to the production of the discourse on gender and the propagation of its perception, the study also attempts to show how women’s voice is generated through a particular staging of forces. The main case study for this paper is the campaign entitled Shame on Who?, launched in November 2018 by ABAAD, one of the most prominent non-profit associations advocating gender equality in the MENA region.