Overview

Amidst ongoing wars and insecurities, female fighters, politicians and activists of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are building a new political system that centres gender equality. Since the Rojava Revolution, the international focus has been especially on female fighters, a gaze that has often been essentialising and objectifying, brushing over a much more complex history of violence and resistance. Going beyond Orientalist tropes of the female freedom fighter, and the movement's own narrative of the 'free woman', Isabel Käser looks at personal trajectories and everyday processes of becoming a militant in this movement. Based on in-depth ethnographic research in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, with women politicians, martyr mothers and female fighters, she looks at how norms around gender and sexuality have been rewritten and how new meanings and practices have been assigned to women in the quest for Kurdish self-determination. Her book complicates prevailing notions of gender and war and creates a more nuanced understanding of the everyday embodied epistemologies of violence, conflict and resistance.

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9781009011112

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Reviews

'The highly original ethnography and bold ethnography of Isabel Kaser sheds new light on the evolution of the Kurdish conflict and allows us to understand the complexity of gender-based emancipatory projects emerging in a Near East under fire.' Hamit Bozarslan, EHESS, Paris 'This splendid book takes seriously the Kurdish militant women in all their ever-evolving complexity, grappling with multiple conundrums. Isabel Kaser's work shows us that being a grittily engaged feminist ethnographer does not make it necessary - either intellectually or politically - to resolve these tensions. Rather, what she asks of us is to develop our capacities to resist simplistic resolutions and, instead, stay attentive to the gendered dynamics that shape the lives of the women on the insurgent frontlines.' Cynthia Enloe, Clark University

'The highly original ethnography and bold ethnography of Isabel Käser sheds new light on the evolution of the Kurdish conflict and allows us to understand the complexity of gender-based emancipatory projects emerging in a Near East under fire.' Hamit Bozarslan, EHESS, Paris 'This splendid book takes seriously the Kurdish militant women in all their ever-evolving complexity, grappling with multiple conundrums. Isabel Käser's work shows us that being a grittily engaged feminist ethnographer does not make it necessary - either intellectually or politically - to resolve these tensions. Rather, what she asks of us is to develop our capacities to resist simplistic resolutions and, instead, stay attentive to the gendered dynamics that shape the lives of the women on the insurgent frontlines.' Cynthia Enloe, Clark University 'Isabel Käser has created a real masterpiece with this book … It is the first publication of its kind: a detailed, critical analysis in solidarity of the feminism and women's movement within the PKK and the parts of the Kurdish Movement close to it.' Wiener Jahrbuch für Kurdishe Studien '[The book] is highly recommended for those interested in the women's movement in Kurdistan, but also for those more interested in the way women's subjectivities are produced and embodied within revolutionary movements.' Joost Jongerden, International Review of Social History

Author Information

Isabel Käser is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Research Associate at the University of Bern. She gained her PhD at SOAS University of London and has previously worked in journalism and diplomacy, most recently leading the research project 'Art in Peace Mediation' for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. She has lectured at the University of Bern, and the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr (UKH), and is currently the Principal Investigator of a collaborative project between the LSE and the UKH entitled 'The Kurdistan Region of Iraq Post-ISIS: Youth, Art and Gender'.

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