Published in 2018
252 pages
Henriette Dahan Kalev is professor emeritus of political science at the Ben Gurion University.
What is this book about?
The book explores the story of two women living in remote town Mitzpe Ramon, in the Negev Desert in south Israel. These women lived in poverty and worked under oppressive conditions for all their lives until one day they began to resist. Standing for the rights of working women and mothers, they led protests and strikes that shook the entire country for weeks.
In An Anatomy of Feminist Resistance: Rebel in the Wilderness, Dahan Kalev’s innovative perspective examines both the public and private spheres of these woman’s lives and reveals the existence of a third sphere in which women are able to find their voices. This study deciphers what causes women to accept conditions of oppression, under what circumstances will women begin to resist, and what are the political transformations rebellious women undergo while fighting oppression.
“Henriette Dahan has written a paradigmatic demonstration of the feminist dictum that the ‘personal is the political,’ for both the subjects of research and the feminist scholar. She tells the stories of two Israeli women of Middle Eastern background who are textile workers in a marginalized location as they resist the interwoven power relations of gender subordination, ethnic inequality and economic exploitation by global capitalism. By attending to the women’s particular transformation of consciousness, Dahan provides uniquely insightful analysis and trenchant critique of the locality of global patriarchy.”(Jon Simons, Leeds Trinity University)
