Gender, Popular Culture, and the Aftermath of Armed Resistance in Palestinian Camps in Jordan

Abstract

Through a focus on the experiences of refugee women political activists in the period between the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, this article examines the ways in which gender norms and symbolic cultural practices are repurposed to reflect the interests of secular and Islamic nationalist groups. It looks at the overall implications of this on the ethos and trajectories of Palestinian resistance, investigating how the lionization of the masculinist Palestinian figure—in either a secular or religious sense—has immured refugees and deprived them of popular cultural means of contributing to liberation. The article argues that, in long liberation struggles that counter imperialist ideology, the configuration of liberation based on a masculinist nationalism undermines alternative means of resistance and the appearance of long-practiced, local-level protests. Indeed, a context with the potential for revolution dramatically turned not only against women but toward the antithesis of its ethos.