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Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence

Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence RESPONSE Brinda Mehta London: Routledge, 2014 292 pages. ISBN 9780415730440 BRINDA MEHTA Editors’ Note: Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence won the African Literature Association’s 2016 Book of the Year Award for “its originality, meticulous research, detailed analysis, nuances, anti-essentialist negotiations of identity, thought-provoking feminist stand, and groundbreaking examination of the diverse forms of Arab women’s creative dissidence. The committee was unanimous in its decision to award the prize to Professor Mehta” (Soraya Mekerta, Spelman College, past president [2013–14] of the African Literature Association). This is a response to Abdelkader Cheref ’s review of my book Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence in this journal (13:3 [November 2017]: 438–41). Cheref was gratuitously patronizing, sloppy, and dismissive, as well as misinformed, in his review. I respond to only some of his egregious mistakes. Accusing me of essentialism foridentifying the women writerswhose worksI analyzeasArab, Cheref offers geneticand racialized essentialisms as an alternative—for example, “Maghrebis are Imazighen (Ber- bers) and not Arab” and “Egyptians are not genetically Arab” (438). Cheref seems unaware of postcolonial and antiracialist contestations of genetic and other forms of identity essen- tialism. Beyond the problematic intellectual and theoretical lack these comments indicate, the women http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Middle East Women's Studies Duke University Press

Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence

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Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies
ISSN
1552-5864
eISSN
1558-9579
DOI
10.1215/15525864-6680322
Publisher site
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Abstract

RESPONSE Brinda Mehta London: Routledge, 2014 292 pages. ISBN 9780415730440 BRINDA MEHTA Editors’ Note: Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence won the African Literature Association’s 2016 Book of the Year Award for “its originality, meticulous research, detailed analysis, nuances, anti-essentialist negotiations of identity, thought-provoking feminist stand, and groundbreaking examination of the diverse forms of Arab women’s creative dissidence. The committee was unanimous in its decision to award the prize to Professor Mehta” (Soraya Mekerta, Spelman College, past president [2013–14] of the African Literature Association). This is a response to Abdelkader Cheref ’s review of my book Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence in this journal (13:3 [November 2017]: 438–41). Cheref was gratuitously patronizing, sloppy, and dismissive, as well as misinformed, in his review. I respond to only some of his egregious mistakes. Accusing me of essentialism foridentifying the women writerswhose worksI analyzeasArab, Cheref offers geneticand racialized essentialisms as an alternative—for example, “Maghrebis are Imazighen (Ber- bers) and not Arab” and “Egyptians are not genetically Arab” (438). Cheref seems unaware of postcolonial and antiracialist contestations of genetic and other forms of identity essen- tialism. Beyond the problematic intellectual and theoretical lack these comments indicate, the women

Journal

Journal of Middle East Women's Studies – Duke University Press

Published: Jul 1, 2018

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