Reframing the War on Terror

by | Jan 6, 2024

This article seeks to expand the kinds of questions we ask about the diverse militarized campaigns referred to collectively as the “war on terror,” the grassroots resistance to these wars, and efforts committed to creating a world without destruction and killing. Shifting the focus of this feminist critique of war away from the center of power (the empire) to the everyday lives of feminist and queer activists living the war on terror from the ground up, this article examines a distinct feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) social movement that worked to respond to and resist the US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. We argue along with our interlocutors in Lebanon that asymmetrical systems of gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and family are entangled in the historical conditions of transnational capital, empire, and war, and necessitate an intersectional approach that refuses to impose false binaries or hierarchies on a complex social reality. We conclude by arguing the importance of reframing the war on terror and reimagining feminist and LGBTQ policies as a critique of the post-racial discourse, beyond dominant imperialist and nationalist discourses, which are exclusionary, sexist, and homophobic in different ways.

The Radical Potential of Mothering during the Egyptian Revolution

by | Jan 6, 2024

During the central perioD of the egyptian revolution—generally recognized as the eighteen days between January 25 and February 11, 2011—as well as the months that followed, mainstream Egyptian and US media discourses reified patriarchal nationalist notions of mothering and revolution. A Reuters article reflecting this pattern focused on celebrations that began the night before Mubarak’s ouster: “Mothers pushed little children in strollers, with red, white and black Egyptian flags painted on toddlers’ cheeks. People waved the national flag, danced and sang patriotic songs as soldiers looked on.” 1 This story, like many popular accounts of the Arab Spring, used images of mothers and children to underscore the point that all sectors of society participated, the implication being that even mothers—those subjects most “unpolitical,” “innocent,” and “unknowing,” even those most “sacred,” most disconnected from public space, and most closely connected to domestic reproductive labor—took to the streets.

Palestine Is Ethnic Studies: The Struggle for Arab American Studies in K–12 Ethnic Studies Curriculum (2023, with Lara Kiswani and Samia Shoman)

by | Dec 28, 2023

Kiswani, Lara, Nadine Naber, and Samia Shoman. “Palestine Is Ethnic Studies: The Struggle for Arab American Studies in K–12 Ethnic Studies Curriculum.” Journal of Asian American Studies 26, no. 2 (June 2023): 221–31. https://doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2023.a901070.

Abstract.
Ethnic Studies pedagogy is anchored in critically analyzing global white supremacy, US imperialism, and colonialism, which includes what happened to and continues in the Arab world. Given that most Arab countries are in Asia and the similarities and connections across “Arab” and “Asian” experiences, the field of Arab American studies found an early home within Asian American studies programs and academic journals. This article explores the emergence of Arab American studies from decades of research and teaching about the global scope of anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism and transnational Arab and Arab American resistance to US empire.

Muslim First, Arab Second

by | Dec 28, 2023

This article focuses on the deployment of one specific identity category, “Muslim First — Arab Second,” emergent among Arab American Muslims in San Francisco, California. 1 I argue elsewhere that the racialization of Islam within U.S. state and corporate media discourses, particularly in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, has provided a socio-historical context that makes the emergence of “Muslim First” as a collective identity possible. 2 Here I focus on how Muslim student activists have utilized this category as a strategy for articulating Muslim identities in their everyday lives. The narratives behind “Muslim First” are also gendered, deployed by many youths who argue that they provide a broad ideological framework for confronting and reconfiguring family relationships, in particular, their immigrant parents’ constructions of masculinity, femininity, and marriage. I also contend that intersections of race and gender are central to the articulation of “Muslim First” identities. When it comes to interracial marriage, for example, “Islam” becomes a vehicle for unsettling parental authority when parents inhibit their daughters from marrying across racial lines.

Middle East Section

by | Dec 28, 2023

February 2000 marked the birth of a cyber student network within MES. The network, also known as “aaamessnl” or The American Anthropology Association’s Middle East Section Student Network List, seeks to improve communication between anthropology students who conduct Middle East research. The list also serves to bridge the gap between students and MES board members. On aaamessnl, students post conference announcements, calls for papers, position openings, and news articles related to Middle East anthropology. Students also use aaamessnl to share research ideas and bibliographic references, seek feedback when grappling with research dilemmas and network among students with similar research interests. Some students have expressed interest in developing a committee to ensure that aaamessnl flourishes. Members are also discussing the possibilities of a fust annual aaamessnl meeting at the M A meetings in November 2000 when students might discuss the future of aaamessnl. To join aaamessnl send email to: majordomo@listlink.berkeley.edu. Write “subscribe aaamessnl“ as the text of your message. Aaamessnl postings are minimal and do not flood the in-boxes of its members. As an aaamessnl member, you wiU hear about our latest activities planned for AAA 2000.

Arab and Black Feminisms: Joint Struggle and Transnational Anti-Imperialist Activism (2016)

by | Dec 9, 2023

Published in Departures in Critical Qualitative Research

ABSTRACT: This essay explores the conditions out of which a diasporic anti-imperialist Arab feminist group came into alignment with the Women of Color Resource Center. It focuses on the history and leaders of the Women of Color Resource Center and its roots in the 1960s and 1970s people of color and women of color based movements in the United States in order to map alliances among black feminist thought, radical women of color movements, and Palestinian de-colonization then and now.

The Rules of Forced Engagement: Race, Gender, and the Culture of Fear among Arab Immigrants in San Francisco Post-9/11 (2006)

by | Dec 5, 2023

Naber, Nadine. “The Rules of Forced Engagement: Race, Gender, and the Culture of Fear among Arab Immigrants in San Francisco Post-9/11.” Cultural Dynamics 18, no. 3 (November 2006): 235–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/0921374006071614.

Based on ethnographic research on the impact of the aftermath of 11 September 2001 on Arab immigrant communities in San Francisco, this essay explores the ways that the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ has taken on local form in everyday life. I argue that the post-9/11 backlash is not a historical anomaly, but represents a recurring process of the construction of the Other within liberal polities in which long-term trends of racial exclusion become intensified within moments of crisis within the body politic. I further argue that class, gender, sexuality, religion, and citizenship simultaneously operated intersectionally to produce a variety of engagements with anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism. Finally, I argue that, together, state policies and everyday forms of harassment have produced an ‘internment of the psyche’, or an emotive form of internment that engenders multiple forms of power and control in the realm of the psyche.

Reflections on Feminist Interventions within the 2015 Anticorruption Protests in Lebanon

by | Dec 5, 2023

Abstract: This essay reflects upon the themes of collaborative research, intersectional feminist activism, and social movements against corruption and sectarianism in the context of Lebanon. The authors focus on the summer of 2015 when protesters filled the streets in response to the government’s mismanagement of garbage in what they called the “You Stink” movement. Feminists, primarily through the formation the “Feminist Bloc,” joined in the protests and presented nuanced frameworks for understanding the problem and mobilizing against the state with a gendered lens. In the pages that follow, the authors historicize the conditions that inspired feminist participation in these protests in order to present the perspectives of a few feminist activists voicing their own analysis of this period. In addition, they reflect upon what it means to write and research collaboratively, between the United States (Nadine) and Lebanon (Deema).