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Sameh Dissertation ©2012 Catherine Sameh ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SIGNATURES, RIGHTS, NETWORKS: IRANIAN FEMINISM IN THE TRANSNATIONAL SPHERE by CATHERINE ZEHRA SAMEH A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Women’s and Gender Studies Written under the direction of Professor Ethel Brooks And approved by New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2012 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Signatures, Rights, Networks: Iranian Feminism in the Transnational Sphere By CATHERINE ZEHRA SAMEH Dissertation Director: Professor Ethel Brooks My dissertation explores how Iranian feminists are mobilizing new discourses and creating dynamic transnational networks, enabled in part by cyber and print cultures. I investigate the ways in which Iranian feminist praxis consequently disrupts and reframes the putative opposition between secularism and Islam, and the multiple binaries assembled through this opposition—democratic versus authoritarian; liberatory versus oppressive; egalitarian versus patriarchal; and modern versus backwards. Within a multi- methodological and interdisciplinary framework, I examine three sites of Iranian feminist activism. I consider the One Million Signatures Campaign, a grassroots feminist movement that emerged in Iran in 2006, which utilizes Islamic human rights discourses and grassroots, democratic practices to engage the state in reforming family law. I also investigate the transnational network structure of the campaign, reflecting on the particular praxis offered by campaigners in the Iranian diaspora. Finally, I examine the writings and reception of Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. As a Muslim, feminist ii and human rights activist, Ebadi emphasizes the compatibility of Islam with human rights, thereby disrupting discourses that counterpoise them. Considered together, these three sites of Iranian feminism destabilize Western hegemony over Iran, consolidated through discourses which pit “superior” liberal democracies over “backward” Islamic nations. This oppositional staging gains purchase through geopolitical relations of power, including some iterations of global feminism, which deploy neocolonial saving and rescue narratives in the name of women’s human rights. Concomitantly, transnational feminist theory, which has destabilized the normative authority of Western hegemony and global feminism, can also often reify the very power relations it seeks to critique. By emphasizing the dangers, limits, and dilemmas of transnational feminist work, transnational feminist theory can neglect critical feminist projects on the ground, effectively writing some women out of history. My dissertation considers how Iranian feminists in Iran and the diaspora challenge these various modes of epistemic silencing. Through a close examination of the praxis of Iranian feminists, reflected primarily through the narratives of the activists themselves, my dissertation contributes to feminist theories of agency and helps revitalize transnational feminist studies. iii ACKNOWLEGEMENTS There are many people to whom I owe a great debt of thanks. I am grateful to the Association for the Sociology of Religion for a Joseph Fichter Research Grant, which funded my trip to Los Angeles to interview the One Million Signatures Campaign activists. I offer sincere thanks to my dissertation committee, Ousseina Alidou, Ethel Brooks, Jasbir Puar, and Joanna Regulska, all of whom have been wonderful mentors and friends. My deepest gratitude goes to my advisor, Ethel Brooks. Without her support and guidance throughout every step of my writing process, this dissertation would not have been possible. I thank Ethel for her patience, kindness, good humor and not least of all, her remarkable and beautiful scholarship. I have learned so much from her, and she is precisely the kind of scholar, activist and person I aspire to be. I thank Jasbir Puar for always providing incredibly insightful feedback. My ideas and writing have greatly benefited from her brilliance. I am grateful to Joanna Regulska for her input, and the comparative perspective she has brought to my work. I thank her also for the warmth she always offers to those around her, and will forever admire the ease with which she accomplishes so much. A special thanks goes to Ousseina Alidou, who stepped in on short notice. I am so fortunate to have participated with her in “The Culture of Rights, The Rights of Culture” seminar held by the Institute for Research on Women in 2009- 2010, where our conversations on gender, Islam and rights began. I supremely admire her work, and I am profoundly grateful for her enthusiastic support of mine. iv I thank the other faculty members in the Women’s and Gender Studies department with whom I’ve had the privilege of working, as well as Joanne Givand and Suzy Kiefer for all of their unsung administrative help over the years. A special thanks goes to Yana Rodgers for all her cheerful assistance these past several months. I was fortunate enough to take courses from Beth Baron and Samira Haj at the CUNY Graduate Center. Samira’s course in particular greatly influenced my thinking about religion, secularism, gender and Islam, and ultimately shaped the direction of my dissertation inquiries. I thank the cohort of graduate students I met at CUNY, Mitra Abbaspour, Aleksandra Kobijski-Majstorac, Sara Pursely, and Mitra Rastegar, for our study group and for ongoing inspiration. Over the years of graduate school and dissertation writing, I’ve been immersed in a tremendous community of friends who’ve offered intellectual and political inspiration, support, and love. In particular, my most heartfelt love and thanks go to Johanna Brenner, who provided extremely helpful comments on my dissertation. Over the last twenty-five years, I’ve learned more from Johanna than I know how to put into words. If I’ve assimilated just an ounce of her political and intellectual wisdom, her loving way of helping others, or her joyful engagement with humanity, than I am a better person for it. Thank you to Betsy Esch, Kim Gilmore, Stephanie Luce, John McGough, and Chloe Tribich for support and friendship over the years, and for copy editing my final draft. I’m grateful to the crew at 248 for their familial generosity. Ilana Berger, Eli Dueker, and Kim Gilmore have offered open doors and lots of support for many years. And Hannah Rosa Paul Dueker lights up my life every day. I’m grateful to my sisters in the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective, who inspire me, and who’ve greatly informed my thinking about the politics of solidarity. Among my colleagues at work, I thank Janet v Jakobsen and Elizabeth Castelli for their support and encouragement in finishing my dissertation. I’ve learned a great deal working with both of them. When I moved to New York almost nine years ago, Erin Small’s family seamlessly incorporated me into their lives, and eased the difficulty of being so far away from my family on the West coast. I’m grateful to Margaret Small, Christopher Small, Denise and William Vidal, Chris and Kate Small, Joan Kenney, and the extended Small and Kenney families for taking such good care of me. And I’m so lucky to be an aunt to Calder, Sebastian and Jude Small. I am deeply blessed to come from such a close and loving family. Since the day she came home from the hospital as a newborn, I have loved my sister, Sarah Sameh, with all my heart. Our lifelong bond has grown richer by the year, and I’m so lucky to be in the world with her. Sarah has given me endless love and encouragement during the dissertation process, and I’m deeply grateful to her. Nothing would have been possible without my parents. From Stephanie Sameh and Abbas Sameh, I learned how deeply beautiful and sacred it is to be alive. They taught and still teach me so much by living lives of compassion, generosity, modesty, empathy, tenderness and joy. I love and respect them both with all my heart, and thank them for their faith in me, and for everything they have given me. I’m grateful also to Judy Sameh, who has provided me with so much support, love and care. We are all so lucky to have Judy in our lives, and to love and be loved by her. Almost ten years ago I met Erin Small, and my life changed forever. My love and admiration for her know no bounds. Each day, I wake up fortunate and thrilled to spend time with her, to love and be loved by her, and to learn from her. Her enormous vi intelligence and wit keep me on my toes, and her vast and open heart anchors me. Erin has provided more support, encouragement, advice, feedback and dinners than I can thank her for, and I’m aware that this dissertation would not have been written without her love and labor. I offer her my profound gratitude, and my devotion, too. I am deeply grateful to the One Million Signatures Campaign activists who so generously gave me their time, and trusted me to tell some of their story. Their tireless activism and hope against many odds inspired this dissertation, and I hope I have not let them down. A version of Chapter 2 appears as the article “Discourses of Equality, Rights and Islam in the One Million Signatures Campaign in Iran” as part of a special issue on New Directions in Feminism and Human Rights in 2010 in the International Feminist Journal of Politics (12:3-4: 444-463). vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page i Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents viii Introduction: Signatures, Rights, Networks: Iranian Feminism in the
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