"Palestinian Voices: Feminist Thought As A Tool For Resistance"

First International Conference, June 28-29, 2007

Professor Sherene Razack

Sherene Razack is a professor at the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her research and teaching interests lie in the area of race and gender issues in the law. Her courses include: ‘Race, Space and Citizenship;’ Race and Knowledge Production’ and ‘Racial Violence and the Law.’ Her forthcoming book is entitled Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims From Western Law and Politics. (University of Toronto Press). Razack has also published Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (University of Toronto Press, 2004), an edited collection Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping A White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002), Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998,1999, 2000) and Canadian Feminism and the Law: The Women’s Legal and Education Fund and the Pursuit of Equality (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1991).

Race-Ing And Gendering The Camp

In this presentation, though a discussion of white settler violence in Canada, I will explore how spaces and bodies are constituted as states of exception, places where law has declared that the rule of law does not apply. Camps are thus created with, communities of people without the right to have rights. As Agamben and others have argued, violence may be directed with impunity against the inmates of the camp. I discuss how the violence of camps must be considered as a gendered, racial violence.