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ABSTRACT
This article takes as its starting point the experiential knowledge of Syrian women telling the story of the Syrian revolution. By stitching together feminist and decolonial perspectives, we can critically rethink the revolution, which is usually displaced by war talk. This article both explores and attempts an exercise in “decolonial love” – by foregrounding women’s experiences, making room for radical stories on the margins, and carefully considering their visions – as an impulse to a different reading of the revolution. Taking decolonial love as both methodology and praxis creates an opportunity to learn about the multiple oppressions and resistances within the Syrian revolution. Centering decolonial love also allows for a more expansive analysis of the politics of which – and whose – knowledge matters. It asks us as researchers to be mindful of our starting points, the space that our knowledge takes up, and the ways in which we can and should learn from situated knowledge. This article, therefore, conveys not only the experience of Syrian women; it also presents a more complex story of the revolution by making visible its non-linearity, the messiness of being situated in spaces of (non-)violence, and the building of “circles of trust” to imagine and live different futures.
تتخذ هذه الورقة البحثية نقطة انطلاقها من أهمية المعرفة التجريبية للنساء السوريات اللواتي يروين قصة الثورة السورية. تحاول هذه الورقة إعادة التفكير بشكل نقدي في الثورة -والتي عادةً ما يتم استبدالها بالحديث عن الحرب - من خلال تجميع أراء ووجهات نظر نسوية ومناهضة للاستعمار معاً. يبحث هذا المقال ويجرب تمريناً على “الحب المناهض للاستعمار” - من خلال إبراز تجارب النساء وإعطاء مساحة للقصص الراديكالية التي تمّ وضعها على الهامش، والنظر بعناية في رؤى النساء - باعتبارها دافعًا لقراءة مختلفة للثورة. إنّ مقاربة “الحب المناهض للاستعمار” كمنهجية بحثية وتطبيق عملي (براكسيس ) يخلق فرصة للتعرف على أشكال الاضطهاد والمقاومة المتعددة داخل الثورة السورية. بالإضافة إلى كل ذلك، يسمح هذا التمركز على الحب المناهض للاستعمار بتحليل أكثر شمولاً لسياسات المعرفة وكيف تحدد أهميتها ومن هم أصحابها. كما تسمح لنا هذه المنهجية كباحثين أن نكون على دراية بنقاط انطلاقنا البحثية والمساحة التي تشغل معرفتنا والطرق التي يمكننا أن نتعلم من خلالها أهمية تموضع المعرفة. لذا، هذه الورقة لا تنقل فقط تجربة النساء السوريات، وإنّما أيضا تقدم رواية أكثر تعقيدًا عن الثورة من خلال إظهار أنّها لا تسير في خط مستقيم، وإظهار فوضى التواجد في فضاءات (اللاعنف )، وعملية بناء دوائر ثقة لتخيل مستقبل مختلف معاش .
Acknowledgments
This article has been possible because of Syrian activists who have shared their experience and knowledge with me. In particular, I am indebted to Kholoud Helmi, who very kindly read the whole piece. In thought-companionship with many colleagues, this article appears as it stands now; all my gratitude belongs to the academic generosity of Suda Perera, Elisabeth Schweiger, Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, Mandy Turner, Katarina Kušić, Suzanne Klein Schaarsberg, Christine Andrä, Gillian McFadyen, Amal Abu-Bakare, Jevgenia Milne, Caitlin Hamilton, and Razan Ghazzawi. I also wish to thank the editors and reviewers whose dedicated reading and comments shaped my thinking.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 “Violens” is a preoccupation with violence to the detriment of non-violence, while also only seeing a specific violence – that of the other rather than of the self (Poopuu, Schweiger, and Simon Citationforthcoming).
2 Thinking about the war in Ukraine, I cannot help but note the numerous ways in which many pundits try to view it in isolation, without recognizing the intimate connections that it has to other conflicts (especially Syria) and the varied violent structures. For more thoughts on this, see Poopuu and Talviste (Citation2022).
3 There is not enough room here to comprehensively map how mainstream media or various policy circles (not to mention academia) represented the Syrian revolution, but I have indicated some prevalent motifs, such as the greater focus on violence versus non-violence, throughout this article by referring to activists’ own accounts. For a more detailed discussion, see Wessels (Citation2019).
4 A feminist practice of decolonial love means that the politics of whose knowledge matters sits at the heart of my work. As a non-Syrian feminist scholar-activist, I recognize that my access to and understanding of certain spaces might be limited, and that even if I make efforts in working in partnership there are considerable stumbling blocks (thinking with Rutazibwa Citation2020; Ackerly and True Citation2008; Kurowska Citation2020; for a detailed discussion of a more dialogical research praxis, see also Poopuu Citation2020). Yet, reflectively navigating what it means to work in partnership with marginalized knowledges is an ongoing research praxis to ensure that you do not speak over other accounts of the revolution.
5 “Decolonial love” is a term that originates from Sandoval’s work. She deployed the concept of “the methodology of the oppressed,” or alternatively the methodology of love that “provides access to a differential consciousness that makes the others possible” (Sandoval Citation2000, loc. 202). Here, decolonial love is linked more concretely to decolonial strategies as reconstructive steps to amplify marginal voices and “struggle against structures of dehumanization” (Maldonado-Torres Citation2008, 157–158).
6 As a step toward reconstructing the story of the revolution as a complex one, I started my journey of learning about the Syrian revolution by “listening” to the accounts of activists: their writings, blogs, online archives, documentaries, and the many dialogic interviews that I have conducted (Poopuu Citation2020). I have also attended events organized by Syrian diasporic communities. I recognize that this does not mean that I cannot be guilty of misinterpretation, but “listening” carefully is a critical step if we are to reimagine knowledge production anti-colonially and foster allyship with those whose knowledge is marginalized (Causevic et al. Citation2020; Rutazibwa Citation2020).
7 I am naming them here as they have already made their identities publicly known.
8 The term “citizen journalist” is widely used by the activists themselves. Omari (Citation2017) writes that “reporting the news became a basic act of resistance carried out by ordinary Syrians in their revolt against Assad regime” (cf. Wall and Zahed Citation2015).
9 There are, of course, many stories to be told, but each of these women has been significant in capturing parts of the revolution story as they represent critical projects of citizen journalism in their own right. Following Ghazzawi (Citation2014), I approach this topic by providing an account of women’s role in the revolution, which can and should be accompanied by many others.
10 Similarly, for example, the documentary For Sama recounts the importance of “saving the story” – in other words, telling a more complex and human story of the Syrian revolution in the face of global media and other narratives that try to bury parts of the story and emphasize only certain elements, such as ISIS and/or the “war” label (Al-Kateab and Watts Citation2019).
11 For a detailed overview of how entrenched the mode of governing through violence was in Syria, see Ismail (Citation2018).
12 Many activists say that the revolution started in the southern city of Dar’a on February 25, 2011 when a group of students – the “children of Dar’a” – wrote slogans on a school wall against the regime. The slogans were inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, including “It is your turn now, doctor,” “Leave,” and “The people want to topple the regime.” According to the Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution initiative, which records and archives the creative expression of the Syrian revolution, the students signed their names under these slogans. The regime’s reaction was extremely violent; it arrested and brutally tortured 21 children (Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution Citation2017, 95).
13 For in-depth contextual nuances of the authoritarian regime and how it wielded violence (both routine and spectacular) before and during the revolution, and how the people coped and resisted, see, for example, Ayoub and Al Batal (Citation2019); Cooke (Citation2007); Dunia (Citation2013); Ismail (Citation2018); Munif (Citation2020); Pearlman (Citation2017); Saleh (Citation2017); Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami (Citation2016).
14 In thinking about (non-)violence, I rely on critical feminist scholarship that recognizes a more complex relationship between violence and non-violence, arguing that rather than clear-cut boundaries between them, there is actually a continuum. This scholarship points out how, in addition to physical violence, structural violence matters, and how the latter is often invisibilized by powerful actors. As a result, the already violent context is made to seem non-violent, and violence is singularly produced by the Other engaging in explicitly physical violence (see Frazer and Hutchings Citation2014; Rossdale Citation2019).
15 To better grasp the ingenuity of the many non-violent tactics and strategies employed, see, for example, Bartkowski and Kahf (Citation2013); Haid (Citation2018); Saleh (Citation2017); Wessels (Citation2019).
16 The fact that some people decided to take up arms needs to be qualified with a contextual reading of violence. Both the national and international contexts made a decision to take up weapons more realistic than imagining, for example, protection in unarmed terms. Can it be said to be a real decision when there was an overwhelming imperative for it to happen? When various outside bodies seemed willing to give arms, yet unwilling to offer unarmed support or foster a non-violent way of thinking? This qualification in no way justifies violence but rather pushes us to ask uncomfortable and difficult questions about states’ violent structures and narrow militarized perspectives and about international actors who react to violence by offering guns instead of peaceful (but tangible) support.
17 See the website of Women Now for Development, and specifically their work on feminist knowledge production that centers Syrian women’s experience and knowledge of the Syrian conflict (Women Now for Development Citationn.d.).
18 For examples of similar dynamics in Daraya, see Haid (Citation2018).
19 This conduct may have been willing or unwilling; this distinction is important, as the elements of fear and violence forced many people to be unwilling supporters of the regime.
20 The last part of this heading is borrowed from Hankir’s (Citation2019) edited book Our Women on the Ground.
21 Many activists and commentators have underlined how the Syrian regime was built around a divide-and-rule mentality, so that “destroy[ing] the fabric of the Syrian society” was an ongoing endeavor. For instance, the regime would “deliberately [arrest] women, knowing that this [would] bring shame to the entire family in a patriarchal society that confines honour to the bodies of women” (Alodaat and Boukhary Citation2016, 10).
22 See Mhaissen’s (Citation2014) work on how women are renegotiating their roles in refugee camps.
23 The discussion in this section is based on my interview with Kholoud Helmi (Helmi, personal communication November 7, 2018), but also on the reporting and stories published in Enab Baladi (Enab Baladi Citation2019).
24 “Enab Baladi” means “the grapes of our country.” The newspaper is still running, but it relocated outside Syria in 2014.
25 The way in which gender operated during the Syrian revolution/war is very skillfully unpacked by Kaadan (Citation2018) in her film The Day I Lost My Shadow.
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Birgit Poopuu
Birgit Poopuu is a Research Fellow in the School of Governance, Law and Society at Tallinn University, Estonia, where she is currently leading a two-year research project on “The Role of Women in the Syrian Revolution: Peace through Prefigurative Politics,” funded by the Estonian Research Council (MOBTP200). She is curious about revolutionary and non-violent knowledge and experience in international politics. Her research focuses on feminist and decolonial approaches to peace and conflict studies. Most recently, she has published a “running theme” (Special Issue) together with Karijn van den Berg entitled “Becoming Fluent in Fieldwork: (Un)learning What Is Good/Ethical/Responsible Fieldwork” in Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences (PARISS).