ABSTRACT
The events marking the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Edward Said’s 1978 Orientalism provide an excellent occasion to reflect on the book’s impact on Middle East gender and women’s studies. In some ways Orientalism and feminist studies have, in Marilyn Strathern’s memorable phrase, an awkward relationship. If works such as these are meant as correctives to Said’s relative “neglect” of gender and sexuality, the bulk of work within Middle East gender studies has seen Orientalism instead as providing a strong rationale for careful and sympathetic research. Feminist scholarship too is, by definition, an engaged scholarship because it is premised on a concern about the condition of women and usually involves a critique of the structures that oppress them. For many feminists from the region, not just “tradition” but Islamism is also seen as a threat to women.
