Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.2979/jfemistudreli.39.2.03
Emma McDonald
Abstract: The predominance of patriarchy in Christian communities has supported paternal metaphors over maternal analogues for describing God's action in the world. Feminist theologians have long advocated for the inclusion of women's experiences in God-talk, but navigating how to incorporate maternal imagery for the divine presents numerous pitfalls. This article draws on an expansive definition of motherhood that includes varied social and biological constructions of motherhood to illuminate how experiences of reproductive loss, transgender pregnancy, spiritual motherhood, and maternal grief and activism help envision a trinitarian maternal divine characterized by compassion and a zeal for justice. Ultimately, the article argues that troubling the category of "mother" can generate creative applications of maternal metaphors that remind us of the impassibility and interdependence of God. It also aims to challenge the notion that motherhood must be lauded and upheld over and above other metaphors for God in the world.
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.2979/jfemistudreli.39.2.11
Celene Ibrahim
Of Poets and JestersMethodologies and Reception Politics in Qurʾanic Studies Celene Ibrahim (bio) As Hadia Mubarak, Halla Attallah, Rahel Fischbach, and Yasmin Amin each rightfully point out, given the polyvocality of the Qurʾan and the exegetical depth of the tradition, much ground remains to be covered. As discussants in this round-table, we find ourselves at the intersection of qurʾanic studies in the secularized academy and the methods for studying the Qurʾan developed within Muslim intellectual traditions over the past fourteen hundred years. We occupy the juncture of the two seas of knowledge production: the secularized academy and the devotional scholarly sphere. Given that the secularized academy is in the midst of a fraught decolonization process—thanks in large part to the efforts of feminist scholars—those of us writing constructive exegesis must think carefully about our positionality. We who sit conspicuously at the juncture of the seas of knowledge production must make self-conscious choices about our scholarly motivations and register. The primary choices, as I have experienced them, are as follows: Get the Bulse, Lose the Pulse Successfully writing for the overlords and sultans of academia, we may vie to secure a feeble stage and some accordingly precarious sense of job security. To do so, we must segregate from the everyday religious folk. We will be cultured and dined, but our intellectual production will become unintelligible to all but those with sufficiently refined tastes, for what is exquisite in sequestered halls is made so precisely through its inaccessibility. We become deadened to living communities of practice. Alas, sacrifices must be made! Better a Jester We could lean into the more applied dimensions of our craft. We may be politely eschewed by academia's caesars and sultans for becoming too vulgar. [End Page 79] Given that we resonate with the everyday folk, we have reason to keep company with the merchants—in our case, the publishers—who happily sell commodities generated by our labor to meet the demonstratable demand. We may have lost audiences in the court, but we have gained audiences in the higgledy-piggledy streets and bustling marketplaces. Realizing that we are in good company, we may find contentment in our freedom from courtly strictures. Caught in the unpredictable currents of intellectual decolonization processes, many of us shape our craft to the tastes of the colonial overlords—the senior scholars who have institutional authority, the search and tenure committees, the elite fellowships juries, and so forth. We know that we must use a register that pleases these caesars and sultans of the academy or we risk becoming demoted jesters, the village fools at the margins of academia who speak out of their indigenous epistemes without fear.1 Considering my intersecting Muslim and secular intellectual genealogies and position as a "tentative mufassira,"2 I advocate for a constructive approach that we might amb
正如Hadia Mubarak, Halla Attallah, Rahel Fischbach和Yasmin Amin各自正确地指出的那样，鉴于古兰经的多音性和传统的训诂深度，还有很多领域有待研究。作为本次圆桌会议的讨论嘉宾，我们发现自己处在世俗化学院的《古兰经》研究和过去1400年来穆斯林知识传统中发展起来的《古兰经》研究方法的交汇处。我们处在知识生产的两个海洋的交汇处:世俗化的学术和虔诚的学术领域。鉴于世俗化的学术正处于令人担忧的去殖民化进程之中——这在很大程度上要归功于女权主义学者的努力——我们这些撰写建设性训诂的人必须仔细思考我们的立场。我们这些坐在知识生产海洋的结合处的人必须对我们的学术动机和注册做出自觉的选择。正如我所经历的，主要的选择如下:得到Bulse，失去脉搏成功地为学术界的君主和苏丹写作，我们可能会争取获得一个虚弱的舞台和相应的一些不稳定的工作安全感。要做到这一点，我们必须与日常的宗教人士隔离开来。我们将有教养，吃得饱足，但我们的智力成果将变得只有那些品味十分高雅的人才理解不了，因为在幽静的大厅里的精致之物，正是通过它的不可接近而形成的。我们对活生生的实践团体变得麻木。唉，牺牲是必须的!我们可以更深入地研究我们技艺的应用领域。我们可能会因为太粗俗而被学术界的“凯撒”和“苏丹”礼貌地避开。考虑到我们与普通人产生共鸣，我们有理由与商人保持联系——在我们的例子中，是出版商——他们愉快地出售由我们的劳动产生的商品，以满足可证明的需求。我们可能在宫廷里失去了观众，但在杂乱的街道和熙熙攘攘的市场里，我们赢得了观众。意识到我们有好伙伴，我们可能会在摆脱宫廷束缚中找到满足。在知识非殖民化进程的不可预测的潮流中，我们中的许多人都按照殖民统治者的口味来塑造我们的艺术——拥有机构权威的高级学者、研究和终身教职委员会、精英奖学金陪审团等等。我们知道，我们必须使用一种令这些学术界的凯撒和苏丹满意的语言，否则我们就有可能沦为降级的弄臣，沦为学术界边缘的乡巴佬，毫无畏惧地说出自己的本土知识考虑到我的交叉的穆斯林和世俗的知识谱系和作为一个“尝尝性的穆法西拉”的地位，2我提倡一种建设性的方法，我们可以雄心勃勃地将其描述为tafsir tawḥidī，既认为这两个知识海洋是一个整体，也把解释伊斯兰一神论的细节作为其最终关注的问题在初步的意义上，我们可以将tafs . r tawḥidī描述为致力于:(1)在与解释史的对话中进行严格的语言学、语法、修辞和结构分析;(2)关注《古兰经》话语的社会学和情感维度以及《古兰经》修辞的情感影响;(3)根据我们这个时代紧迫的社会问题，以一种易于理解的方式阐明我们与古兰经话语接触中出现的道德和虔诚的要求;(4)参与文本、化身和现象学的理论学术论述。tafsir tawḥidī的方法是认真整合，不回避应用，建设性的，文学的，历史的，或理论话语。在古兰经研究中，有没有一种方法可以在不被任何一种潮流冲走的情况下，占据知识生产的两个海洋的结合处?如果有，我会去寻找。如果没有，我就带着警帽和铃铛等着。[End Page 81] Celene Ibrahim Celene Ibrahim是《伊斯兰教和一神论》(2022)和《女性与性别》的作者。
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.2979/jfs.2023.a908313
Vijaya Nagarajan
Narratives of the Body and ShameDegrees of Invisibility/Visibility in Public Spaces Vijaya Nagarajan1 (bio) It is the first day of classes, spring semester, in January 2022. I am on my way to work at my university.2 I am standing at an East Bay BART station, a part of the public transportation train system in the San Francisco Bay Area. This particular day, I notice, to my surprise, that my experience in these normative public spaces is entirely different from the semester before. Every time the train screams into the station, the hair bristles on the back of my neck, and rivulets of sweat run down my arms. I press my back hard against the concrete wall, just about nine feet away from the tracks. My feet, in my fastest running shoes, are ready to run in either direction. But the problem is, I do not know and cannot know exactly where my attacker will be coming from. I am afraid, in a way I have never been before. I have spent most of my life in the United States, though not all of it. I am an immigrant from India. I arrived as an eleven-year-old Tamil girl from New Delhi in 1972, fifty years—a half-century—ago. I never expected that I would face this kind of fear as a sixty-year-old woman in the United States. I somehow [End Page 127] imagined that by now, I would feel a deep sense of belonging here inside this landscape, this place I would easily call my own. The reason is, as a child, I had simply imagined a linear curve in the degrees of inclusion I would experience as I spent more and more time in the United States. But as we clearly know, popular movements of feminism and anti-feminism, racism and antiracism, and environmentalism and anti-environmentalism do not linearly construct themselves in the historical periodicities of time. Instead, the historical timelines of racism and antiracism movements, feminism and anti-feminism, and environmentalism and anti-environmentalism are nonlinear, so that they are shaped as much by anti-racism resistance movements and racism movements propelled by specific charismatic, popular figures and the politics, economics, and religions shaping both civic and personal lives. I hope that my eyes peering over my black pandemic mask do not reveal my terror. Normally, when I was waiting for a BART train, I would have a book to read for fun in my hands, my eyes absorbed, without any sense of danger. Or I would be looking at my cell phone, texting and catching up on digital life. Or I would start talking to the person next to me, also waiting in line. But I no longer feel I can do those things. I no longer have that freedom. I watch, though, how other folks on the platform can still do those things. That incident that happened a few days ago has only touched some of us in a way that has changed us, changed our behavior, changed our standing in the world. Instead, I watch, closely scanning the faces all around me, trying to guess which one might hate the color of my skin, or the shape of my eyes. I feel strangely dis
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.2979/jfs.2023.a908301
Celene Ibrahim
Of Poets and JestersMethodologies and Reception Politics in Qurʾanic Studies Celene Ibrahim (bio) As Hadia Mubarak, Halla Attallah, Rahel Fischbach, and Yasmin Amin each rightfully point out, given the polyvocality of the Qurʾan and the exegetical depth of the tradition, much ground remains to be covered. As discussants in this round-table, we find ourselves at the intersection of qurʾanic studies in the secularized academy and the methods for studying the Qurʾan developed within Muslim intellectual traditions over the past fourteen hundred years. We occupy the juncture of the two seas of knowledge production: the secularized academy and the devotional scholarly sphere. Given that the secularized academy is in the midst of a fraught decolonization process—thanks in large part to the efforts of feminist scholars—those of us writing constructive exegesis must think carefully about our positionality. We who sit conspicuously at the juncture of the seas of knowledge production must make self-conscious choices about our scholarly motivations and register. The primary choices, as I have experienced them, are as follows: Get the Bulse, Lose the Pulse Successfully writing for the overlords and sultans of academia, we may vie to secure a feeble stage and some accordingly precarious sense of job security. To do so, we must segregate from the everyday religious folk. We will be cultured and dined, but our intellectual production will become unintelligible to all but those with sufficiently refined tastes, for what is exquisite in sequestered halls is made so precisely through its inaccessibility. We become deadened to living communities of practice. Alas, sacrifices must be made! Better a Jester We could lean into the more applied dimensions of our craft. We may be politely eschewed by academia's caesars and sultans for becoming too vulgar. [End Page 79] Given that we resonate with the everyday folk, we have reason to keep company with the merchants—in our case, the publishers—who happily sell commodities generated by our labor to meet the demonstratable demand. We may have lost audiences in the court, but we have gained audiences in the higgledy-piggledy streets and bustling marketplaces. Realizing that we are in good company, we may find contentment in our freedom from courtly strictures. Caught in the unpredictable currents of intellectual decolonization processes, many of us shape our craft to the tastes of the colonial overlords—the senior scholars who have institutional authority, the search and tenure committees, the elite fellowships juries, and so forth. We know that we must use a register that pleases these caesars and sultans of the academy or we risk becoming demoted jesters, the village fools at the margins of academia who speak out of their indigenous epistemes without fear.1 Considering my intersecting Muslim and secular intellectual genealogies and position as a "tentative mufassira,"2 I advocate for a constructive approach that we might amb
正如Hadia Mubarak, Halla Attallah, Rahel Fischbach和Yasmin Amin各自正确地指出的那样，鉴于古兰经的多音性和传统的训诂深度，还有很多领域有待研究。作为本次圆桌会议的讨论嘉宾，我们发现自己处在世俗化学院的《古兰经》研究和过去1400年来穆斯林知识传统中发展起来的《古兰经》研究方法的交汇处。我们处在知识生产的两个海洋的交汇处:世俗化的学术和虔诚的学术领域。鉴于世俗化的学术正处于令人担忧的去殖民化进程之中——这在很大程度上要归功于女权主义学者的努力——我们这些撰写建设性训诂的人必须仔细思考我们的立场。我们这些坐在知识生产海洋的结合处的人必须对我们的学术动机和注册做出自觉的选择。正如我所经历的，主要的选择如下:得到Bulse，失去脉搏成功地为学术界的君主和苏丹写作，我们可能会争取获得一个虚弱的舞台和相应的一些不稳定的工作安全感。要做到这一点，我们必须与日常的宗教人士隔离开来。我们将有教养，吃得饱足，但我们的智力成果将变得只有那些品味十分高雅的人才理解不了，因为在幽静的大厅里的精致之物，正是通过它的不可接近而形成的。我们对活生生的实践团体变得麻木。唉，牺牲是必须的!我们可以更深入地研究我们技艺的应用领域。我们可能会因为太粗俗而被学术界的“凯撒”和“苏丹”礼貌地避开。考虑到我们与普通人产生共鸣，我们有理由与商人保持联系——在我们的例子中，是出版商——他们愉快地出售由我们的劳动产生的商品，以满足可证明的需求。我们可能在宫廷里失去了观众，但在杂乱的街道和熙熙攘攘的市场里，我们赢得了观众。意识到我们有好伙伴，我们可能会在摆脱宫廷束缚中找到满足。在知识非殖民化进程的不可预测的潮流中，我们中的许多人都按照殖民统治者的口味来塑造我们的艺术——拥有机构权威的高级学者、研究和终身教职委员会、精英奖学金陪审团等等。我们知道，我们必须使用一种令这些学术界的凯撒和苏丹满意的语言，否则我们就有可能沦为降级的弄臣，沦为学术界边缘的乡巴佬，毫无畏惧地说出自己的本土知识考虑到我的交叉的穆斯林和世俗的知识谱系和作为一个“尝尝性的穆法西拉”的地位，2我提倡一种建设性的方法，我们可以雄心勃勃地将其描述为tafsir tawḥidī，既认为这两个知识海洋是一个整体，也把解释伊斯兰一神论的细节作为其最终关注的问题在初步的意义上，我们可以将tafs . r tawḥidī描述为致力于:(1)在与解释史的对话中进行严格的语言学、语法、修辞和结构分析;(2)关注《古兰经》话语的社会学和情感维度以及《古兰经》修辞的情感影响;(3)根据我们这个时代紧迫的社会问题，以一种易于理解的方式阐明我们与古兰经话语接触中出现的道德和虔诚的要求;(4)参与文本、化身和现象学的理论学术论述。tafsir tawḥidī的方法是认真整合，不回避应用，建设性的，文学的，历史的，或理论话语。在古兰经研究中，有没有一种方法可以在不被任何一种潮流冲走的情况下，占据知识生产的两个海洋的结合处?如果有，我会去寻找。如果没有，我就带着警帽和铃铛等着。[End Page 81] Celene Ibrahim Celene Ibrahim是《伊斯兰教和一神论》(2022)和《女性与性别》的作者。
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.2979/jfs.2023.a908293
Emma McDonald
Abstract: The predominance of patriarchy in Christian communities has supported paternal metaphors over maternal analogues for describing God's action in the world. Feminist theologians have long advocated for the inclusion of women's experiences in God-talk, but navigating how to incorporate maternal imagery for the divine presents numerous pitfalls. This article draws on an expansive definition of motherhood that includes varied social and biological constructions of motherhood to illuminate how experiences of reproductive loss, transgender pregnancy, spiritual motherhood, and maternal grief and activism help envision a trinitarian maternal divine characterized by compassion and a zeal for justice. Ultimately, the article argues that troubling the category of "mother" can generate creative applications of maternal metaphors that remind us of the impassibility and interdependence of God. It also aims to challenge the notion that motherhood must be lauded and upheld over and above other metaphors for God in the world.
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.2979/jfs.2023.a908297
Hadia Mubarak
Engaging the Tafsīr TraditionA Springboard into a Bottomless Ocean Hadia Mubarak (bio) Does the Qurʾan chart a new discourse on women and gender—one that upends and subverts patriarchal norms or gender oppression—or does it, on the other hand, entrench patriarchal norms and hierarchies? This has been a persistent question in the scholarship on gender in the Qurʾan, and the answers generated by the past two decades of scholarship are far from conclusive. There have generally been three approaches to this question. One approach is a scripturalist one, which distinguishes between the Qurʾan's portrayal and treatment of women and the exegetical portrayal of women. A few significant works that took this approach are Women, Muslim Society and Islam (1988), by Lamya Faruqi (d. 1986), Women in the Qurʾan, Traditions, and Interpretations (1996), by Barbara Stowasser (d. 2012), and Women and Gender in the Qur'an (2020), by Celene Ibrahim. Stowasser's book was the first significant English-language academic work to be devoted to the subject. Departing from the approach of many scholars to skirt the exegetical tradition in their engagement with the Qurʾan, Stowasser took a deep plunge into this tradition, finding that qurʾanic exegesis and the Qurʾan itself are not always consistent in their portrayal of women. Ibrahim's work, which explores all the major and minor female figures referenced in the Qurʾan, pushes the boundaries of qurʾanic studies through her engagement with the Qurʾan through the lens of "Muslima theology."1 A second approach to this persistent question is to separate the Qurʾan from its exegesis with the specific aim of recovering what authors believe is the [End Page 63] Qurʾan's "anti-patriarchal epistemology" or its egalitarian trajectory.2 This second approach resembles the first; however, it diverges in its a priori conclusion that the Qurʾan is an egalitarian text and in its aim to make a case for the Qurʾan's egalitarian episteme. Scholars who have contributed significant works to a rereading of qurʾanic scripture from a gendered lens are Asma Barlas, amina wadud, Azizah al-Hibri, Riffat Hassan, Abla Hasan, and Asma Lamrabet, among others. The third approach has been a critical reading, one that challenges the subjectivity, "text fundamentalism,"3 and "methodological rigidity"4 of feminist approaches to the Qurʾan. Primarily concerned with philosophical and methodological arguments, scholars working on gender in the Qurʾan who have taken this approach include Kecia Ali, Aysha Hidayatullah, and Ebrahim Moosa. They critique feminist scholars or exegetes for imposing their own contemporary sensibilities upon the Qurʾan, even when the literal meanings of the text appear to contradict their egalitarian aspirations for it. As a way out of the deadlock between the second and third approaches described here, I argue for a fourth approach that more robustly engages with the long history of qurʾanic interpretation. Despite the flourishing of l
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.2979/jfemistudreli.39.2.16
Amira Abou-Taleb
Raising the Moral BarReaching for the Beauty and Goodness of Iḥsān Amira Abou-Taleb (bio) In my research on the Qurʾan, I build upon the works of scholars who call for gender justice from within an Islamic framework. My interest is informed by the works of Omaima Abou Bakr and Mulki Al-Sharmani, who examine qurʾanic ethics of family and marriage, and it speaks to Abou Bakr's study of the jamālī aesthetics of the Qurʾan, as described in this roundtable. My work calls for raising the moral bar beyond "justice" to the qurʾanic mandate of iḥsān. Within Arabic morphology, words derived from the triliteral root ḥ-s-n, including iḥsān, fuse the meanings of beauty and goodness. The Qurʾan employs the root ḥ-s-n on 194 occasions. However, despite this high frequency, we still lack a comprehensive academic critical analysis of the concept in the Qurʾan. Across the globe, Muslims in Arabic and non-Arabic speaking contexts have internalized iḥsān within their common vocabularies. However, most references to iḥsān in Islamic literature reference hadith and not the Qurʾan as the main source. In a famous hadith—known as the Gabriel (Jibrīl) hadith—iḥsān represents the pinnacle of faith: it is akin to being in the presence of God. Through my research, I conduct a close textual analysis of the root ḥ-s-n and its morphological derivatives across the Qurʾan. The intra-qurʾanic hermeneutical approach (tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi-l-Qurʾān) that I use as an investigative lens facilitates a holistic reading of the concept of iḥsān. My findings reveal the presence of an intricate and elaborate "iḥsān paradigm in the Qurʾan." Through this iḥsān paradigm, the Qurʾan presents iḥsān as being integral to the Creator and to all of creation, including human beings. While nature appears to seamlessly follow an intricate cycle of universal harmony, the Qurʾan shows how human beings have the aptitude to live in and out of sync with this harmony: manifesting iḥsān allows one to uphold the harmony while injustice and transgression cause corruption upon earth. Furthermore, the Qurʾan frequently prompts individuals to contemplate [End Page 99] the magnificence of the surrounding natural order and commands human beings to uphold justice (ʿadl) and put forth iḥsān. The Qurʾan establishes justice as a prerequisite for the higher moral value of iḥsān, and it commands both. I analyze the complex implications of this hierarchy in verses that mandate iḥsān in family relationships and when dealing with those who are vulnerable in society. I also examine how the Qurʾan forwards iḥsān as a tool for conflict management. One thing that is important to highlight is the way in which the Qurʾan commands iḥsān at the most difficult times, such as during marital strife and divorce. This implies that acting in a beautiful manner calls for deep reflection and deliberation. Such a mandate counters the human tendency to react impulsively at times of difficulty, and it restrains egotistical desires that often lea
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.2979/jfemistudreli.39.2.25
Salwa Alinat-Abed
Abstract: Muslim women activists in the Islamic Movement who are citizens of Israel, a Jewish-majority state, and members of a Palestinian minority live in a complex tangle of identities: religious, national, gender, and civilian. To cope with this complicated reality, they use patriarchal bargains based on social strategies such as gaining higher education, work, da ʿ wah (dissemination of religious knowledge to encourage the return to Islam), and political involvement. Within the framework of those bargains, female Islamic Movement activists subsequently have become involved in informal politics and gained power and influence in their society. In addition, they follow religious principles like musayarah (flowing with reality) and tawriyah (concealment, sending a double message to avoid provocations with their Israeli surroundings.)
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.2979/jfemistudreli.39.2.17
Nevin Reda
Gender-Based Research in Qur'anic StudiesConcluding Remarks Nevin Reda (bio) To conclude, this roundtable has demonstrated a variety of new and continuing directions in gender-based research in qurʾanic studies. It suggests that the field is diverse and pluralistic, not always univocal, and often engaging a plethora of methodological and theoretical frameworks. Feminist and other gender-based Qurʾan scholarship has moved beyond the immediate confines of the Qurʾan and has widened the scope of scholarly investigations to encompass tafsīr (exegesis), hadith, āthār (reports transmitted from the first two generations of Muslims), and other extra-qurʾanic corpora, as can be noted in the work of Hadia Mubarak, Rahel Fischbach, and Yasmin Amin in this volume (and Fatima Mernissi before that).1 It continues to be in conversation with multiple discourses and conversation partners, including non-Muslim Western academia, as one can note in Halla Attallah's engagement with the ideas of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson on the intersection of femininity and disability. While in the past feminist engagement focused more on masculinist constructions of women and femininity, today women scholars are seeing the need to critique constructions of masculinity and to offer their own readings of ideal masculinity, as one can note in the work of Yasmin Amin (and the broader work of Omaima Abou-Bakr).2 The tightrope that faith-based Muslim women scholars must walk when introducing constructive methodologies and theologically grounded epistemes into largely "secular" academic settings, while at the same time maintaining credibility in practical, faith-based settings, is eloquently addressed in the contributions of Celene Ibrahim and Mahjabeen Dhala. One can note the connection between Muslim women's lived experiences and the [End Page 101] questions that Islamic feminist scholars pose in Mulki Al-Sharmani's ethnographic research and Roshan Iqbal's arguments for reappraising fiqh related to sexual ethics. The spiritual turn is vividly illustrated in the scholarship of Amira Abou-Taleb and Omaima Abou-Bakr, who highlight the importance of the aesthetic and spiritual dimensions, as well as their connection to the Qurʾan's moral foundation, including the central value of justice. The focus on language and intra-qurʾanic coherence remains alive and well, as one can note in the work of Abla Hasan, who embodies an intertextual Qurʾan-centric hermeneutic, highlighting the gap between the literal text of the Qurʾan and heritage-based interpretations. Always, however, we remain conscious of the debt we owe to those who established the cornerstones of Muslim women's Qurʾan scholarship before us, upon whose work we build and from whose accomplishments we take inspiration. Foremost among these trailblazers are amina wadud, Asma Barlas, Riffat Hassan, and Azizah al-Hibri, who established this field in the Western academy, and Omaima Abou-Bakr, who works in both local Arabic-speaking and inter
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.2979/jfemistudreli.39.2.20
Grace Ji-Sun Kim
Invisibility Grace Ji-Sun Kim (bio) The history of racism and prejudice against Asian Americans shows the long record of suffering and oppression of Asian immigrants. In the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, discrimination, racism, and xenophobia marked Asian immigrants as undesirable and un-American. White America precisely defines who and what is American, which denotes privileged selectivity in choosing who can immigrate and become naturalized according to what they feel is acceptable. When the Chinese Exclusion Act expired, it was extended by the Geary Act of 1892, which barred the Chinese from entering the United States. The Geary Act ended in 1943. During World War II, Japanese Americans lost everything they possessed and were forced into internment camps as they became national threats to white Americans. Anti-Asian racism has been part of the fabric of the American story. Race and the American cultural perception of one's race have been the determining factors in distinguishing between the "good" immigrants and the "bad" ones, the better assimilable ones from the unassimilable ones, the racialized ones, and the neutral ones. Immigrants deemed worthy of American citizenship were naturalized; those who were not were excluded. The McCarran-Walter Act (1952) abolished the racial restrictions put in place by the Naturalization Act of 1790, which limited naturalization to "free white persons." This meant women, nonwhite persons, and indentured servants (who were mostly Asian Americans) could not become naturalized citizens. Over time, access to citizenship became more expansive, but the racial restrictions were not eliminated entirely until 1952. This produced the category of "aliens" who were ineligible for citizenship, which largely affected Asian immigrants and limited their rights, as noncitizens, to property ownership, representation in courts, public employment, and voting. Thus, many generations of Asian Americans were made invisible. Without citizenship, they were pushed to the margins, and they did not have the rights to challenge their marginality and invisibility in the courts. [End Page 111] Xenophobia is a defining feature of American life. Xenophobia emerged as soon as nonwhites immigrated to America, and it triumphed in the 1920s. The 1924 Johnson-Reed Act was a strict policy of ethnic quotas that nearly closed the door on immigration from Asia for over forty years. When mainstream, explicit forms of xenophobia began to wane during the civil rights movement, it merely bubbled away from the surface, still lurking, only to reemerge in the last half century—namely, during the Trump administration. Xenophobia has continued the legacy of discriminatory immigration policies, as reflected in the Muslim ban (2017) introduced by President Trump that banned foreigners from seven predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the United States for ninety days. Xenophobia continues to marginalize immigrants and people of color who have bee
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