Saving: Towards a Feminist Reckoning

Abstract

Lila Abu-Lughod suggested saving as a keyword twenty years ago by imploring feminist anthropologists to "be wary" saving discourses and actions, especially when they appear in a sympathetic form. Heeding this call in a sustained way remains a crucial task. Being wary of saving in a systematic way investigates what gives it broad-reaching appeal and power; how and where saving rhetoric is wielded by diverse agents; and why and how particular life-forms are deemed worthy of protection while many others are not. Being wary of saving supports reflexive considerations of how saving discourses operate within anthropology broadly, and feminist anthropology specifically, toward clarifying what an otherwise world "beyond" or "without" saving could look like. Keywords anthropology, reproductive politics, savingLila Abu-Lughod (2002) suggested saving as a keyword for feminist anthropologists twenty years ago. 1 In asking "Do Muslim women really need saving?" she drew critical attention to the violences of saving rhetoric that propelled post-September 11 geopolitics. The US military invasion of Afghanistan was framed as saving Muslim women from reductive renderings of Islam. 2 As US politicians deployed saving rhetoric to justify the "war on terror," there was a proliferation of what Abu-Lughod calls "neat cultural icons" that were "plastered over messier historical and political narratives" (2013, 34). Muslim women, cast as oppressed gendered and racialized religious Others, became the quintessential targets for saving. As then-First Lady Laura Bush claimed, these women "are no longer imprisoned in their homes … because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan" (Abu-Lughod 2013, 32). In turn, Islam was framed as a "special and threatening culture-the most homogenized and the most troubling of the Rest" (Abu-Lughod 2013, 6). The United States positioned itself as a righteous liberator of Muslim women from "the world the Taliban-and-theterrorists would 'like to impose on the rest of us'" (Abu-Lughod 2013, 34) by advancing the ideals of Western Christian liberal democracy with the most violent military in the world. The significance of Abu-Lughod's scholarship is once again clear as US media becomes awash with saving discourse following the Taliban's regaining of power in Afghanistan in August 2021 (Portnoy 2021).Abu-Lughod implored feminist anthropologists to "be wary" (2013, 47) of saving, especially when it appears in a sympathetic form. To illustrate, she showed how claims that US military invasions and occupations in the Middle East were "a fight for the rights and dignity of women" (32) shared "uncanny echoes" (47) with late-nineteenth-century Christian missionaries and colonial feminists "who devoted their lives to saving their Muslim sisters" (47), as well as with contemporary trends in mainstream US feminism. 3 Being wary of the "virtuous goals" (47) of saving when wielded by rightwing, religious, and war-mongering politicians may be an easier task than sustaining skepticism of