Abstract
Does your feminism include Israel? In the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, this is the question that feminists have been asked, and explicitly singled out for censure by states, universities and media for our condemnation of the genocide. The first and obvious thing that must be said about the call for feminists to acknowledge Israeli suffering and, correspondingly, to deny Palestinian suffering is that as racial discourse, the mode of communication is one of “tabloid realism.” Simply put, communications proceed by way of the kinds of headlines one might see in the National Inquirer. The discursive field is littered with beheaded babies and mass rapes; the visual field features blood on the pants of Israeli women who were killed and images of women with legs splayed and underwear showing. These images generate racial affect. That is to say, they provoke and consolidate emotions that travel between bodies to form a deeply sedimented racial (anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab) affect, an affective charge in the collective unconscious that reasserts the racially superior subject whose culture is assumed to have transcended the oppression of women.
Presenters
Sherene RazackDistinguished Professor, Gender Studies, UCLA, California, United States Inderpal Grewal
Professor Emeritus, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Yale University, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—From Democratic Aesthetics to Digital Culture
KEYWORDS
War;Gendered violence
