A Plea To ‘Middle Eastern and North African’ Feminists: Let’s Liberate Ourselves from Notions of Coloniality

Abstract

The 15th of October 2019 was a sunny day in the beautiful city of Rabat, Morocco. A group of twenty fellows at the ‘Women and Politics: Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Experiences’ programme gathered in the hotel’s meeting room to present our work and receive feedback from one another. When it was my turn to share my review, I challenged the persistent dominance of canonical Western theory and methodologies to study and understand women and gender in the ‘MENA’ region. In that moment, I was able to voice a different opinion thanks to the academic resilience and grounding which I owe to the emotional labour and scholarly contributions of pioneering anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist decolonial feminists. I also draw my inspiration from conversations and contentions I continue to have with mentors and colleagues who are concerned with destabilising accepted modes of knowledgemaking in other regions of the world.