Gender-Based Violence in the Middle-East: A Review

Feminist Dilemmas: How to Talk About Gender-Based Violence in Relation to the Middle East?

Feminist Review ◽

10.1177/0141778919849525 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 122 (1) ◽

pp. 16-31

Author(s):

Nadje Al-Ali

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Knowledge Production ◽

Middle Eastern ◽

Gender Based Violence ◽

Gender Based

The article charts my trajectories as a feminist activist/academic seeking to research, write and talk about gender-based violence in relation to the Middle East. More specifically, I am drawing on research and activism in relation to Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon to map the discursive, political and empirical challenges and complexities linked to scholarship and activism that is grounded in both feminist and anti-racist/anti-Islamophobic politics. While reflecting on my positionality, the article aims to challenge the binary of activism and academia as well as Western and Middle Eastern contexts in terms of knowledge production.

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Femicide and the Speaking State

Journal of Middle East Women s Studies ◽

10.1215/15525864-8637409 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 283-306

Author(s):

Sumru Atuk

Keyword(s):

Discourse Analysis ◽

Middle East ◽

Critical Discourse Analysis ◽

Speech Acts ◽

Political Rhetoric ◽

Social Consequences ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

Complex Relationship ◽

Gender Based Violence ◽

Gender Based

Abstract High rates of gender-based violence and sexist political rhetoric are central features of contemporary Turkey. This article explores the complex relationship between the two by drawing on the literature that investigates the (re)making of the category of “woman” in the Middle East and the scholarship on femicide/feminicide. The article employs critical discourse analysis of ruling politicians’ gender-normative statements and shows how they reconstruct the category of “proper woman” as one with institutional and social consequences that compromise women’s safety. Using John L. Austin’s theory of performative speech acts, the article develops a theory of the speaking state to explain the effects of political speech. Ultimately it argues that the politics of “woman making” is central to “the politics of woman killing.”

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