Edward Said Memorial Conference - Lila Abu Lughod

Keynote lecture of Prof. Lila Abu-Lughod (Columbia University): "Authorizing the New Moral Crusade to Save Muslim Women". Edward Said Memorial Conference, Utrecht, 15 April 2013.
"What lies behind the new American common-sense that we should go to war for global women's rights? We must look at Orientalism's twenty-first century forms. I argue that two industries that we rarely think of together are authorizing the current moral crusade to save Muslim women: the international human rights regime and mass-market publishing, which has brought us a sordid genre of (pornographic) pulp "non"fiction about Muslim women's bondage and oppression. Drawing on experiences in rural Egypt and urging us to think carefully about human life, I offer alternative ways to think about the key terms of this crusade-choice versus force, freedom versus bondage."
Edward Said Memorial Conference was organised by the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University as one of the Treaty of Utrecht commemoration events on 15-17 April 2013. More information available at: cfhutrecht2013.....