Feminisms in Tension at the "Feminism in Crisis?" Conference

The "Feminism in Crisis? Gender and the Arab Public Sphere" conference, coconvened by Carmen Geha, Sara Mourad, and Rim Saab at the American University of Beirut, took place on January 19–20, 2018.¹ It included keynote addresses by Nadje Al-Ali (University of London), Hoda Elsadda (Cairo University), Frances S. Hasso (Duke University), Beth Baron (City University of New York), and Islah Jad (Birzeit University). It also included multiple panels that ran in parallel over two days. The conference organizers asked what feminism can accomplish "in the midst of the geopolitical crises sweeping the region, and between state feminism's lip service to women's rights on one hand and the NGOization of activism and political participation on the other."

While the conference disrupted the locality of feminist knowledge production and put feminisms in the region in conversation, it also brought to the surface different positionalities, tensions, complicities, and contestations. Some binaries were deconstructed and others reified. The intersection of gender with sexuality and migration was sidelined in favor of a focus on states, policy making, and the political mainstream.

The local relevance of knowledge production was central to discourse during the two-day conference, as participants attempted to interrogate and envision methodologies that would respond to the struggles of feminists in the region. Far from re-creating simplistic binaries of East versus West, the attention to place acknowledged the systemic power that comes with sites of knowledge production, whether in terms of resources, infrastructure, or opportunities, as Mourad asserted in her opening comments. Many gender studies programs in the region have had to grapple with authoritarianism, fundamentalism, and the romanticizing of cultural values and authenticity, as well as shortages in funding, access, and, in some cases, credibility. Participants in the keynote plenary, "Feminist Critique: Pedagogy and Scholarship in Times of Crisis," discussed some of these complexities at length. Mapping the geographies of feminist knowledge production is a necessary endeavor, and disrupting it is a feminist act.

The title of the conference evoked tensions and possibilities related to the concepts of "crisis," "Arab," and the "public sphere." The conference included lively discussions that challenged the homogenization of the region in neocolonial imaginaries and scholarship. In her opening comments, Mourad asserted that rather than delineating a site of rupture, "this conference is an opportunity to challenge normative definitions of crisis." Whether feminism itself is in crisis or operating in times of crisis was left to interpretation. The notion of crisis presupposes a linear narrative of smooth histories riddled with the ruptures of war. It too often assumes the times in between to be periods of stability and well-being for all people rather than recognizing the importance of positionality and privileges in how people experience times deemed "stable" or "in crisis." Communities, movements, and individuals experience and define crises heterogeneously.

Crisis as defined hegemonically often leads to the prioritization of some struggles over others, and a siloed approach to politics and discourse. As Hasso asserted, "Feminism is a way of looking at the world, and is not only embodied in certain identities." We want to extend this worldview, recognizing feminism as embracing rupture and recognizing heterogeneity. Differences within and across societies are often glossed over by macro formulations of empire and "peripheries," East and West. An analysis beyond these constructs reveals many complicities informed by the hegemony of structures of power. For instance, in 2017, Lebanese feminists and allies in Beirut policed migrant domestic workers on Labor Day, prompting Allison Finn to ask in her paper, "Coloniality and Complicity in Feminist Research and Activism," "How can we work through moments we are complicit with?"

While strategic complicity can be a matter of survival, we are more concerned with complicities that are actively in line with the system, since such alliances come at the expense of more disruptive forms of feminism. One complicity is the term Arab in discussions of the region, or what Menna Ahmed Agha called "hegemonic feminisms" in her paper, "Finding a Place for the Nubian Feminist," on the panel "Intersectional Feminism: Thought and Practice." For al-Ali and...