In
Amar’s article, “Turning the Gendered Politics of the Security State Inside
Out?”, he addresses how Egyptian women were demoralized, sexually assaulted
in public by police for protesting against the regime. The anger towards the
women who protested against police brutality and the change of regime brought
gender inferiority in Egyptian police since they were not seen as “rescuer for
women” or “victim protector” instead a legitimate protestor. In
the discourse of sexualized brutality, Amar discusses about the hyper
visibility of Lara logon’s case. How Fox News described the entire Egypt for
not being ready for modernity or democracy, and Egyptian men as a whole
represented as predatory rather ignoring the fact that they were sub contracted
thugs sent by the regime and Logon was rescued by Egyptian women and military. This
challenges domestic versus international “logic of hyper visibility” focus on
processes by racialized, sexualized subjects, or the marked bodies of
subordinate classes, become intensely visible as objects of state, police and
media gazes.
Nazmabadi,
in her article, “Vatan, the Beloved; Vatan, the Mother” argues why “Vatan” has
to be a gendered; why female beloved and why a mother? She also discusses how
literature has probed the productive work of gender and sexuality in generating
modern nationalism and patriotism however it has ignored how patriotism and
nationalism create a binary of gender and hetero normalization of sexuality.
Regardless of its geopolitical boundaries, “Vatan”, seen as a female body,
to protect, to posses, to kill or to die. The meaning for Vatan has shifted
from Mother earth to beloved territory, rejecting Sufi meaning of Vatan which
had to do with the desire to belong to community of faith, or the passion for
unity with the divine to modern day patriotism of passion for a national
homeland. Also, this article reflects how literature has been successful to use
metaphorical language and images to portray and contextualize Vatan with Iranian masculinity.
What I found most interesting about Najmabadi's article was how obsessively the vatan was viewed as feminine, motherly, even so that the treaties defined the borders or Iran in a way that it envisaged it as the outline of a female body, and as you said, one that must be loved and protected. So if there was any sort of attack, it would be as if they were penetrating a female body. How can a land become to gendered? And how they fetishized the soil? Like it was an inadequate substitute for the vatan.
ReplyDeleteSujata provided a great response to the two readings, especially the piece written by Amar. The production of political subjects involved in protests requires that a gendered distinction be defined. Amar specifically cites the appropriation of protestors into terrorists beginning in the 1990's. The protesters were identified as explicitly masculine and aggressive. Amar wrote, "Protestors were resignified as crazed mobs of brutal men, vaguely 'Islamist' and fiercely irrational, depicted according to the conventions of nineteenth-century-colonial-Orientalist figurations..."(308). As Amar later explained, once middle-class Egyptian women were at the forefront of protests, the security state was forced to alter their public perception as well. Amar does an excellent job of detailing the role an institution can have in controlling the success or agency of a group of activists, as well as how the response to protestors can shift with domestic and international perception.
ReplyDeleteSujatas post was very informative about the two articles. I found Amars article to be very interesting because it really explained the truth in what was happening in Egypt. Anyone who was involved in the uprisings were tortured, sexually harrassed and humiliated. I remember seeing the uprising in the news and I was chocked by it. What stuck to me in this article was how Fox New judged the entire Egyptian people for not being ready for modernity and democracy because of Lara Logans case.
ReplyDeleteThank you Sujata for your post, I found both articles very interesting. However, i must say that the artical by Paul Amar was more striking. I remember hearing about this when it happened, but then I saw the interview with Lara Logan. What Fox News did was keep feeding this stereotype that Middle Eastern men are monsters, sex crazed, and violent among other things. In the article it also states that Fox News condemned Egypt and decided that they are not "ready for modernity or democracy." When seeing the interview with 60 MINS they repeatedly said that sexual abuse and harassment are very common in Egypt. How do they know that? are they studying it themselves? As it states in the article it was never once mentioned in the News that the harassers could have been contracted thugs. Instead, Fox took the story and used it as an example of why we cant trust Egyptian or Middle Eastern men. I will try and post the 60 MINS interview if I can figure it out.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO12X1nhzzk
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdCvDgmElss