points.of.crossing

‘The media coverage of the Middle East since September 11, 2001, points to the necessity of a cultural critique that can attend to the discourses of representation through which those tragic events were made transparent. My work is located at the interstices of postcolonialism and feminism with a view to investigating the complex discourses of cultural representations in order to provide an interventionary and counterdiscourse. At a time when Western, and particularly (North) American, relations with the Middle East are in a state of crisis, this text attempts to provide historical perspectives and current insights into a nation branded by U.S. president George W. Bush as part of an “axis of evil,” and examines the ways in which liberal feminist discourse has been and continues to be complicit with dominant discursive representations of “Other” nations and women.’

“So when I look at Black women, like the Black female organizer of Slutwalk NYC who was asked to ask Erin Clark to take down her sign, I see us doing what we’ve always done—taking a broad view of movements that have clear red flags when it comes to inclusion in order to serve the greater good of women. While white women often want to deploy ‘woman’ as a universal category and have the nerve to get angry and defensive when Black women like myself point out differences in our experiences, it is Black women themselves who have demonstrated what it really means to care about women as a group. For we put our bodies and our psyches on the line to show up at events called ‘Slutwalks’ knowing that we are both more vulnerable to the same violence that brought other women there and yet that we have little social privilege and power to reclaim the terms in the ways that many of the others marchers do. But we show up anyway, and in showing up, white women feel like they are being inclusive, when in fact, I would argue that most Black women, are showing up in spite of, not because of, Slutwalk’s inclusivity.”

A brief introduction to and overview of the history and state of erotic literature, selected from “Arab states” (taken as a cultural unit, however problematically), Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, and the Ottoman legacy.

From the Encyclopaedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, Volume 5, on Scribd.