å Wednesday, November 29th, 2017

Due Sunday, December 3rd by midnight. Word count, at least 300 words. You may include a brief quotation, but be sure this is followed by your interpretation of the text and include the proper citation (either MLA or APA). Late assignments will be accepted for partial credit if they are submitted no later than one week after the original deadline.

In Sara Ahmed’s article, “Affective Economies,” she considers the work that attends to emotions within a narrative structure. Using details from the text to explain what you mean, consider how this emotional work relates to the “rights” and “ground” often connected to the subject and nation.

In ” Do Muslim women really need saving? anthropological reflections on cultural relativism and its others”, Lila Abu-Lugnod discusses the involvement of US in Afghanistan. She starts by  mentioning how the attacks on Sep. 11, 2011 everything changed for them too. Americans started to look for almost an excuse to go into their country and start a “war against terrorism”. To the people there, it was clear that the attention  was focused on all the wrong places to try to look for something to fix. She takes first lady, Bush, to show how American troops were there and ‘liberating’ them from terrorism and supposedly from the Taliban. Instead of studying the history of the situation the country was in, they came in to ‘save’ women from the wrong factors. She criticizes that instead of getting to know their culture, the Americans came in trying to change the way they were treated to almost the same as it was in America. Here the liberation women have is different from that of women in Afghanistan. As the government announced in the first few months of the ‘war against terrorism’, women had gained some minor liberties like being able to listen to music, yet they left out things that women had been fighting against for such a long time. As she said there “was the blurring of the very separate causes in Afghanistan of women’s continuing malnutrition, poverty, and ill health, and their more recent exclusion under the Taliban from employment, schooling, and the joys of wearing nail polish”(Abu-Lugnod,784). To Americans it was communicated that these women were being saved in some way, but they did not addressed the real issues that they needed to. Maybe it might had been because they did not analyze their cultural struggles before coming in to fight a war. These women did not need the type of saving the Americans were trying to offer them.

In this article Lila Abu-Lughod discusses the way the image of the oppressed Afghan women and her victimized femininity were mobilized in efforts to justify the U.S post 9/11 wars in the middle east. She analyzes two major moments in media where this can be clearly seen: One was her interview with a PBS reporter and the other was Laura Bush’s radio address.  In her interview with the PBS reporter she discusses the way culture, women’s roles and Islam were evoked as a way to explain terrorism. Instead of analyzing the way U.S involvement created much of the instability in the region prior to the events on 9/11, the media chose to focus on Muslims and middle eastern culture to try to make sense of the attacks. The veil was evoked as a symbol of female oppression and a clear example of the “backwardness” and “barbarism” of Islam and middle eastern culture. In turn, the war was presented as necessary to “free” oppressed and victimized Afghani women. In Laura Bush’s radio address her manner of speech conflates the Taliban and the terrorists while framing the western world as the benevolent entity that would save the “women of cover.” This approach to Muslim women’s identities, their perceived oppression and victimization under the veil is problematic in different ways. Not only does It help mobilize the west to see themselves as more “civilized” and therefore superior, it also ignores Muslim women’s agency within their own cultural and religious tradition. While women face oppression and disenfranchisement in Afghanistan they fight their hardships by drawing on philosophy that makes sense in their context and through reinterpreting religious doctrine. Ignoring the way Muslim women carve out their own unique brand of feminism is an instrument that maintains the “war on terror” running by gaining support for western countries in the name of freeing middle eastern women from middle eastern men.

In the essay ” Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving”, Lila Abu-Lughod criticizes Westerners how they tried to “Liberate” Muslim women who they think they do not have freedom. After the 911 attack Laura Bush suddenly brings up Muslim women’s right which they never had before. She first mentions “War on Terrorism” which is about the Middle Eastern occupation of the United States. She also criticizes they justification Westerner made which America can occupy the area because they attacked America. She also criticize the logic since they are evil, we can beat them even though it was actually for economic benefit.  America went to War in Afghanistan against Taliban who controlled Afghan, and took the control of the country. Laura Bush said the Muslim woman is free after the invention. Women in Afghan wore burqas when Taliban control the region, and they were not allowed to go out side without it. If women in Afghan does not cover themselves they would be punished or harmed. Westerner thought it is a violence to the Muslim women right. However, even after United States took control of the country, they were still wearing them. Furthermore, she criticizes how  Laura Bush says they had been successful and that the invention of that country is helping Afghan people especially women. However, women are still oppressed in Afghanistan. I think saying something like “liberate” the area is actually looking down on people and their culture. Therefore, the way America did was totally against their will and it barely changed anything. People there have their own culture and if some outsider says something about this or forcing, I think it is really difficult for them to change suddenly. They have lived their lives with the culture, so instead of forcing to change, their regional power has to do something to it little by little.