Arab Feminist Research Articles

Men, Women, and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics (review)

Men, Women, and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics (review)

Men, Women, and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics: Fedwa Malti‐Douglas

M<i>en, Women, and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics</i>: Fedwa Malti‐Douglas

Men, Women and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics

This is a study of the Arab world's leading femininst and most controversial woman writer, Nawal El Saadawi. Her outspoken feminism and critique of patriarchy have won her much admiration, but also many enemies. Imprisoned in Egypt under Sadat, El Saadawi is now among those on the death lists of Islamic religious conservatives. The book contends that El Saadawi's work cannot be read in isolation from its Islamic and Arabic heritage. Drawing upon knowledge of classical and modern Arabic textual traditions, and on extensive conversations with El Saadawi, this book places the writer within her cultural and historical context.

Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing; Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke, editors

<i>Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing</i>; Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke, editors

Post-Colonial Feminism and the Veil: Thinking the Difference

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the issue of the veil has been the topic of heated debate in Arab countries, particularly those that witnessed strong fundamentalist movements. The fact that Iranian Islamicists who took power in Iran sanctioned the veil and penalized those women who chose not to wear it was either a seductive or, alternatively, a terrifying reminder to women in other Muslim countries of what it might be like for women under Islamicist rule. In countries like Jordan, Algeria and Egypt, where fundamentalist movements have mobilized many followers including large numbers of women whose adoption of the veil signified their initiation into the movement, the question of the legal sanction of the veil has aroused intense reactions from supporters and opponents alike. In this paper I try to explore the question of the veil from the complicated perspective of an Arab feminist, who both rejects the veil as a personal choice but also recognizes its empowering and seductive effect on Arab women. My discussion will be limited to the veil as it plays itself out in an Arab context, since this is what I am most familiar with. The analysis might, or might not be true in other non-Arab Muslim countries. Also, my 'analysis' will be more of a personal journey of exploration and reflection than a traditional academic analysis or a strictly scientific one. For the purposes of this paper I shall use the term 'veil' to mean the current dress adopted by Muslim women in the Arab world, as followers of the contemporary fundamentalist movements. In its most common expression the veil entails covering the woman's hair with a scarf that is ordinarily white, leaving the face to be exposed. All of the body is usually covered with a loose dress in dark colours, with buttons from top to bottom. Women typically wear Western clothes beneath this dress, which they take-off, along with the scarf, when they are in the sole company of women. These women do not usually cover their hands with gloves nor do they wear make-up.

Rereading "Nedjma": Feminist Scholarship and North African Women

GENDER AND SEXUALITY ARE KEY FORCES in the negotiation of national and cultural identities, as is evident in the texts of North African writers such as Abdelkdbir Khatibi, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Nabile Fares, Mohammed Dib, and Assia Djebar, and women's negotiation of these identities is frequently a central issue. Yet some critics have taken a postfeminist approach to these questions, analyzing the textual deployment of woman without considering its relation to women's historical and material reality. Others have taken a feminist approach devoted mainly to studying images of women (as mothers, militants, etc.), leaving aside the problem of the texts' staging of the social processes by which human subjects are constituted as women in particular cultural and historical circumstances.' Critical neglect of women's constitution as historical subjects in literature is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in readings of Kateb Yacine's Nedjma, for though readers readily recognize in Nedjma (the character) an emblem of the contradictory forces at work in Algeria's search for national identity, they rarely consider Nedjma's significance for Algerian women's liberation, and never see in it a figuration of the revolution's failure to ensure social equality for women. I would argue in favor of feminist readings of North African fiction that neither limit inquiry to the examination of sex roles and their literary representations, nor bypass women's interests by focusing attention on woman as a textual marker of intractable difference. Taking Nedjma as my example, I hope to demonstrate the importance of attending to the relation between fiction and North African women's potency as makers of social meanings. After showing why Nedjma must be read in the context of women's political situation in Algeria today, I will trun to the related question of Western feminist scholarship on women of North Africa and the Middle East, arguing that debates in Arab feminism and recent reflections on theory and methodology in feminist social science should be taken into account by literary scholars.

Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing, edited by Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke 1. 404 pages, glossary, index. Indiana University Press, Bloomington1990. $39.95/$17.50.

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Editors' Note and Acknowledgments: When Will There Be a "New World Order" for Women?

Editors' Note and Acknowledgments When Will There Be a "New World Order" for Women? This issue of the JOURNAL of WOMEN'S History went to press during the cease fire in the Persian Gulf War. Rather than joining in the chorus of comments on the meaning of the "end" of the Cold War (to say nothing of the "end" of history in general and the "end" of purpose and identity in the history of women in particular),1 we thought it appropriate to make some comments on a few beginnings—for this publication and the United States. First, it is well known that President George Bush has proclaimed a "New World Order" wherein peace, freedom, and global stability will prevail in the wake of the war in the Middle East.2 While some suspect this term is a euphemism for "Here Comes Pax Americana Again," we, however, are willing to take the president at his word. Consequently, this issue presents a timely article in the International Trends section by legal scholar Elizabeth F. Defeis, which suggests that part of this new international order should include belated ratification by the United States of the major human rights treaties, especially the women's convention. As the only leading democratic nation that has refused to sign these United Nations' documents, the time seems right to show a new commitment by the United States to all international laws and norms—not just some of them. National feminist leaders in the United States have correctly pointed out in the New York Times that the war in the Middle East was not waged to defend democracy.3 The least the United States can now do is to underscore political, civil, and socioeconomic rights of women, thereby supporting citizenship for them even though most Arab governments allied with it during the Gulf War do not. Second, we have solicited a number of historical articles about women from Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The first, on Poland by Renata Siemienska, appears in the Dialogue section of this issue with a comment by Peggy Simpson. We want to carry such essays periodically for the next several years, as we watch for and hope that substantial consideration for women's rights and needs emerges from these new national and regional configurations of power. In the regular Articles section, for example, appears an essay on the importance of biography in the writing of Egyptian women's history, by Marilyn Booth, and there is an extensive abstract of a new book on Arab feminist writing. (Readers might also want to note that the Journal of © 1991 Journal of Women's History, Vol 3 No. 1 (Spring) 1991 Editors' Note 7 WOMEN'S HISTORY 2 (Winter 1991) carried a detailed analysis of the education of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran by Hammed Shahidian ). Additionally, we carefully selected the ten-year-article review in the Bibliography section in this issue to reflect the dramatically changed post-Cold War world conditions, including the recent war in the Persian Gulf. The subtopics include "women and the military," "women in the Middle East," and "women in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union." Third, the editorial board meeting of the JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S HISTORY in December 1990 endorsed the policy of carrying articles from international scholars, not in translation, as we have already done, but in the original language. English abstracts will accompany these pieces. If, indeed, we are on the threshold of a more peaceful, interdependent world, then, as specialists in women's history, we must broaden our linguistic horizons as well. The editorial board also approved the idea of publishing, in the Book Review section, short abstracts of all books published in English on the history of women everywhere in the world. These abstracts, combined with the ten-year bibliographical listings of periodical literature, detailed abstracts of foreign language books published outside the United States, and review essays of books on specific themes or topics, will allow readers to keep abreast of the continuing explosion of publications in women's history. The first short abstracts of all books received during 1990 and through the spring of this year will appear...

Gender, sexuality and power in Arab society: Arab feminist criticism of discourse and social order

Adnan, Etel. Sitt Marie Rose. Sausalito, California: Post‐Apollo Press, 1982. 105 pp. $7.50 paper. El Saadawi. Woman at Point Zero. London: Zed Press, 1983. iv + 106 pp. $6.25 paper. Sabbah, Fatna A. Woman in the Muslim Unconscious. New York: Pergamon Press. 132 pp. including footnotes and index. $22.50 cloth, $9.95 paper.

Reconciling Western and Arab Feminisms

This article attempts to address how Western and Arab (North and South) feminists are able to envision solidarity and empower women across local and national boundaries through (1) connecting local and global gender issues and (2) reconciling Western feminist scholarships and Arab women’s culturally specific positions in international and cross-cultural frameworks. Given the historical background of the Middle East, there is a need to understand multiple factors such as class, nation, racism, sexism, colonialism and imperialism that influence Arab women’s struggles for liberation. Arab women’s struggles cannot be defined and situated in a context that removes the diversity of their historical experiences, location, religion and cultural factors. I would like to examine how Arab women are marginalized within the sphere of Western feminism(s) because they have been portrayed as passive victims instead of active participants seeking mobility and changes in their society. In dismantling the binary construct of East/West, liberated/oppressed, colonizers/colonized and progressive/backwards in global feminist discourses, there is an urgent need for a cross-cultural dialogue between Western and Arab feminisms in order to create space that allows differences to be recognized and examined, and crafting a meeting point for women to relate across their differences. For Western feminists trying to make sense of Middle Eastern issues and Arab women’s struggles, solidarity will remain elusive unless they recognize that women’s experiences and struggles cannot be separated from race, class, nation, colonization and imperialism.

Locating Arab Refugee Women: Identity and Allegiance in Global Feminist Conflicts

There are academics who argue that the most significant failing of the Arab feminist movement is that it has yet to become a political actor with significant power and influence in the social and political arena.1 Overtly radical Arab feminists are accused of being pawns of the West, of being too polarizing to represent the interests of Arab women and are ostracized by the Islamic establishment. Their “personal is political” stance is seen as a deliberate subversion of the primary issues concerning Arab women generally, including Arab refugee women. Notably, though Arab refugee women are a highly politicized group, for the most part they remain silent in the Arab feminist discourse: they are neither addressed by Arab feminism nor are they given a voice in Arab feminism.

Where do you Really Come From?: Arab and Arab-American Women Break Silences

For scholars and students located, as is this reviewer, in places with erratic (or no) postal service, inadequate library budgets, and other problems of access and isolation, MIT's Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies (EJMES), a multidisciplinary journal launched in 2001, is welcome in its highly accessible form — but also in its innovative, and critical content. Its encouragement of work by young scholars, including graduate students, is particularly appealing.“Gender, Nation and Belonging: Arab and American Feminist Perspectives”, edited by Rabab Abdulhadi, Nadine Naber and Evelyn Alsultany (Summer 2006, Volume 5), is the most ambitious (as well as the longest) offering to date and has the signal virtue of being both analytically rich and a pleasure to read, including poetry, memoirs and interviews, as well as more academic interventions.

The Lesbian Subjectivity in Contemporary Arabic Literature: ‘An Absent Presence’ Disciplined by the Gaze

The subject of lesbianism is rarely addressed in contemporary Arabic literature, without inciting prejudice, denial, or repetition of some preconceived ideas about the widely used term, “homosexuality”. Even after the emergence of Arab feminism, ‘lesbian subjectivity’ is totally silenced on the assumption that sexuality is not a ‘priority’ in a male-oriented world in which ‘women’ have more vital concerns to fight for than what is seen as ‘bodily rights’, or rights to ‘pleasure’. Some authors presume that there are no lesbians in Arab cultures. Others claim that some women ‘become’ lesbians due to negative experiences or imposed sexual segregation. Set within the limits of female bonding in heterosexual norms, most Arab writings about intimate same-sex relations among females tend to convey an implicit message that lesbians are women who can be heteronormalized once their circumstances change. All these assumptions and misconceptions regulate the public opinion and subdue any attempt to assert an independent lesbian subjectivity that has different priorities, ethics, rights, and politics.

Subversive Discourses in Hanan Al-Shaykh: Pushing out the Boundaries of Arab Feminism in the Novel

Surveying women's literature over the past two centuries, gynocriticism I has found, perhaps to our surprise, that one of the recurrent themes in the writings of both Third World and Western women has been madness. Time and again , women authors from different periods and literary traditions, with diverse cultural,ideological and epistemic affiliations and commitments, bring out this theme to demonstrate emphatically and unequivocally how the symptoms of psychologicaldisfunctionality, together with definitions of madness, are culture-produced and bound, the products of a virulently hierarchical and patriarchal symbolic order.

Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing by Margot Badran, and Miriam Cooke, (eds.)

Margot Badran, and M. Cooke, ed., Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, 412 pages.