Disrupting Violence:
Solidarity in the Time of Despair

Imperial feminism is silent about this ongoing genocide in Palestine and its impact on many bodies and communities. For example, even in the face of genocide, colonial feminists disregard the violence of reproductive rights in Palestine. In reporting the intensity of reproductive genocide in Palestine, South Africa states that Israel has violated “Article 2d” which prohibits violence against reproductive rights. South Africa also testified that 70 percent of the people who were killed during this genocide were women and children (“Reproductive Justice”).

In Palestine, under the settler colonial grasp, women cannot access their bodily autonomy including rights to have or not to have children and rights to have a healthy environment to raise their children. Instead of calling out these reproductive injustices, imperial feminists present Muslim women as victims of patriarchy while Muslim men are presented as violent to them. Thus, these Muslim women need to be saved by white feminists which is a tactic to justify violence against people in the Global South in general (Farris, 2017). Therefore, informed by intersectional and transnational feminist practices, our pedagogical practices need to call out imperial feminism that continues to objectify non-Western women while disregarding the role of settler colonialism and military violence in debilitating their lives.

As I call out this double standard, decolonial scholars including Angela Davis, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, and Jasbir Puar also guide our practices to debunk the notion of Western pedagogical supremacy that presents non-white/non-Western bodies as others. In addition to that, by taking an anti-racist pedagogical approach to our education system, we can spread the seeds of hope for the future. By promoting academic knowledge that does not address ongoing state violence, military violence, settler colonialism, and genocide, the institutionalized structure silences resistance against colonizers (Davis, 2015). Thus, considering the urgency of building solidarity to resist settler colonialism, global capitalism, and state-perpetuated violence, in this paper, I explore pedagogical possibilities to raise collective awareness through teaching transnational instructional materials in an undergraduate classroom. I look for myriad possibilities in the practices of transnational feminist scholars for disrupting anti-Islamophobic rhetorical practices.

I have chosen the framework of solidarity to work toward ensuring social injustices by strategically selecting instructional materials that can address different forms of social injustices perpetuated by the imperialists. Davis, in her book entitled Freedom Is a Constant Struggle captured the interconnectedness of oppression against minorities and disenfranchised communities happening in different countries. If we take a closer look, we can see the connection between different forms of violence and oppression around the world. For example, the atrocities and violence against black people, indigenous people, and Palestinian people follow the same mechanisms that criminalize them. Structural racism is embedded in the system and under this racialized system, non-white people are the others/potential criminals.

Zionist discourses use the criminalizing trope that presents Arabs as deviant. These discourses associate the people in the Global South “closer to nature.” The usage of animal imagery is used to inscribe them as inferior bodies. This tactic justifies the violence conducted on their bodies and lives (“Undercurrent”). This again shows the exploitation of language as imperial symbols are used to shape discourses against oppressed people. Davis (2015) also points out that in conducting any state violence, we hear the language of law and order (war on terror, etc.) to legalize their brutality. Thus, it is of utmost importance to use instructional materials that bring forward the stories of violence including genocide, and settler colonialism as freedom indeed is a constant struggle. In this constant struggle, we need to build theories and pedagogical practices from the flesh (Cited in Chavez et al., 2012).

In reapproaching the existing pedagogical practices, I ask the following questions: How is transnational feminism directing and could direct us to resist the oppressive pedagogy against marginalized communities? What does transnational solidarity look like in an anti-racist classroom? How do we build solidarity against oppression? How do the past activists/scholars guide us to frame the revolutionary approaches to combat epistemic violence? Where do we find the elements of collaboration in transnational resistance? In the process, I incorporate those transnational feminist voices who lead us through this journey of resistance to unsettle violence including state violence, and military violence through their anti-imperial rhetorical constructions that challenge settler colonialism and imperialism embedded in images, symbols, languages, media narratives, etc.

Historically, feminist scholars have long been questioning such practices from an intersectional approach. From a post-colonial, critical race, and anti-imperial feminist lens, many feminist scholars also critiqued the one-dimensional assumption in understanding knowledge to challenge imperialist disciplinary norms. To point out its limitation, even the scholarships on the issues of intersectionality predominantly focus on the US context. Hooks (2000) points out that feminism is not specific to women and their concerns only. Feminism comprises the inclusion of oppressed people and advocates movements to end sexism and any kind of oppression that’s dictated by power hierarchy. This suggests the significance of feminist involvement in building classroom pedagogy.

Transnational feminism is a critical approach that can disrupt white supremacy, Islamophobia, gendered oppression, and other forms of mechanisms that target people by using the smoking screen of law and order. To build resistance through rhetorical practices, transnational feminist rhetoric plays a significant role by disrupting the spread of problematic values, ethics, and assumptions that marginalize non-Western people. More so, these assumptions are informed by “singular, monolithic, and homogenous views of identity and subjectivity” (Griffin and Chavez, 2012, p. 2). This monolithic feminism has not included different identities’ experiences and views around the world. There is still a lot of work that needs to be undertaken by transnational feminists to challenge this monolithic perception. It is this monolithic perception of non-Westerns that produces rhetorical violence.

For example, Palestinians are rhetorically presented as animals by the Israeli colonialists. “We are fighting against human animals” – this statement is used by the Israeli defense minister to justify their genocide of Palestinian civilians (PBS). The racialized rhetorical construction of non-westerners is used to justify the violence against non-white/non-western people. Using metaphors such as military intervention, the war against terror, collateral damage, etc. are deployed to diminish public support for the Palestinian people. The genocide in Gaza is not an isolated incident; rather, this history of colonialism, genocide, and oppression against non-white and non-Westerners points out the oppression against colonized people and disenfranchised communities.

According to Moraga, while symbols and metaphors are used in marginalizing oppressed people, “No metaphor for describing the condition of being multiply oppressed is adequate” (Cited in Chavez et al., 2012, p.5). Oppressed people’s embodied experiences need to be shared with the public. To do that, Moraga suggests we break the silence against oppression. “Silence is like starvation” and that from one starvation “other starvation can be recognized if one is willing to take the risk of making the connection” (Cited in Chavez et al., 2012, p. 6). To recognize these different forms of oppression, an anti-racist pedagogy could plant the seeds of hope in the form of building instructional materials.

Sometimes, marginalized students internalize these oppressions, and they don’t recognize how different mechanisms are at play in subjugating their voices. An anti-racist pedagogy recognizes students’ agency and instead of creating a classroom based on an oppressive, hierarchical system, this pedagogy centers students’ voices as a driving feature in the classroom conversations. At the same time, anti-racist materials can create consciousness against existing systemic racism. Teaching intersectional history including the history of settler colonialism, slavery indigenous genocide, etc, is critical in building awareness. At the same time, stories of oppression that grow in the flesh need to be brought to the fore in resisting different forms of oppression. Therefore, Moraga’s “theory in the flesh” is one of the major components of building an anti-racism classroom.