Innocent Subjects: Feminism and Whiteness by Jonsson Terese

Author:Jonsson, Terese [Jonsson, Terese]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pluto Press
Published: 2020-12-19T16:00:00+00:00

An extended footnote accompanies this paragraph. This starts by pointing out that the ‘relationship between Islam and feminism’ and ‘the migrant crisis’ are ‘different issues, even though they are often conflated by the mainstream press’. Chamberlain goes on to highlight right-wing media constructions of ‘an influx of non-refugees’ bringing ‘religions and cultures that marginalise and subordinate women’. Chamberlain problematises such constructions, but then brings in the issues of ‘forced marriage and honour-based abuse’ and describes the ‘problematic of gender, religion and culture’ as having been ‘exarcerbated by incidents of mass sexual assault in European cities as well as reports of abuse in migrant centres, allegedly perpetuated by migrants’. The footnote concludes by pointing out that such incidents have led to ‘right-wing politicians using feminism as a means by which to justify xenophobia and exclusionary politics’. 48

These two paragraphs take the reader through a whirlwind of complex and contentious topics, none of which are fully elaborated. While the discussion importantly signals concern with how racism shapes public debates about migration, ‘Islam and feminism’, and sexual assault, and while it draws attention to problematic conflations between these various topics, the quick gallop through them creates its own conflations and slippages. For one, there is an assumption that there is an obvious relationship between these various issues that does not need to be explained. This reproduces what Ahmed describes as a ‘stickiness’ between them. In analysing the proximity constructed between ‘the figures of the asylum seeker and the international terrorist’ within government discourse, Ahmed draws attention to the way ‘emotions work by sticking figures together (adherence), a sticking that creates the very effect of a collective (coherence)’ (Chamberlain herself draws on this concept in other parts of the book). 49 According to Ahmed, the frequent ‘sticking’ of words such as ‘Islam’ and ‘terrorist’ and ‘asylum seeker’ in close proximity naturalises a connection between them, creating a figure of collective fear. She notes that this connection does not have to be explicitly made; it is rather the repeated proximity of certain signs, words and objects that creates the links.

In relation to gender, Naaz Rashid’s research on policy discourse about Muslim women similarly highlights how topics such as veiling, forced marriage and FGM are frequently positioned on a continuum with ‘extremism’ and terrorism within Muslim communities, despite the connection between such topics being unclear and unevidenced. She ascribes this ‘conflation of what are conceptually distinctive policy concerns’ to the ‘securitisation of the policy landscape’, which folds all ‘social problems’ associated with Muslims together in highly problematic and reductive ways. 50 The fact that Chamberlain simultaneously highlights increased levels of racism, then, does not undo the affective lumping together of the topics of ‘extremism’, ‘FGM’, ‘Islam’, ‘the veil’, ‘migrant crisis’ and ‘mass sexual assault’. These all become potent signifiers for what is referred to as ‘the difficulty of Britain’s multicultural society’. This framing relies on the dominant contemporary public discourse which repeatedly constructs ‘Muslims’ as a problem for Europe and ‘the West’. 51 While framing the

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