Politics of critique: Understanding gender in contemporary Middle East

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis paper explores the implications of spatial production of academic knowledge on the Middle East, through the critiques of Orientalist discourses on the ''Muslim woman.'' It begins with an examination of the success of postcolonial studies and scholarship on democratization in challenging racist perceptions and politics in the West. Then it reflects on the ways in which this knowledge production travels and is reconfigured in places where power inequalities are different. This requires a consideration of the regional consequences of either an over-emphasis on differences in agencies of ''Muslim women'' or a relative silence on issues of gender inequality. The paper's suggestion is to shift the focus from representation and discourse to the structural circumstances in which ordinary men and women's agencies play out; various political mechanisms which participate in the production of acceptable cultural practices; and patterns of resistance, which may defy arguments about culturally specific definitions of agency. This is a quest for making the ''exotic'' familiar, without exoticizing the familiar.

Making and unmaking culture: gender experts, faith, and the international governance of gender

“…The louder the claims made in the name of culture, the greater the need to pay attention to who is speaking and who is given a platform to speak (Altan-Olcay, 2015;Arat, 2008;Kandiyoti, 2014;Song, 2005). In response to the debate on cultural rights versus women's rights, Arat suggests the need to think about differences in interpretations of culture within groups and the political possibilities that could open up if interpretations that stand closer to gender equality and women's rights are supported (2008).…”