Resisting Far-Right Politics in the Middle East and Europe

Tunay Altay is a postdoctoral researcher in sociology and gender studies at Humboldt University of Berlin. He specializes in queer migration and sexual politics in the context of Europe and the Middle East. By following queer feminist methodologies, he focuses on the experiences of migrant sex workers, drag performers, and LGBTQ activists and how they navigate social exclusion and marginalization in Europe. His 2020 article (co-authored with Gökce Yurdakul and Anna C. Korteweg) is the recipient of the Best Article Award by the Council for European Studies' Gender and Sexuality Research Network. He published widely in academic journals, including in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Ethnic and Migration Studies, and the European Journal of Women’s Studies. Nadje Al-Ali is Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Brown University. Her main research interests revolve around feminist activism and gendered mobilization, with a focus on Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and the Kurdish political movement. Her publications include What kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (University of California Press, 2009, co-authored with Nicola Pratt); Women and War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives (Zed Books, 2009, co-edited with Nicola Pratt) and Gender, Governance and Islam (University of Edinburgh, 2019, co-edited with Deniz Kandiyoti and Kathryn Spellman). Katharina Galor is a Senior Lecturer of Judaic Studies at Brown University. She specializes in the visual and material culture of Israel-Palestine with a focus on gender studies. She is the author of Finding Jerusalem: Archaeology between Science and Ideology (University of California Press, 2017) and Jewish Women: Between Conformity and Agency (Routledge, 2024); the co-author of The Archaeology of Jerusalem: From the Origins through the Ottomans (Yale University Press, 2015, with Hanswulf Bloedhorn) and The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (Duke University Press, 2020, with Sa’ed Atshan) and the co-editor of Gender and Social Norms in Ancient Israel, Early Judaism and Christianity. Texts and Material Culture (Journal of Ancient Judaism. Supplements, 2019, with Michaela Bauks and Judith Hartenstein), and Reel Gender: Palestinian and Israeli Cinema (Bloomsbury Press, 2022, with Sa’ed Atshan).

This volume makes a compelling case for the urgency of foregrounding gender and sexuality to connect Middle Eastern and European critiques of far-right politics. Locating the collection in its contemporary moment – of ongoing genocide in Gaza and increased populism and right-wing political recognition in Europe - the editors show the centrality of anti-gender and anti-LGBTQ aggression to both contexts. Indeed, it is through shining a spotlight on anti-gender and anti-LGBT aggression that the connections between the two sites, and their colonial and anti-migrant histories, can best be made. Importantly, the focus here is on the multiple forms of resistance that constitute the terrain: queer feminist interventions; critical comparisons; bottom-up mobilisation and knowledge production. Through a variety of case studies and critical interventions, the editors and authors insist that it is precisely this resistance that offers hope in the contested political present.

• List of FiguresNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: Anti-Genderism, Homophobia and Far-Right Politics in the Middle East and Europe Nadje Al Ali, Tunay Altay and Katharina GalorI. Framing Far-Right politics: Queer Feminist Perspectives1. The Gender Wars: New Conundrums of Our TimesDeniz Kandiyoti 2. Feminist and Queer Politics without Guarantees: A Rejoinder to Deniz Kandiyoti’s ‘Gender Wars’Evren SavciII. Anti-LGBTQ and Anti-Feminist Mobilisations in the Sphere of Politics3. The Rise of Israeli Far-Right Politics: A Queer Feminist AnalysisSa’ed Atshan & Katharina Galor4. ‘For the Sake of Kids’: National Security and Family Values in the Ukrainian Sexuality Education Debate Maryna Shevtsova5. Attacks on the Academy from Gender Studies to Post-Colonialism: Science, Secularity and the Far Right in France, Germany and BeyondElizabeth BermanIII. Comparative Studies between the Middle East and Europe6. Anti-Feminist Strategies of Right-Wing Parties in Turkey and Germany: A Comparative Analysis of Gender and Sexuality PoliticsNur Sinem Kourou and Victoria Scheyer7. Homophobia without Borders: Dismantling Homophobia’s Architecture in Cairo’s Bathhouse Raid and Berlin’s Rave CrackdownAhmed Awadalla8. ‘From Belfast to Diyarbakır’: Transnational Conversations on Conflict and LGBTI+ Politics in the ArchiveHakan Sandal-Wilson IV. Bottom-Up Interventions and Resistance9. Feminist and Queer Action and Art in Poland’s Illiberal DemocracyPawel Leszkowicz & Tomasz Kitlinski10. Why Do We ‘Care’? Neo-Liberal Governance and Emergence of the Feminist Subject in IranFiroozeh FarvardinIndex