2025/03/13 by Heba El-Sagheer Aly · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Gender, Feminism, and Media #Work-Family Balance Challenges #Labor Movements and Unions
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/1369118x.2025.2478084
openalex publication_date 2025/03/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
The elusive nature of postmodern thought hinders much-needed solidarity and political activism in the face of the various forms of oppression exerted on women, including colonialism (as in occupation) and neocolonialism (the ideology of neoliberalism). This paper examines the failure of the postmodern project, as manifested in postfeminism and the internet, to recognise women living under colonial and neocolonial conditions. By demonstrating how postmodern postfeminist thought and the internet create new binaries like cyborg/human, cyborgean reproductive agent/mother, and individual/woman, I highlight their contribution to more othering of Palestinian women. Furthermore, I argue that, through the internet and with the rise of postmodern postfeminist thought, Palestinian women's stories can be reduced to a narrative among other narratives unable to be verified. The postmodern postfeminist thought and the internet risk turning Palestinian women into estranged virtual heroines of resistance whose fight against oppression lacks any traces of sameness with that of Western women. I call such a mode of estrangement/alienation ‘postmodern feminist orientalism’. I conclude with a discussion on the similarity of the material condition of the category ‘women’ even within differences. Such discussion should illustrate that the point of intersection between both Arab and Western women is the common oppression exerted upon them by neoliberalism.