Palestinian Feminist Critique and the Physics of Power: Feminists Between Thought and Practice

  • Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian Hebrew University of Jerusalem
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent/03/fal.108
Keywords: Nakba, physics of power, settler colonialism, dispossession, militarization, biopolitics

Abstract

Grounded in my own position as a Palestinian feminist born and raised in Haifa, this paper delves into the nature of feminism for Palestinian women in the Jewish settler colonial state by asking three main questions: How does the complex socio-political reality of settler colonialism reflect itself in the lives and status of Palestinian women living in Israel? What kind of critical feminist theorizing is needed from Palestinian feminists in Israel? How can we analyze and confront the racism of the historical silence of the majority of Israeli feminists towards the historical injustice and current violence faced by Palestinian feminists?  The paper underlines the importance of widening the critical feminist lens to account for the physics of power and calls for (a) the deconstruction of feminisms that have refused to regard the Nakba as a focal analytical and actual source of feminist theorization and (b) defiance in the face of global, regional, and local amnesia towards the Palestinian right to life in the face of Israel’s necropolitical regime of control.

Author Biography

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Director of the Gender Studies Program at Mada al-Carmel and Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law- the Faculty of Law, Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Published
2014-05-02
How to Cite
Shalhoub-KevorkianN. (2014). Palestinian Feminist Critique and the Physics of Power: Feminists Between Thought and Practice. feminists@law, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent/03/fal.108
Issue
Vol 4 No 1 (2014)
Section
BDS as a Feminist Issue
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