Feminist focus on culture obscures how racialized women’s bodies legitimize state surveillance

Evidence

If we did not think of hosts and guests, and of culturally advanced versus primitive cultures, of free will versus oppressive communities, how would this change our strategies in the context of legally addressing the problem of forced marriages? I think we would as feminists abandon our focus on multiculturalism and pay renewed attention to racism, and specifically to how cultural racism works. … Our chances to do any of things, I am convinced, are severely restricted if we shift our gaze away from the crucial ways in which the Muslim woman’s body is used to articulate European superiority. We cannot forget for an instant the usefulness of her body in the contemporary making of white nations and citizens. Her imperilled body has provided a rationale for engaging in the surveillance and disciplining of the Muslim man and of Muslim communities. … It is instructive that it is only the violence emerging from forced marriages, veiling practices, and female genital mutilation that Europe has been concerned about, and not the violence of poor educational and job access or the dislocation and forced migration of large numbers of Muslims through war. … It is clear, as Abdullahi An-Naim has suggested writing on forced marriages, that communities under siege are ‘most likely to turn inward and reinforce the very practices that those on the outside are seeking to change.’ Thus far, the feminists and lawmakers considered here have contributed to the siege rather than worked towards dismantling it. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 332

Categorization

• XREF: Aligns with the analysis in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ about cross-cultural panic narratives serving class/identity politics. — connects to: More Facebook use increases body surveillance regardless of gender — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1478
• DEEPTHINKING: The dual claim — that liberal feminist rescue frames weaponize the Muslim woman’s body for state discipline AND that this makes genuine anti-violence work harder, since Europe only flags culturalized violence while ignoring structural violence — has a density and internal tension worth sitting with.