A Just and True Love: Feminism at the Frontiers of Theological Ethics: Essays in Honor of Margaret Farley

Transnational Feminism and the Rhetoric of Religion

75 Chapter Three Transnational Feminism and the Rhetoric of Religion Serene Jones NIGHT ARRIVALS It was after midnight when the three of us walked out of the airport and onto the busy streets of Cairo. I remember how surprised I was by the light and noise and energetic pulse of a city that seemed startlingly wide awake, even at that late hour. I remember, too, how the shock of the city’s energy mirrored my own internal state; not only was I far from sleep, but my pulse was jumpy and noisy, driven by an anxiety located somewhere between disorientation, fear, and hopeful expectation. The fear surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. It was my first time in the Arab world since 9/11, and I quickly discovered that despite my best instincts and most liberal of intentions, the media fallout from that day made me apprehensive in crowds of jalabiya and headscarves. It was also my first time to step onto soil so close to a war zone of my own country’s making. That I would be perceived as the enemy to some did not escape me; what that perception would require from me, however, did. Excitement was there, too. It was mid-December in 2003, and the three of us had come to Egypt for a conference bringing North American and Arab women’s studies scholars together to talk about the role of gender in the present-day conflicts in the Middle East. The gathering was the first of its kind and, by design, small, its participants all handpicked, with equal representation from the U.S. and the Arab world. It was clear that we had important things to talk about; while it was increasingly evident that political leaders in the U.S. as well as in the Arab world were willing to use the protection of women as a justification for military aggression, it was equally evident that women, particularly those who thought critically about gender, had not been heard from in the midst of it all. In the U.S., we also knew that the Bush administration was continually deploying “feminist” arguments to fuel its demonized caricature of the so-called woman-oppressing “Arab terrorists.” That our Arab women’s studies colleagues would have a different take on the matter was certain; and we knew, on this score, we had much to learn. On the plane ride over Europe, the three of us had studiously read the bios and papers of all the conference attendees and thought we had a good picture of the women with whom we would be talking. It was clear that despite our vastly different social locations, everyone shared a certain set of theoretical commitments. The snappy, postmodern title of the conference said it all: “Gendered Bodies and Transnational Politics.” Everyone obviously agreed that gender was a social construct, that class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality were significant features in the always particularized articulations of gender, and that analyzing the relation between discourse and power should be a central part of any academic feminist conversation. We all agreed, as well, that the center of our cross-context conversations was an urgent concern about the imperial designs of the U.S. in Iraq and the Middle East and the role played by global capital in the execution of these designs. What we could not tell from the bios and the conference description , however, was what difference these shared commitments would make when it came to sitting together in a room and trying to have sustained conversations about what our role as women’s and gender studies scholars should be in the midst of these conflicts. Would our common training in the field of “feminist theory” allow us to hit the groundrunningwithrespecttoourassessmentoftransnational“gender 76 Serene Jones rhetoric”? Would it let us avoid those age-old and frequently tiresome debates about nature and nurture and permit us to move quickly into interesting forms of cultural analysis and historical argument? Would this shared basis in theory allow us to become “friends” more easily, a goal no one was naïve enough to state but everyone shared? Would it help us build productive coalitions by allowing us to better negotiate the differences between us? Would it in this way enhance the work of justice and further our activist commitments to a progressive political movement capable of responding to the international threats we identified ? In...