The Harem Syndrome: Moving Beyond Anthropology’s Discursive Colonization of Gender in the Middle East
Author(s)
Elie, Serge D.
Abstract
The article elucidates the nature of anthropology’s discursive construction of gender in the Arab world. A historical overview is provided on the evolution of the anthropological discourse on gender in the Middle East in order to illustrate the process of discursive colonization. Harem theory, the intellectual progeny of the anti-Orientalist debate, is seen as the culmination of the evolution of anthropological discourse on gender in the Middle East and is shown to be inadequate. Moreover, its recent reincarnation into “postcolonial feminism,” however appropriate in some instances, seems overdetermined by imported theoretical preoccupations, rather than by the Middle East internal social struggles. The article highlights a new context characterized by the emergence of an uncritical Islamic discourse on gender in the Arab Middle East. Accordingly, I argue that the discursive site of struggle over gender has shifted, from one straddling the borders of East and West and that focused on undermining Western stereotypes of Middle Eastern women to a site located within the Middle East and that calls for combating the discursive appropriation of women by the Islamist narrative of emancipation. Finally, the article briefly outlines steps toward an exit strategy from metropolitan anthropology’s arrogation of gender discourse in the region.
