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

First International Conference, June 28-29, 2007

Professor Rosemary Sayigh

Prof. Rosemary Sayigh is an anthropologist, oral historian and author of "Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries" London: Zed Books, 1977; and "Too Many Enemies: The Palestinian Experience in Lebanon" London: Zed Books, 1994.

Voicing women into history: stories of home

Representations of Arab and Muslim women have been a central element in Western missionizing and colonialism, part of a projection of 'backwardness' that was used as justification for a range of interventions that include the Zionist appropriation of Palestine. Since the 1948 Nakba, Palestinian resistance has taken many forms including women's mobilization. Yet class and gender hierarchy remain embedded in Palestinian communities and indeed in resistance itself. The current deepening political crisis is worsened by a divide between the political elite and the rural and urban poor, particularly refugee camps inhabitants and the internally displaced. Though ideologically mobilized as 'victims', women in camps have been historically deprived of voice. The Nakba of 1948 separated them from home (national, local and individual); the resistance movement mobilized them symbolically and actively, but without giving them 'voice'. By recording refugee women's stories of home (present, past or hoped for in the future), my hope is to initiate an archive that will place them in history, and form a resource for future self-directed activism. The 'home' as concrete framework of the protection/control duality of women's lives needs to be examined and re-conceptualized national and male ideas about what women do in the home need revision. Societal ideas of the home need to be expanded to include many kinds of national work. Subverting patriarchy requires a revision of ideas of resistance as not just struggle to liberate the country from an occupier but also a struggle to live better, aim for social justice, and the ending of class and gender hierarchy.