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A Reflection on Tunisian Feminisms in the Post Revolution
Abstract
Much has been said about feminist groups’ bifurcation during the Tunisian revolution. The latter brought to sharp relief struggles over the meaning of democracy and women’s rights as it pertains to Islamists and secularists. These identity categories are still salient and have been relevant to “state feminism” under both Bourguiba and Ben Ali. However, the appropriation of “intersectionality” by Islamist women in the post-revolutionary state-building process, complicates this bifurcation by locating race and class at the center of Islamist feminists’ representations of themselves. As the two popular identifiers “Black Tunisian Feminism” and “Grassroots Feminism” show, “marginality,” “Blackness,” and “anti-secular sentiment” are now the terrain upon which new generations of feminists forge new identities and discourse. What kind of work does race do in this new positioning of Islamist feminists in Tunisia? Why is race a more relevant category to speak about class, gender, and women's rights than “Islam”? What kind of ruptures does the notion of race bring to “Islam as usual” discourse? What kind of transnational solidarities or bridges does the notion of intersectionality authorize in the Tunisian context? I propose to critically assess the shifts and continuities in Islamist feminists’ new positioning as the (black) voices of the “grassroots” and the "marginal.” I show the strengths and limits of an intersectional analysis and racial positioning by confronting it to a reality of feminist elites’ migration, the traveling discourse of racism these women bring with them from Europe, and the concrete policies against racism, classism, and gender inequities, that “Black Tunisian feminists” promote and support.
Discipline
Sociology
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies