In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Editor's Introduction As I draft this introduction in early December, 2001, the twenty year war in Afghanistan continues despite some arguments that it is over because the Taliban have been routed from a fewoftheir strongholds in Kabul and Kandahar. The Northern Alliance is being primed to step in as the next government, although it appears to be an alliance that has as little regard for women's rights as the Taliban have had. The discussions about the war have moved from a singular focus on eliminating terrorism to one that includes assertions about the oppression ofAfghani women under the Taliban regime. Such assertions are often racist and ethnocentric in nature, abound in much of the popular and broadside media, and are supported by eminent figures such as Laura Bush, the wife ofGeorge W. Bush, the Republican president ofthe United States ofAmerica. Simultaneously , the freedom ofrefugee Afghani women to live without war is relegated to email lists and similar spaces, for, despite a focus on the plight ofAfghani refugees in general, the mainstream media and mostquoted commentators simply sidestep the issue ofthe rights ofwomen, and others, to live in peace. Many feminists of color (and some white feminists) around the world are rejecting the tired yet sadly familiar arguments of hegemonic feminisms which assert, occasionally with regret, the importance ofbombs being the necessary tools to achieve the liberation ofAfghani women from the Taliban as ifthere are no feminist practices, or feminists, in Afghanistan who work on these matters. Yet, mostversions offeminisms developed in Third World contexts hold little truck with either fundamental religious practices or nationalisms—both of which use women as cultural signifiers: religious fundamentalisms because they invariably promote the regulation ofwomen's sexuality, and nationalisms because they often rely on cultural arguments focused on modernity and tradition, a binary that can only serve to reproduce gendered inequalities. The political unpredictability ofthe lasttwo decades— as witnessed in the example ofLaura Bush taking up the fight on behalf ofAfghani women's liberation, an issue that one could imagine being addressed by Hillary Clinton, the previous First Lady in the U.S., wife ofa Democratic party president—is now condensed into the discussions of IX the war in Afghanistan. Given the above, what might be gained from drawing on the wide range offeminist analyses that Meridians provides? The subtitle ofthe journal—"feminism, race, transnationalism"—provides some clues because each ofthese three elements directs the gaze to differentyet connected aspects ofcritical writing. Feminist analyses, and I here include the many types offeminisms that I have encountered as I edit Meridians, guarantee that there will be at least an acknowledgment and sometimes an examination ofepistemológica! issues. Discussions of racism and race/ethnicity inevitably illuminate the complex workings of powerinequalities, and transnationalism serves as a reminderofthevariety ofways in which resistance may be expressed. Epistemology, power, and resistance are central to the project ofMeridians, and the essays in this second issue ofVolume Two are exemplars ofthese three processes. Yet epistemology, power, and resistance are sometimes understood as abstract and monolithic, which results in a consequent inattention to the fluid dynamics that organize their expression. The work included in this issue tackles these processes by asking readers to reflect on culture, the body, history, what working from the margins might involve, and demands that readers re-think what might be included within notions of activism and community. An emphasis on women's agency to reshape cultural forms, in contrast to the use ofwomen's bodies as objects upon which to inscribe cultural forms, is present in the pieces byIfi Amadiume, Grace Poore, Gita Rajan, and in the poetry/spoken word ofMarilyn Chin. All four authors discuss how culture provides a central site for meditating on women's agency by offering analytic essays, retrospective thoughts on the making ofa documentary , and poetry. This theme is continued in the fiction ofSejal Shah, the interview ofthe artist Sabah Naeem byJessica Winegar, and the essay by Shane Trudell Verge; these contributors also discuss culture, but more specifically as a place from which to understand how the bodies of differentwomen are sexed, by others as well as by thewomen themselves. An examination through the lens ofhistory is almost always present...

pdf

Share