Relations of ruling in the colonial present: An intersectional view of the Israeli imaginary

Abstract

This article presents a categorical framework for the interrogation of power relations in the study and analysis of Israeli colonialism in Palestine. Following critical antiracist feminist approaches, I highlight the relationship between race, class, and gender constructions that are crucial to colonial rule. Extending Chandra Mohanty's (1991) reading of Dorothy Smith's "relations of ruling," I outline six intersecting categories of colonial practices to examine Israel's particular colonization forms and processes. These categories include: racial separation; citizenship and naturalization forms and processes; construction and consolidation of existing social inequalities; gender, sexuality, and sexual violence; racialized and gendered prisoners; and "unmarked" versus "marked" discourses. Understanding colonial experiences as heterogeneous and plural, I conclude by arguing for the furthering of decolonial and antiracist feminist analyses from within specific sites of resistance. © Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie.