Nawal el Saadawi (1931-2021): a fierce feminist fighter, not without problems

Abstract

This article provides a critical examination of Nawal El-Saadawi’s work: work that articulates the academic, the activist, the experiential, and the literary production. It begins with my own positionality in the context of acquiring/accessing El-Saadawi’s books, as I reflect on the education system I and over one and half million Palestinian citizens have and continue to endure, under Israel’s settler colonial Apartheid regime. Living under a system of racialization, we, Palestinian citizens, were deprived of a decent education at home, and were prevented from any contact with our Arab heritage, in neighbouring Arab countries. This meant we did not have any access to books or any knowledge production, published in the Arab countries, especially if the products were critical of Israel. The irony is that the books we Palestinian citizens could not individually access were accessible at the University Libraries, hence, reaching much of the Arab literature relatively late. This article reviews El-Saadawi’s writings within the social, cultural, political, and patriarchal structure of Egypt and the Arab Middle East. Two specific topics which El-Saadawi focused on, namely, infibulation and the veil will be focused on in this article. The discussion of these topics will be critically assessed within an anti-Orientalist, anti-imperialist feminist framework.