Donne, genere e sessualità nell’area mena

Résumé 0

My presentation aims to show how the MENA historiography has been impacted by both feminist and queer theoretical challenges that have emerged in the last 25 years. In this period there are some major events and factors that have triggered interest for women and gender issues and for their history, in particular: the Islamist parties’ increasing power and women’s reactions to it; the 9/11 tragic event and its consequences; the chain of “Islamist” terrorist attacks. An important role in the construction of this new historiography has been played by the researchers’ new consideration of the legacy of Edward Said’s seminal work Orientalism (1978). Both women and men working on MENA issue have acknowledged this legacy, so much so that their work is almost always framed in the critique of the “neo-Orientalism” paradigm. Last but not least, the global activism around gender and human rights developed in these decades has contributed to form a new mentality and to imbue the research with new inspiration. One of the issues I will discuss is how the multidisciplinary approach has proved to be crucial in order to write contemporary history. Scholars in many disciplines, from literature to the visual, have contributed with their own work to the construction of a new historiography. For example, some of the most important theoretical breakthroughs have been provided by anthropologists and sociologists: suffice it to remember the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi whose work explores the relationship among sexual ideology, gender identity, sociopolitical organization, and the status of women in the Muslim societies. I will not only discuss English language research on MENA women but also some of the major works in the area languages: in this way, I’ll try to show how, side by side with the general - and sometimes affected by neo-Orientalism- literature on women in the Middle East, there is a growing local scholarship that has both academic and political values.