Overview

Women throughout the world have always played their part in struggles against colonialism, imperialism and other forms of oppression. However, there are few books on Arab political prisoners, fewer still on the Palestinians who have been detained in their thousands for their political activism and resistance. Nahla Abdo's Captive Revolution seeks to break the silence on Palestinian women political detainees, providing a vital contribution to research on women, revolutions, national liberation and anti-colonial resistance. Based on stories of the women themselves, as well as her own experiences as a former political prisoner, Abdo draws on a wealth of oral history and primary research in order to analyse their anti-colonial struggle, their agency and their appalling treatment as political detainees. Making crucial comparisons with the experiences of female political detainees in other conflicts, and emphasising the vital role Palestinian political culture and memorialisation of the 'Nakba' have had on their resilience and resistance, Captive Revolution is a rich and revealing addition to our knowledge of this little-studied phenomenon.

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By interviewing Palestinian women political detainees and by situating their experiences both historically and globally, Abdo fills an important gap in both feminist and non-feminist scholarship on gender and resistance. -- Simona Sharoni, Ph.D, Professor, Gender & Women's Studies, State University of New York, Plattsburgh

By interviewing Palestinian women political detainees and by situating their experiences both historically and globally, Abdo fills an important gap in both feminist and non-feminist scholarship on gender and resistance. -- Simona Sharoni, Ph.D, Professor, Gender & Women's Studies, State University of New York, Plattsburgh Nahla Abdo's groundbreaking, highly personal anti-imperialist analysis of Palestinian women political detainees makes a vital contribution to feminist studies of struggle and resistance, moving the reader from rage to hope. Contextualised in a critique of Western feminism and an analysis of Israeli settler-colonial racism, Captive Revolution presents the women militants, criminalised and sexualised by Israel, not as victims but as active agents of anti-colonial gendered resistance. -- Ronit Lentin, Associate professor of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin Nahla Abdo's Captive Revolution is a landmark contribution to an emerging literature on the resistance of women political prisoners since the 1960s, with specific focus on Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and detention centres. The state, through its penal apparatus, plays a critical role in instigating and perpetuating violence against women detainees both through its own repressive practices, and by institutionalising the collective punishment and negation of their people. Avoiding the simplicity of merely adding the narratives of women to existing accounts of prison struggles, Abdo indicts the colonial violence, gynophobia, orientalism and cultural erasure that define the carceral regimes which Palestinian women encounter, and resist. Like its subjects, this book challenges the intellectual and physical barricades that surround our understanding of 'resistance'. -- Dr Mary Corcoran, Keele University, UK.

By interviewing Palestinian women political detainees and by situating their experiences both historically and globally, Abdo fills an important gap in both feminist and non-feminist scholarship on gender and resistance. -- Simona Sharoni, Ph.D, Professor, Gender & Women's Studies, State University of New York, Plattsburgh Nahla Abdo's groundbreaking highly personal anti-imperialist analysis of Palestinian women political detainees makes a vital contribution to feminist studies of struggle and resistance, moving the reader from rage to hope. Contextualised in a critique of western feminism and an analysis of Israeli settler-colonial racism, Captive Revolution presents the women militants, criminalised and sexualised by Israel, not as victims but as active agents of anti-colonial gendered resistance. -- Ronit Lentin, Associate professor of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin

Author Information

Nahla Abdo is an Arab feminist activist and a Professor of Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of Captive Revolution: Palestinian Women's Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System (Pluto, 2014).

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