September 11: A Feminist Archive

September ii: A FeministArchive 251 Introduction, Amrita Basu, Paula Giddincjs, Inderpal Greival, and Kamala Visivesivaran 254 firstwriting since, Suheir Hammad 259 Song ofWar, Ayesha Khan 266 Statement by Revolutionary Association ofWomen in Afghanistan (rawa) 268 In Search of Justice, Human Rights, and a Just Peace byWomen Living Under Muslim Laws (wluml) 271Statement by Women in Black 272Call for a Non-Violent Response in the Aftermath, Medica Mondiale 274 Letter from Rigoberta Menchú to President George W. Bush 278 Why I Opposed the Resolution to Authorize Force, Barbara Lee 281 Statement by Coalition of100 Black Women 283 Women's Resistance Conference—Excerpts from Speech, Sunera Thobani 289 War Frenzy, Sunera Thobani 298 Whose Fundamentalism?, Minoo MoaIIem 302 Transnational Feminist Practices Against War, a Statement by Paola Bacchetta, Tina Campt, Inderpal Greival, Caren Kaplan, Minoo Moallem, andJennifer Terry 309 Women and War, Madeleine Bunting 250 CREATING AN ARCHIVE September ii: A Feminist Archive EDITED BY AMRITA BASU, PAULA GIDDINGS, INDERPAL GREWAL, AND KAMALA VISWESWARAN As this issue goes to press, the United States is engaged in a sustained military intervention in Afghanistan. By the time this issue is actually printed, however, we may already have enough hindsight to understand the particular forms ofdevastation this war has had for the Afghan people —apart from the damage alreadywrought by more than thirty years of civil war, unrest, and violence. As feminists, the questions, "Who speaks?" and "Who speaks forAfghanistan?" have weighed heavily upon our efforts as scholars and educators to make available to a larger public the many compelling voices ofdissent that circulate on the margins of what opinion polls are calling a "popular" war. These forms ofdissent take the form of poetry (as in Suheir Hammad's piece, "first writing since"), of life testimony (Ayesha Khan's interview with an Afghan woman refugee), statements ofdenunciation (by rawa, wluml), statements of support (Medica Mondiale, Rigoberta Menchu), as well as speeches directed against U.S. foreign Policy. We are particularly pleased to reprint Barbara Lee's speech to Congress in which she spoke against authorizing President Bush to have increased wartime powers, not only because Lee was the lone dissenting voice in Congress, but because she articulates the thoughts ofmany who oppose the war and the extraordinary measures undertaken by the U.S. government in order to pursue it. The same is true ofSunera Thobani, a professor of Women's Studies at the University ofBritish Columbia, Canada, whose speech critical ofU.S. foreign policy led the Canadian government to bring her up on hate speech charges. As a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle makes clear, the FBI investigation of Women in Black, a transnational women's peace group dedicated to nonviolent resolutions ofconflict in the Middle East [Meridians:feminism, race, transnationalism 2002, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 251-3]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 251 and elsewhere, is yet another example ofthe attempt to suppress unpopular speech and opinion. Among the many things this war has taught us is the need to stand for the academic freedom to voice dissenting opinion at the university. It is no accident that women ofcolor have been on the front lines of such free thought, or sadly, that they number among the first to be singled out and punished for it. Our goal for this collection was to highlight opinions and voices that were considered unimportant to foreign policy debates by the popular media in the U.S. (or in most parts ofthe world) but which seemed to us to provide important and progressive insights and opinions. Although there were many other pieces that we could have included, such as Arundhati Roy's statement in the Guardian, or Barbara Kingsolver's piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, we believed that these had already had plenty of exposure and were easily available. We felt that it was important to include opinions ofAfghan women and women's groups, critiques of fundamentalist regimes by Muslim women and groups who have been struggling against them for many years, as well as statements by other feminists who opposed militarism, imperialism, and state oppression. The statements and commentaries that are collected here provide important links among the three terms—feminism, race...