The Cunning of Gender Violence focuses on how a once visionary feminist project has folded itself into contemporary world affairs. Combating violence against women and gender-based violence constitutes a highly visible and powerful agenda enshrined in international governance and law and embedded in state violence and global securitization. Case studies on Palestine, Bangladesh, Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel, and Turkey as well as on UN and US policies trace the silences and omissions, along with the experiences of those subjected to violence, to question the rhetoric that claims the agenda as a "feminist success story." Because religion and racialized ethnicity, particularly "the Muslim question," run so deeply through the institutional structures of the agenda, the contributions explore ways it may be affirming or enabling rationales and systems of power, including civilizational hierarchies, that harm the very people it seeks to protect. Contributors. Lila Abu-Lughod, Nina Berman, Inderpal Grewal, Rema Hammami, Janet R. Jakobsen, Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Vasuki Nesiah, Samira Shackle, Sima Shakhsari, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Dina M Siddiqi, Shahla Talebi, Leti Volpp, Rafia Zakaria
Lila Abu-Lughod is Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. Rema Hammami is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Institute of Women's Studies at Birzeit University. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is Professor of Criminology and Social Work at The Hebrew University and Chair in Global Law at Queen Mary University of London.
Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Circuits of Power in GBVAW Governance / Lila Abu-Lughod, Rema Hammami, and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian 1 I. Securitization 1. Lawfare, CVE, and International Conflict Feminism / Vasuki Nesiah 55 2. Securofeminism: Embracing a Phantom / Lila Abu-Lughod 88 3. The Role of "Honor Killings" in the Muslim Ban / Leti Volpp 122 4. Because Religion: Does Something Called "Religion" Cause Gender-Based Violence? / Janet R. Jakobsen 151 II. States of Violence, Unruly Subjects 5. GBV and Postcolonial India: Transnational Media, Hindutva, and Muslim Racializations / Inderpal Grewal 177 6. The Politics of Legislating "Honor Crime" in Contemporary Pakistan / Shenila Khoja-Moolji 209 7. State Criminality and Gender-Based Violence: Palestinian Schoolgirls between Books and Rifles / Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian 233 8. Power, Subjectivity, and Sexuality in Iranian Political Prisons / Shahla Talebi 259 III. Civilizing Interventions: Development and Humanitarianism 9. Child Marriage in the Feminist Imagination / Dina M. Siddiqi 293 10. Catastrophic Aid: GBV Humanitarianism in Gaza / Rema Hammami 324 11. What Counts as Violence? Transgender Refugees, Torture, and Sanctions / Sima Shakhsari 361 IV. Media Frames 12. Weaponized Bodies: Female Genital Mutilation and Immigrant Exclusion / Rafia Zakaria 391 13. Breaking the Frame: The Power of Media Narratives and the Question of Agency / Samira Shackle 405 14. Dressed Up, Stripped Down: Media Depictions of Conflict Rape / Nina Berman 422 Contributors 439 Index 445
"The Cunning of Gender Violence is a riveting and much-needed interdisciplinary collection that aims both to understand and radically shift the securitized, racialized, and imperial approaches to gender violence that dominate law, policy, and the media. Compellingly calling on feminists to recognize the Faustian bargain they have struck by perpetuating these dominant approaches, the book brings to the fore lives and experiences that have often been relegated to the margins of global feminist attention, even as they are at the center of multiple forms of quotidian global and state violence." - Karen Engle, author of (author of The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict: Feminist Interventions in International Law) "Those committed to an anti-Muslim agenda appoint themselves as modern, humanitarian, democratic, and feminist, a status achieved against a Third World constituted as premodern, illiberal, Muslim, and uniquely given to gender-based violence. It is a major contribution of this book to show how global racial governance is achieved through the idea of gender-based violence as a defining feature of Third World cultures and communities." - Sherene H. Razack, author of (Nothing Has to Make Sense: Upholding White Supremacy through Anti-Muslim Racism) "A remarkable piece of work within the realm of geopolitical feminism. ... It stands out for its sharp acumen and the detailed analysis of scholars who have dedicated themselves to researching and confronting gender-based violence against women in various global contexts." - Yanyan Zhu (Affilia) "In brief, this volume represents a thorough investigation and assessment of the trajectory of the feminist project to combat violence against women in the wider context of global and local circuits of religious and political power. Recommended. Graduate students and faculty." - A. Rassam (Choice)
