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
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