“Between Orientalism and Postmodernism: the Changing Nature of Western Feminist Thought Towards the Middle East”

Hawwa 4,1_f4_76-92I 5/24/06 5:04 PM Page 76 “BETWEEN ORIENTALISM AND POSTMODERNISM: THE CHANGING NATURE OF WESTERN FEMINIST THOUGHT TOWARDS THE MIDDLE EAST” SHADI HAMID Oxford University Abstract 1980s postmodernism provided a viable theoretical alternative to existing discourses. Where pre-postmodern second-wave feminism subscribed to prescriptive notions of what a woman should or should not be, postmodern feminists (or post-feminists) instead articulated a much more diverse, mal- leable, morally and culturally relative notion of what it means to be a woman. This new relativist approach meant that feminists were now mak- ing a conscious effort to engage with third-world women in a way that acknowledged cultural particularities. Today Muslim women are struggling to find a place for themselves. Western feminists have the potential to play an important role in the process of change in the Muslim world. The nature of this role has yet to be determined. In recent decades, Western feminists have had a tendency to superimpose their own culturally specific notions of equality on the Muslim world. Now, there is the risk that a new generation of postmodern intellectuals will decide to slowly disengage. With this in mind, finding the middle ground has never been more urgent. Few words are more controversial than the word “feminism.” Few words can elicit such a wide range of charged emotion. For some, it is a word which conveys freedom and liberation from patriarchal oppression. For others, it represents a merciless attack on the insti- tution of the family. For yet others, feminism is just another means with which the West can destroy the culture and traditions of the Third World. Like most other things, feminism—as a concept and as a movement—defies easy characterization. Over the course of the last forty years, since the heady days of sixties radicalism, feminism has mor- phed and evolved in response to rapidly changing conditions and circumstances. What it is today is certainly not what it once was. As countries and cultures interact in an increasingly globalized © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 HAWWA 4, 1 Also available online – www.brill.nl Hawwa 4,1_f4_76-92I 5/24/06 5:04 PM Page 77 77 world, feminists have been forced to address a variety of challeng- ing questions. Obviously, feminists care about their female counterparts in the Third World. But it is one thing to care; it is another to decide on a specific course of action. In their interaction with those still hurting from the scars of the colonialist project, feminists have found themselves in a catch-22. If they get involved in women’s rights issues in cultural settings they are not familiar with, they run the risk of offending local sen- sibilities and will almost inevitably be accused of imposing Western values on unwilling populations. On the other hand, if they choose not to act in the name of cultural sensitivity, then they are essen- tially staying silent in the face of injustice, a morally problematic situation for those whose very raison d’être is helping women fight the oppression of patriarchy. Feminists have struggled to come to terms with this dilemma— a dilemma which continues to plague women’s rights activists to this very day. In this article, I will try to put this dilemma in perspective, examining how different feminists have addressed this issue and, hopefully by the end, provide some tentative suggestions on how to proceed. For the purposes of this article, and in light of recent international events, I have chosen to focus on the Middle East. The moral dilemmas that feminists face is nowhere more evi- dent than in this troubled region. A U R B Feminism was (and still is) a Western construct. The movement for gender equality arose out of the Enlightenment ideals of freedom, equality and the dignity of the human person. In the works of John Stuart Mill and Mary Wollstonecraft, two of the earliest and most influential feminists, we constantly see references to reason, rationality and objectivity. Unfortunately, with these apparently lofty ideals came Western exceptionalism and its negative aspects—ethnocen- trism, racism and imperialism. Through the colonialist project, Western “modern” thought was introduced to the future nations of the Third World. And since then we have witnessed the uneasy relationship between feminism—with all of its Western intellectual and philosophical baggage—and the non-Western world. Hawwa 4,1_f4_76-92I 5/24/06 5:04 PM Page 78 78 Second-wave feminism, which gained ascendancy in the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s, was very much a product of Enlightenment thought with its almost messianic belief in unlimited progress. Feminists, at this point, had a less nuanced view of the world than their more relativist sisters would in later years. They emphasized the universality of their mission. For the most part, it did not occur to them that women in other parts of the world had their own culturally specific notion of “women’s rights.” Reina Lewis and Sara Mills note that, “second wave Anglo-American feminist theory had generalized from western middle-class women’s experiences and developed a form of theorizing—‘sisterhood is global’—which assumed that those white concerns were the concerns of women everywhere” (2003: 4). Second-wave feminists were supposed to come together as women and not as anything else—not as black women, not as Arab women, and not as Catholic women. The common and over- riding denominator was supposed to be the oppression at the hands of men that each and every woman experienced. When second-wave feminists looked outside of their own borders, they did so from a position of dominance, power and presumed superiority. They saw societies that seemed to them to be stuck in time, consumed by outdated ideas of tradition and religion. Little effort was made to understand these “backward” cultures on their own terms. Instead, Western feminists tended to look at Third World women as a composite, monolithic group of powerless women lacking any agency. What resulted was a cultural gap that did not bode well for relations between Western feminists and their non- Western counterparts. W F M W It would be useful here to look at some specific examples of anti- Muslim bias in Western feminist thought. For the purposes of his- torical perspective, I will begin more than 200 years ago with a brief look at Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792. This work, which still stands today as one of the seminal feminist texts, is replete with casual references to the backwardness of Muslim women and the religion of Islam in gen- eral. Referring to English women, Wollstonecraft says: “In the true style of Mahomentanism, [they] are treated as a kind of subordinate Hawwa 4,1_f4_76-92I 5/24/06 5:04 PM Page 79 79 beings, and not as part of the human species, when improvable reason is allowed to be the dignified distinction which raises men above the brute creation” (1992: 80). Here she uses characteristic Enlightenment-era language to create an oppositional binary between the subhuman Mahometans and then men, presumably European, who rise above brute creation because of their “improvable reason.” Later, she makes another off handedly reductionist comment: “Beauty, he declares, will not be valued, or even seen, after a couple have lived six months together . why, then, does he say that a girl should be educated for her husband with the same care as for an Eastern harem?” (1992: 191). Similarly, in the Subjection of Women, published in 1861, John Stuart Mill asserts that, “[Christianity] has been the religion of the progressive portion of mankind, and Islamism, Brahminism, etc. have been those of the stationary portions” (1997: 46). If we fast forward to 1952, the same themes reappear in Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex when she informs the reader that “when the family and the private patrimony remain beyond question the bases of society, then woman remains totally submerged. This occurs in the Moslem world . the veiled and sequestered Moslem woman is still today in most social strata a kind of slave” (1997: 84). Despite the fact that a relatively small number of women wore the veil at the height of Arab secular nationalism, the Orientalist image of the oppressed, secluded veiled woman continued unabated in Western literature. Muslim women were seen as passive, sexless beings covered up in masses of cloth, a sharp contrast to the self- assured “sexually liberated” women of the advanced West. We should note, however, that this was not always the way the matter was perceived. Interestingly, during the colonial period, Muslim women were stereotyped as sensual, seductive, and sexually charged. In contrast, white women would emphasize and accen- tuate their whiteness, which was supposed to connote purity (Bulbeck 1998: 129). The veiled woman was seen as mysterious, almost phan- tasmic. Her very inaccessibility made her all the more desirable in the European mind. The colonist sought to control and conquer all, including native women. But, face to face with the veiled woman, the European lost his power. Control eluded him and reciprocity was denied. After all, she could see him, but he could not see her. It is this inability “to fix and control that is unsettling and terrifying Hawwa 4,1_f4_76-92I 5/24/06 5:04 PM Page 80 80 yet so seducing” (Yegenoglu 2003: 548). In the end it did not really matter whether they were active or passive, sexed-up or sexless— Muslim women were always othered, invariably defined as the oppo- site of their Western counterparts.

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