Disjunctive Synthesis: Deleuze and Arab Feminism

Abstract

W hile feminists in the West have identified in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari cause for serious attention, this has not been the case among Arab feminists. This may be due to a lack of familiarity with their work or a lack of access to their works in translation, but I believe it has more to do with a perceived lack of resonance between Deleuze's thought and Arab feminist concerns. 1 The first part of this essay examines the state of Arab feminisms today, while the second explores just how viable and productive a "disjunctive synthesis" of Deleuze and Arab feminism might be at this juncture. 2 In the third and final section, I briefly outline what effects such a project can have, by analyzing the particular situation of women in the Gulf state of Kuwait. Arab feminisms today A conference held in October 2009 organized by the scholars of the Lebanese Association of Women Researchers (Bahithat) at the American University of Beirut marked the plurality of Arab feminism in its title: "Arab Feminisms: A Critical Perspective." The proposed goals of this conference, as described in a letter sent to invited participants, were manifold, but one key aim was to gauge "the place and role of feminism in the many and often contradictory realities of Arab societies and their interactions with other forms of feminism both within and outside the dominant Eurocentric model, as well as the strategies they have developed for change in the intellectual, social and cultural structures." 3 This objective was achieved by including participants from all over the Arab world, other parts of the global South, and both 1 A rather elusive concept in Deleuze's philosophy, resonance can be understood as a force between series that can trigger a transformation of or movement beyond the series involved (Deleuze 1990b, 226-29, 239). As will become evident, my argument is that the resonance between Deleuze and Arab feminism can initiate a movement beyond some of the limits currently structuring the latter. 2 The Deleuzian notion of the "disjunctive synthesis" will be discussed in detail in the second section of this essay. For now, it is sufficient to think of it as a relationship between series through which additional series of differences resonate or are produced (Deleuze 1990b, 229).

Becoming-Queer-Arab-Activist: The Case of Meem

“…"Images of thought" are affective orientations that become dominant in societies and accepted as truth or common sense. They are "dogmatic, orthodox or moral" and "distorting" (Deleuze, 1994, in Al-Nakib, 2013, and limit the proliferation of bodily affects. 14 However, they are different from the notion of ideology.…”

“…As such, identities and the binary of West/East are a false problem. Identity politics that defines activism against the Gay International in the aim of opposing dominant imperialist frameworks are obscuring positive queer Arab "different differences" that could produce more differences (Deleuze, 1990, in Al-Nakib, 2013.…”

What Can a Body Do? Answers from Trablus, Cairo, Beirut and Algiers

“…As Mai Al-Nakib explains: 'Freedom for Spinoza consists of adequately understanding our specific historical determinations of affects and existence and then maximizing encounters that increase our capacity to act and live.' 13 This need to gain a strongly causal understanding of one's situation that is simultaneously matched by a capacity to act resonates powerfully in many Arab countries where, as Samir Kassir points out, most people are abundantly aware of the causes of their everyday problems but not in a position to act. Kassir dates this affect of powerlessness to the First Iraq War: 'Powerlessness to suppress the feeling that you are no more than a lowly pawn on the global chessboard even as the game is being played in your backyard.'…”

Satire as A Cyber-Mediated Practice the Case of “Noon Alniswa”

“…Echoing that, it was stated that Gulf feminism has been more radically manifested in writings and art than it is in scholarship or activism; examples of radical feminist writers would include Kuwaiti Laila Al-Uthman, Saudi Umayma al-Khamis, Bahraini Fawzia Rashid, and Emirati Salma Matar Sayf, among others (Al-Nakib, 2013). …”