Frances S. Hasso, Associate Professor in Women’s Studies and Sociology at Duke University, will give a talk entitled:

“Racialized-Gendered Partition and Dissensus in Bahrain’s Pearl Revolution”

October 20, 2014 at 4:30 p.m.
Science Center Room 199

This paper examines the co-production and “interarticulation” of racializing/sectarian and gendering dynamics in Bahrain as longstanding conflict between the majority of citizens and the ruling Al Khalifa regime intensified into the ongoing 14 February Revolution, also called the Pearl Revolution. These dynamics are stamped on and produced through the organization of bodies and space. Embodied and spatialized dynamics are highlighted by the small geographic area of Bahrain, its residential partitions based on sect, ethnicity, and citizenship status, and its post-1979 culture of gender segregation in street life inspired by the Iranian Revolution. Among the Pearl Revolution’s notable dimensions is a rise in women-led confrontational street politics that is not necessarily authorized by Bahraini opposition men and has produced sublimated tensions not captured by images of gender-segregated orderly marches. For their part, Bahraini state officials and their supporters strategically deploy conservative ideologies of sexual respectability and purity to discredit women and men activists. Sectarian discourse, racialized naturalization and policing policies, and gendered and sexual forms of violence and control intersect in marked ways. The Pearl Revolution is a point of historical rupture, I argue, for imaginaries, subjectivities, and how gendered bodies inhabit space.

Co-sponsors: Departments of Sociology and Anthropology, Modern Languages and Literature (Arabic Section) and Political Science and programs in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Islamic Studies, and Peace and Conflict Studies.