Gender Violence and the Transnational Politics of the Honor Crime

Front matter

GENDER VIOLENCE AND THE TRANSNATIONAL POLITICS OF THE HONOR CRIME

GENDER VIOLENCE AND THE TRANSNATIONAL POLITICS OF THE HONOR CRIME

Dana M. Olwan

Index

Genealogies of the “Honor Crime”

Transnational Memorialization: The Politics of Remembering Murdered Muslim Women

Between the Artist and the Critic: Palestinian Confrontations of Violence

Against Exceptionalism: Historicizing US Discourse on Gender Violence and Racial Terror

At the Limits of Legal Justice: Women’s Organizing and Juridical Activism in Jordan

Intersectional Feminism and the Politics of Hope and Solidarity vii

157 177

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Aqsa Parvez Bench in Pelham, Ontario Entrance to the American Independence Park Aqsa Parvez's Memorial Plaque

Jordanian Abolish Article 308 Activists Banner from Abolish 308 Campaign

Tal3at Ramallah March vi

46 47 48

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK has journeyed with me over multiple geographies and homes for over a decade. Its completion is owed in large part to so many people and communities who helped me recognize its importance and encouraged me to pursue the difficult intellectual and political questions that I wanted to ask and tried to answer here.

My work was made possible through a number of generous grants and scholarships that helped support this project. A Future Minority Studies postdoctoral fellowship informed the shape of the project in profound ways, connecting me with Chandra Talpade Mohanty, who has supported my work from day one. Her brilliant scholarship resonates through many of the pages in this work. Thanks are due to the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, which granted me the Lilian Robinson Scholar Award and hosted me at Concordia University as I was completing my research on honor crime discourses in Canada. A Palestinian American Research Council grant helped me better understand contestations of gender violence in Palestine. Thanks are due also to the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University for its generous support of my research and the production of this book.

Iam thankful to the members of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse University (SU). My colleagues in the department, Himika Bhattacharya, Pedro DiPietro, Eunjung Kim, Vivian May, Danika Medak- Saltzman, Gwendolyn Pough, Robin Riley, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, vii viii * ACKNOWLEDGMENTS are all incredible scholars whose commitments to feminist scholarship and pedagogy have inspired my own in so many ways. I also am grateful for the crucial administrative assistance and support of Susann DeMocker-Shedd and Alice Loomis. At SU, I have had the pleasure of working with brilliant students and activists from whom I have learned so much. Special thanks are owed to Laura Jaffee, Pamela Sertzen, and Nicole Tanquary for sharing their feminist pedagogies, their labor, and their support. My students in my undergraduate classes and senior students in the feminist solidary seminar have challenged and transformed how I understand the world.

Transnational feminist scholarship has framed and inspired my analysis throughout this work. The works of Lila Abu-Lughod, Elora Halim Chowdhury, Yasmin Jiwani, Nadine Naber, Sherene Razack, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, and Sunera Thobani have indelibly shaped my own. I thank Elora Halim Chowdhury for her support of the project. Thanks to Nayrouz Abu Hatoum, Sophia Azeb, Lisa Bhungalia, Chandni Desai, Keith Feldman, Mali Golomb- Leavitt, Saleem Haddad, Emilie Cameron, Chris Churchill, Michelle Hartman, Tamara Isaak, Jimmy Johnson, Vani Kannan, Marcy Knopf-Newman, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Haneen Maikey, Eli Manning, Corinne Mason, Emily Mitchell- Eaton, Scott Morgensen, Jennifer Moghannam, Shaista Patel, Randa Serhan, Mejduline Shomali, Gohar Siddiqui, Heather Turcotte, Ariana Vigil, and Suzy Zepeda for their friendship, guidance, and support throughout this journey. Dima Ayoub’s love and laughter have carried me through multiple moves across many borders. Mari Spira’s fierce intellect and our sustained connection for many years have transformed my understanding of feminist praxis.

The following colleagues and friends read and offered generous and incisive feedback on parts of this manuscript and different iterations of my work. Allison Brown provided editorial development that helped reshape the trajectory of this project. Vani Kannan offered important research work that helped guide my chapter on US honor crime discourses. Christine Abbott provided vital editorial assistance. Wahiba Abu-Ras offered helpful and encouraging advice. Many thanks are owed to Chris Eng, Amy Kallander, Margaret Little, Corinne Mason, Margaret Pappano, Shaista Patel, Sophie Richter-Devroe, Robin Riley, Mari Spira, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty for their intellectual insights, their advice, and their work in reading and reviewing parts of my manuscript. Carol Fadda has labored over every single part of this manuscript and cheered me to the finish line. Across the Syracuse University campus, a number of colleagues have become mentors and friends whose compassion, commitment, and kindness have made the academy a more livable place. I thank Barbara Applebaum for supporting my work from the moment I arrived at the SU campus. Thanks also to Mike Gill, Kara Herold,

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS œ ix

Margaret Himley, and Charlotte Sharp for supporting me in various stages of this process.

I am thankful to friends from Canada who made me feel remembered and loved in spite of the distance and borders between settler colonial states. I thank them for crossing these borders when I could not cross them. Molly Kraft and Eliane Mazzawi made one of the first visits to Syracuse when I moved here. Our hikes in Ithaca and incessant laughter still ring in my ears many years after that fun-filled trip. Raneem Azzam is a dear and constant friend. Trina Zeimbekis embodies a type of love, care, friendship that I aspire to. I thank her for the baklava-making nights and for making me see what I often miss. With Aruna Boodram, Yasmeen Abdelhadi, Wren Pragg, and Nanky Rai, I took a road trip to New Orleans that healed my heart and reminded me of the power of friendships born of trust.

Sunera Thobani’s fierce and brilliant feminist politics have provided a compass for my own. I am grateful for the deep commitment and love she has shown me since the day I met her. Harsha Walia invited me into her radical activist world and helped me connect the dots between and across so many struggles. I thank her and Nassim Elbardouh for the type of love that distance cannot unmake. I thank Elena Ismail for many great meals and her thoughtful company. Ozlem Sensoy became a friend and mentor in Vancouver, and I owe much to her. Many thanks are also due to Abdullah Khalifeh, a kind friend. Margaret Pappano and Adnan Husain treated me like family when I lived in Kingston, breaking fast together during Ramadan and sustaining the connection between our worlds when we no longer shared the same spaces. Ariel Salzmann was always generous with her time. Laith Marouf and Gretchen King generously hosted me in Montreal countless times. Margaret Little’s heart and feminist politics have been an inspiration for more than a decade. I am so grateful for her friendship and care. I am thankful for the rekindled connection with David Thompson. Amidst a global pandemic, he reminds me of the power of words to heal and transform.

Between 2015 and 2018 I spent three formative years at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI). There I was welcomed by Ayat Hamdan and Inaam Charaf, who generously helped me navigate a new academic space and learn to write, think, and teach in Arabic once more. I was lucky to have the opportunity to coteach a class on Arab feminisms with Sophie Richter-Devroe, who quickly became a cherished friend. I thank my students who taught me so much about the diverse and intertwined social and political struggles of people from across the region. In Doha, Jad Kawtharani, Dana Kawtharani, Ayhab Saad, and Ahlam Saad opened their homes and hearts to me from the moment we met. Both families welcomed my bonds and friendships with their x • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS daughters, Joud and Salma. I thank Paolo D’Urbano and Laura Treglia for their continued friendship and support. Eyas Hmouz became a trusted friend. Maram Kabbara’s friendship, heart, and wit made leaving Doha a very difficult decision. I am grateful for our continuing and growing friendship.

In Jordan, the lifelong friendships of Rand Al Jammal, Nour Abu Ragheb, and Dima Zannouneh have been so central to my growth. I thank Dima Zannouneh for her love and support and the many memories we have shared together since our days at Yarmouk University. Abeer Dababneh was a generous host at the Center for Women’s Studies of the University of Jordan. My friendship with Farah Al-Haddad has traveled with us through our moves from Jordan and the US. In Palestine, Ayhab and Ahlam Saad were generous hosts in Ramallah. Haneen Maikey’s friendship and love have transformed my time in Palestine.

My return to Syracuse and the US after a long absence was made easier with new and renewed friendships that shortened the Syracuse winters and helped me make a new home in the US. Christine Abbott’s constant love has spanned two decades of life in the US and many unforgettable road trips and travels. Amy Kallander, George Kallander, and their daughters, Mona and Sabrina, have provided support and laughter when things were hard. I thank Amy for nourishing our friendship with late-night calls, check-in emails, and run encouragements and for being there for me from the moment I set foot in this city and on this campus. Farha Ternikar’s kindness and friendship have been a gift for many years. Robin Riley has stood by me through many ups and downs. Many thanks are owed to Jessie Nissim, who is a model of compassionate love and care. Thanks also to Gretchen Purser for many chats and coffees. Rashmi Gangamma and I arrived at Syracuse at the same time, and we have been friends since our orientation. Hannah Ehrenreich welcome me into her home in Syracuse, making me see this city in a way no one else has. Nikeeta Slade’s politics and insights have inspired and transformed my analysis so often. Thanks also to Pedram Magsoud-Nia for political discussions that redefined our friendship. I thank Laura Jaffee for her ginger cookies and care. Laila Kobrossy Audi’s kind heart and genuineness are what authentic friendships are made of. Fahimeh Zaheri’s fierce sisterly love and support have helped me navigate many difficult life decisions and moments. Siham Doughman’s kindness and positive outlook on the world are an inspiration. While I was completing this manuscript, the sharing of laughs and growing friendships with Su Nam and Susan Thomas were a much-needed gift. Thank you to each and every one of you for all the delicious food we have shared and the many more memories we will create.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS œ xi

Taralee Cyphers believed in my project from the moment I met her. I thank her for the valuable advice, care, and efficiency with which she has championed my work. Many thanks are owed to her, Laurie Avery, Rebecca Bostock, Kristen Ebert-Wagner, Kristina Wheeler, and the entire editorial team at The Ohio State University Press for supporting this book. I am also thankful for the generative feedback of the anonymous reviewers of this manuscript whose comments helped me refine many of the arguments made throughout this work. Sections of chapter 1 are revised versions of previously published work: “Pinkwashing the “Honor Crime’: Murdered Muslim Women and the Politics of Posthumous Solidarities,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44, no. 4 (2019): 905-30; and “No Place in Canada’: Triumphant Discourses, Murdered Women, and the ‘Honor Crime,” in In the Name of ‘Honor’: Responding to Violence Against Women from Socio-legal and Policing Perspectives, edited by Aisha Gill, Karl Roberts, and Carolyn Strange (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 218-36. I thank Sharif Mosa, Samar Dudin, Majd Sidawi, and the Jordanian National Commission for Women for allowing me to include their work and images in my book. I am grateful for their kindness and generosity. I thank Lena Merhej for designing the inspirational and moving cover of this book and for emphasizing themes of feminist resistance in her art.

Through the long writing process, messages from my family members, dispersed across the world, reminded me that I had so many people rooting for me. My aunt Hala Al Aruri and my uncle Musa Al Aruri made Jordan home again with delicious meals and love. I am thankful to my cousins Ahlam Abed, Diana Olwan, Zaineb Olwan, and Maha Zibdawi, who took time out of their worlds to encourage me to keep moving forward. Their supportive messages helped me feel connected and cared for always. Hana Al Aruri’s strength and resilience inspire me. I am thankful for the sisterly love that we grew and our bond and connection, which go far beyond biology.

I would be lost without Carol Fadda’s love, friendship, and sisterhood. The completion of this book is owed in large part to her critical and meticulous feedback, her unwavering support, and her generous intellect. From the moment we met, Carol welcomed me into her life unconditionally, making me a part of her family both in Syracuse and in Beirut. Nada, Wadad, and Nahi, Carol's late father, made Lebanon a second home. Sean Conrey’s kindness, compassion, and care are what radical love is made of. I thank all of them for the countless calls, meals, walks, and runs that have sustained and deepened our connections for many years now. Carol, Sean, and their daughters, Mira and Emily, are my home away from home and my family.

xii «+ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest gratitude goes to my nieces and nephews: Emily, Mira, Omar, Jenna, Faris, and Layla. Having the privilege of being a part of their magical worlds and seeing them grow into strong and thoughtful beings has been a privilege and a gift. My siblings, Rami, Rana, and Omar, have supported me throughout this journey and have stood by me when my life took strange and unexpected turns. Ranas tough-love approach has helped me in more ways than she knows. I am in awe of her no-nonsense views on the world and her unwavering love for me. Thanks to Kate Azima for her loving heart and gentle kindness. Thanks to Lina Sarie for the supportive messages and the virtual calls. In Mohamed Chaaban, I have a true brother. His goodness shines through always.

My final thanks go to my parents, Mohammed Olwan and Hiyam Abudhais, whose love and care for me is boundless. My father’s intellect and integrity inspire and ground me. My mother’s intuition and wisdom are my guide. I thank them both for modeling strength and resilience in the face of life’s certain uncertainties.

This book is dedicated to people struggling against gender violence and fighting to bring an end to it in all its formations.

INTRODUCTION

Genealogies of the “Honor Crime”

IN 2000 the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) published “Lives Together, Worlds Apart: Men and Women in a Time of Change” as part of the yearly State of the World Population report. The eighty-four-page study, published at the turn of the century, focused on gender inequalities between men and women, arguing for the importance of “bringing gender inequality fully into the light and treating it as a matter of urgency affecting both human rights and development priorities” (2). The document combines country-based reports with research and analysis about the role of states and nongovernment organizations in creating safe and healthy environments for their communities. Nestled within the document is a section that discusses violence against girls and women as a human rights violation that negatively impacts their health and well-being. In this section, the document specifically names sex trafficking and “honour killings” as two forms of violence that are on the rise and that affect a growing number of children, girls, and women worldwide (29). In its discussion of the honor crime, the report estimates that “throughout the world, perhaps as many as 5,000 women and girls a year are murdered by members of their own families, many of them for the ‘dishonour’ of having been raped” (29).’ The report attributes this form of violence to “the community’s or the family’s demand for sexual chastity and virginity” (29), suggesting that these crimes take place all around “but tend to be more

2 e INTRODUCTION prevalent in, but are not limited to, countries with a majority Muslim population” (30).

Since its publication in the UNFPA report, this estimate has become one of the most cited numbers on the phenomenon of gender violence known as the “honor crime’—often losing its initial reference point or citational origin. Frequently appearing in a broad array of nongovernment reports, news media articles, and academic texts, the UN-endorsed number serves to give a name to a specific and distinct form of gender-based violence. This statistic also raises the alarm about the honor crime’s impact on girls and women and the crime’s abrogation of their right to life, safety, and human dignity. Astonishingly, the UN report provides no information on the methods and strategies used to arrive at this estimate but provides the qualification of “perhaps” to note that the number it cites may, in fact, be an underestimate of the crime’s scale or its rate of occurrence. More than a figure that measures the number of women murdered in the name of honor, the UN estimate disseminates and constructs its own truths about the magnitude and scope of this phenomenon, which is today speculated to claim the lives of almost 12,000 women per year (Gill 2018). As a numerical figure that draws its power from the authority of its nongovernment purveyors and their stated investment in gender equality and women’s rights, this number has become a definitive measure for honor-related violence and its annual rates of occurrence. Stripped of historical and geographic specificity, it operates as a free-floating signifier that produces transnational circuitries of knowledge about a social problem of macabre global proportions.

Knowledge about the honor crime has sought to reveal both the global magnitude of this form of gender-based violence and its specific features or identifying traits. Citations of the UN figure do not always acknowledge their original source, but they are often accompanied by notes about its limitations. In the statistical data section of the Honor Based Violence Network, for example, the UN number is included with an introductory note that states that “these figures are considered estimates and are widely believed to be severe underestimates. Due to lack of focused reporting and recording of Honour Killings internationally very little is known about the true extent of HBV worldwide”? Such remarks do not question the methodology or validity of the collected data but point, instead, to their shortcomings and their potential underestimation of the phenomenon of honor-related violence. Similarly, an article on honor-based violence published in National Geographic alludes to the difficulties of counting honor crimes but nevertheless claims that “hundreds, if not thousands, of women are murdered by their families each year in the name of family ‘honor: It’s difficult to get precise numbers on the phenomenon of honor killing; the murders frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished, and the concept of family honor justifies the act in the eyes of some societies” (Mayell 2002). Oscillating between a figure that estimates hundreds and possibly thousands of killings, the author emphasizes the lack of accuracy around this form of violence which is attributed to underreporting.

In other coverage of the crime and its occurrence in the US, Gregg Zoroya (2016) of USA Today acknowledges that “no one really knows” how common honor-related violence is but states that the “the practice appears to be getting worse, although it’s unclear whether the higher numbers stem from better reporting or greater frequency. The Internet appears to play a crucial role, both in learning more information about the violence and in creating more opportunity for families to track down inappropriate behavior by relatives.” Increased knowledge about honor-related violence is here linked to modern forms of information collection and reporting through the internet, but the author concedes that it is not clear whether the internet generates what we know about this violence or whether it simply documents actual higher incidences and rates of occurrence. In other words, even in reports that insist on the pervasiveness of honor-related violence, there remains an unresolved tension between the claimed figures and the methods used to procure and disseminate them.

Global efforts to end the phenomenon of gender and sexual violence have predominantly employed two strategies: the first relates to the work of “quantifying” the social problem of gender and sexual violence. Typically, this includes the production of a measure of the problem or the collecting of data and information, which is then translated into numerical evidence. This evidence is then combined with qualitative knowledge (some explicitly stated and some implicitly drawn) that is then used to shed light on the magnitude or scale of the social issue under study. The second pertains to producing policies, procedures, and indicators that can help mitigate or end the numerically identified social problem. The quantification of gender-based violence has a long history, one that has been codified in the various reports, documents, and fact sheets produced by the United Nations, nongovernment organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and a large body of qualitative academic literature. The need to track gender-based violence emanates from a recognition of its global impact and the belief that producing numerical knowledge about the problem can assist in efforts to contest and end it. Work to quantitatively study gender-based violence draws its legitimacy from the power of numbers or the belief that numbers reflect, rather than construct, uncontested and scientifically collected bare facts about the world. Writing on the practices of measuring and quantifying gender violence,

Sally Engle Merry argues that numbers “convey an aura of objective truth and scientific authority despite the extensive interpretive work that goes into their construction” (2016, 1). Merry’s work explores the links between numerical information and the processes of creating indicators or measures of complex and not readily traceable or easily calculable phenomenon like human rights, gender violence, and sex trafficking. Providing a cautionary note about the “seductions of quantification,” Merry’s study reveals that the ability to produce numerical figures about such issues operates under the assumption that they are, in fact, not only knowable but also quantifiable social phenomenon.

Critical scrutiny of the numerical edifice that surrounds the honor crime has been expressed by anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod who, in her groundbreaking work on the subject, has stated that “reports regularly note that honor crimes are on the increase; however, no evidence or explanation is given of how the figures are derived” (2011, 38). Abu-Lughod questions the terms of classification on which honor-based violence is identified and then counted. She argues that such work requires the disappearance of the context and the specificities of these crimes. Drawing attention to the disputable methodologies that inform the nascent claim that twenty-three to twenty-seven honor killings occur in the US per year, Leti Volpp (2019) has carefully shown how data about the honor crime work in tandem with assumptions about the nature of this form of gender violence and assumptions about the backgrounds of their perpetrators.* As Volpp states, “Of course, data has its own magic, carrying with it the notions of objectivity, science, and truth. Yet there is also a willing belief in the prevalence of ‘honor killings’ among Muslims that aligns with longstanding narratives of the dangerous Muslim man and the imperiled Muslim woman” (167-68).* Despite the important scholarly interventions surrounding available numerical data, quantitative information continues to converge with a set of structuring, essentialist, and generalized narratives about the form of this violence and its perpetrators in order to produce the phenomenon that is known as the “honor killing” or the “honor crime” Although no definitional consensus about what constitutes an honor crime exists today, data about honor killings produced by the UN and other nongovernment organizations, government reports, media accounts, and activist interventions against honor-based violence, combined with a bevy of scholarly and academic literature on the subject, coalesce to create powerful discourses surrounding honor-related violence, its staggering rates of occurrence, and its far-reaching scope.

Apprehension surrounding the contemporary constructions, deployments, and circulations of knowledge about gender violence known as the honor crime gives shape to some of the central concerns of this book. This apprehension is not animated by a questioning of the existence of gender-based violence that is motivated by and carried out in the name of “honor”; nor is it compelled by a desire to disavow such forms of violence as unassociated with the religion of Islam and therefore un-Islamic.° Rather, this apprehension is informed by a commitment to trace the appearance of this discourse and its political, social, and cultural workings in this historical conjuncture and understand its power. By discourse, I refer not only to the language that is used to identify the honor crime but also to the reports, policies, and practices that are produced in and enacted under its name. Following the work of Elizabeth Bernstein in providing an ethnography of the sex trafficking discourse, I understand discourse to “signal a constellation of words, materialities, and practices as they coalesce in historically and culturally situated ways, constructing the empirical object under consideration and the social locations in which it is manifest” (2018, 25).

I am therefore interested in mapping a set of stories and narratives that honor crime discourses elicit and produce. In this book, I trace how these discourses enact particular and multiple modes of knowing gender violence and how, ultimately, they structure and delimit horizons of antiviolence contestations. In paying attention to what now constitute honor crime and honor killing discourses, I seek to better understand the various forms of gender-based violence that the honor crime describes, invokes, and encompasses. Before delving into this discourse and its workings, it is important to note a distinction between the “honor killing” as the act of murder and the “honor crime,” a term that invokes a broad range of violence, including death and murder, that are enacted under the name of honor or rationalized through its invocation. In using the term honor crime, I am also pointing to efforts to enact laws and regulations that construct this violence, in its various manifestations, as a criminal act. When possible, I have used the term honor crime over honor killing unless a text specifically refers to the act of killing or murder. In describing the honor crime, I am primarily referring to forms of gender violence recognized to operate under the logic of honor that is attached to “communities defined by their alien difference from us” and subsequently unmoored from an understanding of a broader continuum of gender violence (Abu-Lughod 2013, 128). Throughout this book, my use of the term seeks to problematize it, offering a genealogy of its construction, appearance, and circulation.’

Gender Violence and the Transnational Politics of the Honor Crime is invested in thinking about the ways in which discourses surrounding the honor crime operate: how they work in tandem with or separately from a range of linguistic, literary, political, and metaphorical texts and contexts; and how, through their uneven proliferation, they construct particular material realities. Discourses around the honor crime are of course not singular, uniform, fixed, or unchanging, and they do not operate uniformly across different geographic contexts. The discourses surrounding the honor crime appear in both hegemonic and dominant forms, and they can also be replicated, circulated, and disrupted. Dominant and mainstream discourses surrounding the honor crime continuously insist on its singularity, specificity, separateness, and distinctiveness from other forms of gender violence. As this book will show, honor crime discourses that construct this form of violence in this singularized way work in complicated ways, distributing meanings unevenly and unpredictably. Their appearance, however, is neither sudden or coincidental but historically specific and contingent. Tracking the contemporary movements, productions, and deployments of these discourses illuminates the unstable and ungovernable means by which they appear to circulate. To better understand their tractions and uptakes, I follow multiple and wide-ranging narratives and stories about the honor crime, showing how they proliferate between and within nation-states. I refer to discourses in the plural in order to highlight the multiple texts and contexts that construct the honor crime as it is today understood. Through the following chapters, I unpack how these narratives become tied to interconnected and overlapping forms of governance, state power, sexual control, and border management.

This project therefore analyzes a broad range of texts that span legal, political, and literary genres and that inform normative and critical understandings and confrontations of gender-based violence known as honor crimes. I understand hegemonic honor crime discourses as sets of signs, symbols, and rhetorical, discursive, and political practices that appear to describe a unique and distinct form of gender violence. While this form of violence is understood to target the lives of both men and women, in this book I primarily focus on cases related to violence against women. The cases, sites, and narratives I focus on do not purport to exhaust the wide range of available materials on the phenomenon of the honor crime or the specific contexts in which gender violence takes place. Rather, I explore a certain set of narratives to examine the knowledge they produce about gender-based violence in general and the honor crime in particular. In following these knowledge constructions and narratives, I draw out the relations between the four separate but interconnected sites of Canada, the US, Jordan, and Palestine. Far from mere geographic proximity or geopolitical intimacies and entanglements, these sites are tied together through the nonlinear travels, maneuvers, and circulations of these discourses. In placing these sites side by side and analogously, the book asks the following questions: How have mainstream honor crime discourses emerged, and for what ends? What is their discursive currency, and how have the honor crime’s meanings been constructed and transported from one context to another?

Although a number of critical studies now acknowledge the various complicated and interwoven mobilizations of honor crime discourses, relatively unexplored are the ways in which they travel across and between different geographies and contexts in multidirectional, uneven, and circular routes.’ Through its focus on these disparate and interconnected sites and contexts, this book provides a transnational feminist examination of the movements of honor-related discourses and their shaping of community-based, state-sanctioned, and nongovernment responses to and activism against gender-based violence. At stake in the study of the intersections between political, legal, activist, and cultural discourses surrounding the honor crime is both their ascendancy and their regulation of notions and practices of modernity and citizenship today. My book demonstrates that the discursive severing of the honor crime from the broader continuum of gender violence does not emerge suddenly but has a genealogy or a contemporary and nascent history. In reading a broad array of texts together, I demonstrate that this discursive and textual move has broad political consequences for policies, practices, and the law. Throughout the work, I show how the honor crime functions as a signifier that governs and manages populations and how its meanings travel and circulate across and between separate and interconnected circuits of power and knowledge.