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The author investigates the configurations of power implicated in the production of the discourses on the 'muslim woman' in the West and North Africa. She argues that as a single category, the 'muslim woman' is an 'invention', whether in the Western discourses of Orientalism (Isabelle Eberhardt) and psychoanalytic feminism (De Beauvoir, Irigaray, Cixous and Lacan), or in the discourses of islamic feminism (Djebar and Mernissi) and Maghrebian nationalism (Habib Bourguiba and Tahar al Haddad).
This book presents a detailed critical analysis of the work of Fatima Mernissi. Mernissi is considered to be one of the major figures in Feminist thought for both Morocco and Muslim society in general. This work discusses Mernissi's intellectual trajectory from 'secular' to 'Islamic' feminism in order to trace the evolution of so-called Islamic feminist theory. The book also engages critically with the work of other Muslim feminists, using frameworks and approaches developed in the works of Muslim reformist thinkers, namely Mohammed Arkoun and Nasr Abu Zaid, with the aim of engaging the theorization of this emerging Feminism.
With interdisciplinary analyses of texts whose origins span the diversity of the Jewish and Muslim traditions, the provocative essays collected in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Francophone World offer startling insights into the meaning of the volatile history of this conflict in the Francophone world. In France and the Francophone world, the hostilities of the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict are consistently reenacted in cultural clashes between the large Muslim and Jewish populations within France and throughout the Francophone Diaspora. The notable scholars appearing in this collection interrogate the complex history of this conflict – from the beginnings of Zionism in 1897 to the first and second Intifada of 1987 and 2000 – and give unique perspectives culled from a diverse range of literary, philosophical, historical, and psychoanalytic frameworks. An important and unique volume, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Francophone World, will shed new light for the reader on the dense ideological antagonisms at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will surely be celebrated as an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and teachers alike.
Long repressed following the collapse of empire, memories of the French colonial experience have recently gained unprecedented visibility. In popular culture, scholarly research, personal memoirs, public commemorations, and new ethnicities associated with the settlement of postcolonial immigrant minorities, the legacy of colonialism is now more apparent in France than at any time in the past. How is this upsurge of interest in the colonial past to be explained? Does the commemoration of empire necessarily imply glorification or condemnation? To what extent have previously marginalized voices succeeded in making themselves heard in new narratives of empire? While veils of secrecy have been lifted, what taboos still remain and why? These are among the questions addressed by an international team of leading researchers in this interdisciplinary volume, which will interest scholars in a wide range of disciplines including French studies, history, literature, cultural studies, and anthropology.
Veiled women in the West appear menacing. Their visible invisibility is a cause of obsession. What is beneath the veil more than a woman? This book investigates the preoccupation with the veiled body through the imaging and imagining of Muslim women. It examines the relationship between the body and knowledge through the politics of freedom as grounded in a ‘natural’ body, in the index of flesh. The impulse to unveil is more than a desire to free the Muslim woman. What lies at the heart of the fantasy of saving the Muslim woman is the West’s desire to save itself. The preoccupation with the veiled woman is a defense that preserves neither the object of orientalism nor the difference embodied in women’s bodies, but inversely, insists on the corporeal boundaries of the West’s mode of knowing and truth-making. The book contends that the imagination of unveiling restores the West’s sense of its own power and enables it to intrude where it is ‘other’ – thus making it the centre and the agent by promising universal freedom, all the while stifling the question of what freedom is.
To what extent, and precisely how, are nationalism and patriotism transnational processes? Youth Mobilization in Vichy Indochina and Its Legacies analyzes the causes and consequences of state-sponsored patriotic youth associations during World War II in French Indochina. Providing an historical account of the transnational policy process of youth mobilization during World War II, this book describes how officials transplanted French doctrines to Indochina with sensitivity toward the varying local political contexts and cultural traditions the French believed they had found there. Engaging the work of Benedict Anderson on nationalism in the Third World, Raffin details the mechanisms by which a set of French colonial practices and discourses sponsored by the colonial state promoted nationalism among local youth and helped to lead the countries of the former French Indochina toward militaristic regimes. This well-researched volume provides a valuable contribution to a period of Indochinese history that is still little studied, and is important reading for students and scholars of colonial history who seek a long-term historical perspective on empire and post-empire state building.
At the intersection of literary, cultural, and postcolonial studies, this volume looks at French perceptions of 'Indochina' as they are conveyed through a variety of media including cinema, literature, art, and historical or anthropological writings. The volume is long awaited, as France's memory of 'Indochina' is understudied compared to its relationship with its former colonies in West and North Africa. The book has contemporary urgency as the makeup of France's immigrant population changes and grows to include Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotioan populations.
This groundbreaking book analyzes a wide range of literary and visual texts, many of which have not received treatment elsewhere, and promotes an emergent canon of women's writing and film.
Are human rights universal or the product of specific cultures? Is democracy a necessary condition for the achievement of human rights in practice? And when, if ever, is it legitimate for external actors to impose their understandings of human rights upon particular countries? In the contemporary context of globalization, these questions have a salient religious dimension. Religion intersects with global human rights agendas in multiple ways, including: whether ''universal'' human rights are in fact an imposition of Christian understandings; whether democracy, the ''rule of the people,'' is compatible with God's law; and whether international efforts to enforce human rights including religio...
OUREGANO is a scathing indictment of the self-absorbed consciousness responsible for individual and collective social failure in 1950s central Africa. At its heart is seven-year-old Tiffany Murano, who arrives with her parents at this fictional French colonial outpost. The novel threads through the minds of its diverse characters--French and African, young and old--in a bitter, sometimes hilariously funny, and ultimately achingly sad critique of colonialism.