Reading Arab Feminist Discourses

A Postcolonial Challenge to Israeli Feminism

Abstract

This essay offers a reading of feminist discourses articulated in the Arab Middle East by a Mizrahi Israeli feminist scholar. Key debates that have animated Arab feminist scholarly work for more than a hundred years are explored and discussed with an eye for their relevance to contemporary debates within Israeli feminism. These include: the question of the value of ‘Western’ feminist models vis-a-vis locally constructed feminist concepts and theories, the relationship between feminism and nationalism, and the social and epistemic significance of exploring divisions along gender lines as constituted and experienced through ethnic, religious, and class lines. From her position as a Mizrahi feminist who reflects on the closely linked analytical and socio-political question of diversity among women, the author proposes to look at the Arab feminist experience and the scholarly body of work that has described and theorized it as an insightful space where these questions were debated long and hard. The essay closes with some reflections about the postcolonial challenge such reading poses for contemporary feminist scholarship and activism in Israel.